And once again, I get the chapter about the jheherrin...
Covenant comes up out of the lake after wounding the lurker, and finds that the company is all more or less unharmed. The exception is Linden, whose leg is badly broken and needs to be set. Covenant wants to set it himself, but Cail refuses to let him.In silent consideration, Brinn reached out with the cloth Covenant had discarded. He took the krill and wrapped its heat into a neat bundle, as if thereby he could make the truth bearable for Covenant. But Covenant went on staring at his hands.
They were unharmed; free even of heat-damage. He had been protected by his own power; even his flesh had become so accustomed to wild magic that he guarded himself instinctively, without expense to any part of himself except his soul. And if that were true -
He groaned.
If that were true, then he was already damned.
While Linden sleeps, the Giants tell Covenant and Brinn about their quest: led by Seadreamer's Earth-Sight, they are searching for the cause of the wound in the Land. Covenant tells them he needs their ship.Covenant's vitals trembled. His hands had held power enough to maim the lurker and had suffered no harm. "I said I'll do it."
"No." Cail's denial was absolute. "You have not the strength of the Haruchai. And the blame for this injury is mine."
"Don't you understand?" Covenant could not find sufficient force for his remonstrations. "Everything I touch turns to blood. All I do is kill." His words seemed to drop to the ground, vitiated by the distant self-pity of the lurker. "She's here because she tried to save my life. I need to help her."
Unexpectedly, Cail looked up and met Covenant's wounded gaze. "Ur-Lord," he said as if he had judged the Unbeliever to the marrow of his bones, "you have not the strength.
You don't understand! Covenant tried to shout. But no sound came past the knot of self-loathing in his throat. Cail was right; with his half-hand, he would not be able to grip Linden's foot properly; he could never help her, had not the strength. And yet his hands were unharmed. He could not resist when Pitchwife took hold of him, drawing him away from the group around Linden.
Without speaking, the malformed Giant led him to the campfire Honninscrave was building. Seadreamer sat there, resting his acid-burned foot. He gazed at Covenant with eloquent, voiceless eyes. Honninscrave gave Covenant a sharp glance, then picked up a stone cup from one of his bundles and handed it to Covenant. Covenant knew from the smell that the cup contained diamondraught, potent as oblivion. If he drank from that cup, he might not regain consciousness until the next day. Or the day after that.
Unconsciousness bore no burdens, felt no blame.
He did not drink. He stared into the flames without seeing them, without feeling the clench of grief on his features. He did nothing but listen to the sounds of the night: the lurker bubbling pain softly to itself; Pitchwife's faint stertorous breathing; Linden's gagged scream as Cail started to pull at her foot. Her bones made a noise like the breaking of sodden sticks as they shifted against each other.
Then the First said tightly, "It is done."
The fire cast streaks of orange and yellow through Covenant's tears. He did not want ever to be able to see again, wished himself forever deaf and numb. But he turned to Pitchwife and lifted the stone cup toward the Giant. "Here. She needs this."
Pitchwife carried the cup to Linden. Covenant followed like a dry leaf in his wake.
Before Covenant reached her, he was met by Brinn and Cail. They blocked his way; but they spoke deferentially. "Ur-Lord." Brinn's alien inflection expressed the difficulty of apologizing. "It was necessary to deny you. No disservice was intended."
Covenant fought the tightness in his throat. "I met Bannor in Andelain. He said, 'Redeem my people. Their plight is an abomination. And they will serve you well.'"
But no words were adequate to articulate what he meant. He fumbled past the Haruchai and went to kneel at Linden's side.
So Covenant tells them his tale: about the Sunbane, and about his quest. And the First tells him that the Giants know where they might find out where the One Tree is."Thomas Covenant," the First said in a voice like a broadsword, "what is your purpose?"
"Oh, forsooth!" Pitchwife laughed. "Let this lurker await our good readiness. We will not be hastened." His words could have been sarcastic; but he spoke them in a tone of clean glee. "Are we not Giants? Are not tales more precious to us than life?"
But while the First hesitates, the skest move in for another attack. They corner the company on a peninsula, surrounded by mud."Then take me there." His voice was husky with supplication. "The Sunbane's getting worse. People are killed every day to feed it. The Land is dying." I swore I'd never kill again - swore it in the name of Foamfollower's caamora. But I can't stop. "Please."
Honninscrave tosses a torch into the mud, which catches on fire. The skest continue to advance. And somewhere in the midst of all this, Vain suddenly reappears.
And then...
The sur-jheherrin defend the company by absorbing the acid skest into their clay bodies. One after another, the skest are absorbed, and more and more sur-jheherrin come out of the mud to help. Meanwhile, Honninscrave continues questioning the first two sur-jheherrin.Covenant turned in time to see a short figure detach itself from the burning mud, step queasily onto the hard ground.
The figure was scarcely taller than the skest, and shaped like them, a misborn child without eyes or any other features. But it was made of mud. Flames flickered over it as it climbed from the fire, then died away, leaving a dull brown creature like a sculpture poorly wrought in clay. Reddish pockets embedded in its form glowed dully.
Paralyzed by recognition, Covenant watched as a second clay form emerged like a damp sponge from the mud. It looked like a crocodile fashioned by a blind man.
The two halted on the bank and faced the company. From somewhere within themselves, they produced modulated squishing noises which sounded eerily like language. Mud talking.
The First and Pitchwife stared, she sternly, he with a light like hilarity in his eyes. But Honninscrave stepped forward and bowed formally. With his lips, he made sounds which approximated those of the clay forms.
In a whisper, Pitchwife informed his companions, "They name themselves the sur-jheherrin. They ask if we desire aid against the skest. Honninscrave replies that our need is absolute." The clay creatures spoke again. A look of puzzlement crossed Pitchwife's face. "The sur-jheherrin say that we will be redeemed. 'In the name of the Pure One,'" he added, then shrugged. "I do not comprehend it."
The jheherrin. Covenant staggered inwardly as memories struck him like blows. Oh dear God.
The soft ones. They had lived in the caves and mud pits skirting Foul's Creche. They had been the Despiser's failures, the rejected mischances of his breeding dens. He had let them live because the torment of their craven lives amused him.
But he had misjudged them. In spite of their ingrown terror, they had rescued Covenant and Foamfollower from Lord Foul's minions, had taught Covenant and Foamfollower the secrets of Foul's Creche, enabling them to reach the thronehall and confront the Despiser. In the name of the Pure One -
The sur-jheherrin were clearly descendants of the soft ones. They had been freed from thrall, as their old legend had foretold. But not by Covenant, though he had wielded the power. His mind burned with remembrance; he could hear himself saying, because he had had no choice, Look at me. I'm not pure. I'm corrupt. The word jheherrin meant "the corrupt." His reply had stricken the clay creatures with despair. And still they had aided him.
But Foamfollower - The Pure One. Burned clean by the caamora of Hotash Slay, he had cast down the Despiser, broken the doom of the jheherrin.
And now their inheritors lived in the mud and mire of Sarangrave Flat. Covenant clung to the sur-jheherrin with his eyes as if they were an act of grace, the fruit of Foamfollower's great clean heart, which they still treasured across centuries that had corroded all human memories of the Land.
Honninscrave asks about the Pure One, but the First says they don't have time for that.Another part of Covenant knew that his arms were clamped over his stomach, that he was rocking himself from side to side, like a sore child. Everything was too vivid. Past and present collided in him: Foamfollower's agony in Hotash Slay; the despair of the soft ones; innocent men and women slaughtered; Linden helpless in Seadreamer's arms; fragments of insanity.
---------------------Covenant hugged his chest, unable to stop rocking. "No." His mind was a jumble of shards like a broken stoneware pot, each as sharp-edged and vivid as blame. "You're wrong." The Stonedownors stared at him; but he could not read their faces. He hardly knew who he was. "You need to know about the Pure One."
The First's eyes sharpened. "Thomas Covenant," she rasped, "do not taunt me. The survival and purpose of the Search are in my hands. I must choose swiftly."
"Then choose." Suddenly, Covenant's hands became fists, jerking blows at the invulnerable air. "Choose, and be ignorant." His weakness hurt his throat. "I'm talking about a Giant."
The First winced, as if he had unexpectedly struck her to the heart. She hesitated, glancing past the company to gauge the progress of the sur-jheherrin. To Covenant, she said sternly, "Very well, Giantfriend. Speak to me of this Pure One."
Giantfriend! Covenant ached. He wanted to hide his face in grief; but the passion of his memories could not be silenced.
"Saltheart Foamfollower. A Giant. The last of the Giants who lived in the Land. They'd lost their way Home." Foamfollower's visage shone in front of him. It was Honninscrave's face. All his Dead were coming back to him. "Every other hope was gone. Foul had the Land in his hands, to crush it. There was nothing left. Except me. And Foamfollower.
"He helped me. He took me to Foul's Creche, so that I could at least fight, at least make that much restitution, die if I had to. But he was burned -" Shuddering, he fought to keep his tale in order. "Before we got there, Foul trapped us. We would have been killed. But the jheherrin - the ancestors - They rescued us. In the name of the Pure One.
"That was their legend - the hope that kept them sane. They believed that someday somebody pure - somebody who didn't have Foul's hands clenched in his soul - would come and free them. If they were worthy. Worthy! They were so tormented. There wasn't enough weeping in all the world to describe their worth. And I couldn't -" He choked on his old rage for victims, the preterite and the dispossessed. "I had power, but I wasn't pure. I was so full of disease and violence -" His hands groped the air, came back empty. "And they still helped us. They thought they had nothing to live for, and they helped -"
His vision of their courage held him silent for a moment. But his friends were waiting; the First was waiting. The sur-jheherrin had begun to move off the peninsula, absorbing skest. He drove himself to continue.
"But they couldn't tell us how to get across Hotash Slay. It was lava. We didn't have any way to get across. Foamfollower -" The Giant had shouted, I am the last of the Giants. I will give my life as I choose. Covenant's memory of that cry would never be healed. "Foamfollower carried me. He just walked the lava until it sucked him down. Then he threw me to the other side." His grief resounded in him like a threat of wild magic, unaneled power. "I thought he was dead."
His eyes burned with recollections of magma. "But he wasn't dead. He came back. I couldn't do it alone, couldn't even get into Foul's Creche, never mind find the thronehall, save the Land. He came back to help me. Purified. All his hurts seared, all his hate and lust for killing and contempt for himself gone. He gave me what I needed when I didn't have anything left, gave me joy and laughter and courage. So that I could finish what I had to do without committing another Desecration. Even though it killed him."
Oh, Foamfollower!
"He was the Pure One. The one who freed the jheherrin. Freed the Land. By laughing. A Giant."
He glared at the company. In the isolation of what he remembered, he was prepared to fight them all for the respect Foamfollower deserved. But his unquenched passion had nowhere to go. Tears reflected orange and green from Honninscrave's cheeks. Pitchwife's mien was a clench of sorrow. The First swallowed thickly, fighting for sternness. When she spoke, her words were stiff with the strain of self-mastery.
"I must hear more of the Giants you have known. Thomas Covenant, we will accompany you from this place."
~Foamy~
But with this line he clearly reinforces Foamfollower's explaination of the Giantish love for tales. 
Carumba! IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII like it! 
