The One Tree, Chapter 2: Black Mood

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The One Tree, Chapter 2: Black Mood

Post by matrixman »

Starfare's Gem is well on its way, leaving behind Coercri and the Land, heading towards open Sea and the far-off mysteries of the earth.

On board the dromond, Linden and Covenant are enthralled by the Giants, and share in the simple thrill of the voyage. They are also entertained by a plainsong the Giants sing to express their love of adventure and discovery.

Soon Linden is eager to explore the ship. Cail of the Haruchai appears (just like that!) and asks her if she wants to see her quarters. She realizes that a place of privacy is just what she needs now.

"And perhaps the hospitality of the Giants would extend as far as bathwater? Hot bathwater? Images of luxuriance filled her head. How long had it been since she had last taken a hot bath?" :)

"CALGON, CALGON, take me awaaay!"

Linden and Cail walk across the ship, dwarfed by the dimensions around them. Through the enormous eating-hall, out to the afterdeck. Then below to a passageway where rooms had been set aside for them. Linden enters her room to find furnishings that totally outsize her. (Alice in Wonderland indeed!)

After Cail leaves to find food and bathwater for her, Linden is alone in her cabin. Then something happens:
A hand of darkness hidden somewhere inside the depths of the dromond reached out one dire finger toward her heart. At its touch, all her relief and anticipation and newness eroded and fell down like a sea-doused castle of sand. An old and half forgotten black mood began to seep back into her.

It stank of her parents and Gibbon.
Though Linden struggles to understand why her oppressive feeling seems to "spring from outside of her," her memory of her parents confuses her too much, blocking her percipience. She flees her cabin and goes up on deck. Covenant and the others are there, but Linden doesn't feel ready yet to tell Covenant the truth about her past, so she keeps news of the oddness of her mood to herself. Cail reappears, but says nothing of his wasted errand. Linden is relieved:
She sensed the presence of a fierce capacity for judgment behind the impassivity of the Haruchai. She did not want it turned against her.
Being with her friends eases her spirits. For the rest of the afternoon, Linden watches the Giants at work. She spots Ceer and Hergrom moving among and learning from the Giants. Cail explains that they are "fulfilling an old dream of the Haruchai":
During all the centuries that the Unhomed and the Bloodguard had known each other before and after the ritual of desecration, no Haruchai had ever set foot on a Giantship. Ceer and Hergrom were answering a desire which panged their ancestors more than three thousand years ago.
Was this one more thing sacrificed for the Vow? The Bloodguards' duty to the Lords cost them opportunities to visit the Unhomed to explore the work of their Rockbrothers?

By late afternoon, Linden's gloom is returning. She can't shake off the impression that her mood comes from some external source--some "fatal flaw or ill" in the Giantship, but she can't separate it from her own private demons. At supper, she has no stomach for food, despite the appetites of the Giants around her.

Later that night, the Giants gather on deck for the telling of stories: the most precious activity of all. But Linden's unease only grows at night; she can't bear any stories now, so she goes back to her cabin. She decides to endure her mood, let it run its course. She sips some diamondraught, and goes to sleep. But she suffers a nightmare: she relives the night behind Haven Farm. Linden's dream sequence here is one of the most powerful images of the Chronicles:
Joan lay there, possessed by a cruelty so acute that it stunned Linden to the soul. Then Covenant took Joan's place, and Linden broke free, began running down the hillside to save him, forever running down the hillside to save him and never able to reach him, never able to stop the astonishing violence which drove the knife into his chest. It pierced him whitely, like an evil and tremendous fang. When she reached him, blood was gushing from the wound--more blood than she had ever seen in her life.

She could not stop it...Feverishly, she tore off her shirt to try to staunch the flow, leaving herself naked and defenseless; but the flannel was instantly soaked with blood, useless. Blood slicked her breasts and thighs as she strove to save his life and could not...The wound was growing.

In moments, it became as wide as his chest. Its violence ate at his tissues like venom. Her hands still clutched the futile sop of her shirt, still madly trying to exert pressure to plug the well; but it went on expanding until her arms were lost in him to the elbows. Blood poured over her thighs like the ichor of the world. She was hanging from the edge by her chest, with her arms extended into the red maw as if she were diving to her death. And the wound continued to widen. Soon it was larger than the stone on which Covenant had fallen, larger than the hollow in the woods.

Then with a shock of recognition she saw that the wound was more than a knife-thrust in his chest: it was a stab to the very heart of the Land. The hole had become a pit before her, and its edge was a sodden hillside, and the blood spewing over her was the life of the Earth. The Land was bleeding to death.
8O

Linden is awoken by Cail, who had heard her screaming. She tells him to get Covenant, then runs outside. The meaning of her dark mood is clear to her now.

On the wheeldeck with the company gathered, Linden tells Covenant there's a Raver on the ship. Though she fears to be touched by the Raver again, Linden wants to be of use to her companions: "...she had a chance to show that she could be a danger to Lord Foul and his machinations, not only to her friends."

The whole crew is roused to action. At moonset, Linden begins walking the deck, struggling to overcome her fear and open herself to the Raver's aura.

After dawn, Linden at last locates the Raver--in the food stores of the ship. Honninscrave is perplexed: "That seems a strange hiding. From deck to keel below you lie only grainholds, foodlockers, watercests. And all are full. Sevinhand (the Anchormaster) found pure water, wild maize, and much good fruit on the verges of the Great Swamp."

Linden can only think: "the verges of the Great Swamp. Where all the pollution of Sarangrave Flat drained into the Sea."

She feels the dark malice underneath her feet stirring, gathering.

Suddenly, a "dark gray tumult came flooding over the storm-sill out of Foodfendhall."

RATS! Huge rodents "with sick yellow fangs and vicious eyes."

They aim straight for Covenant. But the Haruchai and Giants are there, kicking and crushing the horde.

Linden can't do anything. She is frozen by the sheer proximity of the Raver. But she senses the buildup of power in Covenant: he wants to use the wild magic but his defenders are too close to him. Too late. One rat gets through: Covenant falls, grappling at his right leg. He comes back up with the rat and fries the beast with wild magic.

The chapter ends with:
In the confusion of the struggle, no one noticed that all the winds had died.
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Post by dANdeLION »

Very nice, Matrixman.
Dandelion don't tell no lies
Dandelion will make you wise
Tell me if she laughs or cries
Blow away dandelion


I'm afraid there's no denying
I'm just a dandelion
a fate I don't deserve.


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Post by Durris »

Matrixman wrote:
She spots Ceer and Hergrom moving among and learning from the Giants. Cail explains that they are "fulfilling an old dream of the Haruchai":

Quote:
During all the centuries that the Unhomed and the Bloodguard had known each other before and after the ritual of desecration, no Haruchai had ever set foot on a Giantship. Ceer and Hergrom were answering a desire which panged their ancestors more than three thousand years ago.


Was this one more thing sacrificed for the Vow? The Bloodguards' duty to the Lords cost them opportunities to visit the Unhomed to explore the work of their Rockbrothers?
*blink*

Thanks for showing me another piece of Vow-unlived life. There are several such in TOT.

Though I'd always been affected by the sight of Ceer and Hergrom in the rigging (and some of my response is pure envy of the extremely able-bodied), I hadn't recognized the desire to join Giants on the Sea as another casualty of the Vow.
Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased.
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Post by aTOMiC »

This started out as another example of why I sometimes can't take the Linden character. Oh great. Here we go. She's gonna spend another chapter internalized and grim. How much longer do I have to weather this storm? I read along becoming more and more antagonistic toward Linden. Snap out of it! Life is good. Stop being so fatalistic!

Its a Raver.

A Raver you say?

Oh.....Okay. Nevermind.

Great job, MM. :D
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Post by Seafoam Understone »

Linden for some reason doesn't get on my nerves like she has with other people (a ;) to Tom C ...and others). I found her to be not grating but pitied her because she is suddenly thrust into this strange place at the beginning of the second chrons and is forced to endure the Sunbane and it's ills, then has a Raver touch her in a way so intimate that it's a wonder she didn't go stark raving (pardon the dum pun) mad.
It is fortunate that she was along so that she was at least able to sense "something" amiss and forewarn the others.
Too bad that Covenant got bitten again dispite the efforts of the Haruchai. But I never actually saw Rats as being able to carry venom. Diseases yes via saliva transfer when they bite but not venom. Hmm. Perhaps these aren't ordinary widdle rats eh?

Ah! The joy the Haruchai must've felt being high up in the rigging along side their Rockbrothers. Must've been a chore just to get them to come back down again. The Giant sailors must've been impressed and amused to see these "little" guys working so dilligently and effectively along side them.

Stone and Sea wish I was along for the ride... :groovy: wait a tic! I am along for the ride. ... On to chapter three.

Good job Matrixman!
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Post by matrixman »

Good point about the rats, Seafoam. Guess they were special commando Raver rats! In terms of true venom carriers, I suppose SRD could have used snakes to attack Covenant (the Marid Method). But they'd be too slow, slithering their way across the ship. It would be the stupidest surprise assault in history.

But there's a far freakier alternative: Spiders! They can be venomous, and they can certainly move fast enough to surprise anyone. Imagine a horde of deadly spiders racing towards you on the deck of Starfare's Gem! 8O On second thought, I'd rather not imagine that...
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Post by Dragonlily »

Special Raver rats with venom in their saliva. Eew.

To me, too, it was a relief to discover that Linden's mood was due to a Raver. SRD took long enough to get us there. ;) But wait! That really is Linden. The Raver merely made use of what was already in her.

Give her credit, it would be hard for anyone to face these dangers and impending doom without reverting to base fears. The Giants make us forget fear, but Linden and Covenant are normal people at heart, no matter what their problems have been. We shouldn't put them down for reacting as we would. Often they are far braver than we would be.
SRD wrote:Without warning, she felt a concatenation of intensity as Covenant's power took fire within him. But his defenders were too close to him. He could not unleash the wild magic.
It's important to remember, what followed took place because Covenant sacrificed himself to protect the Giants who were defending him.
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Post by Seafoam Understone »

Very true Joy, because again TC just goes into "self-sacrificing" mode when he see the danger HE will cause. Something we'll read later on that keeps driving Linden NUTS.
Am wondering just what caused the wind to suddenly die out at the moment he withdrew into himself and blocked all others out.

MM, yes I've owned pet rats and kept them for food for my pet snakes and read about how plauge was spread on ships and throughout Europe. Anyone bitten by a rat should immediately be checked for all types of diseases (including rabies). Strange that by and large these rodents seem to be immune to many of the diseases that ravage mankind.
Also plauge and other nasty little buggers aren't usually spread by rats but as BJ and Hawkeyeonce explained to Frank Burns on a episode of M*A*S*H (T.V. series)
"B.J. :"Frank, it's the lice and fleas ON the rats that spread the fever." Hawkeye: "And when the rats die the fleas jump on us." Frank: Well, that's ridculous, I carried a couple of dead rats out to the dump a little while ago...I...I-I mean I'm I-I'm not sick... I mean, just because a person has to faint......"
But then these are Rats of the Land/Alternate Earth and thus might be venomous. I think SRD was dredging up all the nasty little things that make us humans squirm. TC was already bitten by snakes (Madrid), and then a spider jumped from the hand of one of the Clave members... soo what next... of course! Rats. But then later come the
Spoiler
eels and cool ones too.. not just electric but fire ones. :twisted:
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Post by dlbpharmd »

Nice job, MM.
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Post by danlo »

I don't mean to sound like a goofball but The One Tree tends to make me very happy. That's prob why it's my favorite book in the series. What I don't understand is people who don't like it. What's not to like? Haruchai, Giants! Come on get over you Lindenitus.

How can you resist everything and all things Giant? I love their names for everything--Horizonscan, Dawngreeter, Foodfendhall and their personal names. The sea's a great change of venue after the horrid Land and, somehow, through it all Starfare's Gem, tho it seems like it could sink like a stone, casts the illusion of a cradle of strenght and safety.
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Post by Fist and Faith »

I'm with danlo. For a while, I even considered TOT my favorite book in the world! Between the Giants and the very cool stuff the Haruchai do,
Spoiler
and the awesome power of the Elohim and Elemesnedene
I can't imagine how people don't like it. But that's the way of the world, eh?

Anyway, I don't know why the Vow would have kept the non-Bloodguard Haruchai from going to Coercri. Why the heck didn't they????? Makes no sense to me.
All lies and jest
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest
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Post by Furls Fire »

Ah Giants!! :D :D
Then Pitchwife began to sing. He stood some distance away, but his voice carried like light across the dromond, rising strongly from his deformed chest over the slapping of the waves and the snap of the canvas. His tune was a plainsong spiced with accents and suggestions of harmony; and the other Giants joined him:

"Come sea and wave--
broad footpath of those who roam
and gateway to the world!
All ways lead the way to Home.

"Come wind and speed--
sky-breath and the life of sail!
Lines and sheets unfurled,
our hearts covet every gale.

"Come travel and quest!
Discovery of the Earth:
mysteries unknurled:
roaming without stint or dearth:

"Risk and journey save
the heart of life from loss and need.
We are the ocean's guest,
and we love the vasty world!"

The Giants were joyful singers, and their voices formed a counterpoint to the rocking of the masts, a song punctuated by a rising staccato as the breeze knocked canvas. Starefare's Gem appeared to ride music as well as wind.
I just LOVE that passage!!!

"Come wind and speed--sky-breath and life of sail!" LOVE IT, LOVE IT, LOVE IT!!!!

Starefare's Gem seemed to ride music as well as wind...
And I believe in you
altho you never asked me too
I will remember you
and what life put you thru.


~fly fly little wing, fly where only angels sing~

~this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you~

...for then I could fly away and be at rest. Sweet rest, Mom. We all love and miss you.

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Post by DukkhaWaynhim »

Hi Guys, just thought I'd thank MM for this analysis [thank you, MM!] and chime in about the rats. I agree that SRD needed something scampery-fast to instill a sense of horror and suddenness, but I wouldn't get hung up on whether rats can do this kind of thing. These rats have been inhabited by a Raver. Remember that the venom that TC has been infected with works on a moral level as well as a physical level.
At this stage in the game, TC has already been bitten (snake), reinfected (bees) and then reinfected again (spider from the Sunbane freak). I think that by now its the Raver-ill more than any actual physical venom that is infecting TC.
Gotta keep the Raver away.
I think using various creatures to (re-)infect TC are just SRD's way of "keeping it fresh."

my $0.02
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Post by Durris »

DukkhaWaynhim wrote:I think using various creatures to (re-)infect TC are just SRD's way of "keeping it fresh."
Indeed. Also, Covenant's (physical and magical) response to each reinfection intensifies. This is in keeping with what happens medically in RL: once an infection or allergy has become established, the intensity of immune response to each new exposure is greater than the last.

Covenant here enters a state of physical and moral anaphylaxis.
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Post by matrixman »

Hey, DW, thanks for dropping in! Did the smell of rats lead your keen olfactory sense to this thread or what? :wink:

I somehow totally forgot that Covenant had already been bitten by that spider in TWL. So of course SRD didn't want to rehash the spider thing in TOT. Which is just as well. Spiders: they are among nature's most amazing creatures and I respect them entirely. Just keep them away from me.
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Post by duchess of malfi »

Just as Covenant becomes more sensitive to the raver venom with each exposure, Linden seems to have become more sensitive to them as well, after she was mentally and emotionally "raped" by one at Revelstone. The one hiding on the ship brings up the depression and darkness from her past...it does not need to attack her directly, as it does Covenant. Merely being nearby is enough to have a strong effect on her. :(
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Post by JIkj fjds j »

Having begun reading The One Tree again I was interested in the passage where Linden, on her return to her cabin, discovers that the Giantish furniture has been replaced with table and chairs more suitable to her size.

How might this have happened? Who would have made the small "doll's house" furniture? Did Honninscrave, or maybe Cail, suggest it?

The Diamondraught on the table is almost like the little bottle with the "Drink Me" label, from the Lewis Carroll story, Alice in Wonderland. And I can't help wonder if Stephen Donaldson has used this "imagery" to empower abstract ideas concerning Linden's emotional state.

The "glass" table may imply clarity of thought!
How else might the Giants and Cail have known that Linden was in a troubled sleep?

______________________________

I've always liked the scenes with Covenant on the Wheeldeck with the Giants. So much hope and anticipation for the adventure ahead. Although, when Linden joins Covenant in need of a distraction from her oppressive mood, I had the impression of there being something missed - some joke perhaps, or banter, that Covenant had shared with the Giants before Linden's appearance.

Maybe the joke was always with Vain!
Covenant tells Linden that he hasn't moved since he came aboard and is interfering with the rigging. Three Giants had tried to move him but to no avail.
Covenant concludes by saying that, "Honninscrave wants to use a block-and-tackle". Can this be part of a Giantish game! Or could it be that Honninscrave wants to tie a rope around Vain's neck and "attach a block-and-tackle", so that he might be of some use perhaps as a ballast for the Mainsail!

Funny!
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Post by wayfriend »

Vizidor wrote:Having begun reading The One Tree again I was interested in the passage where Linden, on her return to her cabin, discovers that the Giantish furniture has been replaced with table and chairs more suitable to her size.

How might this have happened? Who would have made the small "doll's house" furniture?
This is sufficiently explained in the next book, but not this one.
Spoiler
The Giants have a whole woodworking shop in one part of the ship.
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Post by JIkj fjds j »

wayfriend wrote:
Vizidor wrote:Having begun reading The One Tree again I was interested in the passage where Linden, on her return to her cabin, discovers that the Giantish furniture has been replaced with table and chairs more suitable to her size.

How might this have happened? Who would have made the small "doll's house" furniture?
This is sufficiently explained in the next book, but not this one.
Spoiler
The Giants have a whole woodworking shop in one part of the ship.
White Gold Wielder is my most unfamiliar book of the whole series.
Having said that, I should have explained that the making of furniture is really a trivial matter to the rest of the story. But still it highlights some of the unseen bustle of Starfares Gem. Of which SRD took care of by adding that Honninscrave might not need to give direct orders when a comment here and there was all that was needed to make any nearby Giant jump to the task.
It was also mentioned that the ship had three Watch's. I would presume these were eight bells; three eight hour shifts making up a twenty-four hour day.
Spoiler
And as the Giants would often than not set to tasks outwith their main duties, then it could even be reasonable to assume that the Master himself might have went down to the workshops to help out with the making of furniture.

Again, trivialities, but no less interesting.
DukkhaWaynhim wrote:Gotta keep the Raver away.
I think using various creatures to (re-)infect TC are just SRD's way of "keeping it fresh."

my $0.02
DW
It's worth mentioning that DukkhaWaynhim was involved in Matrixman's thread.
Back in the Illearth War when Lord's Hyrim and Shetra journeyed through the Sarangrave it was the screams of the frozen soldier which heralded the emergence of the Lurker. Similairly, Linden's nightmare screaming caused her to uncover the hidden Raver.
I'm sure a connection is in there somewhere :)
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wild maize and wild magic!

Post by JIkj fjds j »

I almost read through chapter two without a hitch, until that is, the rat attack! Which left me completely baffled.
How could hundreds of rats, hundreds, get aboard the drommond without the Giants knowing ??????
This makes no sense whatsoever.

One clue may have something to do with the wild maize, gathered from the verges of Sarangrave Flat for the ship's food stores.
When Linden was attempting to trace the whereabouts of Kinslaughterer Raver, she became aware of a fragmentation of evil. Herem must have sensed her awareness and so gathered for attack. Linden felt the rise of the Raver - almost like wild maize defragmenting back onto it's kernel.

Taking a closer look at the words: wild maize, and, wild magic, are much too close to ignore. So what can they mean?

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