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:
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: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.
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":She sensed the presence of a fierce capacity for judgment behind the impassivity of the Haruchai. She did not want it turned against her.
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?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.
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.
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.