Though Covenant and Brinn begin the fight against the Clave in “Soothtell” just before it, “The Quest” is where Covenant’s alliance against the Clave—with the Haruchai collectively, Memla, Sunder, Hollian, and (in time to come) the Giants of the Search—is forged. In “Those Who Part,” its war against the Clave won, the alliance disperses; though their shared travails have bonded its members irreversibly, separate fates await many of them.
“The Quest” and “Those Who Part” represent the Alpha and Omega points of that part of Haruchai history that transpires in the Second Chronicles. Not merely the beginning and end, but the source and goal. “The Quest” shows us the shared history and mutual responsibility that motivate Covenant and Brinn in their choices toward each other. In “Those Who Part” all of Haruchai history is recapitulated and redeemed.
The Haruchai reappear in TWL a couple of chapters before “The Quest,” and Brinn and Covenant become responsible to and for each other in “Soothtell,” just before it. But in “The Quest” what had started as tactical necessity for each of them becomes considered and conscious choice. Though Brinn’s acceptance of responsibility for Covenant’s life has been a foregone conclusion from that first moment of mind-speech in the soothtell, Covenant’s acceptance of Brinn’s service begins reluctantly. The First Chronicles refrain of Tan-Haruchail is never mentioned explicitly, but Covenant and Brinn (who in this speaks for his entire nation) do end up saying its moral equivalent to each other in all sincerity, notwithstanding Covenant’s scruples.
In “Those Who Part,” after a long and eventful moral coevolution, Covenant honorably discharges the Haruchai from his service, over the most cogent objections Durris can raise. Just as only Covenant had the power to pronounce First Mark Tuvor “true” and free him to depart this life, only Covenant can pronounce complete the struggle of Tuvor’s descendants to prove their worth. Even Brinn’s victory over the Guardian of the One Tree wasn’t enough without Covenant’s verdict: most honorably acquitted. All that Bannor promised in Andelain has been accomplished, and then some.
******
Both chapters come after victories. “The Quest” picks up after Covenant’s first battle with the Clave after the soothtell, in which he inflicts losses, destroys Santonin’s piece of the Illearth Stone, and frees the Haruchai and some Stonedownor and Woodhelvennin prisoners, but doesn’t kill the na-Mhoram. “Those Who Part” comes in the aftermath of the final rout of the Clave, Covenant’s ordeal in the Banefire (alchemical or metallurgical caamora—was fusing venom into alloy what he had originally hoped to do in Coercri?), and the Banefire’s extinguishing.
The action before or at the beginning of both chapters takes place in the former Lords’ quarters area. In TWL, the soothtell had occurred in its round central chamber; in WGW, after the Clave’s defeat and the Banefire’s extinction, Covenant and Linden spend a night in the room that had once been Mhoram’s.
At the start of “The Quest” Linden is unconscious. When at length she awakes and speaks with Covenant, it’s across a vast and painful emotional distance, not only because she’s still morally seared by Gibbon’s recent violation, but also because she sees Covenant’s leprosy and venom and because his use of wild magic to heal his cut wrists makes her feel completely superfluous.
At the start of “Those Who Part” Linden and Covenant are both wide awake. No distance remains between them whatsoever. Their conversation in the prior chapter (“All I want is a living love for as long as I can get it. I want you.”) has broken down all barriers, and they become again physically intimate for the first time since The One Tree.For a moment, she returned his embrace as if she were grateful for it. Then, suddenly, she stiffened. Her slim, abused body became nausea in his arms. He tried to speak, but could not sever the knots in his chest. When she tried to pull away from him, he let her go; and still he could not speak.
She did not meet his stare. Her gaze wandered his frame to the old cut in the center of his shirt. “You’re sick.”
Momentarily, he failed to understand her. “Linden—?”
“Sick.” Her voice trailed like blood between her lips. “Sick.” Moving as if she were stunned by abhorrence or grief, she turned her back on him. She sank to the ground, covered her face with her hands, began to rock back and forth. Faintly, he heard her murmuring, “Sick. Sick.”
*blink*She had not been in his arms since the crisis of the One Tree; and now she sought to impress every touch and line of him onto her hungry nerves.
If he had wanted sleep himself, she would have been loath to let him go. But he had resumed his certainty as if it could take the place of rest; and his desire for her was as poignant as an act of grace. From time to time, she felt him smiling the smile that belonged solely to her; and once he wept as if his tears were the same as hers. But they did not sleep.
During this night, Linden becomes aware that the very granite of Revelstone is responding to the end of Clave and Banefire:
This image is a resolution, modulated into a major key, of a tragic image at the very end of “The Quest”, in which Revelstone’s protest against the Clave is the last thing Covenant perceives before becoming unconscious from blood-loss and delayed shock:And as the abused stone of the sacred enclosure cooled, the entire city let out a long granite sigh which seemed to breathe like relief through every wall and floor.
Ah, Revelstone, now you need keen no more…*ahem* I digress.As he fell, he heard a cold wail from Revelstone—a cry like the keening of the great Keep, promising loss and blood. Or perhaps the wail was within himself.
In both chapters Covenant and a companion travel from Revelstone’s upland exit to Glimmermere: Covenant and Brinn in “The Quest” and Covenant and Linden in “Those Who Part.” In “The Quest,” Covenant is so exsanguinated he can hardly stay afoot without Brinn’s help. In “Those Who Part,” he walks “with a happy haste in his strides,” despite the fact that Covenant & Linden have both been awake for 48 hours or so…and have already put their quadriceps muscles to other use
.Covenant and Brinn in “The Quest” trek to and from Glimmermere in deep night, lit only by the moon. Covenant and Linden in “Those Who Part” do so in dawn light of what becomes a desert sun. In both chapters, Glimmermere’s resistance to the Sunbane is invoked.
“The Quest”:
“Those Who Part”:[Covenant] did not know where else to turn except to Glimmermere. To the Earthpower which remained still vital enough to provide Glimmermere with water, even when all the Land lay under a desert sun.
As Covenant and Linden enjoy their baptismal bath in Glimmermere, a desert sun is rising over them; the narrative makes plain, as readers feel the holy icy water swirling around their own skin, that the Sunbane cannot harm them here.Toward Glimmermere, where Mhoram had hidden the krill of Loric for the Land’s future. Where sprang the only water outside Andelain Earthpowerful enough to resist the Sunbane.
This scene in “Those Who Part” shows us bliss in the aftermath of victory; Covenant’s and Brinn’s trek to Glimmermere in “The Quest” shows us companionship in time of utmost need.
“The Quest”:
(Temporarily is how Covenant can permit them to serve him again; but I’m getting ahead of the tale.)[Covenant] did not have enough blood in his veins to sustain himself without the fire of his ring: once he dropped his power, he would be beyond any self-protection. He would have to trust the Haruchai to save him, save his friends. And that thought was bitter to him. Bannor’s people had paid such severe prices in his name. How could he permit them to serve him again?
“The Quest”:
Covenant’s wild magic summons the krill from the depths of Glimmermere, and sustains him as he walks on the lake to retrieve it. Back on the lake shore, his power subsides and his exhaustion takes hold.And Brinn strode at his side as if the Haruchai had already committed himself to this service. Somewhere he had found a cloak which he now draped across Covenant’s shoulders; the Unbeliever shrugged it into place, hardly noticing. It helped to protect him against the shock of blood-loss.
Covenant needed hope….He could not known he was so capable of slaughter. He could not face the demands of his new knowledge without some kind of hope.
… Brinn walked beside [Covenant], and did not speak. The Haruchai seemed content to support whatever Covenant intended. In the same way, the Bloodguard had been content to serve the Lords. Their acceptance [remember the Vow’s antiphon, “We accept”!] had cost them two thousand years without love or sleep or death. And it had cost them corruption: like Foamfollower, Bannor had been forced to watch his people become the thing they hated. Covenant did not know how to accept [making the Tan-Haruchail reciprocal] Brinn’s tacit offer. How could he risk repeating the fate of the Bloodguard? But he was in need, and did not know how to refuse.
“The Quest”:
[Brinn later says “You are not alone” to the Giants of the Search.]…Shorn of power, [Covenant] could no longer grasp the krill. It became hot in his hands, hot enough to touch the nerves which still lived. He dropped it to the ground, where it shone like the last piece of light in the world. Mutely, he knelt beside it, with his back to Glimmermere as if he had been humbled. He felt alone in the land, and incapable of himself.
But he was not alone.
“The Quest”:
*blinks, bows head and is silent*Brinn tore a strip from his tunic—a garment made from an ochre material that resembled vellum—and wrapped the krill so that it could be handled. For a moment, he placed a gentle touch on Covenant’s shoulder. Then he said quietly, “Ur-Lord, come. The Clave will attempt to strike against us. We must go.”
Brinn’s commitment to Covenant is no mere duty inherited from his ancestor Bannor, no mere debt of a freed prisoner. It is, already, as deeply personal an allegiance as Bannor’s had become after his whole shared history with Covenant, when at last they stood together on Landsdrop in “The Spoiled Plains.” The small demonstrations of human concern that pervade this chapter (interspersed among more traditional, and also much-needed, Haruchai competence and heroism) take my breath at every reading.
Covenant and Brinn return to the upland portal of Revelstone, are met by Ceer, and proceed down through the city:
“The Quest”:
In his Dissection of this chapter, Matrixman opined that this must have been deeply humbling for Covenant; I am humbled merely to imagine it. A still more humbling honor awaits Covenant in this chapter, less than a page further on.As [Covenant] moved through the tunnel, a score of Haruchai gathered around him like an honor-guard.
Covenant and his retinue of Haruchai pass through Revelstone’s forehall without the narrator’s pausing at all to describe it. In the latter portion of “Those Who Part”, in contrast, the forehall will take center stage as the setting of the most important conversations of the chapter—which are just as morally climactic for WGW as the exchange between Covenant and Bannor in “The Spoiled Plains” is for TPTP. But I’m getting ahead of the tale again.
In “The Quest,” Covenant, Brinn, Ceer, et al. join Linden, Sunder, Hollian, and the freed Haruchai and people of the Land out in front of Revelstone’s tower gates.
In the time it took Covenant and Brinn to travel here, Brinn’s fealty has been telepathically conveyed to—and fervently ratified by—his compatriots. (Incidentally, this homage is quite a departure from the usual minimalism of Haruchai gesture; how sad that Covenant was paying so little attention.)[Covenant] had eyes only for Linden. Her back was to him. He hardly noticed that all Brinn’s people had turned toward him and dropped to one knee, as if he had been announced by silent trumpets.
Similar obeisance is offered in “Those Who Part”, just inside the gates of Revelstone.
Just in the act of typing this my chest is suddenly as tight as Covenant’s must have been.Near the gates were gathered the people who had accompanied or fought for the Unbeliever and survived…They seemed to wait for Covenant as if he were the turning point of their lives. Even the Haruchai, Linden sensed with a touch of quiet wonder. In spite of their mountain-bred intransigence, they were balanced on a personal cusp and could be swayed. As Covenant drew near, each of them dropped to one knee in mute homage.
The First greets Covenant, who then explains his purpose to confront Corruption in Kiril Threndor. The First’s expression of approval and request for further instructions is interrupted:
"Those Who Part":
This echoes Brinn’s words in “The Quest,” when Covenant has announced his purpose to make a new Staff of Law.Durris had taken a step forward. He faced Covenant with an unwonted intensity gleaming in his flat eyes.
“Ur-Lord, we will accompany you.”
"The Quest":
But Covenant responds differently to Durris than he had to Brinn.“Ur-Lord Covenant, you conceive a bold undertaking. You will be accompanied.”
"Those Who Part":
Just as Covenant in “The Quest” had argued with himself repeatedly about saying even a tacit yes to Brinn’s service, Durris is not ready to take Covenant’s no for an answer on the first—or second—attempt. Both Covenant’s reluctance to accept service and Durris’s determination to continue service are responses to the debts of their shared history. Durris appears to see himself as a second Bannor, with a chance to undo what he considers to have been Bannor’s mistakes.Covenant did not hesitate. In a voice as unshakable as the Haruchai’s, he said, “No, you won’t.”
[Incidentally, “Those Who Part” shows Brinn and compatriots turning aside from no least detail of Covenant’s need. Why does Durris not recognize this as a sufficient reparation for any turning aside their ancestors might conceivably have done?]“Thomas Covenant, bethink you….The Haruchai are known to you. The tale of the Bloodguard is known to you. You have witnessed that proud, deathless Vow—and you have beheld its ending. Do not believe that we forget. In all the ages of that service, it was the grief of the Bloodguard that they gave no direct battle to Corruption. And yet when the chance came to Bannor—when he stood at your side upon Landsdrop with Saltheart Foamfollower and knew your purpose—he turned aside from it. You had need of him, and he turned aside….We must restore our faith. We will not turn aside again.”
And Durris appears to see Covenant as a potential second Kevin, capable either of enacting a new Desecration or of undoing Kevin’s default, being a new and greater High Lord who can sustain a renewed Vow. His determination to remain with Covenant over Covenant’s objections mirrors his ancestors’ determination to allow no more Kevins. Both he and they act on the fallacy that they can, by main force of responsibility, make those they serve into persons unfallen enough to support the weight of their loyalty.
Into this doomed attempt to redeem history by doing it over, Covenant intervenes. Just as he had totally restructured the moral world of Sunder and Hollian, so now he remakes Haruchai history by remythologizing it.
"Those Who Part":
Durris—just as stubborn as Covenant!—still isn’t satisfied.“The fact is,” he said without accusation, “you’ve been wrong all along. You’ve misunderstood your own doubt from the beginning. What it means. Why it matters. First Kevin, then the other Lords, then me—ever since your people first came to the Land, you’ve been swearing yourselves in service to ordinary men and women who simply can’t be worthy of what you offer. Kevin was a good man who broke down when the pressure got to be worse than he could stand—and the Bloodguard were never able to forgive him because they pinned their faith on him and when he failed they thought it was their fault for not making him worthy, not preventing him from being human. Over and over again, you put yourselves in the position of serving someone who has to fail you for the mere reason that he’s human and all humans fail at one time or another—and then you can’t forgive yourselves because his failure casts doubt on your service. And you can’t forgive yourselves either. You want to serve perfectly, and that means you’re responsible for everything. And whenever something comes along to remind you you’re mortal—like the merewives—that’s unforgivable too, and you decide you aren’t worthy to go on serving. Or else you want to do something crazy, like fighting Foul in person.
……
“You can do better than that. Nobody questions your worth. You’ve demonstrated it a thousand times. And if that’s not enough for you, remember Brinn faced the Guardian of the One Tree and won. Ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol. Any one of you would’ve done the same in his place. You don’t need to serve me any more.”
Thus Brinn’s gesture of comradeship in “The Quest” is reciprocated.“Ur-Lord, what would you have us do?” he asked as if he felt no distress. “You have given our lives to us. We must make recompense. That is necessary.” In spite of its inflexibility, his voice put the weight of Haruchai history into the word, necessary. The extravagance and loyalty of his people required an outlet. “The Vow of the Bloodguard was sworn to meet the bounty and grandeur of High Lord Kevin and Revelstone. It was not regretted. Do you ask such an oath from us again, that we may preserve the meaning of our lives?”
“No.” Covenant’s eyes softened and blurred, and he put his hand on Durris’ shoulder as if he wanted to hug the Haruchai. Linden felt pouring from him the ache of his appreciation.
Only the Haruchai now remember with Covenant the true, undistorted history of the Land. In the era of rebuilding after Linden has healed the Sunbane, they will be far more necessary in the moral realm, as guardians of memory, than their ancestors had been militarily as the protectors of the Lords and the city.“There’s something else I want you to do.”
At that, Durris’ stance sharpened. He stood before the Unbeliever like a salute.
“I want you to stay here. In Revelstone. With as many of your people as you can get. For two reasons. To take care of the wounded. …And to protect the city. This is Revelstone, Lord’s Keep. It belongs to the Land—not to Corruption or Ravers. I want it safe. So the future will have a place to center. A place where people can come to learn about the past—and see what the Land means—and make plans.
An antiphonal response—and almost-unlooked-for resolution in the tonic major chord!—to the “silent trumpets” that had heralded Covenant’s advent in “The Quest.”“You’ve already given me everything Bannor promised and more. But I want you to do this too. For me. And for yourselves. Here you can serve something that isn’t going to fail you.”
For a long moment, Durris was silent while his mind addressed his people. Then he spoke, and his dispassionate voice thrilled Linden’s hearing like a distant tantara of horns.
Covenant isn’t the only one whose vision is blurred just now.“Ur-Lord, we will do it.”
In response, Covenant squeezed Durris’ shoulder and tried to blink the gratitude out of his eyes.
“O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam [and Kevin, and Korik, and Covenant, and Linden] that was worthy of so great a redemption…”
…
There’s yet more redemption in this chapter; Cail’s tale will have to await another occasion, and maybe another narrator. There’s only so much my poor receptors can take at once.
)