The pace and development of this chapter is different from the previous one. Where “Withdrawal from Service” starts, quite literally, with a splash, followed by tense waiting on the Giants’ rescue efforts, and an emotionally and morally explosive climax, “The Isle” begins as a slow chapter. Its pace is not a calm after the previous night’s moral storm, however, but a long simmering of dread and anticipation that will eventually boil over all at once.
Honninscrave, the First, Pitchwife, and Covenant anticipate the arrival at the One Tree; Linden and Seadreamer dread it. The contrast picks up a thread that has woven in and out of the story since we first met the Search in TWL: Covenant has asked and received this entire voyage on his authority as Giantfriend and ring-wielder, against the guidance of Seadreamer’s Earth-Sight. And even he isn’t certain that this is the right choice: his anticipation has a ragged edge of strenuously suppressed doubt.
Flinch. There is also love in the world, but under the Arch of Time it can never be guaranteed secure.He seemed avid for the One Tree to the point of fever….[Linden] saw in his face that he was remembering the Clave, people butchered to feed the Banefire, self-distrust; remembering power and venom over which he had no control. At times, his gaze was hollow with recollections of silence. Even his lovemaking became strangely vehement, as if despite their embraces he believed he had already lost her.
Though the goal of Search and Quest is the same, the Sunbane’s end, the Giants have had to make a leap of faith—constantly renewed as each risk of this voyage has become a worse disaster than the last—to trust that the One Tree is truly a means to that end. They’ve talked themselves and each other into doing so, and Seadreamer has just had to swallow it because he has no voice to say them nay. Plainly, at this juncture, if he could speak, he would shout, “For the last time, DON’T DO THIS!!”
Findail accedes to Linden’s request that he succor Seadreamer. I’m a bit mystified as to why. Because the Sun-Sage herself asked him to? Because even his Elohim arrogance isn’t completely empathy-proof? Or because if Seadreamer is asleep he won’t be able to communicate his fears to anyone with the power to change the ship’s destination? Linden several times sits on the impulse to tell Covenant to turn back; Covenant needs the One Tree to break the double bind between the equal desecrations of the Sunbane and the venom, and if he lost that hope he’d have none to put in its place. She can’t bring herself to take it from him.
Starfare’s Gem passes through a school (pod?) of Nicor, more than have ever been seen together before. This scene for me intensified the sense of being outside all normal (for even this Earth) lands and seas.
As the ship continues flying toward the Isle (with all the speed that the narrative itself lacks at this point, by design), the apprehensive Giants console themselves with song and merriment; Covenant and Linden give each other what private comfort they can—insofar as either of them is able to be comforted just now.
Next morning, Covenant prepares to put on his old clothes. Consciously or unconsciously he’s preparing to resume the physical condition from which he was summoned from our world; whatever happens at the One Tree has the potential to cast one or both strangers forth from the Land again. Linden looks at him with a mute plea: covering his nakedness, so new to her senses, with his old clothes would be like relegating what they have become to each other to the status of a dream—or of the merewives’ song. He relents…and much later dons his Giantish robe.[Covenant] stood apart as if the recanting of the Haruchai had shaken him to the core of his strength [it certainly did so to us readers!], rendering him inaccessible to consolation. Or perhaps he held back because he had forgotten how to be alone, how to confront his doom without loathing his loneliness. [How quickly he has lost the habit of his leper’s defenses…I can’t help but see that as progress.] When he and Linden went below to her cabin, he huddled on the pallet as if he could hardly endure the bare comfort of her flesh.
By the time SRD showed the pair pacing on deck the next day, I was pacing too, like a kid asking the Captain and the First, “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”
For all the waiting, when the Isle is finally sighted it’s a surprise…the more so because the One Tree isn’t visible on it anyplace. I’m reminded of an aphorism from Le Guin’s Always Coming Home:
Ursula K. Le Guin wrote: In the center is the absence. It is so.
The very name “The One Tree” evokes ancient myths of the tree that is the axis of the world. We’re at the farthest point off the edge of the map, but for that very reason we’re now approaching the center of the cosmos. I remember a quote from some medieval mystic: “God is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.”SRD wrote:Linden was not as far-eyed as the Giants; but after another league she also spotted the Isle. Tiny in the distance, it stood like a point of fatality at the juncture of sea and sky—the pivot around which the Earth turned.
As dusk falls, a longboat is launched with Covenant, Linden, Honninscrave, Seadreamer, the First, Pitchwife, and, unexpectedly, Brinn and Cail, who appear without speaking to anyone. Findail materializes in the boat once it’s untied from the ship side.
Honninscrave and Seadreamer row for hours; from a distance, the Isle seems to get nearer slowly. An eldritch mist rises to envelop both the quest and the Isle (another cinematographic moment). It obscures everything that could measure the boat’s progress, but when it parts the quest finds that the Isle is no nearer than it ever was. Plainly we’re operating outside physical distance and sequential time.
This seems to be one of SRD’s similes that states the exact thing that’s happening under the guise of a figure of speech. Somehow Findail seems to bring about what happens next (help me out, kinfolk: his doing so seems both important and inexplicable).Findail stood facing the Isle. His mien and hair were dry, untouched by the mist. He held his arms folded across his chest as if the sea were gripped motionless in the crooks of his elbows. The focus of his eyes was as intent as an act of will.
And suddenly this isn’t a slowly simmering chapter any more; it flashes into a steam explosion in an instant.
Brinn tries to leap into the sea; Seadreamer catches him; they wrestle; Honninscrave tries to separate them; Cail starts to dive into the battle, but the First pulls him away and draws her sword on Brinn.But then violence broke out behind the Appointed.
When she asks Brinn to explain, he will speak only to Covenant. And it’s plain on Seadreamer’s face that what he’s been dreading all along is now arriving. Linden figures out that whatever Brinn intends will make possible the awful thing Seadreamer sees, whatever it may be.“Enough!”
Honninscrave shifted out of her way. Seadreamer stopped fighting. Before Brinn could evade her, she had her blade at his throat.
But Linden of all people has reason to know that sometimes a person cannot be who they are and not do a certain thing, irrespective of the consequences; if consequences could have signified, she wouldn’t have taken the silence from Covenant.Fighting to regain her voice, [Linden] confronted Covenant… "Don’t—" She was trembling. "Don’t let him do it. The consequences—"
And shortly the stakes on not allowing Brinn are raised.
Amid the moral and physical horror of this battle of wills I must confess to a certain exaltation: this has got to be the apotheosis of Haruchai stubbornness seen anywhere in the mythos. Plainly whatever Brinn wants to do is, to say the least, not an idle whim.The Haruchai had gripped the First’s blade in one hand. Against her great strength, he strove to thrust the iron away from his throat. Blood coursed down his forearm as the longsword bit his flesh; but his determination did not waver. In a moment, he would sever his fingers if the First did not relent. …Cursing under her breath [in Giantish or Haruchai? With the gift of tongues, she was equally fluent in both!], the First withdrew her sword. “You are mad.” She was hoarse with emotion. “I will not accept [the inverse of Tan-Haruchail] the burden of your maiming or death in this way.”
I was all ready to write about the paradox of “knows without knowledge and has not come seeking the thing he seeks,” so like the paradox of white gold. But just typing this quote has left me speechless and proseless. This chapter and the previous one reveal the molten core beneath the dispassionate Haruchai surface; reading them is like watching a volcanic eruption shattering a glacier.“Ur-Lord, I ask you to hear me.”
Covenant stared at the Haruchai. His nod appeared oddly fragile; the acuity of his passion made him brittle. …
“There is a tale among the Haruchai,” Brinn began without inflection, “a legend preserved by the old tellers from the farthest distance of our past, long ages before our people ever encountered Kevin Landwaster and the Lords of the Land. It is said that upon the edge of the Earth at the end of time stands a lone man who holds the meaning of the Haruchai—a man whom we name ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol. It is said that he has mastered all skill and prowess that we desire, all mastery like unto the poised grandeur of mountains. And it is said, should ever one of the Haruchai seek out ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol and contest with him, we will learn the measure of our worth, in defeat or triumph. Therefore are the Haruchai a seeking people. In each heart among us beats a yearning for this test and the knowledge it offers.
“Yet the path which leads to ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol is unknown, has never been known. It is said that this path must not be known—that it may only be found by one who knows without knowledge and has not come seeking the thing he seeks.” In spite of its flatness, Brinn’s voice expressed a mounting excitement. “I am that one. To this place I have come in your name rather than my own, seeking that which I have not sought.
“Ur-Lord, we have withdrawn from your service. I do not seek to serve you now. But you wield the white ring. You hold power to prevent my desire. Should you take this burden upon yourself, it will be lost to me—perhaps to all Haruchai forever. I ask that you permit me. Of Cable Seadreamer’s Earth-Sight I comprehend nothing. It is clear to me that I will only succeed or fail. If I fail, the matter will fall to you. And if I succeed— “ His voice dropped as if in no other way could he contain the strength of his yearning. “Ur-Lord.” Clenched as if it were squeezing blood out of itself, his fist rose like an appeal. “Do not prevent me from the meaning of our lives.”
*silent tears and curling toes*
...
Perhaps it’s Covenant’s leprosy that makes Brinn’s molten desire incomprehensible to him.
Covenant sees only another risk of failure, and the potential of a self-judgment as overwhelming as that provoked by the merewives. But to Brinn this opportunity is a great and unforeseen grace. I’m reminded of a quote from Lois McMaster Bujold’s Shards of Honor:“And if you fail?” Covenant lashed the word at Brinn’s dispassion. “You already believe you’re unworthy. How much more do you think you can stand?”
Brinn’s visage remained inflexible. “I will know the truth. Any being who cannot bear the truth is indeed unworthy.”
While his companions are still arguing about permission, Brinn slips overboard and swims to the Isle to meet the Guardian. (Suddenly distance and speed are working normally again; or perhaps distance and speed in this place are functions of the intensity of the traveler’s will.) His response to the gift of this test is a wordlessly resounding “I accept!”…I’ve always thought—tests are a gift. And great tests are a great gift. To fail the test is a misfortune. But to refuse the test is to refuse the gift, and something worse, more irrevocable, than misfortune.
The battle with the Guardian, glimpsed at wide intervals through rips in the constantly shredding and reuniting mist, is another of SRD’s brilliant sequences of virtual cinematography; the Guardian begins the battle invisible and only Brinn’s blows bring him, by degrees, into visible reality. (Maybe someone with martial arts or Zen experience can comment on the significance of being fought into visibility; I glimpse that there are major implications in this, but can’t bring them quite into focus.)
As the combat progresses, Brinn loses successively his shirt, his skin, and much of his blood.
Just as Brinn has taken on this test as bearing his whole people within himself, this image shows him as a microcosm of the ongoing Haruchai genocide: back in Revelstone, the strength of his nation continues to run from veins opened by the Clave, moment by moment and sun by sun.Linden clung to herself and fought to suppress her instinctive tears. Brinn would not survive much longer. He was already so badly injured that he might bleed to death. How could he go on fighting, with the strength running from his veins moment by moment?
Brinn’s opponent gains each increment of strength Brinn loses, swiftly pressing this otherworldly battle to its conclusion.
Facing mere death is not remotely the point of this test: every Haruchai we’ve seen does that a dozen times a day and calls it a day’s work. What is unprecedented about this battle is that Brinn cannot win it; he must first acknowledge that he cannot but lose, and then must deliberately consent to losing, in order to take the Guardian along. And he couldn’t know in advance that this is “losing to win”; Brinn must have been even more surprised than his companions when he arose alive as the Guardian on the far side of death. Since, as Fist pointed out in Hergrom and Ceer’s combat with the Sandgorgon, no Haruchai heretofore has ever considered the possibility of losing, Brinn’s losing to win represents a conceptual revolution as well as a test of physical and ascetic prowess. In the battle’s end Brinn says a resounding “MU!” (“Not this, not that!”) to the absolute either/or of “succeed or die”.…[The Guardian] seemed to become more adept and irresistible as he grew more solid. Almost at once, he brushed aside Brinn’s counterattack. Lashing out like lightnings of flesh and bone, he coerced Brinn to the precipice again. A cunning feint toward Brinn’s abdomen lowered his arms defensively. At once, the old man followed with a hammerblow to Brinn’s forehead.
Brinn swayed on the rim, tottered. Began to fall.
Covenant’s shout tore through the mist like despair:
“Brinn!”
In the fractional pause as his balance failed, Brinn glanced toward the aghast spectators. [Echoing his gaze at Covenant during the soothtell, which conveyed mind-speech that saved Covenant’s life?] Then he shifted his feet in a way that ensured his fall. But as he dropped, his hands reached out. His fingers knotted into the old man’s robe.
Surrendering himself to the precipice, he took the Guardian with him.
Incredible Durris, incredible!!! (say! you don't get into these books do you? I definately picked the right Haruchai for this particular dissection! 
oy vey! 
Let me explain this fight. *sigh* Or at least try. I very clearly know what I'm trying to say, but it doesn't look as clear when I read what I've written. Ah well...
