And so comes to pass the end of Cable Seadreamer. Here, at the base of The One Tree. The same Tree Berek Halfhand himself removed a branch from and shaped the Old Staff of Law. Berek feared no rejection, there was no catastrophic end to his coming upon the Tree. Ah, but now, the Earthpower has changed. The Tree no longer allows such things. Now, Seadreamer’s Earth-Sight rings so tragically true. He knew, he knew what would happen if Covenant had touched the Tree with his White Gold. In his final cry, he strove to drive the force of his sight forward. “DO NOT!!!!”For a frozen splinter of time, Linden saw everything. Seadreamer's hands were closing on the branch. Covenant yearned forward as if he perceived the death in Seadreamer's eyes as clearly as she did. Cail supported the ur-Lord. The First, Pitchwife, and Honninscrave were in motion; but their running appeared slow and useless, clogged by the cold power in the air. The sunlight made them look at once vivid and futile.
She was alone in the western shadows with Vain and Findail. Percipience and reflected light rendered them meticulously to her. The Demondim-spawn's grin was as feral as a beast's. Waves of fear poured from Findail.
Disaster crouched in the cavern. It was about to strike. She felt it-all Lord Foul's manipulations coming to fruition in front of her. The atmosphere was rife with repercussions. But she could not move.
Then Seadreamer's hands closed.
In that instant, a blast like a shout of rage from the very guts of the Earth staggered the company. The Giants and Covenant were swept from their feet. The stone came up and kicked Linden as she sprawled forward.
Her breathing stopped. She did not remember hitting her head, but the whole inside of her skull was stunned, as if everything had been knocked flat. She wanted to breathe, but the air felt as violent as lightning. It would burn her lungs to cinders.
She had to breathe, had to know what was going on. Inhaling convulsively, she raised her head.
Vain and Findail had remained erect nearby, reflecting each other like antitheses across the gloom.
The well was full of stars.
A swath of the heavens had been superimposed on the cavern and the One Tree. Behind the sunlight, stars flamed with a cold fury. The spaces between them were as black as the fathomless depths of the sky. They were no larger than Linden's hand, no brighter than motes of dizziness. Yet each was as mighty as a sun. Together they transcended every power which life and Time could contain. They swirled like a galaxy in ferment, stirring the air into a brew of utter destruction.
A score of them swept toward Seadreamer. They seemed to strike and explode without impact; but their force lit a conflagration of agony in his flesh. A scream ripped the throat which had released no word since the birth of his Earth-Sight.
And wild magic appeared as if it had been rent free of all restraint by Seadreamer's cry. Covenant stood with his arms spread like a crucifixion, spewing argent fire. Venom and madness scourged forward as he strove to beat back Seadreamer's death. Foamfollower had already died for him.
His fury deflected or consumed the stars, though any one of them should have been too mighty for any mortal power to touch. But he was already too late. Seadreamer's hands fell from the branch. He sagged against the trunk of the Tree. Panting hugely, he took all his life in his hands and wrenched it into the shape of one last cry:
"Do not!"
It is no secret to those who know me how hard the One Tree is for me to get through. We’ve come so far, been through so much to reach the Isle. And what happens???
This.
Covenant's outpouring faltered. Flame flushed up and down his frame like the beating of his pulse, but did not lash out. Horror stretched his visage, a realization of what he had avoided and permitted. In her heart, Linden ran toward him; but her body stayed kneeling, half catatonic, on the stone. She was unable to find the key that would unlock her contradictions. The First and Pitchwife still clung to Honninscrave's arms, holding him back from Seadreamer. Cail stood beside Covenant as if he meant to protect the Unbeliever from the anger of the stars.
And the stars still whirled, imposing themselves on the stone and the air and the retreating sunlight, shooting from side to side closer toward the heads of the companions. Abruptly, Cail knocked Covenant aside to evade a swift mote. The First and Pitchwife heaved Honninscrave toward the relative safety of the wall, then dove heavily after him.
Destruction which no blood or bone might withstand swarmed through the cavern.
As I read this, I thought, “this can’t be happening…he was supposed to come here…
Yes, he was, but not for the reasons we thought. Oh no, there is a deeper purpose, and a glimpse of that purpose is about to happen. Vain.
Vain! In the confusion of all that is happening: The angry stars, the death of Seadreamer, the utter loss I felt at Covenant’s apparent failure to get a branch; I just stopped and everything became clear to me. I looked up from the book and whispered, “oh, YES!”. Why else would he don the heels??? Just for safe keeping??Findail tuned himself to a pitch beyond the stars' reach. But Vain made no effort to elude the danger. His eyes were focused on nothing. He smiled ambiguously as one of the stars struck and burst against his right forearm.
Another concussion shocked the cavern. Ebony fire spat like excruciation from the Demondim-spawn's flesh.
When it ended, his forearm had been changed. From elbow to wrist, the skin and muscle and bone were gone, transformed into rough-barked wood. Deprived of every nerve or ligature, his hand dangled useless from his iron-bound wrist.
But the stars don’t relent, they swirl incensed by the company’s presence in the Cavarn. Covenant’s power erupts with new force, he becomes an argent vessel of destruction, consuming the very universe as the sun begins to leave the cavern. In his madness, he starts for the Tree, his wild gaze fixed on the branch Seadreamer had died to retrieve for him.
Yet, the stars aren’t thwarted. For every star Covenant’s power consumes another takes its place. And his power grows to catastrophic proportions.
The words of Findail bring Linden’s senses to full alert. She looks at the stone and realizes that it boils not because of wild magic, but because it is of the same power as the stars. They are standing on the back of the Worm! And the Worm is waking up!Still Linden could not move. Nothing in her life had prepared her for this. Stars gyred around the Tree, around Covenant. The stone boiled as if it were about to leap upward, take shape in its own defense. Wild magic lacerated her frail flesh, afflicting her with fire as Gibbon-Raver had once filled her with evil. She did not know how to move.
Then hands took hold of her, shook her. They were as compulsory as anguish. She looked away from Covenant and met Findail's frantic yellow eyes.
"You must stop him!" The Elohim's lips did not move. His voice rang directly into her brain. "He will not hear me!"
She gaped back at the Appointed. There were no words in all the cavern to articulate her panic.
"Do you not comprehend?" he knelled at her. "He has encountered the Worm of the World's End! Its aura defends the One Tree! Already he has brought it nigh rousing!
"Are you blind at last?" His voice rang like a carillon in agony. "Employ your sight! You must see! For this has the Despiser wrought his ill against you! For this! The Worm defends the One Tree! Have you learned nothing? Here the Despiser cannot fail! If the Worm is roused, the Earth will end, freeing Despite to wreak its vengeance upon the cosmos. And if the ring-wielder attempts to match his might against the Worm, he will destroy the Arch of Time. It cannot contain such a battle! It is founded upon white gold, and white gold will rive it to rubble!
"For this was he afflicted with the Despiser's venom!" Findail's clamor tormented every part of her being. "To enhance his might, enabling him to rend the Arch! This is the helplessness of power! You must stop him!"
Umm…bones of the Earth??? Where have we heard that just recently?????A source buried among the deepest bones of the Earth-a source which had been at rest.
Okay, okay…Tracie, don’t jump ahead…we are still in the cavern here…
But he doesn’t pull it back, he just changes it’s direction. And at first, Linden doesn’t realize what he’s doing. All she knows is that he is no longer poised to bring down the Arch, no longer in rage. Then, wild magic floods through her.This was the crux of her life, this failure to rise above herself. This was why Lord Foul had chosen her. This paralysis was simply flight in another form. Unable to resolve the paradox of her lust for power and her hatred of evil, her desire and loathing for the dark might of Ravers, she was caught, immobilized. Gibbon-Raver had touched her, taught her the truth. Are you not evil? Behind all her strivings and determination lay that denunciation, rejecting life and love. If she remained frozen now, the denial of her humanity would be complete.
And it was Covenant who would pay the price-Covenant who was being duped into destroying what he loved. The unanswerable perfection of Lord Foul's machinations appalled her. In his power, Covenant had become, not the Earth's redeemer, but its doom. He, Thomas Covenant-the man to whom she had surrendered her loneliness. The man who had smiled for Joan.
His peril erased every other consideration.
There was no evil here. She clung to that fact, anchored herself on it. No Ravers. No Despiser. The Worm was inconceivably potent-but it was not evil. Covenant was lunatic with venom and passion-but he was not evil. No ill arose to condition her responses, control what she did. Surely she could afford to unbind her instinct for power? To save Covenant?
With a shout, she thrust away from Findail, began surging through utter and immedicable argent as if it were lava toward the Unbeliever.
At every new lash and eruption of wild magic, every added flurry of stars, she felt that the skin was being flayed from her bones; but she did not stop. The gale howled in her ears. She did not let it impede her. A Giantish voice wailed after her, "Chosen!" and went unheeded. The cavern, had become a chaos of echoes and violence; but she traversed the cacophony as if her will outshone every other sound. The presence of so much power elevated her. Instinctively, she used that force for protection, took hold of it with her percipience so that the stars did not burn her, the gale did not hurl her back.
Power.
Impossibly upright amid conflagrations which threatened to break the Isle, she placed herself between Covenant and the One Tree.
His fire scaled about him in whorls and coruscations. He looked like a white avatar of the father of nightmares. But he saw her. His howl made the roots of the rock shudder as he grabbed at her with wild magic, drew her inside his defenses.
She flung her arms around him and forced her face toward his. Mad ecstasy distorted his visage. Kevin must have worn that same look at the Ritual of Desecration. Focusing all the penetration of her senses, she tuned her urgency, her love, her self to a pitch that would touch him.
"You've got to stop!"
He was a figure of pure fire. The radiance of his bones was beyond mortality. But she pierced the blaze.
"It's too much! You're going to break the Arch of Time!"
Through the outpouring, she heard him scream. But she held herself against him. Her senses grappled for his flame, prevented him from striking out.
"This is what Foul wants!"
Driven by the strength she took from him, her voice reached him.
She saw the shock as truth stabbed into him. She saw realization strike panic and horror across his visage. His worst nightmares reared up in front of him; his worst fears were fulfilled. He was poised on the precipice of the Despiser's victory. For one horrendous moment, he went on crying power as if in his despair he meant to tear down the heavens.
She finds herself back at the waning bon fire of horror. Back by the slab of stone where Covenant lays with a knife in his chest. His life is bleeding out of him. He had sent her back to save him. But what he doesn’t know is, she can’t because he isn’t there! She tries to convey this to him. That she has no power to save him because he, himself, his spirit, his lifeforce is not laying there with him on that slab, it’s in the cavern of the One Tree, enveloped in Wild Magic. And Venom. But, he doesn’t listen to her.His might bore her away. It did not touch her physically. It did not unbind her arms from him, did not harm her body. But it translated everything. Rushing through her like a torrent, it swept her out of herself, frayed her as if she were a mound of sand eroded by the sea, hurled her out among the stars.
Night burst by her on all sides. The heavens writhed about her as if she were the pivot of their fate. Abysms of loneliness stretched out like absolute grief in every direction, contradicting the fact that she still felt Covenant in her arms, still saw the enclosure of the well. And those sensations were fading. She clung to them with frenzy; but wild magic burned them to ash in her grasp and cast her adrift. She floated away into fathomless midnight.
Echoing without sound or hope, Covenant's voice rose after her:
"Save my life!"
As she regains her bearings, Linden looks around the cavern and discovers that Covenant’s power is gone, the stars are gone, and the One Tree is now barely visible in the gloom. She sees Honniscrave huddled at the base of it with his brother cradled in his arms. This part always brings me to tears…"Covenant!"
The sound fell stillborn in the woods. She did not know how to make him hear her. She clung to the link, but it resisted her service. If she had had the entire facilities and staff of a modern emergency room at her immediate disposal, she would not have been able to save him. His grip on the wild magic was too strong. The effort of mastering it had made him strong. Despair made him strong. And she had never wielded power before. In a direct contest for control of his might, she was no match for him.
But her percipience still lived. She knew him in that way more intimately than she had ever known herself. She felt his fierce grief and extremity across the gap between worlds. She knew --
Knew how to reach him.
She did not stop to count the cost. There was no time. Madly, she hurled herself into the dying bonfire as if it were her personal caamora.
For one splintered instant, those yellow flames leaped at her flesh. Harbingers of searing shot along her nerves.
Then Covenant saw her peril. Instinctively, he tried to snatch her back.
At once, she took hold of the link with every finger of her passion. Guided by her senses, she began to fight her way toward the source of the connection.
The woods became as insubstantial as mist, then fell into shreds as the winds between the stars tugged through them. The stone under her feet evaporated into darkness. Covenant's prone form denatured, disappeared. She began to fall, as bright as a comet, into the endless chasm of the heavens.
As she hurtled, she strove to muster words. You've got to come with me! It's the only way I can save you! But suddenly the power was quenched as if Covenant himself had been snuffed out. Her spiritual plummet among the stars seemed to become a physical plunge, a fall from a height which no human body might endure. Her heart wanted to scream, but there was no air, had never been any air, her lungs could not support the ether through which she dropped. She had gone off the edge of her fate. No cry remained which would have made any difference.
Helpless to catch herself, she stumbled forward onto her face on the floor of the cavern. Her pulses raced, chest labored. Reminders of the bonfire flushed over her skin. A moment passed before she was able to realize that she had suffered no hurt.
Ah, my heart!! Honniscrave! Seadreamer! Covenant! The One Tree was so hard on me. Not in the way The Wounded Land was. This was hard because after waiting so long for this book I was reading of Covenant’s apparent failure to get what he sought. My hero was broken. Broken, I thought, beyond repair. I should have known better.The sight wrung her. Cable Seadreamer, involuntary victim of Earth-Sight and muteness. He had done nothing with his life except give it away in an effort to save the people he most treasured. She had failed him, too.
But then she became aware of Honninscrave himself, realized that the Master was breathing in great, raw hunks of loss. He was alive. That perception seemed to complete her transition, bringing her fully back into the company of her friends. The gloom macerated slowly as her eyes swam into focus.
Softly, Pitchwife said, "Ah, Chosen. Chosen." His voice was thick with rue.
A short distance from Honninscrave and Seadreamer, Covenant sat spread-legged on the stone. He appeared unconscious of the violence building in the roots of the Isle. He faced the unattainable Tree with his back bowed as if he had broken his spine.
His face was only a blur in the gloom, a pale smear from which all hope had been erased…Stiffly, she carried her appeal toward Covenant. Kneeling between his legs, she faced him and tried to lift the words into her throat. You've got to go back. But she was unable to speak. It was too late. His power-haunted gaze told her plainly that he already knew what she wanted to say.
"I can't." His voice sifted into the dark like a falling of ashes. "Even if I could stand it. Abandon the Land. Let Foul have his way." His face was only a blur in the gloom, a pale smear from which all hope had been erased. "It takes too much power. I'd break the Arch."
Oh, Covenant!
She had nothing else to give him.
I mirror Linden’s wail… Oh Covenant!!!