WGW, Chapter 11--Aftermath

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Durris
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WGW, Chapter 11--Aftermath

Post by Durris »

After Covenant endures the grandmother of all caamoras in the Banefire—an act not only of purgation but of alchemy and metallurgy—Linden directs Nom and her comrades in bringing Glimmermere’s water into Revelstone. Fire that is unnaturally evil can only be quenched by water that is supernaturally life-giving. The fire has made Covenant into an alloy (we’ll come back to this point, because he explains it to Linden in his own words later); and a newly fused alloy needs to be tempered as it cools.

Though Linden knows that Covenant survived the ordeal—she witnessed it all in her percipience—she feels sure that their relationship has died because of her attempt to possess him to dissuade him from the Banefire. The Covenant who emerges from the fire is not in any sense the same person, and she dares not expect that he will now be anything to her at all.
…As he had moved sightlessly past her toward some place or fate which she could no longer guess, her heart had turned to bitterness and dust, leaving her as desolate as the demesne of the Sunbane. She had thought that her passion was directed at him, at his rejection of her, his folly, his desperate doom: but when she saw him emerge from the Banefire and pass by her, she knew better. She had been appalled at herself—at the immedicable wrong of what she had tried to do to him. Despite her horror of possession, her revulsion for the dark ill which Lord Foul had practiced on Joan and the Land, her clear conviction that no one had the right to master others, suppress them, rule them in that way, she had reacted to Covenant’s need and determination as if she were a Raver. She had tried to save him by taking away his identity.
There was no excuse.
Linden’s morality about possession has been a thread weaving in and out of the entire second series. As I read her reflections here, outside the Banefire enclosure and while guiding the irrigation, I thought of two earlier points in her trajectory: early in the voyage in TOT, when, for fear of possession, she refuses to attempt to reach a Covenant delirious and comatose with venom; and in Bhrathairealm, when she reaches into Covenant and breaks him free of the Elohim silence. The consequences of the latter act had provoked Brinn to attempt to pronounce a capital sentence; when Linden reflects on the consequences of her recent possession of Covenant, she comes near sentencing herself to death.
Then for a moment she had believed that she had no choice but to take his place in the Banefire—to let that savage blaze rip away her offenses so that Covenant and her friends and the Land would no longer be in danger from her. …If her life had been shaped by a miscomprehended lust for power, then let it end now, as it deserved. There was no one nearby to stop her.
But Findail shows again his newfound beginnings of moral courage and of respect for mortal humans:
Sun-Sage,…I know not how to dissuade you. I do not desire your death—though mayhap I would be spared much thereby. Yet consider the ring-wielder. What hope will remain for him if you are gone? How will he then refuse the recourse of the Earth’s ruin?
So she goes not to the death she feels she deserves, but to the task she knows is needed. Just as she always has done since she was a pre-med.

Durris guides Linden up through Revelstone to the upland plateau, and remains at her side thereafter throughout the chapter.
She sensed all the Haruchai as if they were simply a part of Revelstone, a manifestation of the Keep’s old granite.
This sentence, very like SRD’s descriptions of Bannor and other Bloodguard in the first series, both invokes Haruchai history and shows that Haruchai redemption has begun. They are no longer prisoners and victims in this city, but its condign inhabitants.
Spoiler
And are soon to become its inheritors and protectors.
Linden continues to reflect on Gibbon’s prophecies of her desecration as the Banefire cools, until she perceives an outward and visible sign of her inward sense of sin:
An old habit which might once have been a form of self-respect caused her to thrust her hands into her hair to straighten it. But its uncleanness made her wince.
This image made me wince, for it connects to a similar image in the TOT chapter “Mother’s Child,” as Linden advanced to confront her Haruchai accusers.
The wind fluttered her unwashed hair against her cheeks. Under other circumstances, she would have loathed that dirt. She had a doctor’s instinct for cleanliness; and a part of her had always taken pride in the sheen of her hair. But now she accepted her grimy appearance in the same spirit that she displayed the dark stain [Ceer’s blood!] on her thighs. It, too, was just.
At the steaming outskirts of the sacred enclosure, Linden encounters Pitchwife and the First. Just as the First had confronted Linden during the voyage with the necessity of attempting to heal Covenant, she now breaks into Linden’s confessions with a call to medical readiness.
There is need of you. The wounded are gathered in the forehall. They must be tended….Mistweave labors among them, though he is no less hurt. He will not rest….It is your work he does.
As I read the description of Linden’s repairs to Mistweave’s broken elbow and many other wrecked limbs, I remembered that SRD’s father was an orthopedist—and speculated that Linden herself might have chosen an orthopedic residency if expiation had not driven her into family practice. Here in the forehall, an opportunity for more constructive reparations presents itself.
Fole’s hurt reminded her of Ceer’s—the leg crushed by a Sandgorgon and never decently treated—and so she immersed herself in the damage as if restitution could be made in that way, by taking the cost of broken bones and torn flesh upon herself.
This scene, subdued and sickroom-quiet as it is after the climactic battle of the last chapter, nevertheless is a turning point in Linden’s life. Her motivations for practicing medicine transform before our very eyes.
Yes. It was specific and clean. It had meaning, value; the pain of it was worth bearing. Yes. And it held her in one piece.
As if for the first time: Yes.
Linden has come a long way from “Father’s Child” in TOT, when she said,
I don’t think I’ve ever done anything in my life except deny. I didn’t become a doctor because I wanted people to live. I did it because I hate death.
Spoiler
Just as Durris in the next chapter will not be allowed to renew the old Vow but instead will make a different, more human, more sustainable commitment, Linden here renews her Hippocratic Oath in a completely different direction.
Linden instructs Durris and Cail to tell Nom to return the water to Glimmermere and to bury the dead, and charges the Haruchai to care for the wounded people of the Land. Just as her surgery upon Fole is a reparation for her crime against Ceer, Cail's response is a reversal of the judgment Brinn and Cail once pronounced upon Linden.
…The Haruchai were not unaffected by their part in the Land’s plight. The merewives and the Clave had taught them their limitations. And Brinn’s victory over the Guardian of the One Tree had done much to open the way for Cable Seadreamer’s death and the Despiser’s manipulations. In a strange way, the Haruchai had been humbled. When Linden looked up at Cail, he said as if he were still unmoved, “It will be done. You are Linden Avery the Chosen. It will be done.
We all know what "as if he were not" means in SRD's lexicon!

Cail guides Linden to a part of the Keep unfamiliar to her, but achingly familiar to us. The circular court leading to the Lords’ private quarters is where the soothtell took place, beginning Covenant’s war against the Clave that has now been won. Mhoram’s room, where Covenant now waits for Linden, is where Mhoram learned from Elena’s sculpture that Covenant and Bannor both required absolute answers for their lives—and where Mhoram taught Covenant that the results of his choices, even if costly, were less important than the motives of those choices.
Mute with shame and longing, [Linden] fought the inadequacy of her vision and strove to anele [anoint, as for the Sacrament of Healing] her sore heart with the simple sight of him.
Luminous in silver and tears, he stood before her….She saw only that he carried himself as if he had not come to berate her.
The word “anele” took me back to the TOT chapter “Also love in the world,” where Linden awakes the next morning “aneled of numbness as if her blood had become chrism.” In that chapter, Covenant had put himself between Linden and the judgment of the Haruchai. Here and now, he puts his reborn self between Linden and her own self-judgment. He can do this because he has transcended his own self-judgments.
His contradictions remained, defining him beneath the surface. Yet he had become new and pure and clean.
As Foamfollower emerged as the Pure One after his total-immersion caamora in Hotash Slay?
It was as if his doubt were gone—as if the self-judgments and –repudiation which had tormented him had been reborn as certainty, clarity, acceptance in the Banefire.
Linden has been trying to figure out what she’s seeing that is different. At first she thought Covenant’s leprosy had been eradicated, then that the venom had been burned out. Covenant explains that what has happened is neither of those things.
”I guess you could say it’s been fused. I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s been burned into me so deeply that there’s no distinction. I’m like an alloy—venom and wild magic and ordinary skin and bones melted together until they’re all one. All the same. I’ll never be free of it.”
As he spoke, she saw that he was right. He gave her the words to see that he was right. Fused. An alloy. Like white gold itself, a blend of metals.
Recall that Kasreyn coveted the white gold because it was an alloy rather than a pure metal, because perfect works and pure materials could not endure in an imperfect world.

Covenant concludes,
I used to say I was sick of guilt. But not anymore….It’s not a sickness anymore. I am guilt. I’ll never use power again.
Berenford’s quote from Covenant’s recent novel, “Only the damned can be saved,” reminded me of the biblical passage, “Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.” Hanging on to putative innocence rather than taking a moral risk in the service of life can be a way of trying to save oneself rather than lose oneself?
Linden doesn’t remotely understand how Covenant can face Foul if he has renounced the use of power. But she can see his certainty down to the core; and she loves him. She asks what her choices are, what he wants her to do. He replies,
”I want what you want. I want you to find something that gives you hope. I want you to come into your power. I want you to stop believing that you’re evil—that your mother and father are the whole truth about you. I want you to understand why you were chosen to be here….I want you to have reasons”.
She still did not comprehend his apprehension. But he had given her an opportunity she coveted fervidly, and she was determined to take it at any cost. Her voice was thick with a kind of weeping she had suppressed for most of her life; but she no longer cared how much frailty or need she exposed. [The very antithesis of her “flat professional voice”.] All the severity and detachment to which she had trained herself had fled, and she did not try to hail them back. Trembling fiercely to herself, she uttered her avowal.
“I don’t want hope. I don’t want power. I don’t care if I never go back. Let Foul do his worst—and to hell with him. I don’t even care if you’re going to die.” That was true. Death was later: he was now. “I’m a doctor, not a magician. I can’t save you unless you go back with me—and if you offered me that, I wouldn’t take it. And that also was true; she had learned it among the wounded in the forehall of the Keep. “All I want is a living love. For as long as I can get it.” Defying her weakness, she stood erect before him in the lamplight as if she were ablaze. “I want you.”
At that, he bowed his head at last; and the relief which flooded from him was so palpable that she could practically embrace it. When he looked up again, he was smiling with love—a smile which belonged to her and to no one else. Tears streaked his face as he went to the door and closed it, shutting out the consequences of wild magic and venom. Then from the doorway he said thickly, “I wish I could’ve believed you were going to say that. I would’ve told Cail to bring us some blankets.”
But the safe gutrock of Revelstone enclosed them with solace, and they did not need blankets.
*blink, flinch* One of the most moving moments in the mythos. Covenant and Linden enact a mutual Tan-Haruchail far deeper than that of their initial intimacy on Starfare's Gem, because neither is now the same person he or she was when they first gave themselves to each other.
*Durris dries eyes and reaches for spouse*
Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased.
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Post by matrixman »

Durris wrote:Linden directs Nom and her comrades in bringing Glimmermere’s water into Revelstone. Fire that is unnaturally evil can only be quenched by water that is supernaturally life-giving.
That makes sense, though I didn't see it quite so, um, symbollically. (But, hey, it's fantasy, so I guess everything is symbolic of something.) I had thought that basically any water would have done the job of quenching the Banefire, it's just that Glimmermere happened to be the nearest and biggest source of it. Still, I guess having Earthpowerful water helps. It's funny how something as supposedly grand and mighty as the Banefire is compromised by one simple weakness: it can't swim. :)
Durris wrote:Findail shows again his newfound beginnings of moral courage and of respect for mortal humans:
Sun-Sage,…I know not how to dissuade you. I do not desire your death—though mayhap I would be spared much thereby. Yet consider the ring-wielder. What hope will remain for him if you are gone? How will he then refuse the recourse of the Earth’s ruin?
Ironic how Findail ends up providing counsel, even support, for both Covenant and Linden. He's certainly in a unique position to do so, since nobody else around has a clue about the whole Sun-Sage/ring-wielder business, except Vain--and he's not talking. :) So maybe we shouldn't be too hard on Findail from now on, eh?
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Post by Dragonlily »

Durris wrote:In that chapter, Covenant had put himself between Linden and the judgment of the Haruchai. Here and now, he puts his reborn self between Linden and her own self-judgment. He can do this because he has transcended his own self-judgments.
Durris, this is a great description of the spiritual transformations in this section of WGW. Very well done, the whole dissection. :D

I find SRD's account of Covenant's caamora and its aftermath to be some of the most moving writing in the whole 2nd Chrons.
“All I want is a living love. For as long as I can get it.” Defying her weakness, she stood erect before him in the lamplight as if she were ablaze. “I want you.”

At that, he bowed his head at last; and the relief which flooded from him was so palpable that she could practically embrace it. When he looked up again, he was smiling with love—a smile which belonged to her and to no one else. Tears streaked his face
Tears indeed. Finally, love with no guilt, preconceptions, or barriers. Simple love, nothing else. *blinks* *sniffs*
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Post by dlbpharmd »

Thanks, Durris, and well done!
We all know what "as if he were not" means in SRD's lexicon!
Uh, actually, I don't follow this, and feel left out. Would you care to elaborate?
I remembered that SRD’s father was an orthopedist—and speculated that Linden herself might have chosen an orthopedic residency if expiation had not driven her into family practice.
This is just another example of the extraordinary power of the health-sense. Linden has performed procedures and surgeries throughout the 2nd Chronicles that no family practice physician is capable of. Her health sense not only allows her to see the extent of Mistweave's injury but also guides her in repairing it.
I’ll never use power again.
This is a stab in the heart to those of us who love to see Covenant as the master of wild magic, kicking ass and taking names, as he did at the Soothtell and the confrontation with Kaseryn.
a smile which belonged to her and to no one else.
Throughout 2nd Chronicles Linden has despised the look that Covenant gave Joan as he took her place under the fanatic's blade:
"Don't worry about me." A difficult tenderness softened his tone. "You're safe now - that's the important thing. I'll be all right." Somehow, he managed to smile. His eyes betrayed his pain. The light from the fire cast shadows of self-defiance across his bruised mien. And yet his smile expressed so much valor and rue that the sight of it tore Linden's heart.
TWL Chapter 3

That smile means so much to Linden - not just the emotion that it conveys but something else. That smile is liberating - freeing her from the guilt over her parents, and opening her future and her world to happiness for the first time in her life. Just as Covenant smiled as Joan was spared:
But Thomas Covenant had chosen to die. And he had smiled. For Joan's sake. Linden had never seen one person do so much for another.
TWL Chapter 3

He smiles now for Linden - and that's all she's ever wanted.
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Post by Durris »

dlbpharmd wrote:
Durris wrote:We all know what "as if he were not" means in SRD's lexicon!

Uh, actually, I don't follow this, and feel left out. Would you care to elaborate?
1000 pardons, dlbpharmd. I didn't mean to leave you out.

"As if [Cail] were still unmoved" in this chapter reminded me of many other instances in the first and second series where SRD speaks of the Haruchai acting "as if they did not" feel something.

Ever since Fist's "translation" of the Haruchai response to meeting the Giants of the Search after a four-thousand-year separation between the two peoples, I've parsed the "as if it were not" rhetoric differently. It's the figure of speech called preterition, which emphasizes a statement under the guise of denying it.

Cail speaking to Linden "as if he were still unmoved," after he has reflected on the history that has humbled him individually and his people collectively, is actually very moved indeed. (Not that his inner state would be visible or audible to us flatlanders. But there's a differential calculus of emotion in SRD's descriptions of the Haruchai. The infinitesimal traces--all that is externally visible of their intense emotions--nevertheless retain the character of the specific feelings they refract.)
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Post by duchess of malfi »

The Haruchai are an extremely passionate people, who try to be in complete control of their emotions. SRD often and subtly hints at this...and a slight lessening of a Haruchai's dispassion means that he is fighting with all his being to retain control over his passionate heart. 8)
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Post by SoulBiter »

I thought it was touching that Nom gave Honniscrave a great honor. He buried him right there in the Hall of gifts. Nothing could have been more appropriate after the gift that Honniscrave gave the people of the Land.
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Post by danlo »

Durris quoted: Mistweave labors among them, though he is no less hurt. He will not rest….It is your work he does.

I was particullarly impressed by Mistweave's work (despite a very painful broken arm) and self-sacrifice after the battle-essentially doing "common sense" tirage, working to heal, encountering his own victims, dealing with his self doubt and the, seriously, touching one arm hug where Linden tries to absolve him of his quilt "You're not responsible for this. The Clave made them attack you. You didn't have a choice."
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Post by Durris »

When Mistweave asks Linden, "Chosen, it would be a benison to me if you would tend my arm. The pain is considerable," Linden reflects to herself that he is giving her more help than she deserves. (Linden and Covenant both have an almost Haruchai fixation on the question of their deservingness or lack thereof; I imagine that Cail found himself understanding them both much better after that combat in the rain outside Revelstone required him to acknowledge his [putative!] unworth.)

I think Linden ends up feeling toward Mistweave the way Covenant does toward various Haruchai at various points in the mythos (Bannor under Kiril Threndor, Brinn in "Soothtell,"
Spoiler
and Durris in "Those Who Part")
; a humbling weight of gratitude fused with a sort of despair of ever being worthy of what has already been given as a done deal, without so much as a by-your-leave. Had Linden been asked whether she wanted such service she would have declined it indignantly; it was Mistweave's genius (as that of his Haruchai Rockbrothers toward Covenant) not to ask, for that exact reason.
Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased.
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Post by malinda_maloney »

I loved this chapter. At the very beginning, when SRD was writing about Nom directing the overflow of the Glimmermere to the Banefire, I didn't actually catch on at first that that was the purpose. I sort of pictured the Ents and Isengard, when they broke down the dam of the Isen and cleansed Isengard from Saruman.

And then I realized... yeah, it's to put out the Banefire.

Also, the part where Linden helps the last person, right before she was led to Covenant, stuck out in my mind.
Sighing to herself, she did what she could for the last of the wounded - watched him die because she was only one woman and had not reached him in time. Then she straightened her stiff knees and went with Cail out of the forehall.
This shows to me two things; first of all, how she has grown. In the past, she would have sat there and moaped because she could not save the man, and maybe even be put into one of her moods again. Secondly, it shows me how her and Covenant are different. Covenant would have started cursing or such on how another life had been died because of him, even if indirectly. Especially since it was an innocent life.

I also like the smile he gives her. I know how she feels, and with the life she had, it must be so strange and almost overwhelming.
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Post by Cord Hurn »

I find it interesting that a parallel development of attitudes occurs with both TC and LA. The main difference I can detect is that it's a new direction for Covenant and a it's a return of viewpoint for Linden.
In chapter 10 of [i]White Gold Wielder[/i] was wrote:But before the weaving of the world could tear, he found he knew that answer also. To bear what must be borne. After all, it was endurable--if he chose to go that far, and the choice was not taken from him. Certainly it would be expensive. It would cost him everything. But was that not preferable to a Ritual of Desecration which would make Kevin's look like an act of petty spite? Was it not?

After a time, he said softly, Yes. And again, Yes. Accepting it fully for the first time. You are the wild magic. Yes.
When Durris and his people brought her the things she had requested, she told him to build a fire to clean the knife and keep the water hot. Then while the sun set outside and night grew deep over the city, she opened up Mistweave's elbow and put the bones back together.

That intricate and demanding task made her feel frayed to the snapping point, worn thin by shared pain. But she did not stop when it was finished. Her work was just beginning. After she had splinted and strapped Mistweave's arm, she turned to the injuries of the Haruchai, to Fole's leg and Harn's hip and all the other wounds dealt out by the Grim and the Coursers, the Riders and the people of Revelstone. Fole's hurt reminded her of Ceer's--the leg crushed by a Sandgorgon and never decently treated--and so she immersed herself in the damage as if restitution could be made in that way, by taking the cost of broken bones and torn flesh upon herself. And after that she began to tend as best she could the Riders and servants of the Clave.

Later, through the riven gates at the end of the forehall, she felt midnight rise like the moon above the Keep. The reek of spilled and drying blood filled the air. Men and women cried out as if they expected retribution when she touched them. But still she went weary and unappeased about her chosen work. It was the only answer she had ever found for herself until she had met Covenant. Now it was the only answer she had left.

Yes. It was specific and clean. It had meaning, value; the pain of it was worth bearing. Yes. And it held her in one piece.

As if for the first time: Yes.
The parallel way of describing TC's and LA's self-realizations as to their roles in the Land cannot be a coincidence. So I see it as a way of foreshadowing. 8O
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Post by wayfriend »

Yes. And in both cases, they are accepting who they are, fully. Finding strength from that. As if they always had everything they needed to be strong, and just didn't know it.
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Post by Cord Hurn »

wayfriend wrote:Yes. And in both cases, they are accepting who they are, fully. Finding strength from that. As if they always had everything they needed to be strong, and just didn't know it.
This is a strongly positive message that I think is why I find SRD's fiction so inspiring. It's a message that seems to be here, there, and everywhere in his works, and I never tire of it! :D 8)
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