Be true my friends.
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The moment that Linden Avery has been dreading has finally come. Thomas Covenant, ur-Lord and Unbeliever, Earthfriend and Illender, Giantfriend and Prover of Life, her beloved, has died.
He gave his life, and now as the keystone of the Arch of Time - wild magic personified - he stands between Lord Foul and the Despiser's mad goal. Corruption himself is as good as dead, driven to fatal self-expenditure by a madness that stretched back to the dawn of time.
And in the aftermath of this titanic struggle, the Chosen grieves over the body of her lost love.
In this early part of the chapter, SRD quite eloquently describes the grief that Linden is feeling.She sat cross-legged near the dais, with Covenant's head in her lap. No Breath stirred his chest. He was already growing cold. The capacity for peril which had made him so dear to her had gone out. But she did not let him go. His face wore a grimace of defeat and victory - a strange fusion of commandment and grace - that was as close as he would ever come to peace.
In silence she bowed over his body. Her eyes streamed at the beauty of what he had become.
She had lost him at last.
And yet, though she has endured so much, her work is not over. Her great task has not even yet begun. And Covenant reminds her of this.She could not look up at him. His dead face was all that remained to her, all that held her together: if she raised her head to his unbearable beauty, she would be lost as well.
"I'm sorry."..."I didn't know what else to do. I had to stop him."
The white gold. Since the beginning the Elohim have continually asserted that Linden should have it, not Covenant. Now, the ring has come to her as a gift, freely given. Yet she doesn't yet understand why she needs it.Now it's your turn. Pick up the ring."
I find it odd at this point that as Covenant tries to persuade Linden, he says that she has to heal the Land because he can't do it as he is dead. He may just be trying to be concise, but he doesn't seem to recognise the fact that healing the Land was never his job in the first place.I don't need to. You've already done it.
Covenant has defeated the Despiser twice, but he has never shown, and SRD has never even hinted, that he could heal the Land. It's not part of who he is. That is why Linden was chosen."I can't do it myself. I don't have your hands - can't touch that kind of power any more. I'm not physically alive."
Covenant spends most of the first third of the chapter explaining that Foul's defeat doesn't automatically mean the defeat of the Sunbane, and tryng to convince Linden to pick up the ring."All I did was stop him. I haven't healed anything. The Sunbane is still there. It has a life of its own. And the Earthpower's been too badly corrupted. It can't recover by itself."
And she does, despite the pain that she is feeling...
...because of who he is to her, and because of her love for him.She had lost him. Whatever happened now, she had lost him absolutely.
But she would not fail in this. Not here, at the last. Or would she?Yet she did not refuse him. She had sworn that she would put a stop to the Sunbane. And her love for him would not let her go. She had failed at everything else.
And Covenant is gone, dismissed with a simple command. Like he told Linden, Foul could have done the same thing had he not been so insane with longing.Avaunt, shade! Your work is done. Urge me no more dismay!
Suddenly, Vain and Findail struggle their way into the room, pitting their very essences against each other for one simple purpose: the ring.
Chosen withhold! Do not dare the ring!
We know that the Elohim have always wanted the ring for their own, but Findail also desires to claim the ring for the simple reason that it will mean his end if Linden takes it for herself.He has compelled me to preserve him! But he must not be suffered! Chosen, withhold!
It is at this point that Linden makes an effort to retrieve the ring, if for no other reason than to prevent Findail from getting it. Even though his grip is unbreakable, Vain cannot hold him back. However, she has waited to long. Lord Foul, her summoner, is as god as dead, and with his passing her summons ends.
And now the power that is drawing her back to her own world has grown so strong that she cannot fight its claim on her. Findail, Vain, Covenant’s dead body, the walls of Kiril Threndor – they are all too much for her now, all far more real than she is. She has lost the ring.
His bubbling exuberance, her iron beauty. They are brave beyond reckoning. They are Giants. The First of the Search and her husband. Gossamer Glowlimn and Pitchwife. They have given their strength and support and love to the Earthfriend and the Chosen since the day they meet in the Sarangrave, beset by skest. And now, bleeding and bruised and broken and beyond where they ever thought the end of themselves was, they remind Linden of who she is.She tried to cry out. But she was too insubstantial to make any sound which Mount Thunder might have heard.
Yet she was answered. When she believed that she had wasted all hope, she was answered.
Now ring-wielder and Sun-Sage are one, and the fears of the Elohim should be dispelled. However, The Appointed and the Demondim-spawn demand Linden’s immediate attention.Findail was scarcely a step from the ring. Vain could not hold him back.
But the Appointed did not reach it.
Linden grasped Covenant’s wedding band with the thin remains of her health-sense, drew fire spouting like an affirmation out of the metal. It was her ring now, granted to her in love and necessity; and the first touch of its flame restored her with a shock at once exquisitely painful and glad, ferocious and blessed. Suddenly, she was as real as the stone and the light, as substantial as Findail’s frenzy, Vain’s intransigence, the Giant’s courage. The pressure thrusting her out of existence did not subside; but now she was a match for it. Her lungs took and released the sulphur-tinged air as if she had a right to it.
With white fire, she repelled the Elohim. Then, as kindly as if her were alive, she slid her legs from under Covenant’s head.
Leaving him alone there, she went to take the ring.
Although she knows intuitively that Vain has all but reached his secret purpose, the only sure thing here is Findail’s fear. In this, SRD finally gives him dignity. The Appointed has been one of the most unlovable characters of the whole chronicles, yet at the end SRD shows us that all his actions were born out of fear – not for the Earth or the Elohim – but for himself. The selfishness, and humanity, of this, makes Findail more understandable.
And Vain’s reply was as surprising for me as it was for Linden.”I am Elohim. Kastenessen cursed me with death – but I am not made for death. I must not die”
And now the gift of the Pure One to Thomas Covenant finally takes the last step to fulfilling his purpose.”You will not die.”…”It is not death. It is purpose. We will redeem the Earth from corruption.”
Why should she do as he says? Vain has never shown himself to care about anything that she has cared for. He saved Covenant once, because he was commanded to, and Linden once, for reasons that she has never been able to figure out.”Sun-Sage, you must embrace us.”
Yet, she decides that she does trust him for four reasons:
1 – He had been forgiven to Covenant by Foamfollower. In this, Linden lets go of her animosity towards Covenant’s Dead, having already admitted to herself that there is no reason why Kevin Landwaster should be more trustworthy than them or Covenant.
2 – He had bowed to her once. My guess is that because of this Linden believes that Vain’s purpose will serve her in some way.
3 – He had saved her life. This suggests that Vain’s purpose would fail without Linden.
4 – He had met with anger the warping of his makers. This is the most interesting of all Linden’s reasons, and I believe that this is the key reason she choose to trust Vain. In a sense, Linden’s ‘makers’, her parents, had also been warped by Despite. Despair and self-hatred, Foul’s main weapons, were well known in Avery household. In the past Linden has tried to hide from her parent’s legacy, pretending it never happened and that it did not manifest itself in her heart as lust for power. Now however, with Covenant’s help, she has accepted her parent’s legacy, her own blackness, and decided that it does not prevent her from making choices that count. In this way she has ‘met with anger the warping of her makers’ and this allows her to understand why Vain did what he did, which enables her to trust him.
As Findail ends his existence with more dignity that his people have ever shown before, a ‘staggering concussion of power’ is directed at him, and at Vain, I Linden’s arms.When she put around his neck and Findail’s, the Eohim flinched. But his people had Appointed him to this peril and their will held. At the last instant, he raised his head to meet his own personal Wurd.
Wild magic graven in every rock,
Contained for white gold to unleash or control-
Gold, rare metal, not born of the Land,
Nor ruled, limited, subdued
By the Law with which the Land was created-
And white – white gold-
Because white is the hue of bone:
Structure of flesh,
Discipline of life.
However, by themselves they are not enough. Linden understands this. If the Staff of Law is to be created anew, that Law has to be given a purpose. But neither Vain’s perfection nor Findail’s essence can provide this. The ring supplies the power to transform the two; the ring-wielder must make the transformation count.Findail’s fluid Earthpower. Vain’s hard, perfect structure. And between them, the old definition forged into the heels of the Staff of Law.
And now, Linden knows what she must do with the Staff, though the idea is horrific.She gave the best answer she had. Fear and distrust and anger she set aside: they had no place here. Exalted by white fire, she shone forth her passion for health and healing, her Land-born percipience, the love she had learned for Andelain and Earthpower. By herself, she chose the meaning she desired and made it true.
In her hands, the new Staff began to live.
There is one last thing that Linden needs to do though. To gain strength, and to comfort herself one last time, she turns to Pitchwife and the First and heals them. She soothes the hurt and weariness and aches and pains from their muscles. She fixes Pitchwife’s lungs, restoring his breathing. And then, for reasons that are at the same time blatantly obvious and totally beyond my comprehension, she straightens his back, restructuring his spine so that he stands as straight as any other Giant.But she had already borne so much, and it would all be rendered meaningless if she faltered now. She did not have to fail. This is why she had been chosen. Because she was fit to fulfil Covenant’s last appeal. It was too much – and yet it was hardly enough to repay her debts. Why should she fail? The mere thought that she would have to let the Sunbane touch her and touch her made her guts writhe, sent nausea beating down her veins. Horror raised mute cries of protest. In a sense, she would have to become the Land – to expose herself as fully as the Land to the Sunbane’s desecration. It would be like being locked again in the attic with her dying father while dark glee came hosting against her – like enduring again her mother’s abject blame until she was driven to point of murder. But she had survived those things .She had found her way through them to a life worthy of more respect than she had ever given it. And the old man whose life she had saved on Haven Farm had given her a promise to sustain her.
Ah, my daughter, do not fear. You will not fail, however he may assail you. There is also love in the world.
And then she goes out to face the Sunbane, where a fertile sun has just risen over the Land.
And what can Linden do? With all the might she has, she may as well be as helpless as she was at the beginning of The Wounded Land, since she has no obvious opponent, nothing to target, nothing to aim her phenomenal powers at.And beyond this fertility lurked rain and pestilence and desert in erratic sequence, waiting to repeat themselves over and over again, always harder and faster, until the foundations of the Land crumbled.
Her enemy isn’t a person or a creature. It is the sickness with which Foul has infected the Land, in the same way that he infected Dead Elena at the Colossus of the Fall. She cannot hurt it, or injure it, or cause it pain or harm. So she doesn’t try. Instead, Linden Avery allows the Sunbane to enter the innermost parts of her soul. She takes the Lands sickness upon herself, following both Covenant’s example and Brinn’s.That was the truth of the Sunbane. It could never be staunched. She was a fool to make the attempt.
Fertility, rain, desert and pestilence. The phases of the Earth’s blight. Linden accepts them, suffers them, heals them, and emits them back over the Land like a refreshing mist.With white fire she absorbed the Land’s corruption.
Though she has no strength let to restore the flora and fauna lost over the long years of the Sunbane’s dominion, Linden knows that she has done enough. From the peak of Gravin Threndor she says a word of farewell to Sunder and Hollian in Andelain and then returns to the Giants in the cavern of Kiril Threndor where the Unbeliever and the Despiser met their respective dooms.Her spirit became the medicament that cured. She was the Sun-Sage, the Healer, Linden Avery the Chosen, altering the Sunbane with her own life.
It fired green at hr like the sickness of emeralds. But she understood intimately the natural growth and decay of plants. They found their Law in her, their lush or hardy order, their native abundance or rarity; and then the green was gone.
Blue volleyed thunderously at her head and then lost the Land as she accepted every drop of water and flash of violence.
The brown of deserts came blistering around her, scorched her skin. But she knew the necessity of heat – and the restriction of climate. She felt in her bones the rhythm of rise and fall, the strict and vital alteration of seasons, summer and winter. The desert fire was cooled to a caress by the Staff and emitted gently outward again.
And last, the red of pestilence, as scarlet as disease, as stark as adders: it swarmed against her like a world full of bees, shot streaks of blood across her vision. In spite of herself, she was fading, could not keep from being hurt. But even pestilence was only a distortion of the truth. It had its clear place and purpose. When it was reduced, it fit within the new Law she set forth.
Sun-Sage and ring-wielder, she restored the Earthpower and released it over the wracked body of the Land.
And though she has faded beyond their physical sight, she retains enough to place the knowledge of what she has achieved in their minds.
Linden waits long enough to see the First pick up the Staff of Law and promise to deliver it to Sunder and Hollian. And then she lets go.”Linden Avery! Have I not said you are well Chosen?”
Pitchwife laughed and cried and kissed her. Then he bent, lifted Covenant into his arms. His back was strong and straight. Together, he and the First left Kiril Threndor. She strode like a Swordmain, ready for the world. But he moved at her side with a gay hop and caper, as if he were dancing.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Then the wind took her, and she felt herself go out.
Out into the dark.
She was the Sun-Sage, the Healer, Linden Avery the Chosen, altering the Sunbane with her own life. What else is there to say of Linden but that which Mhoram told her in Andelain.
I hope I didn’t quote too much, but this chapter is once of the greatest SRD has written in my opinion, and sometimes his words are the only ones that do Covenant and Linden justice.“…You are worthy of him…”
Sum sui generis
Vs
