Against All Things Ending (2 page)

Linden’s health-sense accentuates her potential as a healer. However, it also gives her the capacity to possess other people; to reach so deeply into them that she can control their actions. By this means, Lord Foul intends to cripple her morally: he seeks to transform her into a woman who will possess Covenant in order to misuse his power. Thus she will give the Despiser what he wants even if Covenant does not.

And if those ploys fail, Lord Foul has other stratagems in place to achieve his ends.

Horrified in their separate ways by what has been done to the Land, Covenant and Linden wish to confront the Clave in Revelstone; but on their own, they cannot survive the complex perils of the Sunbane. Fortunately they gain the help of two villagers, Sunder and Hollian. Sunder and Hollian have lived with the Sunbane all their lives, and their experience enables Covenant and Linden to avoid ruin as they travel.

But Linden, Sunder, and Hollian are separated from Covenant near a region known as Andelain, captured by the Clave while he enters Andelain alone. It was once the most beautiful and Earthpowerful place in the Land; and he now discovers that it alone remains intact, defended from the Sunbane by the last Forestal, Caer-Caveral, who was formerly Hile Troy. There Covenant encounters his Dead, the spectres of his long-gone friends. They offer him advice and guidance for the struggle ahead. And they give him a gift: a strange ebony creature named Vain, an artificial being created for a hidden purpose by ur-viles, former servants of the Despiser.

Aided by Waynhim, benign relatives—and ancient enemies—of the ur-viles, Covenant hastens toward Revelstone to rescue his friends. When he encounters the Clave, he learns the cruelest secret of the Sunbane: it was made possible by his destruction of the Staff of Law thousands of years ago. Desperate to undo the harm which he has unwittingly caused, he risks wild magic in order to free Linden, Sunder, and Hollian, as well as a number of
Haruchai
, powerful warriors who at one time served the Council of Lords.

With his friends, Vain, and a small group of
Haruchai
, Covenant then sets out to locate the One Tree, the wood from which Berek originally fashioned the Staff of Law. Covenant hopes to devise a new Staff with which to oppose the Clave and the Sunbane.

Traveling eastward, toward the Sunbirth Sea, Covenant and his companions encounter a party of Giants, seafaring beings from the homeland of the lost Giants of Seareach. One of them, Cable Seadreamer, has had a vision of a terrible threat to the Earth, and the Giants have sent out a Search to discover the danger.

Convinced that this threat is the Sunbane, Covenant persuades the Search to help him find the One Tree; and in
The One Tree
, Covenant, Linden, Vain, and several
Haruchai
set sail aboard the Giantship Starfare’s Gem, leaving Sunder and Hollian to rally the people of the Land against the Clave.

The quest for the One Tree takes Covenant and Linden first to the land of the
Elohim
, cryptic beings of pure Earthpower who appear to understand and perhaps control the destiny of the Earth. The
Elohim
agree to reveal the location of the One Tree, but they exact a price: they cripple Covenant’s mind, enclosing his consciousness in a kind of stasis, purportedly to protect the Earth from his growing power, but in fact to prevent him from carrying out Vain’s unnamed purpose. Guided now by Linden’s determination rather than Covenant’s, the Search sets sail for the Isle of the One Tree.

Unexpectedly, however, they are joined by one of the
Elohim
, Findail, who has been Appointed to bear the consequences if Vain’s purpose does not fail.

Linden soon finds that she is unable to free Covenant’s mind without possessing him, which she fears to do, knowing that she may unleash his power. When she and all of her companions are imprisoned in
Bhrathairealm
, however, she succeeds at restoring his consciousness—much to Findail’s dismay. Covenant then fights and masters a Sandgorgon, a fierce monster of the Great Desert. The creature’s rampage through
Bhrathairealm
enables Covenant, Linden, and their companions to escape.

At last, Starfare’s Gem reaches the Isle of the One Tree, where one of the
Haruchai
, Brinn, contrives to replace the Tree’s Guardian. But when Covenant, Linden, and their companions approach their goal, they learn that they have been misled by the Despiser—and by the
Elohim
. Covenant’s attempt to obtain wood for a new Staff of Law begins to rouse the Worm of the World’s End. Once awakened, the Worm will accomplish Lord Foul’s release from Time.

At the cost of his own life, Seadreamer succeeds at making Linden aware of the true danger. She in turn is able to forestall Covenant. Nevertheless the Worm has been disturbed, and its restlessness forces the Search to flee as the Isle sinks into the sea, taking the One Tree beyond reach.

Defeated, the Search sets course for the Land in
White Gold Wielder
. Covenant now believes that he has no alternative except to confront the Clave directly, to quench the Banefire, and then to battle the Despiser; and Linden is determined to aid him, in part because she has come to love him, and in part because she fears his unchecked wild magic.

With great difficulty, they eventually reach Revelstone, where they are rejoined by Sunder, Hollian, and several
Haruchai
. Together the Land’s few defenders give battle to the Clave. After a fierce struggle, the companions corner the Raver that commands the Clave. There Seadreamer’s brother, Grimmand Honninscrave, with the help of a Sandgorgon, sacrifices his life in order to make possible the “rending” of the Raver. As a result, the Sandgorgon gains a scrap of the Raver’s sentience. Then Covenant flings himself into the Banefire, using its dark theurgy to transform the venom in his veins so that he can quench the Banefire without threatening the Arch. The Sunbane remains, but its evil no longer grows.

When the Clave has been dispersed, and Revelstone has been cleansed, Covenant and Linden turn toward Mount Thunder, where the Despiser now resides. As they travel, still followed by Vain and Findail, Linden’s fears mount. She realizes that Covenant does not mean to fight Lord Foul. That contest, Covenant believes, will unleash enough force to destroy Time. Afraid that he will surrender to the Despiser, Linden prepares herself to possess him again, although she now understands that possession is a great evil.

Yet when she and Covenant finally face Lord Foul, deep within the Wightwarrens of Mount Thunder, she is possessed herself by a Raver; and her efforts to win free of that dark spirit’s control leave her unwilling to interfere with Covenant’s choices. As she has feared, he does surrender, giving Lord Foul his ring. But when the Despiser turns wild magic against Covenant, slaying his body, the altered venom is burned out of Covenant’s spirit, and he becomes a being of pure wild magic, able to sustain the Arch despite the fury of Lord Foul’s attacks. Eventually the Despiser expends so much of his own essence that he effectively defeats himself; and Covenant’s ring falls to Linden.

Meanwhile, she has gleaned an understanding of Vain’s purpose—and of Findail’s Appointed role. Vain is pure structure, Findail, pure fluidity. Using Covenant’s ring, Linden melds the two beings into a new Staff of Law. Then, guided by her health-sense and her physician’s instincts, she reaches out with the restored power of Law to erase the Sunbane and begin the healing of the Land.

When she is done, Linden fades from the Land and returns to her own world, where she finds that Covenant is indeed dead. Yet she now holds his wedding ring. And when Dr. Berenford comes looking for her, she discovers that her time with Covenant and her own victories have transformed her. She is now truly Linden Avery the Chosen, as she was called in the Land: she can choose to live her old life in an entirely new way.

“The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant”

In Book One,
The Runes of the Earth
, ten years have passed for Linden Avery; and in that time, her life has changed. She has adopted a son, Jeremiah, now fifteen, who was horribly damaged during her first translation to the Land, losing half of his right hand and—apparently—all ordinary use of his mind. He displays a peculiar genius: he is able to build astonishing structures out of such toys as Tinkertoys and Legos. But in every other way, he is entirely unreactive. Nonetheless Linden is devoted to him, giving him all of her frustrated love for Thomas Covenant and the Land.

In addition, she has become the Chief Medical Officer of a local psychiatric hospital, where Covenant’s ex-wife, Joan, is now a patient. For a time, Joan’s condition resembles a vegetative catatonia. But then she starts to punish herself, punching her temple incessantly in an apparent effort to bring about her own death. Only the restoration of her white gold wedding band calms her, although it does not altogether prevent her violence.

As the story begins, Roger Covenant has reached twenty-one, and has come to claim custody of his mother: custody which Linden refuses, in part because she has no legal authority to release Joan, and in part because she does not trust Roger. To this setback, Roger responds by kidnapping his mother at gunpoint. And when Linden goes to the hospital to deal with the aftermath of Roger’s attack, Roger captures Jeremiah as well.

Separately Linden and the police locate Roger, Joan, and Jeremiah. But while Linden confronts Roger, Joan is struck by lightning, and Roger opens fire on the police. In the ensuing fusillade, Linden, Roger, and Jeremiah are cut down; and Linden finds herself once again translated to the Land, where Lord Foul’s disembodied voice informs her that he has gained possession of her son.

As before, several thousand years have passed in the Land, and everything that Linden knew has changed. The Land has been healed, restored to its former loveliness and potency. Now, however, it is ruled by Masters,
Haruchai
who have dedicated themselves to the suppression of all magical knowledge and power. And their task is simplified by an eerie smog called Kevin’s Dirt, which blinds the people of the Land—as well as Linden—to the wealth of Earthpower all around them.

Yet the Land is threatened by perils which the Masters cannot defeat.
Caesures
—disruptions of time—wreak havoc, appearing and disappearing randomly as Joan releases insane blasts of wild magic. In addition, one of the
Elohim
has visited the Land, warning of dangers which include various monsters—and an unnamed
halfhand
. And the new Staff of Law that Linden created at the end of
White Gold Wielder
has been lost.

Desperate to locate and rescue Jeremiah, Linden soon acquires companions, both willing and reluctant: Anele, an ancient, Earthpowerful, and blind madman who claims that he is “the hope of the Land,” and whose insanity varies with the surfaces—stone, dirt, grass—on which he stands; Liand, a naïve young man from Mithil Stonedown; Stave, a Master who distrusts Linden, and wishes to imprison Anele; a small group of ur-viles, artificial creatures that were at one time among Lord Foul’s most dire minions; and a band of Ramen, the human servants of the Ranyhyn, Earthpowerful horses that once inhabited the Land. Among the Ramen, Linden discovers that the Ranyhyn intend to aid her in her search for her son. And she meets Esmer, the tormented and powerful descendant of the lost
Haruchai
Cail and the corrupted
Elohim
Kastenessen.

From Esmer, Linden learns the nature of the
caesures
. She is told that the ur-viles intend to protect her from betrayal by Esmer. And she finds that Anele knows where the Staff of Law was lost thousands of years ago.

Because she has no power except Covenant’s ring, which she is only able to use with great difficulty—because she has no idea where Lord Foul has taken Jeremiah—and because she fears that she will not be able to travel the Land against the opposition of the Masters—Linden decides to risk entering a
caesure
. She hopes that it will take her into the past, to the time when her Staff of Law was lost, and that Anele will then be able to guide her to the Staff. Accompanied by Anele, Liand, Stave, the ur-viles, and three Ramen—the Manethrall Mahrtiir and his two Cords, Bhapa and Pahni—Linden rides into the temporal chaos of Joan’s power.

Thanks to the theurgy of the ur-viles, and to the guidance of the Ranyhyn, she and her companions emerge from the
caesure
more than three thousand years in their past, where they find that the Staff has been hidden and protected by a group of Waynhim. When she reclaims the Staff, however, she is betrayed by Esmer: using powers inherited from Kastenessen, he brings a horde of Demondim out of the Land’s deep past to assail her. The Demondim are monstrous beings, the makers of the ur-viles and Waynhim, and they attack with both their own fierce lore and the baleful energy of the Illearth Stone, which they siphon through a
caesure
from an era before Thomas Covenant’s first visit to the Land.

Fearing that the attack of the Demondim will damage the integrity of the Land’s history, Linden uses Covenant’s ring to create a
caesure
of her own. That disruption of time carries her, all of her companions, and the Demondim to her natural present. To her surprise, however, her
caesure
deposits her and everyone with her before the gates of Revelstone, the seat of the Masters. While the Masters fight a hopeless battle against the Demondim, she and her companions enter the ambiguous sanctuary of Lord’s Keep.

In Revelstone, Linden meets Handir, called the Voice of the Masters: their leader. And she encounters the Humbled, Galt, Branl, and Clyme: three
Haruchai
who have been maimed to resemble Thomas Covenant, and whose purpose is to embody the moral authority of the Masters. Cared for by a mysterious—and oddly comforting—woman named the Mahdoubt, Linden tries to imagine how she can persuade the Masters to aid her search for Jeremiah, and for the salvation of the Land. However, when she confronts Handir, the Humbled, and other Masters, all of her arguments are turned aside. Although the Masters are virtually helpless against the Demondim, they refuse to countenance Linden’s desires. Only Stave elects to stand with her: an act of defiance for which he is punished and spurned by his kinsmen.