Faith the the Land - The Illearth War, the Inevitability of Evil & the Necessity of Hope

Continuing a three-post journey through beauty, logos, and the  necessity of hope with Stephen R. Donaldson's epic fantasy The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. 

If you are new to the Band, this post is an introduction and overview of the point of this blog that needs updating. Older posts are in the archive on the right. Shorter occult posts and reflections on reality and knowledge have menu pages above.

Comments are welcome, but moderated for obvious reasons. If you don't see it right away, don't worry. We check regularily and it will be up there.

Picture cretit: Lin Wenjun, Symphony - Requiem

Time to roll into the second of our Thomas Covenant posts – this one based on The Illearth War, also number two in a trilogy. It’s going to be a little different because it will look more closely at the book than the first one did at Lord Foul's Bane [click for a link].  This is because we don’t have to do all the background – laying out the logos structure or justifying positive posts for that matter. We encourage readers who want to see where we are coming from and why this story is so exceptional to click this link to the previous post. Letting us get into what is a vastly better book. One where that explores the moral applicability of the logos structure in the last post in different ways on the personal, material level. 

Click for Part 3

[Important note - This post is very long - mainly because of all the quotes. We went quote-heavy this time because the story relies so much on character interactions to reveal larger truths. To make it easier to follow, asides will be in this typeface and quotes from the book in this one. All bold emphases were added by us.]

The Illearth War is the middle stage in Covenant’s personal journey - the one where he begins to grow. His feelings lead to guilt and the realization that the Land demands far more than he’s been willing or able to give. Fantastic new characters tease out moral implications of logos in riveting and heartbreaking ways. Lord Mhoram reveals his quality and the nature of his version of TC’s dilemma. And the Land externalizes impossible paradox of its own.

It was as successful as the first - according to WorldCat, there were 69 editions published between 1977 and 2019 in 9 languages.

This post will start with the important insights from the last one as a point of departure. Then we will spend the rest of it on the scenarios and especially the characters. Because once you see how the metaphysics and morals are applicable, some truths are highlighted for us in letters of fire. 

Human existence is defined by paradox

* Material reality is beautiful and fallen.

* Active evil is immortal and hope is essential.

* The power to save is the power to damn.

all point to 

The necessity of Logos in a fallen world

It's not just the logos structure either, but the way that the message is driven home. Not just why we fail but how. The personality traps that turn our nature against us. The superhuman lengths that the great will go to in the face of immortal evil and the crushing futility in the end. Until the last hope is the true one – saving Logos. But Covenant himself is left a broken shell crushed by a howling newfound guilt over his complicity in brutal loss of the daughter he’d come to love. It’s a powerhouse. We sold it short in the last review. It’s soaring, wrenching, searing, and ultimately exhausting - a journey through the magnificent extravagance of the Land’s defenders and the commensurate tragedy of their failures. 

Here are some of the foreign language covers. It's interesting to see how different translators dealt with the title.

Some of the cover art is pretty odd too.

Before recapping the important points from last time, the usual Donaldson disclaimer. 

We mentioned in the last post that Donaldson builds emotional pressure with the accumulated weight of his intense language. But if this annoys or distracts, the rhetorical effect doesn’t work and the scenes are less effective. This is even more the case here. The Illearth War is a searer. And the message only truly works if you are right there with it. 

It makes you feel the pull of the allure that leads to ruin and the anguish that results. 

You don’t just read it discursively, you feel the ultimate necessity of logos. But if you aren’t moved – if you don’t feel it – you won’t sink into the story and that rhetorical accompaniment is lost. 

The logos and stuff are still there, but the impact stuff we are talking about won’t make sense. 

The disclaimer warns the disinterested that while we recognize the validity of your objections, we couldn’t care less about them. Freeing us to write to the caring. 

The first valid objection is the gamma whining. It’s part verisimilitude - Covenant is a gamma. They whine. And part Donaldson. We don't know enough about him to make a definitive SSH read, but his grasp of gamma subtleties without comparably deep understanding of the other ranks is worth noting. The endless repetition of dysfunctional emotional states sinks the unwritten sequels. The Illearth War is a test. If you are still unmoved, or find that Covenant is too much, The Chronicles are not for you. Which is fair. 

hardyguardy, Kevin's watch 

But if you’re a fan of the Land or were intrigued by Lord Foul's Bane, buckle up. This one’s unique. 

Like the towering spire-look out where Lena first meets Covenant. In The Illearth War, Hile Troy uses it to see the death of his plans, while Mhoram demonstrates the difference between the two of them.

And if you’re interested more in our big issues than Covenant, we'll be examining the nature of despair in a fallen world. How when evil is inevitable, faith is what powers hope. The other alternatives at best collapse into what we called passive evil or a tendency towards moral entropy.

The second objection. The weird Language and Tolkienisms are a two-in-one. As much as we find it doesn't matter, there is no getting around the blatant and unnecessary allusions. It's this bad...

filR, Cirith Ungol, 2009

The martial characters head to Helm’s Deep where they are overmastered by a sorcerer’s forces before being rescued by Ents. Meanwhile the Ringbearer and his closest companion come to ruin in Cirith Ungol, but the Phial of Galadriel sees him out…

This is a send-up, but not by that much.

This is inexplicable and unfortunate because the two stories are so different in tone and feel. And the details and nature of the world. The Band first read The Chronicles after The Lord of the Rings - it was a back-to-back introduction to fantasy that left us chasing the dragon for comparable for years. But we remember being struck and confused by the obvious borrowings. Struck because they jumped off the map and pages. Confused because the story is so different that the inclusion seems bizarre. 

Don’t want to get sidetracked on this because it’s not knowable. We surmised that the stock fantasy elements were a form of shorthand worldbuilding for a story that is character driven. But the Tolkienisms don’t work that way because they don’t use the references to create a ready-made scenario. The Land really isn't like Middle-Earth at all. 

Albert Bierstadt, The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak, 1863, oil on canvas, private

Both worlds are beautiful, but there is an eldritch quality to the Land that is more alien than Middle-Earth. Tolkien's world was a history that could have been ours. It's why the forms and content match so perfectly with their real counterparts. Donaldson's crackles with synesthetic beauty - where health and sickness are visible to the senses. The laws of physics are more alien.

It is connected to our world in important ways, but clearly isn't the same as it. Bierstadt comes close to that extra quality in his sublime landscapes. 

Tolkienesque elements without Tolkienesque meaning is a strange effect. There may be a subversive dimension with some of the conventions, but the necessity of logos is the same in both. It doesn't really matter - it will be a problem for you or it won't. We will note that these became less striking as the story washed over us. The plot and tone are so different from The Lord of the Rings that even Covenant's ring stops triggering associations.  So like the backbeat of bowstring tension from the intense language, the effect depends on the reader. You either sink into the story and the language becomes irrelevant or the language is an impediment, and The Chronicles aren’t for you.

Next, there are also perverse undertones arising from an incestuous theme. It isn’t as gut-punching as the rape, but unfolds over much longer and is more insidious. "At least" the former was sudden.  When it comes to sexual morality – especially aberrant sexuality – the Band has no tolerance and can’t criticize anyone who finds this a deal breaker. 

This is why we don’t find it to be so.

DarthIggy, A Hopeful Tempest

First, Covenant conducts himself way better this time around. Not that that's a high bar, and he’s still a deceptive gamma, but his growth is visible. His evolving feelings for Elena catalyze his further development. The appearance of something approaching emotional health is a major distinction between the two characters who are otherwise similar in important ways. 

Elena never grasps her fatal lack of logos and is destroyed in a vortex of moral inversion, inverted passion, and situational idiocy. Covenant's somewhat feeble growth resembles a magic beanstock in comparison. Of course, he isn’t terminally broken. Or tragic. 

Bringing us back to the core of all the objections. You either feel the tight intensity of the story or you don’t. The rhetorical pitch shapes your feelings. If your heart is moved at the plight of helpless beauty before depraved evil, it doesn’t matter if “roynish” is overused as an adjective or “Lord Foul” a weak name for an archvillain. It’s like obsessing over a character’s name if you’re caught up in an opera. It doesn’t matter. 

First of all, these characters are morally wrecked. Covenant slow-emerging from shell of materialist self-obsession so strong that it's interchangeable with wickedness. Elena’s psyche is so justifiably trashed that over time, Covenant emerges as the voice of reason in the relationship. Second, the book works because it makes you feel the message. It's why all the rhetoric and language disclaimers – to appreciate it, you need to respond to the emotional pitch. 

Paradox isn't just a theme in the story, it's built into the whole structure. This stage of the logos journey needs to show two contradictory elements at once - how appealing and how doomed a pathway material reality is. Show the underlying darkness and the appeal is undermined. If you only show the appeal and the moral lesson is diluted. 

Remember, the last post showed how The Chronicles stack multiple applicabilities. 

How to make the audience feel both the irresistible pull and the shattering consequences?

 

Externalize it in the Land and personalize it in Elena.

The Band would now argue that this is The Illearth War's crowning achievement. The ability to make you share in the appeal of the material lures that divert from logos and the horrifying consequences that result. Elena is the crux of this, and the effectiveness of the book rests on your response to her.

We will discuss her more in-depth later, since our response is that she is probably Donaldson's finest creation character-wise. Her entire arc acts out the appeal and trap of the material and the necessity of logos, but if not moved, you’ll miss it. But if you are moved, Elena is magnetic. You become caught up in her appeal – the mix of passion, vulnerability, purpose, competence, madness, and physical allure that defines something the Band can't systematize. 

The little caption is what turns this from parodic to insightful. 

What we are referring to is the anecdotal observation that there is a certain type of alluring, capable, and insane female that is toxically appealing to men who ought to know better. To the point where the easy pass for her ambitions or more dangerous ideas becomes disastrous. Usually personally, but in the Land it's externalized. 

This belongs more in the social part of the post, so for now, stick to the idea that Elena has to embody doomed material appeal. The same appeal that is externalized in the compulsive beauty of the Land and applicable to all the worldly distractions in our real world. So that you feel the allure and the ultimate inversion at the same time. Donaldson manages to make Elena - alone of all his female characters - compulsively magnetic.  Now comes the hard part.

How do you make the audience see the inherent darkness in something that alluring?

Dmitriy Sandratsky, Dangerous beauty

Realizing that she’s cultivated an incestuous attraction to her absent legend father is enough of a moral shock to slash across her appeal.

Yet somehow, the appeal remains. You get caught up, half-hoping for some way out for her while realizing at the same time how doomed she is. So that the final exteriorization of the evil in her – the attar-stench of wrong Covenant catches at the end - is shocking and inevitable at the same time. 

It may have taken a character as appealing and doomed as Elena to break through Covenant's raging intransigence. The appeal to slowly make him care enough to reject his fatal bargain at the end and doomed enough so that it didn’t matter. That he repents his deception and comes clean only to watch her ghastly fall anyways takes an emotional blowtorch to his soul that sets up The Power that Preserves.

Jessica Sturges, Anguish

And Elena teaches a lesson that is applicable - from her personal expression, to it's externalizad consequences in the Land, to the insight into the real world. 

And the arc from the her magnetism to her insanity to her fall makes it more of a shared experience than a lesson. Investing in the character and her tragic tale gives us a taste of Covenant’s soul-wrenching pain. 

So if you hate Donaldson, we recommend another post. We’ve been thinking a lot about the arts of the West lately – it’s way more interesting then people think, and there’s nothing really creepy there. And if just disinterested but like larger ideas, you don’t need to know the books. The application of logos in art comes through fine. 

As for us, we lean the other way. While we always consider readers in our presentations, we write from our perspective. And for us, re-reading the The Illearth War made us realize we sold it short in the review last post.  To be clear, this is a book we’ve read many times, thought about, and discussed in different places. It hit us differently this read; admittedly it had been a while. Perhaps because we were focusing on the details. But this one hurts. It’s exhausting – a captivating journey of constant emotional tension, hope, and soaring beauty that ends as crushingly as possible without killing Covenant or Mhoram.

The Illearth War is cathartic in the manner of classical tragedy though it doesn't follow the three unities or other characteristics of tragic drama.

Click for the link to this image and excerpt - it's a good introduction to the concept of catharsis.

Let's get started.

The Illearth War

We mentioned that the previous post [click for link] worked out the background in detail, so we’ll refer you over there if want to see how we got here. All we need here are the patterns and relationships that make The Chronicles applicable to the necessity of Logos so this isn't confusing.

Start with applicability. We discovered how useful this concept of Tolkien’s is in our Silmarillion posts and it hasn’t stopped. 

LadyElleth, Silmarillion: A Tiro Nin, Fanuilos

Applicability is a way of thinking about analogous meanings in art without the constriction of allegory. It ties in to the idea of sub-creation – another Tolkien insight that encapsulates a lot of thought about art making. Creation is a divine act and the artist creates in God’s image. For writers, that means fictions that follow an internal logos. Simplified, because no human can match the fullness of God’s plot. But applicable to reality because it conforms to the same basic truths. 

But you can apply the insights of the story to your own world. Here's Varda from The Silmarillion in the form of Elbereth Gilthoniel as evoked by Sam in The Two Towers. This isn't a symbol or even an allegory for Christian Logos. It's not tight enough. But it is built on the same conceptual structure as the logos-creativity-morality axis in our reality. It is applicable.

The simplicity actually amplifies the applicability because there is less “stuff” to sift through. Reality is complex and blurry – it can be hard for many to see moral patterns clearly. But a sub-creation is limited to the necessities of the creator’s vision. So central issues shine forth more clearly. 

The moral content of the arts comes in when you take the insights distilled down in the sub-creation and apply them back to reality. You learn to pick through the noise, so the patterns are clearer. 

Like a star chart.

Look at the sky (out of a light pollution zone) and it's a field of stars and lights. You may know the constellations are there, but it's a lot clearer with a map acting like an applicable sub-creation.

The Chronicles are a masterpiece of applicability across the full scope of our ontological hierarchy 

They are explicitly not Christian in fundamental ways. But the logos-structure in them – the interrelated ontological-epistemological hierarchy that we’ve worked out in various posts – applies to Christian metaphysics in reality. And the only solution to the dilemnas presented in the story is Christian Logos.

The strength of the applicability is simultaneous application across three levels at once.

The Land externalizes applicabilities, Covenant and other main characters personalize applicabilities, and we apply them to the real world. 

And this lets us see how the same errors resonate through what looks like totally different contexts. 

 

Beauty is a consistent sign of the of the glory of Creation, while the fallen world takes on different applications - inevitable death and entropy here, gamma delusion and other pathologies personally, and banes like the Illearth Stone externalized in the Land.

Then there's active evil - the malevolent force that presides over this fallen realm with what seems like unstoppable force. We know it as Satan, it's personalized in Covenant as leprosy - and Elena as her bifurcated madness - and externalized as Lord Foul.

And the inexoribility of this force lets us see how the same necessity of logos is unescapably in and around us. 

Then there is the divine deliverance - the Logos or Jesus Christ in reality, white gold externalized, and what Covenant needs to figure out as an internalized message for everyone.

Certain things become easy to see. The connection between creativity, beauty, and morality is implicit in the Creation. Evil as passive in a fallen world and active as an immortal, inexorable adversary. The role of honesty and how solipsism, self-deception, and materialism are personal applications of what is the fallen nature on a world level. 

The links between the personal and the ontological become clear. Consider Covenant's discussion with Mhoram after he met with the interprerer of dreams -

He said— Hellfire!” He shook his head as if he were dashing water from his eyes. “He said that I dream the truth. He said that I am very fortunate. He said that people with such dreams are the true enemies of Despite—it isn’t Law, the Staff of Law wasn’t made to fight Foul with—no, it’s wild magic and dreams that are the opposite of Despite.” For an instant, the air around him quivered with indignation. “He also said that I don’t believe it. That was a big help. I just wish I knew whether I am a hero or a coward.

This is a good example of how The Illearth War develops the moral vision and necessity of logos through vastly superior character interactions. Our three-part structure of personal, external, applicable/real holds up but we get way deeper into the specifics. There is risk here – if the characters don’t work, the rest doesn’t follow. But when they do, you get to experience the applicability with a real, relatable connection that is surprising. 

You feel the pull of the alternatives and why they fail – both in the Land and especially through the people reacting to it. When we call the story character driven, we are only partly correct. The wonder and pathos of the epic plot also far exceeds Lord Foul's Bane. 

The Land is beautiful

Albert Bierstadt, A Trail through the Trees, 19th century, oil on canvas, 

Hile Troy - another transplant from our world - describes the appeal and the way it's plight motivates.

I like it here. I’m useful to something worth being useful to. The issues at stake in this war are the only ones I’ve ever seen worth fighting for. The life of the Land is beautiful. It deserves preservation. For once, I can do some good. Instead of spending my time on troop deployment, first-and second-strike capabilities, super-ready status, demoralization parameters, nuclear induction of lethal genetic events,” he recited bitterly, “I can help defend against a genuine evil. The world we came from—the ‘real’ world—hasn’t got such clear colors, no blue and black and green and red, ‘ebon ichor incarnadine viridian.’ Gray is the color of ‘reality.’ Ch. 5

The evil is appalling. The way the characters are moved by its plight isn’t just narrated – you feel it too. You want Hile Troy to bloody Foul’s face with an unexpected lesson in tactical genius. You want Elena to find the eye of her paradox and make a difference for the Land she loves. So you share a little of their horror and despair when they fail completely. Because somehow "helping" becomes assuming impossible burdens.

This pushes the personal and external levels together. Not that they become the same, but that they are shown to be different manifestations of the same bigger problem. Applicabilities. The necessity of hope and inherent hopelessness of a beautiful but fallen world without the greater Logos to hope for. And the necessity of faith as the path to knowing that. The same path that redeems a fallen world metaphysically and saves a soul eschatologically is the way out of the gamma delusion bubble and into reality psycho-spiritually.

It’s better known as the metaphysical preconditions of morality.

Take the epistemology part of the ontological hierarchy. Our aggregate understanding of reality is a pastiche of knowledge modes working together on the same truth. When it fails - as in secular transcendence - it's because forms of knowledge are being applied to the wrong levels. 

Faith is how we know Logos at the ultimate level. Abstract logic then tells us to hope. Which will shape how we see and react to empirical reality.

Sometimes when we are working with these ideas, things strike us that seem significant enough to distract from the actual topic. This is one of those. Look closely...

The Theological Virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity trace 

out the ontological hierarchy.

Jonathan Linton, Faith, Hope and Charity, 2010

Faith provides knowledge of God

that

provides logical reason for Hope

that

provides moral direction material perception and action - Charity

And this is why "secular" virtues collapse - there's no faith - no pole star to provide moral direction for moral reasoning. Without that foundation in Truth, might as well do what thou wilt. Until reality bites. 

Modern secularism is secular transcendence. The false belief that the full range of ontology is limited to the material and all knowledge bases apply to it. We don't need to go through this again - dealing with infinity in a finite temporal world is sufficient proof to anyone we are interested is hearing from. The reason this little make-believe is crashing and burning so badly is because it doesn't actually guide life in reality. The virtues aren't virtues because they have long histories, inspired cool pictures, or sound good. They're virtues because they're deontology.

We owe a debt to world's smartest man Chris Langan - IQ between 195-210 - for phrasing. We hypothosized in our Leonardo post that an intelligence of this level would perceive the integration of ontology, epistemology, and morality intuitively. Seeing someone share this post from Langan indicates we were correct. What we call "moral reasoning" is an unsystematic deontology - logical mediation between empirical and ultimate realities.

We prefer his term and want to give credit while explaining why we are jazzed to see it. Here's the academic jargon treatment.

[Note - We aren't prepared to deal with Langan's Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe (CTMU™) version of supra-genius conceptual unity right now. We have enough on the plate. Here's the website if you want to explore. Just two short observations - the front page account looks like it is predicated on an endless recursivity that requires temporal - as in sequential - movement and contrasts with "true" eternity. Unreality in that first diagram as Unmoved Mover 2.0. Number two would be that any critique based on how well it conforms to academic jargon is a confessional.]

It's not just "faith" but Faith in the correct things. It's not just "hope", but Hope in the Truths known by Faith. And it's not just "charity" as toxic altruism, but Charity as morally-guided furtherance of a faithful, hopeful vision. Secular "virtues" are virtuous when they happen to align with moral nature of Creation. But there is nothing forcing them to. In a fallen world, the tendency is towards moral entropy - even well-meaning secularists incline towards inversion in the long run.

Elena had tremendous faith and conviction that passed beyond hope to certainty. Surging ahead, taking all burdens with religious certainty and zeal. 

But she had faith in the wrong things. Her charity was false promises. And her path lead right into the abyss. Magnetic while it lasted though...

The larger lesson is in why Foul always seems to have a contingency plan. An unintentional insight from the unwritten sequels has to do with the the difference between immortal and mortal in a material timeline. Foul claims everything serves him in the end, but as always, he misdirects. He wants to give the impression that he's always a step ahead and that you play into his plans, but that isn't true. He does weave elaborate lies. But he also gets taken by surprise and has his ass handed to him. What's really happening is that he's immortal.

Foul always comes back, because he is applicable to Satan - the eternal, actively evil power of this world. All defeats are temporary. As a supernatural schemer, when he comes back, he takes stock of the new realities and forms new plans based on them. These  necessarily respond to his past defeat because he is reacting to the conditions that that defeat created. The result is the same - a new assault based off old failures - but it isn't one master plan. It's reactive aggression. 

Put another way - screeching and grasping for the Stone as white lightning pounds him through the floor of his throne room and his army reenacts the biggest mass die-off in Land history was never part of a plan.

Evil is a master goal and an immortal player. Here and in the Land it exists in opposition to the good. It's an erosive force in either active or passive entropic form. It's goal is general - tear down Creation. To that purpose, it endlessly changes, adapts, and attacks from every direction. Beat it and it studies the outcome and attacks again accordingly. It even looks like you gave it the opportunity! But you didn't. You beat it the last time and it's trying again with new information. Beat it this time, and the outcome will guide it's next attack. 

To use a martial arts analogy, you're countering a literally tireless pressure fighter with limitless durability that never stops swarming. If you've ever sparred, the awfulness of evil should be clearer now. The best you can do is a moment's reprieve by stunning it. Then it's swarming again. 

Continue the metaphor. The only way to survive it to keep stunning it. An endless chain of combinations that never finishes it - you can't - but keeps it diminished and on it's heels. It's impossible for finite material beings to maintain that unaided - we are too fallible. Even the metaphors come back around to the necessity of Logos. But it also points to the necessity of the moral will. To maintain faith in the promise of the Logos, then the hope, then the virtuous actions that follow. Let it provide the consistency over time that we can't do alone. 

Except it happens simultaneously and not in a sequence. And we can't see the object of faith directly. Yet. 

Carl Ehrenberg, The Adoration of the Magi, 19th century, oil on canvas, private

There is no Christian Logos in the Land. Covenant is applicable to emissary of the Creator and rightful object of faith, but is totally different from Jesus metaphysically. His "divine" nature - the wild magic of his ring - is external to him, not part of his essence.

And on the personal level, he's following his own journey of salvation.

One overarching theme tying all this together is paradox. Each level presents contradictory demands that seem impossible to reconcile. Yet failure to reconcile them leads to destruction. The necessity of hope in the face of an insurmountable enemy. A Law that binds an enemy while making him invincible long term. A world filled with divine beauty that’s a fallen trap. This is familiar.

Paradox is an essential condition of divine creations in a fallen reality

Covenant and his white gold are continually referred to this way. He resists responsibility even as he grows to accept the Land because he sees the danger in extremes for fallen, finite, limited creatures. 

For one example consider this greeting from the eldest teacher and lore master in Revelwood, the tree city of the Loresraat.

 

Hail, white gold wielder!—you who are named ur-Lord Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever and Ringthane. Be welcome in Revelwood! You are the crux and pivot of our age in the Land—the keeper of the wild magic which destroys peace. Honor us by accepting our hospitality.”

This kind of paradox and the need for faith in its resolution in something greater is a kick in the teeth to the dreams come true crowd. The latter is the luciferian lie is that will triumphs over reality. Sometimes things work out. But if the dreams are at odds with reality, no amount of trying hard will make up the difference. 

Blaming yourself for failing to exceed your natural limits is the path to despair. 

Of course it's equally true that dreams  broadly defined are needed to have a chance. That’s the whole creativity and feeling dimension that we saw in the last post is applicable to proper alignment with God. The challenge is to find the place where the paradox stops being contradiction. Covenant doesn’t quite get there but he’s well on his way. He at least realizes that weaselly solutions are futile and that he has to address the paradoxical truths squarely. 

WhimsicalBlue, Dancing with dreams

 

For Elena, the paradoxes are resolved in suffering. But she is crazy-hot and projects the absolute conviction in the truth of her dreams of a zealot. This carries her to the top of human society and adds momentum to her vision. 

Until reality indicates exactly what the logos-free dream assurances of an insane pretty girl amount to. 

For his part, Troy has utter faith that she is correct because... well... she and the Land are beautiful and he can see now, and she's really certain, and however many other logos-free projected solipsisms masquerading as reasons. From Chapter 11...

Troy... turned to the High Lord. With an effort, he forced himself to say, “You know I’ve never commanded a war before. In fact, I’ve never commanded anything. All I know is theory—just mental exercises. You’re putting a lot of faith in me.” 

“Do not fear, Warmark,” she replied firmly. “We see your value to the Land. You have given us no cause to doubt the rightness of your command.” 

The problem - a recurring one here - is that whether Elena doubts the fitness to command is irrelevant. The larger question is what hope does a self-centered little man have against an inexorable immortal evil? One whose plan included the little man's self-centeredness from the start? Or as Covenant observed...

He could not go on in this fashion. If he did, he would soon come to resemble Hile Troy—a man so overwhelmed by the power, of sight that he could not perceive the blindness of his desire to assume responsibility for the Land.

Troy's own background would leave him woefully ill-equipped to make the right call here. Until he finds himself trying to counter Foul's master chess gambit with a spirited round of checkers. 

He does "better" then Elena only insofar as he doesn't actually alter the fabric of reality for the worse and manages to survive his self-immolation after a fashion. 

Mhoram will be presented with impossibilities appropriate to his position and view, but will have to find the same resolution Covenant does or will end up like the others. Elena and Troy are the powerful counterexamples for when the fallen finite creature doesn’t recognize the danger paradoxically present in their conviction. 

Here’s a thought. 

In Lord Foul's Bane Covenant is aggressive in his unbelief. The Land is a dream, a delusion he shouts over and over, and his psychopathic behavior includes violent criminality. He acts very much like a broken, disturbed man tormented by a pretty fiction. Even his bargain with the Ranyhyn is an effort to get through it without conceding.

Judge by the fruits, not the false declarations of liars. The bitterness, vitriolic anger, and easy slide into sexual violence are all typical of ATHEISM. The conscious rejection of logos-based morality.

In The Illearth War Covenant  is hung on the horns of a paradox. It’s made abundantly clear he can’t fully accept the reality of the Land for mental health reasons. Basically pre-conscious drivers intrinsic to his own nature. But he can’t deny its reality and the feelings it creates either. For him both are contradictory and true. His response shifts to accepting the terms of the surface experience while shying away from the bigger questions. Playing along while hatching secret plans to benefit himself. 

Fruits again. The shifty, self-congratulatory cunning at “managing” the unresolvable smoothly gliding into self-immolation is typical of AGNOSTICISM

It's not surprising that The Power that Preserves is about resolving the paradox in a way that maintains the truths. Being in the world but not of it. Quite literally in Covenant's sense. 

The Illearth War is divided into three parts that apply the necessity of logos from different angles. 

The first part goes from Covenant struggling to come to grips with what happened in Lord Foul's Bane, his return to the Land, and a period in Revelstone waiting for Foul to make a move. 

The next two follow different pairs of characters Mhoram and Hile Troy and Covenant and Elena - on journeys to oppose Foul.

The first part sets up and clarifies the main elements of the story, fills in more information, and introduces some fantastic new characters. The trick here was to add Hile Troy as another point of view character so he can set different combinations in motion and watch them from different angles. This really expands the insights that would be possible with a single protagonist or pure narrator. You can inhabit different perspectives that are more or less appealing emotionally then share in their outcomes. 

Hile Troy and Elena give Covenant and Mhoram lessons on how not to proceed. Throw in Covenant’s own colossal – if less fatal – failure and you get three applications tackling fundamental existential paradoxes with human smarts or desire is suicidal. 

The book opens with Covenant reeling with the paradox of his experience in the previous book. As hard as he tries to hold to his atheism, he can’t deny the memories and images of the Land. To the point of questioning his own sanity. 

We would describe his struggle as reconciling contradictory knowledge levels. 

Remember, the point of applicability is that it illuminates things that are just as true but less clear in reality. And we know that our methods of knowing – our epistemology – is linked to ontological level under consideration.

In Covenant’s case, epistemological levels are in conflict. He can’t deny the empirical, sensory knowledge telling him that the Land was real. He experienced things that he can’t in his world – not stuff leprosy took like feeling and potency – but synesthetic experiences with no parallel. Seeing health and ill or feeling beauty. 

At the same time, he knows them to be logically impossible. There is no path of abstract reasoning that can connect the two material realities he’s inhabited. Even the summoning doesn’t resemble some sort of portal or door. 

What he can see and what he can reason out are at irreconcilable odds. This is driving him insane when he strikes his head and finds himself back in the Land. We know to reconcile the impossibility of different realities through faith. But he’s no where near there yet. At this point his world and the Land are bleeding together in incoherent ways. His need for resolution is acute and sets the emotional tone for the book.

Consider the applicability of paradox in the story. The Land is beautiful, precious, and worth dying for. To the people in the Land, service to it is basically their pantheistic pagan religion and they are rewarded with gifts of beauty, bounty, and Earthpower. You can’t help but care for it. Even Covenant is won over in the end. You have to defend it. But if you lose, you and it are destroyed. If you overcommit, you and it are destroyed. If you despair, you and it are destroyed. And Foul is too strong to oppose by material means. So any plan you come up with is getting destroyed regardless.

The Land makes truths applicable by externalizing them. We know Law is an essential impediment to Foul's progress, but it's clearly not enough. Likewise the Earthpower doesn't do much to stop him either. 

It's a paradox because we are shown it's not an either-or. Elena throws away Law. Kevin saw the full flowering of Law. What is needed is something that supersedes the Law. That is, the Logos. We will see this when the white gold - applicable to the Logos - shreds the Staff of Law.

Faced with this sort of unsolvable impasse, despair becomes inevitable and desecration a real possibility. But if Lord Foul is inexorable and despair a sin, it means we have to rethink the presuppositions that got us here. Mhoram is already showing another path. A balance of creativity and law supported by faith in the Creator and Covenant as his instrument. 

Covenant - and other characters - make the message applicable on a personalized level. We see his naturally "fallen" deceptive gamma nature amped up by the active evil of his leprosy. He imposes his own law - a form of brute material enslavement that destroys the spark of creative power that gives him life. 

Creativity is applicable to Creation, the positive moral direction, clean life, and alignment with Logos. Covenant's inability to use his ring in the Land is the same set of relationships personalized in his loss of his art. 

Chapter one makes that clear.

The doctors there had taught him that his illness was the definitive fact of his existence, and that if he did not devote himself wholly, heart and mind and soul, to his own protection, he would ineluctably become crippled and putrescent before his ugly end.

That law had a logic which now seemed more infallible than ever. He had been seduced, however conditionally, by a delusion; and the results were deadly.

Yes there’s risk - for the Land, for Covenant, for anyone. There’s a sort of logic in Covenant’s insistence that if you take no responsibility you can face no blame. But we’ve seen that that isn’t the case in reality. In a fallen world moral entropy means inactivity in promoting the good promotes evil. The moment you interact with anyone you are necessarily making moral choices. And when you get it wrong, you are to blame. That can’t be avoided. It’s why repentance and forgiveness are essential parts of learning and moral growth.

Now the real world that the applicability gets applied to. Consider the nature and necessity of Logos in a fallen world. The ultimate failure of the Law as moral constraint for fallible humans.

External power extended from God / the Creator is the only blade capable of slashing through the infernal traps of the Valley of the Shadow of Death. This doesn't absolve us from moral laws. It means our necessarily-inadequate efforts are boosted to sufficiency. But that needs both heart and head - the fullness of life.

The paradox of white gold is the paradox of Incarnation - divine power in finite mortal hands. Passion without constraint leads to Hile Troy's despair or Elena's false faith. It's fake metaphysics that ignores human limits and opens to all the bogus occult third ways where fallen humans self-deify through feelings because they really want to. But excessive constraint is the sterile walking death by the thousand cuts of moral entropy. Covenant's first failed bargain. 

The answer again is the necessity of logos. Or put another way...

It comes back to our ontological levels. The graphic isn’t complex, but it does make the problem clear. We - and all our structures, societies, and projects are finite, fallen, and limited. We possess the capacity to reason things that are intangible, but that doesn’t allow us to see them. On the other side we can dream beyond our limits as well, but can’t materialize those either. They’re inspiration, not agendas.

This is why material characters who stretch beyond their capacity, convince others of their vision, then actually have to deliver in the face of uncooperative reality, fail so miserably. Fallen finite humans can’t reach absolute standards unaided. It’s baked in. 

Even worse, the mentality that overdreams and overpromises is unlikely to learn and course correct. More likely to double down, grasping at ever fainter hopes rather than admit their limits or initial errors. 

Foul on the other hand is immortal. He gets it. Knowing this is precisely why he wins, he encourages extravagant hopes. Plus the anguish slakes his sadism. 

One thing that comes through like a laser is the less-than-uselessness of gnosis, luciferianism, or any other bit of masturbatory, be-your-own-god posturing. Neither Elena’s earth-mother Ranyhyn mysticism meets apotheosis of suffering nor Troy's otherworldly mental gifts amount to much more than spitballs at a tank. But they are cautionary tales. 

Covenant's perspective is different. Personally he has to save himself before he can save the Land. Externally, he has to save the Land by resolving the paradox of it’s reality and impossibility. It’s like he has to learn applicability – how to maintain the different and the same at once. His atheism is already crumbling by the end of Lord Foul's Bane – the raw insistent beauty of the Land showed the impossibility of pure disbelief. 

Bouquet Valley in the Adirondacks by William Trost Richards, 1863, oil on canvas, private

The agnosticism is a different challenge. Covenant can see the inherent reality of the Land; just as a fedora bedecked smart boy can see the inherent structure in creation. The story handles the applicability on two fronts; it externalizes and personalized. Externalized, it's Disbelief 2.0 - the desperate flail that the experience is an internal delusion. Dream therapy is his term. This means accepting the “reality” of a consistent structure but denying it any external value. Playing along because it’s obviously more than nothing, but avoiding any active moral responsibility for what happens there. He’s more civil – willing to mouth the words – but still putting materialist self-absorption over logos. Personally or externally. 

What moral or social worth is there in such a character?

Horace Vernet, The Angel of Death, 1851, oil on canvas, Hermitage, St. Petersburg

What happens is his own interactions – with Mhoram, Troy, and especially Elena impel his growth. It comes too late, but he learns to feel, and love. And when the irony is brutally driven home that the selfish bargain he struck and now repudiates helped cause her Elena’s death? 

He’s left howling with guilt and pain and... eventually... the realization that he still needs a better way. 

As noted, there are three parts to the story - the real world and Revelstone to introduce the characters, then two parallel journeys. The first follows Mhoram and Hile Troy as they march with the Warward to meet Foul’s army in battle. Meanwhile, Covenant and Elena journey into the mountains in search of the  mysterious Seventh Ward of Kevin’s Lore. The journeys are simultaneous in story time and mirror and reverse each other in different ways. 

The map shows the places everyone goes in blue, Mhoram and Troy's destinations in green and Covenant and Elena's Seventh Ward in purple. Mhoram mentions a journey to Foul's Creche. It's on the far right coast.

Both journeys pair a Lord and a man from our world so that Covenant and Mhoram each travel with the other's distorted image. Meaning Troy and Elena fail in ways that are threats for counterpart. So the personal applicability of each is highlighted with initially-appealing alternative that ends in disaster. As for the journeys, Mhoram and Troy move with a big army through the south of the Land, allowing us to see the implications of Troy's tragic failure on a grand scale. 

Eytan Zana, Concept art

Troy's plan is excellent based on what he could know. It wins, maybe even with the giant-raver. It's what he couldn't know that gets him.

Covenant's is a small group - the travelers, their two Bloodguard, and their guide, moving through pristine mountain vistas. The full parallel appeal between the externalized beauty of the Land and the personalized allure of Elena. 

One thing that comes through is the appeal of the Land and Elena as different applications of the same moral problem - material allure.

Not that we shouldn't be attached to things - that's Covenant's first disastrous strategy. But that without Logos, the allure of the material cal lead us to ruin.

Each represents a side of the danger that comes with the extremity of attachment without faith in Logos. Troy is a savant - his computer-like mind capable of processing strategic and logistical information with inhuman ability. Hence his confidence. Given time to familiarize himself with the parameters, if victory is possible, he's almost algorithmically unbeatable. Elena is passion driven by a mystic vision. Same overwhelming love for the Land, but filtered through the animal emotion of eldritch beasts. Like the logical and mystical sides of a fake theology. 

Hile Troy and Elena personalize and externalize - make applicable - the necessity of logos by showing the terminal path of Luciferian Secular transcendence. They fall into Foul’s trap from their different ends by mistaking great strength for limitless strength. Both make impossible assurances without realizing why the assurances are impossible. And both lack necessary faith in the creator and his logos. 

For Troy, it’s excessive faith in his tactical acumen. For Elena it’s excessive faith in the wisdom of the Ranyhyn and force of her passions. Bur both characters apply vanity and ignorance on personal and external levels. And when they fail, the results are ghastly.

Three big moral themes tie Covenant to both new characters. We’ll treat these together since they don’t separate cleanly in the story. All reflect back on that underlying necessity of Logos. The first we've already looked at - 1. Seductive Power of Material Appeal. 

Next is the loosely scriptural idea of 2. Sins of the Father. Not literally, since the consequences of his sin stretch forward and backward in generations. The applicability is the idea that sins reverberate through family lines. Something else to consider before transgressing. 

Then there is 3. Purity of Intent and Necessity of Choice. This is related to the Sins of the Fathers but more general - the idea that things that are ill-conceived cannot serve the good in the end. 

Consider the nature of summons to the Land and the paradox implicit in Covenant as the one who can save or doom.

 

There's a discussion in Lord Foul's Bane whether Foul or the Creator was involved in Covenant's summoning. Ultimately we find out that it was the Creator with no coercion or influence and with Foul's ironic acceptance.

There is evidence - inconclusive - that the moral frame around the summons colors the outcomes

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Here's Mhoram's take - His applicability fully emerges as the man of faith facing the ultimate crisis. He is the one with unshaking faith in the Creator and in Covenant as His instrument. The fact that he will ultimately discard his staff for a cruciform weapon and blow the roof off in the fight of his life is a bonus.

“My friend, it is in my heart that you were chosen by the Creator.

“Consider. He is the Creator, the maker of the Earth. How can he stand careless and see his making destroyed? Yet he cannot reach his hand to help us here. That is the law of Time. If he breaks the arch to touch the Land with his power, Time will end, and the Despiser will be free. So he must resist Lord Foul elsewhere. With you, my friend.” 

He cannot touch you here, to teach or help you, for the same reason that he cannot help us. Nor can he touch or teach or help you in your own world. If he does, you will not be free. You will become his tool, and your presence will break the arch of Time, unbinding Despite. So you were chosen. The Creator believes that your uncoerced volition and strength will save us in the end. If he is wrong, he has put the weapon of his own destruction into Lord Foul’s hands.”

Félix Joseph Barrias, The Temptation of Christ by the Devil, 1860, oil on canvas, Philbrook Museum of Art

Free will and the instrument of the Logos is a familiar tale. One might say... applicable.

High Lord Elena makes the hard moral distinction explicit when she takes up the exact same matter with Covenant. Only instead of something applicable to Christian faith, she opts for an insane mythology of her own making based on Ranyhyn horse-mysticism, her obsession with her greatest predecessor, and her inverted belief that Foul's goal of utter despair is a key to infinite power.

 

I find a danger in Lord Mhoram’s belief that the Earth’s Creator has chosen you to defend the Land. It is in my heart that this does not account for you.

“However, I have thought at times that perhaps our dead live in your world. Perhaps High Lord Kevin now restlessly walks your Earth, searching a voice which may utter his word here.”

We see how this turns out. 

Take a look at Covenant's summonses and compare them to the overall thrust of the stories. In Lord Foul's Bane Covenant is filtered through the Creator and Foul, is oblivious to what is happening to him, and operates in atheist mode. In The Illearth War he realizes what is happening then resists before heading into shifty, spineless agnostic mode. 

Note that during his summons in Chapter 3, he passes through a green taint before Elena's gold carries him through. 

It's easy to see this as inscribing Covenant's paradoxical nature from the moment he arrives. Of course, Elena's moral direction is a bit different from the Creator's. And Covenant's time in the Land is more disastrous this time around. 

When Covenant melts down after his summons and demands to be returned, Mhoram expresses a revealing regret:

“My friend, if the choice were mine, I would return you at once to your world. The decision to summon you was painfully made, and I would willingly undo it. The Land has no need of service which is not glad and free. But, ur-Lord”—he gripped Covenant’s arm again to steady him—“my friend, we cannot return you.”

“We have no lore for the releasing of burdens."

Mhoram externalizes the same need for free moral choice that the Creator respects - and in doing so externalizes the applicability of objective moral alignment with the Logos. He also indicates that what Covenant faces is a burden. The unpleasant end of responsibility street. And in so doing, shows the fundamental integration of ontology, epistemology, and deontology / objective morality.

Here's the latest interation of the ontological hierarchy and vertical Logos for reference - now with deontology! [Note - what we had been calling "moral reasoning" is just part of a larger deontological integration of epistemology and ontology. We owe a debt to Langan because reading his site made us realize the necessity of taking this more seriously.]

No matter how stacked the odds, Mhoram keeps winning. All the way to the end of the trilogy. But never makes the assumption that it's inevitable. He is supremely confident here because his belief is in his effort - not his power. He's actually very humble - knows he can always be beaten but also that if he is, he will have left no depth unplumbed. It's not making an extravagant luciferian promise that is ontologically impossible. It's a man of faith making a stand. 

In The Power that Preserves Covenant comes on his terms - rejecting an initial summons for non-selfish reasons, then coming willingly. The summoners were Mhoram - who lets Covenant go rather than compel him - and Triock and Foamfollower - who were broken emotionally, but fundamentally true morally. The High Wood Triock uses for the summoning was given to him by Mhoram with a spirit of moral virtue. It's all clean.

“Triock son of Thuler, please accept a gift from me—in the name of the High Lord, who is loved by all the Land.” Reaching into his robe, he brought out his lomillialor rod. “This is High Wood, Triock. 

Please accept it—for the sake of the love we share—and as expiation for my doubt.”

So this time he comes with righteous indignation, eventually channels it into logos, and fully delivers what we've waited three intense books to see.

The paradox of Covenant's power to save or damn on an externalized large scale is the paradox of the human condition. Simultaneously fallen and created in God's image, opposite potentialities coexist. Not just as opinions either, but real moral polarities.

Agnostics like to pretend there's a middle way.

 

The Purity of Intent is obvious here. The Sins of the Father is just as important. The way Triock manages his crisis is different from the rest of Lena's family, and his summons seems comparably clean. On the other hand, Elena's summoning is the most disastrous of Covenant's three. And then there's her grandmother and Hile Troy. 

Troy was summoned into the Land by Atiaran in the last act of her own tragic life. A final mistake in an ill-conceived attempted to call Covenant to face justice for his crimes. Delusional actually, if we consider what we know about the metaphysics and morality of the Land. So the Sins of the Fathers and the Purity of Intent are already at work.  

Her summons rescues Troy from a fiery death in our world but incinerates Atairan in the process. This is a violation of her Oath of Peace since she gave into despair, and a willful act of violence towards herself followed. The Sins of the Father plus Purity of Intent = the wages of sin is death. 

What does this mean for Troy and his summons?

The Illearth War is timely because it address the relationship between these evils and despair head on. The last post described how the Land externalized the applicability of logos. If Foul is invincible and despair is the ultimate defeat, faith in a still-higher power is the only way forward. The thing is, our world is fallen, so evil - active and passive - is invincible in the end. And despair is the ultimate defeat - even worse here since the consequences are spiritual and unending. Troy doesn't get it and takes impossible burdens. We see his own despair closing in like Tolkien's footsteps of doom.

He would have to prove himself in this war. He would have to prove that he was the fruit of hope, not of despair. He would have to win.

If he did not, then he was more than a failure; he was an active evil—a piece of treachery perpetrated against the Land in defiance of his own love or volition—worse than Covenant, for Covenant at least tried to avoid the lie of being trusted. But he, Hile Troy, had deliberately sought trust, responsibility, command—

No, that thought was intolerable. He had to win, had to win.

In our world, he was a loner and outsider. His disability came with a gift – a form of inner sight or conceptualization that enabled him to preform remarkable feats of strategy and logistics. He's an embittered loner like Covenant, but instead of gamma become situational omega, he starts at delta

After which my only real skill was keeping track of spatial relationships in my head. For instance, I could play chess without a board. So I finally got a job in a think tank with the Department of Defense. They wanted people who could understand situations without being able to see them—people who could use language to deal with physical facts. I was the expert on war games, computer hypotheticals, that sort of thing. All I needed was accurate verbal information on topography, troop strength, hardware and deployment, support capabilities—then leave the game to me. I always won. So what did it all amount to? Nothing. I was the freak of the group, that’s all.

In the Land, Troy gains a sight he never knew possible and is taught to use it by Elena, who is understandably fascinated by the man called by her grandmother from the world of her father.. 

Curt Walters, Sunrise from Bright Angel Trail, 20th century, oil on canvas, private

Because of this his reaction to the Land is completely different. Born blind, the experiences of sight can’t be memories, the way Covenant's restored feeling could be. 

Since seeing is a new experience, Troy has no doubt that it's real. No longer isolated by his disability and something of a celebrity in the Land, his natural personality can shine through. And like Covenant, it’s an extreme version powered by the sudden, miraculous vitality of the Land. 

I’ll tell you—I never think about going back. How can I? I’m here, and I can see. The Land’s given me a gift I could never repay in a dozen lifetimes. I’ve got too big a debt—The first time I stood on the top of Revelwood and looked over the valley where the Rill and Llurallin rivers come together—the first time in my life that I had ever seen—the first time, Covenant, I had ever even known that such sights existed—I swore I was going to win this war for the Land. Chapter 5

Covenant powers up into the sex offender version of gamma-Saiyan before the consequences speed bag him into growth. Troy embraces the delta’s duty and responsibility but blows it into impossible promises to defeat Foul militarily and deliver the Land. Without Covenant. In terms of applicability, that is promising to overcome a metaphysical condition with finite, fallen human effort. In other words - self-salvation. Secular transcendence. Be your own god.

It sounds great when firing up other finite, fallen, subjectively blinded humans...

Eytan Zana, Concept art

It's somewhat less compelling in the face of the metaphysical realities of immortal evil.

Dear God!” he breathed in anguish. “What have I done?” The avalanche of revelations battered him down. “Dear God. Dear God. What have I done?”

Lin Wenjun, Undead Army

He had been in command. And when the debacle of his command was over, the Land would be defenseless. 

He had served the Despiser from the start without knowing it, and what Atiaran Trell-mate had given her life for was worse than nothing.

Ontology is indifferent to what we want to be true. Or what we proclaim to be true No matter how many narrative-huffers sign on board. Those are the false paths of the occult and Postmodernism. Applicability personalized and externalized.

Now see how the Purity of Intent and the Sins of the Father are intertwined within the ethical applicabilities of summoning. 

Actually,” Covenant said as if he were telling Troy a secret, “it isn’t you they’ve got faith in at all. Just as they don’t have faith in me. It’s the student who summoned you. That’s whom they’ve staked their faith on.

Or Troy's growing doubt, as in this conversation with Mhoram from Chapter 15...

Your presence here is the outcome of her Peace-less grief and her hunger for retribution.”

Covenant had raped Trell’s daughter—Atiaran’s daughter—the daughter of the woman who—!

Were all his plans only so much despair work, set in motion by the extravagance of Atiaran’s death?

We learn how Lena’s family circle was broken in the aftermath of her rape. She became delusional and psychotic - clinging to the fantasy that Covenant loved her and would someday return. In her trauma, the King Arthur-Jesus hybrid story of messiah reborn gets personalized. He's coming back to her. This was made worse by another unintended consequence of Covenant's immoral nature – his cowardly bargain with the Ranyhyn.

NathalyBarajas digital art

By sending the horse to Lena every year, he remained present. Renewing the fantasy of his return and preventing time from doing its healing work. And letting little Elena ride turned out to be... unwise.

The seeds of evil were there from the start. The bargain was an attempt to avoid responsibility that he himself repents. But there's no way to repair. The Ranyhyn are themselves may be pure but their nature can be warped to ill end in with the right set-up. They aren't cunning. And Covenant himself repeatedly says how bad it is to give gifts to broken. Note the moral grewth from Lord Foul's Bane.

But that doesn’t work. When you’ve hurt someone that badly, you can’t go around giving them gifts. That’s arrogant and cruel.” His mouth twisted at the bitter taste of what he had done. “I was really just trying to make myself feel better. 

Anyway, it didn’t work. Foul can pervert anything. By the time I got to the end of the Quest for the Staff of Law, things were so bad that no bargain could have saved me.

The defacto loss of their daughter strained her parents’ relationship – they were never the same. When Atiaran aged faster than her Earthpowerful gravlingas husband Trell, she eventually abandoned her home and family. Returning to the Lorestaat in the hope of learning how to bring Covenant back for punishment.

Working with Earthpower arrests aging - another sign of the applicability of life, the beauty of Creation, and the morally good. 

It's why Elena, Mhoram, and Trell all look much younger than they are. 

Atiaran attempted the summoning against the rules of Lorestat - a cross between a school and a research center where lore is studied and developed. Furthermore, she’d already surrendered to despair when she left her family. The motivation for the summoning was a violation of her Oath of Peace. And her fiery death considered another transgression – essentially suicide. Later Trell will come to Revelstone where he will have his own crisis – attacking Covenant and breaking his own Oath. Piling on more guilt. 

Shadowmyths, Unforgiven

Applicability - Breaking the Oath of Peace seems to be the Land's version of mortal sin in a world without the mechanics of Christian redemption. We don't hear much about the eschatology - and serving the Land seems a proxy for religion. But the immediate problem is secular transcendence - that people have no internal mechanism for self-forgiveness when failing to live up to an impossible, absolute standard.

Give the link a look. The verse is perfect for this group.

For her part, Elena is surprisingly indifferent to her grandfather, considering that she grew up with him. It suggests conflicts within the family that are not given the details of, but add to the verisimilitude of this broken bunch. And a window into the single-minded intensity of her own purpose.

“You’re breaking Trell’s heart. And your mother’s.” 

Her face stiffened. “Do you accuse me of Trell’s pain?”

What comes of it is the fruit of a poison tree.  

Applicability again - Atiaran's motives were sinful and her mind broken. But these were reactions – bad reactions because evil is always a choice, but reactions all the same – to Covenant's initial sin. 

He creates the wound that echoes and puts simple people in positions they had no capacity to process.

This is the context that Troy arrives in. Appearing outside the Loresraat badly burned next to Atiaran’s charred corpse. In other words, pretty much the intersection of Sins of the Father and Purity of Intention. Unlike Elena, he at least has doubts that he is a skewed instrument. So when he starts making promises…

Hiltmark, if you accomplish what I ask, I swear that I will win this war.” 

“Swear?” Verement cut in again. “Does the Despiser know that you bind him with your oaths?”

Covenant gets it from the start. There is an element of wisdom coming through his cowardice. He is able to see the danger Troy is in as an actual threat. 

This seduction of responsibility was Foul’s doing. It was the means by which Lord Foul attempted to ensure the destruction of the Land. When inadequate men assumed huge burdens, the outcome could only serve Despite. Covenant had no doubt that Troy was inadequate. Had he not been summoned to the Land by Atiaran in her despair? And as for himself—he, Thomas Covenant, was as incapable of power as if such a thing did not exist. For him it could not. If he pretended otherwise, then the whole Land would become just another leper in Lord Foul’s hands.

What he hasn't figured out is how to balance that awareness with moral engagement. He is on his way. There's a real growth in understanding from the first book of what the dangers are. And that's the first step to recognizing the necessity of logos and figuring out how to deal with them. But he isn't there yet. It's a process.

Herbert Draper, The Lament for Icarus, 1898, oil on canvas, Tate, London

“I know,” Covenant murmured. “The fact is that you’re starting to find out just how terrible all this responsibility is. Let me know when you start to feel like a failure. We’ll commiserate together.”

That stung Troy. “I’m not going to fail!” he snapped.

Covenant grimaced ambiguously. “Then let me know when you succeed, and I’ll congratulate you.”

 

Then there’s Elena. From the Sins of the Father or Purity of Intent perspective… yikes.

Elena is the daughter from Covenant's rape of Lena and was “raised” in the circle of disfunction we just described . More on her later, but her formative childhood experience was being taken into the mountains on one of Lena’s Ranyhyn and shown their mystical horserite. The same Ranyhyn that came to her mother each year and fueled her delusions. 

Donaldson’s failure to make them really sing doesn’t undermine their importance in the Land as pure expressions of Earthpower. The Ranyhyn defy physics in certain ways and exhibit greater wisdom than fallen humans. Their supernatural beauty and vitality marks their inherent goodness. 

And when they incorporate the child Elena in their feral, mystical collective mind-meld, she is given a formative vision as unique in the Land as she is. 

If this isn’t the cause of her insanity – the frightening dissociated look in her eyes – it’s the catalyst. The Ranyhyn collective vision is an utterly alien intelligence, with an exuberance, passion, and pure hatred of Foul of superhuman purity and ferocity. For an unstable and alienated little girl of exceptional ability, that experience utterly defines her.

So Elena is even more hopelessly tied up in the echoes of Covenant initial sin. Her conception, the nature of her childhood, and the formative mystical gift of the horses are all poison fruit. And she’s the one who compounds her grandmother's error by teaching Troy to see! This is the context for Troy's arrival.

Sydney Mortimer Laurence, Mount McKinley, 1923, oil on canvas, private

Troy comes into awareness of the Land and vision at the same time, with no doubt it is true. He goes all in on the beauty and palpable health of the Land – the things that are perils to Covenant are paradise to him. He comes to share Elena’s mad love of the Land beyond reason or limit and the belief that the intensity of their feelings for it can overcome the limitless might of immortal evil in a fallen world.

When first considering these new characters, we thought the contrast was reason and passion – Troy the strategist and and Elena the crazy mystical horse chick. But we were mistaken. Both have excessive passion – the difference is how they channel it. One is more emotion-based, the other more logical, but both tap into the same deeper belief. Like mystical and rational theology as different approaches to the same Truth. It’s that here the deeper beliefs prove wrong.

The problem is that Foul exceeds the Ranyhyn. Neither their hate nor passion has ever mattered against him since he drove their legendary king into despair then murdered him. A variation on the Kevin theme. Their visions - and the crackpot theology Elena concocts off them - don't amount to anything once there's a real test. 

It's an ontological category error. Foul precedes Creation. He is trapped in Time, but the powers of the material world are laughable to him. The Power of Command can't even effect him. As far as cunning goes, he's played the Ranyhyn like fiddles. Elena overrates them and herself while underrating him because she has no logos. Just the conviction of crazy-hot solipsism.

When Troy leads the Land's forces into utter disaster - Mhoram manages to save some by exceeding himself - the poison fruit blossoms. The summoning shows how Sins of the Father and Purity of Intent aren’t really separable. These tie into the Seductive Power of Material Appeal.

We already know the Land was seductive. Its beauty is the visible externalization of the glory of Creation. It’s as beautiful as appearance gets. But we learn Elena is something of the personalized equivalent. Right down to the fallen nature of hidden banes. 

Troy is motivated to exceed himself to the point of self-immolation because he falls in love with the Land and Elena. 

Frank Bernard Dicksee, La Belle Dame sans Merci, 1901, oil on canvas, Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery

We get the sense that the tainted man wants to win the love - or at least the adoration -of the tainted girl by beating Foul. Not even sure how lustful he is – there’s a reverence there as well that is dangerous. It’s always dangerous to idealize fallen people. 

Even Covenant falls for Elena -  working through his feelings is what starts to break him out of his gamma prison. The first thing other than himself he really cares about. There is real guilt over Lena. But there is human emotion with Elena that starts tainted and slowly runs clean.

Her nameless inner force, ancestry, and her strange irrefusability both disturbed and attracted him. And yet she had the power to sway him... He could be made to follow her, even if she went to attack the Despiser himself. Her beauty, her physical presence, her treatment of him, ate away portions of his armor, exposing his vulnerable flesh.

He could not understand Elena’s power over him, could not control his response. She was an illusion, a figment; he should not be so attracted to her. And she should not be so willing to attract him. He was already responsible for her; his one potent act in the Land had doomed him to that. Ch. 21

Why is Troy convinced he beats Foul? Why is he willing to pile up bootless promises until he himself notices to get the buy-in he needs to make his plan work? Because he isn’t a gamma. He is bitter because of his isolation, but supremely confident in his strategic acumen. And with good reason. He’s a genius of sorts, with the abstract purity of mathematical logic behind him. He’s unbeatable in wargames in two worlds and freed from his disabilities quickly wins command of the armies of the Lords. 

Command: Modern Air and Naval Operations screen from game review

There’s no arrogance. He’s meticulous in planning. Weighs all eventualities. Studies his history. And formulates strategies with the perfection of a computer. He’s never commanded before, but he has seasoned veteran seconds. He’s not arrogant – remember? He’s somewhat humble and easy to follow. Self-sacrificing and duty-driven.

This makes him easy pickings for Foul. Because it’s not arrogance. It’s hubris. Pride leading to his overvaluation of his objectively impressive talents and into disaster. 

Troy is hopelessly materialistic...

Edward Julius Detmold, The Truth, 1933, watercolor, private

"Of all men the seer is least popular and the clown most popular. For the majority of men seek illusion and distraction but few seek the truth and enlightenment." 

Consider these quotes from or about Troy

But I tell you—they don’t believe there is any hope but you... Well, I don’t believe that—Mhoram or no Mhoram. Ch. 5

If he had believed Mhoram’s tales of a Creator, he would have dropped to his knees to pray... But he had never learned to rely on anyone but himself. The Warward and the strategy were his; he was in command.  Ch. 11

Warmark Troy frowned. Everyone in Revelstone seemed to see something in Covenant that he himself could not perceive.  Ch. 12

The Creator is applicable to God and Covenant/white gold to the Logos within the Land. Mhoram shows us the path of faith. Troy is the perfect dupe victim of modern secular transcendence - totally confident that human assurances carry more weight then the humans making them. If we use the terminology of the occult posts, he’s luciferian. He believes that his will and prowess can triumph over reality itself. 

Start with the assurance to Covenant in Chapter 4. We realize his willingness to judge Covenant is based on his certainty that he can beat Foul. Seriously.

"I don’t know which way Foul is going to try to get at us. But I can beat him in a fair fight. I’m looking forward to it."

He was glad to talk about his battle plan; he felt proud of it, as if it were a work of objective beauty. His plan was the kind of daring strategic stroke that only a blind man could create. Ch 13

He spent most of the night reviewing every facet of his battle plan, trying to assure himself that he had not made any mistakes. Ch 16

Consider this famous quote with an important addendum. 

Note the difference in Troy and Foul's reactions to first contact. Foul's army is a steamroller. Troy is dancing on the back foot shifting from plan to plan, while Foul keeps grinding forward. 

This isn't normal conflict. This is a flawed, fallen human learning the difference from an immortal evil.

None of Troy's adjustments amount to much. It takes Mhoram pulling a rabbit out of something other than a hat to save what's left of the day after Troy succumbs utterly to despair, attempts suicide, and dumps all the responsibility he aggressively saught on Mhoram. 

The quotes trace the path of creeping doom.

He knew that the Land was real. And he knew that its future hung by the thread of his strategy in this war. If he made a mistake, then more brightness and color than he could ever take into account were doomed. Ch. 11

He had committed the Lords and the Warward to a path as narrow and fatal as a swaying tightrope. In it, he caught a glimpse of the true depth of his willingness to sacrifice himself for the Land. Now he could only hope that what he had to offer would be enough. Ch. 12

To meet Mhoram’s trust, he whispered, “I won’t let you down.”Now he felt that he had given his personal guarantee of success to practically the entire Land. He had maneuvered himself into a corner—a place where defeat and betrayal became the same thing. If this was the kind of thinking that inspired Covenant’s Unbelief, then Troy could see that it made a certain kind of sense. But he had a savage name for it; he called it cowardice. Ch. 18

But it's not cowardice to admit insufficiency in the face of immortal evil. Covenant is a coward, but he is also correct, and his reasoning slowly gets better. By not jumping in, he comes to understand how Foul works. He believes belief is dangerous to himself and the path to despair and destruction against Foul. Applicability personalized and externalized.

"That is not what Unbelief means. It means I’ve got to withhold—to discount—to keep something for myself! Because I don’t know why!” 

Unbelief was his only defense against the Land, his only way to control the intensity, the potential suicide, of his response to the Land. He felt that he had lost every other form of self-protection. And without self-protection he would end up like the old man he had met in the leprosarium—crippled and fetid beyond all endurance. Even madness would be preferable.

Troy grows increasingly vehement and flailing as his failures come into focus. Until he finally sees that Covenant - willing to fight coward or not - was right about him. Mhoram as well, though in a less aggressive way. 

“He doesn’t actually think I’m a Raver.” Inner pain made his voice harsh. “He thinks Foul had a hand in summoning me... Foul wanted the Lords to trust me because he knew what kind of man I am. Dear God! It doesn’t matter how much I hate him. He knew I’m the kind of man who backs into corners where just being fallible is the same thing as treachery. Ch. 20

“But you forget that it isn’t up to me anymore. I’ve done my part—I’ve put you where you haven’t got any choice. Now Mhoram has got to save you. It’s on his head.”

Quaan appeared torn between dismay for the Warward and concern for Troy. “Even a Lord may be defeated,” he replied gruffly.

“I’m not talking about a Lord,” Troy rasped. “I’m talking about Mhoram.”

Troy has nothing left. All his assurances have been exposed for the vain blatherings of an insignificant little man puffed up on nothing. And in his despair he tries to pin the same burden on Mhoram. There is an echo here of Covenant's bargain to trade dooms with Elena. 

The difference is that one works. Here's why.

Darrell K. Sweet's cover for an edition of The Illearth War shows Mhoram in the process of saving the army. Who else was going to be able to call a Forestal, get him to listen, and sell him on a deal? 

Forestals operate on another power level altogether. They are limited to their domains and have other constraints, but within those are nearly indomitable. As Foul's army finds out. 

Troy is certain that Mhoram can succeed where all his planning failed. He's asking Mhoram to redeem his hubris. He turns out to be right, but for reasons he doesn't understand.

Note that Troy has faith in a man without understanding the source of the man's strength. Mhoram doesn't want the burden. He isn't sure if he is sufficient and knows what Covenant has yet to learn - there is no escape from the wages of sin without faith. So he accepts in full awareness of his limitations while Troy remains blinded - only now by despair instead of hubris. 

In his weariness, Lord Mhoram ached to deny this, to refuse the burden. He said, “Warmark, of course I will do all that lies within my strength. But if Lord Foul has chosen you for the work of our destruction—ah, then, my friend, all aid will not avail. The burden of this plan will return to you at the last.”

“No.” Troy kept his face toward the fire, as if here reliving the acid burn which had blinded him. “You’ve given your whole life to the Land, and you’re going to give it now.”

“The Despiser knows me well,” Mhoram breathed. “He ridicules me in my dreams.” He could hear echoes of that belittling mirth, but he held them at a distance. “Do not mistake me, Warmark. I do not flinch this burden. I accept it. On Kevin’s Watch I made my promise—and you dared this plan because of that promise. You have not done ill. But I must speak what is in my heart. You are the Warmark. I believe that the command of this fate must finally return to you.”

The important question here that is unaddressed is why does Foul attack Mhoram directly? He doesn't rely on schemes to bring him down, but looks to undermine his resolve with personal contact. 

William Blake, Satan Smiting Job with Sore Boils, around 1826, ink and tempera on mahogany, Tate, London

In terms of applicability, evil always targets the righteous. Mhoram's Logos-based morality prevents him from taking the insane burdens of Troy or Elena then self-immolating in failure. He is a man of faith.

 

“No,” Lord Mhoram answered. “Do not pass judgment upon this mystery until it is complete. Until that time, we must keep faith.”

This has been his position from the beginning - the servents of the Land must give their utmost, but only Covenant can save it. Both are needed. To a Christian, that sounds applicable. As does the potential for evil as well as good in true freedom of choice. 

“Of course,” Mhoram replied. “That is the Despiser’s way. He intends you to be the means of our destruction.”

“Then why did you do it? Hellfire! You know how I feel about this—I told you often enough. I don’t want—I’m not going to be responsible for what happens to you.” 

Lord Mhoram shrugged. “That is the paradox of white gold. Hope and despair run together for us. How could we refuse the risk? Without every aid which we can find or make for ourselves, we cannot meet Lord Foul’s might. We trust that at the last you will not turn your back on the Land.”

Mhoram and Covenant are the only characters that really understand how Foul operates and what he is. They are also the two who have encountered him directly - in dreams in Mhoram's case, though Foul would have been aware of his presence if he beat a Raver right outside Foul's Creche. 

The distinction between the knowledge and agency that comes from Mhoram's faith and Troy's solopsistic luciferianism or even Triock's wounded bitterness is stark. Triock comes through in the end, but isn't quite there yet.

"Warmark Hile Troy is not convinced that we will lose this war. He makes bold plans. But I have heard the Despiser laughing. For better or worse, I am seer and oracle for this Council. I hear—I approve the High Lord’s decision of summoning. For many reasons."  

"But I must tell you that I believe Thomas Covenant to be a friend of the Land. The burden of his crime hurts him. I believe he will seek atonement at the High Lord’s side.” 

It's even clearer when we look at the attitude oft the young Hirebrand of Revelstone meeting the messianic legend for the first time. He replaced old Birinair who was killed on the quest in The Illearth Warand had never met Covenant.

“Thank you, Hirebrand.”

At once, pleasure transformed Borillar’s face. He tried to maintain his gravity, to control his grin, but the man of legends, Unbeliever and Ringthane, had spoken to him, and he blurted out, “Be welcome, ur-Lord Covenant. You will save the Land.”

Borillar's jovial attitude is a contrast to the faithless figures. And he proves courageous and essentially effective as well. He'll go down fighting in The Power that Preserves to buy Mhoram the precious opportunity for his own faith-driven apotheosis. Borillar doesn't survive the trilogy, but once again the man of faith proves adequate when others don't.

Troy, on the other hand is like a more logic-based Elena. He has no conception of the difference between what he imagines “limitless” - the beauty of the Land and appeal of Elena - to be and what actual immortal evil is. It’s orders of magnitude.

ErinM31, Storm

“Creator preserve us!” Mhoram replied. The yowling wind whipped his voice from his lips, and Troy barely heard him. “It is a vortex of trepidation... It will make us afraid!”

A war of extermination with immortal evil on a fluid battleground proves a tad different from wargaming. 

Troy is talented. He does as well as could be expected. But it’s one hitch after the other from the first setback. Continually on his heels, promising more extravagantly and lunging for ever smaller windows of opportunity. When his hopes and plans finally crap out, he is utterly beaten. Reduced to attempting suicide and throwing everything in Mhoram’s hands. 

He did not realize that he had tried to jump until Terrel and Ruel caught his legs and hauled him back over the parapet.

Then he felt a burning in his cheeks. Lord Mhoram was slapping him. 

“Discover a way!” the Lord raged. “They will be slain! You must save them!”

“I can’t!” Troy shouted in sudden anger. The stark impossibility of Mhoram’s demand touched a hidden resource in him, and he yelled, “Foul’s army is too goddamn big! 

And if there is a better two-line contrast between Troy and Mhoram's characters than "Discover a way!" and "I can't", we'll be happy to have it.

To his credit, Troy does come up with the idea of engaging the Forestal, but has no idea how or if that is possible.

“Sweet Jesus!” he whispered. “There is one chance.”

“But you’ll have to do it.” 

“Then I will do it. Tell me what must be done.” 

Now Troy studied Mhoram… What he saw reassured him. The Lord’s eyes gleamed with hazardous potentials, and the bones of his skull had an indomitable hue. The contrast to his own weakness humbled Troy. 

Mhoram does salvage something of the day against all odds because he neither promises outcomes or loses faith. But Troy is done. Since he died in our world, there’s no way for him to return. And his final promise removes him from the story. 

Then there is Elena. The strength of her as a character is how she actually makes you feel some of the appeal in spite of the insanity that drives much of the story. Personalizes and exteriorizes while being more sympathetic than her father. 

Shawna Erback, Now She Won't Be Alone

There is applicable verisimilitude here despite her fantastical history. We’ve mentioned her terrible formative years – start with her parents. Her insane mother is just as tragic and a more innocent victim. She lacks the gifts her daughter uses to reach the pinnacle of rulership in the Land. She’s frozen in adolescence, pining for her adored messiah-rapist, while a magic horse comes every year and no one can move on. 

Her adoptive father despises her real one for his own stolen innocence, but fiercely loves her and her mother. He raises her without sharing his hate in some semblance of material normalcy. But Lena can’t or won’t marry him and move forward “within the social rules”. The way traditional communities with guiding elders can process and get past traumas. 

On one side - Covenant obsessed people unable to grow through tragedy by a mix of anger, hurt, guilt, and magical thinking. The setting is fantasy, but the multi-generational damage all too familiar. Logos works on multiple levels - moral abstracts like The Power of Material Appeal, The Sins of the Father or The Purity of Intent aren't visible in themselves materially. Material logos is known by it's fruits - you can act contra moral law, but then consequences follow. Flawed motives and sinful acts turn away from the moral lodestone, creating the conditions for further degeneration and misdirection.

On the other side, the biological father. An actual, otherworldly figure out of legend – applicable to Jesus Christ in the logos structure with a lot of King Arthur in how the villagers see him. You get the idea. A figure that destroyed her family in an evening, that her mother worshipped beyond all else - including their daughter. A figure who shares her distinct gray eyes. This is a reminder that her dissociation isn't just a psyche broken by childhood dysfunction. Elena is fundamentally bifurcated in a way unique in two universes.  

Elena is half our-world human. 

Her biology is as singular as her Horserite vision. Obviously Land people are close enough to us that we can have viable offspring. But Drool could track Covenant through his alien boots on the ground. There is an existential difference somewhere between the worlds and Elena is literally half and half. Everything about her is disjointed.

She’s extremely gifted – lightyears beyond her village. Compare her family's naïve reverence for the Lords and Loresraat to her rapid ascent to High Lord of the Council. But Donaldson drives home the other side of her that only Covenant picks up on. A fatal dissociation in her gaze that speaks to her mad hidden desires. 

Her eyes. They were gray like his own; but though they met him squarely they had an elsewhere cast, a disunion of focus, as if she were watching something else--as if some other, more essential eyes, the eyes of her mind, were looking somewhere else. 

This essential dissociation manifests through will and talent into something applicable to the luciferian, occultic, and secular transcendent "be your own god" pattern in the real world. Start with the bizarre belief system she fabricates from her logos-less dysfunctional experiences. A distorted faith in self-generated falsehoods that starts with the mystical Horserite she participates in.

Julie Dillon, Running Horses 

Her dissociated child mind is plugged into an overwhelming collective animal vision of feral beauty, pain and rage. She experiences Foul’s primordial betrayal and murder of their legendary king with the sublime, inhuman purity of supernatural beasts. And the Ranyhyn are icons of goodness and truth in the Land - like 1950s Superman. Their wisdom and justice is sacrosanct. It’s literally mystical – direct sending from a higher power. 

To Elena, it’s pure truth that only she has. 

“I was transformed—restored to life. At the touch of those waters, the blindness or ignorance of my heart fell away. My fear melted, and I was joined to the communion of the Ranyhyn."

 

"Heart and mind and soul and all, I gave myself to a dream of Fangthane’s death.”

This isn't a realistic dream. At all. But it consumes her. When her eyes are elsewhere, this visionspace is at least one of the places. The intensity of the hatred is so palpable that it scares Covenant into attempting his bargain-betrayal. The idea is to do what he can to further Elena's quest in the hope that her maniacal intensity could somehow take his place at the center of the Land's destiny. It's as dumb as it sounds, and it backfires so terribly that it sends Covenant on the path to Logos. 

He might be able to induce her to take his place, assume his position at the onus of Lord Foul’s machinations. He might be able to lead her extravagant passion to replace his white gold at the crux of the Land’s doom. 

This literally mystical apotheosis of anguish and hatred merges with her obsession with Kevin. A proxy father figure of sorts and as close a human parallel to the Ranyhyn king as you'll find. 

Put the song Lord Kevin's Lament next to Elena's fake metaphysics. The lyrics show an awareness that the beauty of the Land is precious and fallen and the necessity of logos. Elena is convinced that Kevin's inevitable failure before immortal evil was actually a win, It's that secular transcendence of the occult - that finite human anything can reach absolute on its own.

“I am fascinated by him... highest of all Berek Heartthew’s great line—the Lord most full of dominion in all the Land’s known or legended history."

“Thomas Covenant, there are some who believe that the Ritual of Desecration expressed High Lord Kevin’s highest wisdom...  I believe that there is immeasurable strength in the consummation of despair—strength beyond all conceiving by an unholocausted soul. 

I believe that if High Lord Kevin could speak from beyond the grave, he would utter a word which would unmarrow the very bones of Lord Foul’s Despite.”

“That’s madness!” Covenant gasped thickly. Elena’s gaze wavered on the edge of focus, and he could not bear to look at her. “Do you think that some existence after death is going to vindicate you after you’ve simply extirpated life from the Earth? That was exactly Kevin’s mistake. I tell you, he is roasting in hell!”

Note the proliferation of wild beliefs without Logos. Covenant is understanding that total despair is total defeat that plays right into Foul's hands. Elena's take is a perfect inversion. Applicability...

Rejecting Logos for any reason only leads to one place.

Mhoram also understands, but he realizes that it comes down to Covenant. Whatever path the High Lord has to follow may be grievous but can't be decisive.

Lord Mhoram gazed at her intently for a time. When he finally spoke, his voice was thick with suppressed appeals. “Beware, High Lord. Even the Seventh Ward is not enough.”  

Elena met him squarely, but her own gaze appeared unfocused. The other dimension of her sight was so pronounced that she did not seem to see him at all. “Perhaps it was not enough for Kevin Landwaster,” she replied softly, “but it will suffice for me.” 

“No!” Mhoram protested. “The danger is too great. Either this power did not meet Kevin’s need in any way, or its peril was so great that he feared to use it. Do not take this risk.”

Or when Covenant finally begins to repent and confronts her with the very real danger in her actions. Danger he is aware of, going back to his summoning. The moral awakening on his part is palpable. Like Mhoram, he's come to a deeper understanding of how Foul manipulates excessive desires.

"You summoned me, and we’re on our way to the Seventh Ward—and I want to know what Foul gets out of it. He wouldn’t waste a chance like this” 

“This is no part of his intent,” she replied coldly. “The choice to summon you was mine, not his.” 

“Right. That’s the way he works. But what made you decide to summon me?

“No, beloved. I do not believe it. High Lord Kevin formed his Wards in a time before his wisdom fell into despair. Fangthane’s hand is not in them. It may be that the Power of Command is perilous—but it is not ill.”

Somewhere along the line she makes the mistake a lot of talented, driven, and misdirected people do - forgetting this simple message - 

There is no equivalence of any kind between human feelings of limitlessness - no matter how all-consuming - and true abstract infinity. 

This is the old fake luciferian path of transcendence through "superseding" some mortal limit. Gnostics and all kinds of occultists buy into this lie. The idea is that reaching some sort of extreme can propel humanity to divinity. It’s mathematically impossible – like adding your way to infinity – but endlessly seductive. Because it dangles that most ancient of lures – being your own god.

John W. DeFeo, The Temptation of Eve stationery card

 

And that has been a fatal lure since the garden. 

"Did it surprise you to learn I am so vehement""

Elena's impossible formation gives her the idea that the superhuman purity of the Ranyhyn’s anguish and hatred unlocks a power beyond all others. Transcendence born from the union of perfect love and perfect hate. 

The problem is that this moment comes in death – had Kelenbhrabanal or Kevin lived one minute more they would have crushed Foul.

The problems are obvious. Metaphysically, the Ranyhyn and their wisdom are surpassed by Foul. Again and again we see that the Earthpower that the horses express has no power over him. He blows through tests of truth, overpowers all opponents, and is even immune to the Power of Command. The Ranyhyn have proven to have no understanding of him or ability to effectively oppose him. Even if Elena were interpreting it correctly – which she isn’t – the Ranyhyn’s advice on Foul is irrelevant. 

In case we miss that, Donaldson reiterates it when another character learns the dead end of despair. Lord Verement volunteers for a suicide stand to delay Foul's army and buy time for Mhoram's hail Mary. Having heard news of his wife Lord Shetra's death, the already bitter man gives way to despair.

Eytan Zana, Concept art

"No fear or love limits my strength! I match you hate for hate, moksha Raver! Melenkurion abatha!”

The Raver is powered by the Illearth Stone. Banes as externalized applicabilities of the fallen nature of the world - human effort can't overcome them any more than we can reverse the Fall. In his despair, Verement thinks there is equivalence between feelings of limitlessness and true abstract infinity. There isn't.

 

Elena takes the idea that much higher and crashes that much harder. Her idealized image of Kevin seems to be a mix of what the horses showed her, the lure of powerful legendary men like her absent father, and a personal need for suffering to be redemptive. It is, just not in the way she thinks it is. Her private mystic path is inverted -  a pastiche demonstration of the Sins of the Father, the Purity of Intent, the Lure of the Material, and the Necessity of Logos. And this is never clearer when she falls in love with the idea of her messianic alien father. To the point that when she meets him, she wants him as her mate. 

Anne Stokes, Unicorn Connection; Summon the Reaper

The Land is not the West. But in Lord Foul's Bane Lena described her people’s marriage process and it seemed about as incest-friendly as ours should be. We suspect this perverse attraction is something Elena can pursue because of her status as High Lord. 

But it is so abhorrent that it slashes across her  personality – her breezy acceptance  marks how far off those dissociated eyes are. 

Elena doesn't exist an any reality but her own. It's our opinion she wasn’t “broken” as much as never whole. But the end result is the same. A character defined by the magnetic appeal of beauty, nobility, vulnerability, and passion on one hand and shocking perversion on the other. There is no way to reconcile the qualities Elena shows and her casual acceptance of open incest. Not to mention the dissociated, absent eyes.

There are pieces that form a familiar archetype – magnetic, beautiful, capable, mystically driven, fundamentally broken, and devastatingly dead wrong. Male readers might recognize the appeal of a certain kind of craziness and hotness phenomenon - where the mix of allure and danger somehow goves that dead-wrong mystical conviction the same appeal as the intoxicating female. Not just convincing, compelling. And if directed at you, the intensity presents a challenge even for a seasoned frame. One minute you're just helping out with a fund-raiser, and then... A newb disappears without a ripple.

WhimsicalBlue, Alone with the Moon

Insane, driven allure is next level quicksand. Being love-bombed by it is sorcery. 

And the ability to compel agreement with the most retarded things means that there is no check on how far their talent and ambition takes them. 

Unlike gamma males, they aren’t consciously lying. This makes them even more compelling. But like gamma males, there’s no real truth there. So when they finally collide with a reality that doesn’t succumb to their appeal, the results are catastrophic. The fact that her vision comes from the earth and involves horses completes the picture. There’s uaually some sort of occult “spirituality” at the heart of carzy-hot conviction and the nature-earth-wicca-Gaia axis is a really common one. Misdirected maternalism perhaps. But who knows? It’s just a common pattern. 

Do not fear, beloved. You will not suffer Kevin Landwaster's fate. I will preserve you."

She lacks the ability to promise this.

The beauty of The Illearth War structure is in the interactions and contrasts between characters where the applicability comes out. We see Troy internalizes Elena’s vision because he completely falls for her. That’s the whole point of the crazy-hot digression. It is a natural compulsion that can draw even a smart man to ruin. And Troy’s not gamma – he’s the best there is at what he does. In two worlds. Nor does he he seem to harbor perverse fantasies about the unattainable girl. It's more chaste reverence. He personalizes the appeal of the material – his willingness to fight for the Land with honor and self-sacrifice is what most readers wish Covenant wound do.

But without logos, none of it matters. 

Beware the lures of material allure.

The comparison with Mhoram is different. He’s fellow Lord from the Land – obviously not a cross-world hybrid but at least someone with the same frame of reference. 

The clearest contrast is their faith. 

Mhoram is a proxy-Christian – singled out for his belief in the Creator and ultimately redeemed through his faith in the emissary Covenant. Because of this he never loses hope. 

Elena has her crystal shoppe Wilde Hunte paganisme and the conviction born of madness that her own broken background holds the key to transcendence through despair. There really is no hope involved. Not in any conventional sense. Just blind certainty and orbiters until that last horrific realization.

And here you thought it was just going to be the fundraiser…

She looked like a priestess, an enactor of hallowed and effective rites, approaching the occult ground of her strength. The very gaps of her elsewhere gaze were crowded with exalted and savage possibilities.

Both Lords appear capable. Mhoeam hasn’t reached his own apotheosis, but The Illearth War makes his quality clear. What we see are his wisdom, humanity, and deep commitment. Like sitting up with Covenant hand holding his hand through his troubled sleep.

He was so exhausted that he could no longer see Mhoram’s face. But as he ran out of consciousness, he felt the Lord’s unfaltering hold on his hand. Mhoram’s care comforted him, and he slept. 

But always a hand gripped his and consoled him. It anchored him until he returned to consciousness. 

He's the scholar chosen to solve the problem of the mystical krill. The seer and oracle blessed or cursed with visions of Foul himself. And he's by far the most formidable of the Lords in combat. By the end of the trilogy, one of the most formidable combatants in the Land.

Two asides in The Illearth War that refer to him fighting a Raver-possessed ur-Vile loremaster alone on a desperate scouting mission near Foul’s own domain. He describes the horror of being overmatched by such an adversary. Covenant eventually notes - as we do - that Mhoram is here now, in one piece. 

Covenant gripped the Lord’s gaze, and said, “Tell me something, Mhoram. How did you get away—when that Raver caught you—near Foul’s Creche?” 

Mhoram answered with a conscious serenity, a refusal of dismay, which looked like danger in his gold-flecked eyes. “The Bloodguard with me were slain. But when samadhi Raver touched me, he knew me as I knew him. He was daunted.”

Then we learn what exactly a Raver is. And how hostile and remote that terrain is… And even this just hints at his true capabilities.

Yeah, Mhoram can fight...

He repeatedly exceeds himself, facing challenges that would destroy others and prevailing through seemingly endless reserves of indomitable will. While retaining the humility to avoid the grand promises and self-immolating overconfidence that sinks Elena and Troy. Mhoram accepts the possibility of personal failure and gives his utmost, never losing hope no matter how terrible the odds. Because he recognizes he’s a flawed, limited, fallen being and doesn’t take base his self-meaning on promises and responsibilities that are ontologically beyond him. So why does he stay hopeful? 

The same reason Christians do. 

Faith. 

Consider Mhoram's understanding of which moral judgments are possible and which are roads to ruin. The first of these quotes are from exchanges with Covenant, the latter two with Troy. Note the difference between fake certainty and the willingness to tackle anything with a spirit of humility and 

“I know. Don’t mind me. But tell me this. What would you do in my place?”

“No,” said Mhoram. “That I will not answer. Who can declare? Power is a dreadful thing. I cannot judge you with an answer. I have not yet judged myself.” Ch. 8

“Mhoram, don’t you resent him? After what he’s done?”

“I have no special virtue to make me resent him. One must have strength in order to judge the weakness of others. I am not so mighty.” Ch. 16

“Ah, Warmark,” returned the Lord, “everything that passes unattempted is impossible.” Ch. 21

Acceptance of the possibility of failure is the way to face any challenge without doomed bravado and despair. But it requires faith. Faith that your commitment is buoyed by something that is adequate. Which means giving your all for something that is necessarily bigger and ultimately beyond you. Like eventually single-handedly taking out a Stone-weilding giant-raver's entourage before killing him too while sure in his faith that Covenant can handle the larger problem of Foul.

Likewise, Covenant's moral relativism is a non-problem. Like this mike drop that sends Covenant scrambling to change the topic.

 

“Then do you truly believe that there is no difference between fighting to destroy the Land and fighting to preserve it?” 

Eytan Zana, Concept art

Mhoram isn’t luciferian he doesn’t need to be his own god. Awareness of his limitations and the possibility of failure are always present. He just never loses faith. So as long has he gives all he has and resists despair, he can’t lose. He can be physically overcome, but he can’t lose. When Elena proves insufficient… the fact that Elena does prove insufficient is, well, sufficient. 

Note the difference – Mhoram is a seer who sees isolated facts that he processes into his world view like any other sense data. He doesn't claim false certainty over meaning. One suspects his direct knowledge of Foul adds to his faith. He’d be uniquely aware of what and how powerful Foul is, and therefore the necessity of logos in stopping him. 

There’s no hubris. Just the hopeful confidence that comes from faith. 

Put it another way – the smart money says Mhoram finds a way to win that last desperate fight with Kevin’s specter. Not that he'd be stupid enough to call him, but had he been there instead of Covenant. Not sure how, because you never are with him. But an ending  involving some variation on a battered, exhausted lord being helped out of Earthroot by a bloodguard in the fading light from smears of green ectoplasm seems right. 

Because he has help. He 

always has help. 

Applicability - at the end of The Illearth War Covenant repents his own selfish bargain and pleads with Elena to stop. Not to use the Power of Command. To come back to Revelstone with him and let the Council figure out how to proceed with the discovery. They now know what it is and how to get there. And they don't know it yet, but just below them, Foul’s massive army is being exterminated by the Forestal. The immediate urgency is past. Regardless, they know the prophecy has nine more years. 

Now consider what Covenant is actually offering. 

This isn’t one of his selfish bargains to get off the hook for moral imperatives. He is getting back on the hook and offering to accept life in the Land. Consider - Elena is his summoner. As long as she lives, he’s here. They go back to Revelstone to study the ward and plan, he’s committing to remaining here for years. He hasn't even worked through his beliefs, but he's come to life emotionally and accepted his responsibility.

This is critical, and it starts with confession and repentance. Coming clean and doing better. The mechanics of salvation. The problem is that Elena hasn't grown. On the cusp of her demented vision, she disputes Covenant's admission. And doubles down on The Sins of the Father, The Purity of Intent, The Necessity of Logos.

“Don’t you see it?” he gasped. “This is all some plot of Foul’s. We’re being manipulated—you’re being manipulated. Something terrible is going to happen... Your vision!” Covenant extended his hands in pleading toward her. “Don’t you see what that is? Don’t you see where that comes from? It comes from me—from that unholy bargain I made with the Ranyhyn. A bargain that failed, Elena!”

 “Yet it would appear that you bargained better than you knew. The Ranyhyn kept their promise—they gave in return more than you could either foresee or control.” 

The Ranyhyn can't beat Foul. They can't even understand him. Their pain and fury is irrelevant. As is Covenant's - his desperation as his lies and rationalizations crumble comes through Donaldson's odd prose. 

Elena's reactions are irrational as expected. She ignores his reasoning and seeks emotional reassurance. And when he finally confesses how he really feels for her - what he will sacrifice for her - the perverse irony is that she feels empowered to launch her suicidal plan. 

“Manipulation, Elena,” he rasped... “I’ve been manipulating you, using you. I watched you and helped you so that when you got here you would look exactly like that—so you would challenge Foul yourself without stopping to think about what you’re doing—so that whatever happens to the Land would be your fault instead of mine. So that I could escape! Hell and blood, Elena! Do you hear me? Foul is going to get us for sure!”

 “Was there ever a time when you loved me?”

“Of course I loved you!.. It never even occurred to me that I might be able to use you until—until after the landslide. When I began to understand what you’re capable of. I loved you before that. I love you now. I’m just an unconscionable bastard, and I used you, that’s all. Now I regret it.”

With all the resources of his voice, he beseeched her, “Elena, please don’t drink that stuff. Forget the Power of Command and go back to Revelstone. Let the Council decide what to do about all this.”  

“And if you have loved me, how can I fail to strive for your escape? You need not have bargained in secret. I love you. I wish to serve you. Your regret only strengthens what I must do.”  

“That’s not a good answer! What happens to the Oath of Peace?” 

Covenant even tries to invoke the Oath of Peace, but can't break through her euphoric high. The rest is a slow-motion trainwreck as Elena recalls the ghost of dead Kevin, breaking the Law of Death and weakening the fabric of reality to do so. It is Law after all that restricts Foul in some ways.

Put aside the speculation and consider what matters. Covenant repents, but too late. And Elena ignores the direct appeal of the emissary of the Creator at the end. Remember that Covenant is applicable to the Logos on an externalized level. Not his personality, but his ontological role. Regardless of what happened to that point, the Logos point-blank told her to stop and walk with him to a better way.

Abraham Hunter, Walking with Jesus

For what it's worth, Kevin's ghost adds his horrified objection too.

“Come! I have tasted the EarthBlood! You must obey my will. The walls of death do not prevail. Kevin son of Loric! Come!”

No! howled Covenant, No! Don’t!

“Fool! Desist!” Staggering waves of anguish poured from the voice. “Do not do this!”

“Kevin, hear me!” Elena shouted back in a transported tone. “You cannot refuse! The Blood of the Earth compels you. I have chosen you to meet my Command. Kevin, come!”

The great voice repeated, “Fool! You know not what you do!”

None of it matters. We know Elena has replaced Logos with horse mysticism. In the end, she pits her fake faith that the extremity of Kevin's despair will make him all-powerful against the assurances of the emissary of the Creator and Kevin himself that it won't. 

We are all familiar with Eowyn's epic stand against the Witch-King of Angmar - where logos, courage, and virtue deliver an unexpected victory against all odds...

This is the opposite of that.

Foul uses the Stone to master and corrupt the woefully inadequite Kevin and unleashes him back on Elena. And while his final blow wasn't up to Foul and the Stone, he isn't exactly a lightweight. 

“Fool!” he cried in a paroxysm of anguish. “Damned betrayer! You have broken the Law of Death to summon me—you have unleashed measureless opportunities for evil upon the Earth—and the Despiser mastered me as easily as if I were a child! The Illearth Stone consumes me. Fight, fool! I am Commanded to destroy you!”

And so it is that Foul turns Elena - and Kevin - into instruments for his own ends. Servants with a love for the Land twisted without logos into weapons against it. Kevin's despair creates the conditions for Elena's. And the vaunted Oath of Peace proves as much a deterrent as man-made prescriptions always do in a Fallen world.

DarthIggy, by Way of Fire

The evil shines in her appearance at the end

Through the brunt of the Blood, he began to smell something wrong, something ill. But he could not locate its source. Either the Power of Command itself was in some way false, or the wrong was elsewhere, making itself apparent slowly through the dense air. He could not tell which. No one else appeared to notice the subtle reek of ill. 

It appalled him. Despite the dizziness which unanchored his mind, he located the source of the nameless reek of wrong.

The ill was in Elena, in the High Lord herself.

Now think about what this means for Covenant. How radical a shift this is. His go back to Revelstone plan probably couldn't work, but that's not the point. The point is that evil is always a choice - even at the eleventh hour, and no matter how much momentum it has. Pulling out of the power dive may not be likely, but it's your fault if you don't to the very end. Covenant passes through weird lusts and manipulations before accepting a clean paternal affection for his broken daughter he never knew. He comes to love her in a healthy way – his offer is to develop that relationship. One that he can’t have with his own son. It's too late, but it is sincere. And that will make all the difference.

Allen Morris, detail

It’s unlikely she could accept this. She calls him beloved until the end, not father. In her mind he’s her messiah-lover. With no taboo around her desires and no political check as High Lord, it’s not likely she’d settle into the role her white gold-wielding father envisions. But that doesn't matter for Covenant's salvation.

This means Covenant finally learns to feel a healthy emotion and chooses to put someone ahead of himself out of sincere selfless love. It breaks through that gamma shell. But because it comes too late, he follows the breakthrough with having to watch the thing he finally loves unconditionally destroy itself - at least partly because of his own now-repented selfish deceit. 

All his intransigence, bargains, and denials are swept away in a wave of howling anguish that is hard to think about. 

And because Elena is such a fantastic creation, you share that pain, even knowing she was doomed from the start. 

The final applicability of Elena -  

We see the dangerousness of logosless attraction – of love vs. obsession. To the solipsist, even the object of consuming infatuation is no more than an extension of themselves – how it makes them feel, look, benefit, etc. So when asked to put “beloved’s” wishes over her own chance to finally be her own god, prove her delusions true, and knock out immortal evil it’s no choice at all. He's no more "real" to her the she was to him. 

Except he changes.

Paradoxically, Elena becomes the tragic driver of Covenant's growth. 

More than anything else, she leads him to caring with a series of compulsions he hadn’t felt before. There is an attraction that lingers even after he realizes who she is. But this time when confronted with the possibility of a perverse sex act, he declines. Even through she is the initiator and he supposedly still doesn’t really believe.

But human attachments are kindled in Covenant for the first time. Elena’s overpowering impact on him gradually redirects into a healthy paternal direction – the only healthy feeling he’s shown in the series. Elena heals him, which is why he repents the bargain in the end. He finally cares. Consider this progression -

Yet he could not deny it; he was moved by Mhoram’s account of the dilemmas of the Lords. He was moved by the Land, and by the people who served it—though they made him look so small to himself. Ch. 5

“And, Bannor—”

“I wouldn’t do it again—attack a girl like that. I would take it back if I could.” He said it as if it were a promise that he owed Bannor for saving his life. Ch. 8

She was his daughter. Tenderly he stooped, retrieved her blanket, wrapped it around her shoulders. Tenderly he held her face in his hands, touched her sweet face with the impossible aliveness of his fingers. Ch. 21

And that’s why it’s so agonizing. Because we see that she is a willing partner in her own destruction. Like Troy, her wild overconfidence leads to impossible promises, but unlike Troy she has the crazy mystic’s certainty. Covanant is the one who knows better. The responsibility to steer her properly was on him. The paternal responsibility. His cowardly gamma selfishness made him fail the most profound test of masculine virtue with the full implications made appallingly clear. Having done what he could to get her there, he’s screaming as she falls. And if anything captures Covenant at this point better than that...

Agnostic delusion fails harder than atheism because you’ve engaged enough to care.

The failure of the atheist Bargain with the Ranyhyn hurt and left him struggling with difficult moral questions. The agnostic Bargain with Elena left him a shattered husk. It’s hard on the reader. It’s tempting to consider other outcomes – with different decisions, could Covenant have reached her the way she reaches him? 

Their responses to sexual perversion suggest not. Considering the extent to which she is unreachable. And the hidden virulent ill within her – her version of his leprosy if we’re going to personalize the applicability of active evil – is totally unrecognized by her. 

Covenant reacts badly to the "inner Lord Foul” of his leprosy, but he is at least aware of it and that it demands some sort of response. For all her superior social grace and achievement, Elena never is.

By all accounts she was extremely attractive though...

The lessons are the sins of the father, the purity of purpose, and above all the necessity of logos against them all. E chose the charismatic occult path – crazy-hot – and what The Illearth War drives home is that no matter how appealing, just, or certain that seems, the end is abject disaster. 

On the other hand, Covenant's trauma, repentance, and guilt finally shows him the moral impossibility of his avoidances. The experience is what begins his resolve to fight for the Land. And that culminates in an all-out toe-to-toe fight to the finish with Foul himself. To assume that responsibility despite the risks. To leave the false hopes of agnosticism and learn to be in the world but not of it. 

At the end the book, a shattered Covenant meets up with survivors of the other party in the forest of Garroting Deep. Consider the story he tells and the broken husk of Troy's frenzied response. He's learned nothing. 

He made no mention of the focus of her gaze, her consuming passion. But he told all the rest—his bargain, Amok’s end, the summoning of Kevin Landwaster, Elena’s solitary fall.  “I’m sorry,” he concluded into the stillness. Forcing himself to drink the bitter dregs of his personal inefficacy, he added, “I loved her. I would have saved her if I could.” 

You’re a leper! A moral leper! You’re too selfish to love anyone but yourself. You have the power for everything, and you won’t use it. You just turned your back on her when she needed you. You—despicable—leper! Leper!” 

“Unbelief has got nothing to do with it. She was my daughter.” Ch. 26

For the first time, Covenant shows acceptance - to the point of downplaying her guilt and owning his own. This is the opposite of the earlier bargain where he was trying to offload responsibility. Troy is the opposite - he can’t take it when his dreams fail because they were all he had and winds up sounding like an emasculated doomer spewing black-pilled despair from its hell-bound soul. 

It can get worse...

“Do you call that victory? We’ve been decimated! What good is a victory that costs so much?” Troy’s fury rose like weeping. “It would have been better if we’d lost! Then it wouldn’t have been such a waste!” 

And that’s the difference between riding no-logos failure to the bitter end and repentance.

Repentance is changing your mind. Realizing that past priorities and motivations were wrong and realizing you can do better. Guilt can be a driver to repudiate old errors. But you have to see that there’s more out there then yourself. That your best is required but may not be sufficient, and that isn’t your fault. You’re fallen and need help. Conversely...

Few things are more pathetic than moral cowards bleating over circumstances their moral cowardice were complicit in bringing about.

Here's some "Law" - the inviolate integrity of ontology isn’t a choice. Whether to accept it is, but then the ensuing consequences aren’t. We see the failures of atheism, agnostic weaselry, and luciferian auto-idolatry of the techno and occultic types. Different degrees of personal cost, but with Foul advancing through all of them.

Between Covenant, Elena, and Troy we get the gamut of fake alternatives to reality. 

Next comes the answer. 

Click for Part 3