Lord Foul's Bane: Chapter 7: Lena

[teres]

Chapter Six (Part II) | Chapter Eight (Part I)

A good day, everyone, and welcome back to Lord Foul’s Bane! Last time, we heard the legend of Berek Halfhand, and that was about all that happened, unfortunately.

For the reader post, Silver Adept notes that it would have been better to have Covenant either understand little of the story-telling, or have everyone do their best to explain it to him. Donaldson will later go for the latter option, but I would have liked it here, too; we’re supposed to be learning about the world, after all.

They further note that the description of Atiaran singing is “specific to [] European and European-derived musical traditions”, which I note because I get the impression that Donaldson made an effort not to make the Land too European.

Let me begin with the next chapter, then! And fair warning, this chapter contains rape, so proceed with caution.

Chapter 7: Lena

We open on Covenant, who stays separate from the group as everyone embraces. He feels trapped, as a “leper’s claustrophobia [], a leper’s fear of crowds, of unpredictable behavior” is on him (which would work better if he wasn’t outside of the crowd already, and I really have to wonder how many crowds he’s met in the last year to know this…). He thinks that the Stonedownors want him to be a hero like Berek (actually, I think that’s only Lena and maybe Atiaran), and then walks away with a “stiff jerk of repudiation”. He complains about how ridiculous all this is, and says that the “kind of heroism” Berek performed is impossible for him because he’s a leper. I think that’s also in no small part because you’re not remotely a heroic person at present, Covenant.

He then remembers that Foul talked about a confrontation, and realises that he might well be led to a confrontation with him. He’s “trapped”, he finds, because he obviously can’t “play the hero in some dream war”, but he does need to go through the “dream” to get out, and standing still and “[trying] to stay sane” won’t work, either. He stops walking, and then sinks into a panic attack as his hopes for the Land fall away, and he’s stuck being not being able to go on and not being able to stop. Though I don’t really care about Covenant’s trouble with the Land, this isn’t badly written, and I do like to see Covenant come to a situation he can’t deal with with cynicism.

Just then, Lena comes running after him with her gravelling pot (which I find quite sweet), and when she’s reached him, she asks if he isn’t well. Covenant “lashes at her”, saying that he isn’t well at all, and nothing’s been since he was divorced, after which he glares at Lena, “defying her to ask what a divorce [is]”. He can’t see Lena’s reaction, but instead of giving him “crude questions or condolences”, like he expects, she tells him there’s a place he can be alone. Yeah, that’s the best thing to do in this situation; she doesn’t know him enough to know what his problems are and what she could say, and in any case, not giving Covenant more to deal with at least can’t hurt.

For his part, Covenant agrees enthusiastically, since he feels his “nerves [are] about to snap”, and he feels violent, so he doesn’t want “anyone to see what happen[s] to him”. Lena leads the way to the Mithil, and from there half a mile downriver to an “old stone bridge”, which Covenant is reluctant to cross because… he thinks that he won’t recognise himself if he comes back (that’s what I gather, at least). He asks where they’re going. Lena answers that they’re going to the far side, where he can be alone. The Stonedownors don’t often go across the Mithil, since they think that the mountains to the west are unfriendly, and the “ill of Doom’s Retreat” behind them has “bent their spirit”. She herself has been all over the mountains in search of suru-pa-maerl images, though, and hasn’t been harmed. Close by the bridge, there’s a place where Covenant won’t be disturbed.

Hmm, while I like the idea of this, I have to wonder if she plans to tell Atiaran where Covenant is, since I could see her trying to find him, at least. She probably does, but I get the feeling that Lena hasn’t thought this through very well. Then… Doom’s Retreat will turn out to be a battlefield that many people died on, and while it certainly makes sense that it’s thought of as an ill place, when we’ll see it, we don’t hear about it having affected the mountains around it, nor does it seem that bad. Then again, the tale of Doom’s Retreat may well have grown over the years, and I doubt that anyone from the Stonedown has seen it for themselves, so I won’t complain. I also kind of wonder what makes Lena so adventurous; maybe Atiaran encourages her in that?

Well, Covenant thinks the bridge looks “untrustworthy” since it isn’t mortared, but he does get on, and the bridge turns out to be steady. At the top of the bridge, he pauses to look down at the Mithil, and he wonders if he can’t simply ignore everything that threatens him, return to the Stonedown and “pretend with blithe guile” to be Berek Halfhand reborn. He decides that he can’t, because he’s a leper and there are “some lies he [cannot] tell”. Good to see he does have some integrity, even if it’s only for selfish reasons… Covenant finds that he’s “pounding his fists on the wall” of the bridge, and tries to look if he’s injured himself, but the light isn’t good enough, so he just follows Lena down the bridge.

We get some description of their route: they go into the mountains for a bit, then turn right and climb a “steep hill”, and then go down a “splintered ravine” back toward the river. The ravine is described (and compared to a ship), and Covenant sees it ends at a swath of sand that ends in “a flat rock promontory jutting into the river”. Lena stops on the sand and empties the gravelling pot in a “shallow basin” she digs out, and soon Covenant squats beside the “fire”. Lena, for her part, goes to stand on the promontory and watches the moon rise above the mountain. There’s some description of that, and of the moon silhouetting Lena, and when the whole valley is in the light, Lena returns to Covenant. Even though nothing much happens here, it’s a nice sequence for building atmosphere, I find.

Lena asks if she should go. We’re reminded of Covenant’s palms itching “as if he want[s] to strike her for even suggesting that she might stay”, but on the other hand, he’s afraid of the night, and doesn’t want to be alone. Yes, Donaldson, I think we know by now that Covenant is going to do something bad to Lena; if that’s going to happen, could you at least get on with it instead of constantly hinting? Covenant gets up and asks what she wants, “[fighting] to stay neutral”, to which she answers that she wants to know more about him. Covenant winces at this, but then collects himself and tells her to ask, which she does, asking if he’s married. That predictably hits a sore spot with Covenant, and he “whirl[s] to face [Lena]” with “hot distress [in] his eyes and [] bared teeth”. Lena falters and looks away; Covenant sees this and complains about how his “face [has] betrayed him” and he wants to contain himself in front of Lena. Still, she “aggravate[s] his distress more than anything else he [has] encountered”. Maybe it’s time to tell her to leave, then? Covenant doesn’t really answer the question, and asks instead why Lena wants to know. Lena goes to sit by the fire and looks at Covenant, and when she doesn’t answer at once, Covenant paces up and down the sand, “turn[ing] and pull[ing] fiercely at his wedding ring”. I do like the way that Donaldson shows from Covenant’s own perspective that he isn’t doing well at all here… though I’d still love for this scene to progress faster.

Well, Lena answers Covenant’s question by saying that there’s a man, “Triock son of Thuler”, who wants to marry her. He woos her, though she isn’t “of age” to marry yet, so he’ll choose her when she’s ready to marry. If she were old enough, she wouldn’t marry him, though. She does find him a “good man in his way”, as he’s a “good Cattleherd” and defends his “kine” well, and he’s quite tall, but there’s just too “many wonders in the world” and “too much power to know and beauty to share and to create”, and she hasn’t seen the Ranyhyn. Because of that, she can’t marry someone who just appreciates her for her suru-pa-maerl, and she wants instead to go to the Loresraat and keep going through all the trails until she becomes a Lord. “It is said” that that can happen, after all, and does Covenant think so?

To answer Lena’s question, I certainly think it’s possible; if it weren’t, there wouldn’t be any Lords, after all, and even if she means to ask if someone from her background could do that, I’d answer the same, since most people of the Land live in those conditions, and I’d expect at least one person like that to have become a Lord in the past hundreds of years. I’m really not seeing why she wouldn’t think this is possible? Yeah, Atiaran didn’t make it, but she’s been quite clear that that’s the exception. Also… why does she say that “it is said” to be possible to become a Lord? Wouldn’t Atiaran be her primary source for that, and who would she have this from, anyway? This doesn’t make much sense, and it makes her look much too naïve once again (and it doesn’t fit well with her not believing the superstitions about these mountains, either).

Beyond that… I’d still like to know why “Cattleherd” is capitalised. It is used like that in the next books, so it’s not an error, but it does strike me as rather random. Then I notice “kine” (which is an archaic word for “cows”), which I find a bit weird to see used when Lena is reasonably young and she hasn’t used much archaic words otherwise. Finally, I’m not really seeing how this answers Covenant’s question? I guess she might be interested in what marriage is like since she doesn’t plan to marry, but she doesn’t follow up on that, so that’s just a guess.

Covenant, for his part, hardly hears her, because he’s “enraged and undercut” by a memory of Joan, and because of it, the “hollowness of his dream” becomes obvious. He’s convinced that the Land isn’t real, and it’s just a “torment that he inflict[s] upon himself in subconscious, involuntary revolt against his disease and loss”, which I don’t find very plausible, given that he’s never had anything like this before in the previous year. He complains a bit about how bad this is, then goes to sit with his back to Lena and hugs his knees as hard as he can to keep himself under control. He then asks Lena how her people marry, and Lena explains. When “a man and a woman” have become friends and wish to marry, they tell the Circle of elders (and I really feel that “elders” should be capitalised here). The elders then have them wait for a season to make sure that their friendship is “secure”, and there’s no tensions between them that might make them unhappy later on. After that, everyone gathers in the centre of the Stonedown, and the elders take the couple in their arms and ask them if they want to share “life, in joy and sorrow, work and rest, peace and struggle”, to renew the Land. The couple answers that they “choose to share the blessings and the service of the Earth”, and then the Stonedown says that it is good, and wishes them “life and joy and power” during their marriage. The day is then spent in celebration, and the “new mates” teach “new games and dances and songs” to the people of the Stonedown, so that the Stonedown stays happy, and “communion and pleasure do not fail in the Land”.

That’s not uninteresting, though I think this would be more memorable in action (which won’t happen), and I’d like it more if it didn’t occur in what’s supposed to be a tense scene. Lena now goes to tell the story of how Atiaran and Trell married, which is also nice to have as background information, but not nearly necessary enough to justify dragging this scene further out. Well, their marriage was a “bold day”, and the “elders who teach [the Stonedown]” have often talked about it. During the whole “season of assurance”, Trell went up in the mountains, looking in every forgotten and newly-exposed place for a bit of “orcrest—a precious and many-powered rock”. The South Plains were experiencing a drought at that time, after all, and Mithil Stonedown suffered from a famine. Just before the marriage, he found what he sought: a bit of orcrest “smaller than a fist”. And so, after the marriage ceremony, he and Atiaran saved the Stonedown. Atiaran “sang a deep prayer to the Earth” (which the Stonedowners had forgotten, but which was still known in the Loresraat), while Trell crushed the orcrest in his hand. Thunder sounded, and a bolt of lightning shot up from the crushed orcrest, and then the sky “turned black with thunderheads” and it began to rain. So the famine was broken, and the Stonedown was happy. It is a nice tale, I have to give it that, and again we have worldbuilding that isn’t infodumping, so I like it!

Covenant, for his part, doesn’t like it at all, because the tale “[strikes] him like a mockery of his pains and failures”, and he can’t contain his rage at it. He then runs toward the river and throws a stone in it, before ranting about how he gave Joan “riding boots” for the wedding. …It’s quite a bit better than yelling at Lena, I have to give him that. We now switch to Lena’s perspective, as she walks toward Covenant and stops behind him, not knowing quite what to say. She decides to ask what happened to Joan, to which Covenant “[t]hickly” says that she’s gone. Lena asks how she died, and Covenant says that he died instead of her, that she divorced him (and that their marriage was “[t]erminated”) when he most needed her. …I’m unfortunately having some trouble taking this wholly seriously. Lena gets indignant and asks why something like that would happen “while there is life” (so don’t her people have a concept of divorce?). Covenant says, getting more and more angry, that he isn’t alive and rants about how he’s a leper and lepers are “ugly and filthy” and “abominable”. Lena asks how that can possibly be, because he isn’t abominable, and what world dares to treat him like that? Covenant gets even angrier, and he says that his world is real, fact, and the “kind of thing that kills you if you don’t believe it”. The Land is a “nightmare”.

Lena gets “sudden courage”, and says she doesn’t believe it. Covenant’s world may be as bad as he says, but the Land is real. Covenant freezes at this, and asks with “preternatural quietness” if she’s trying to “drive [him] crazy”. Lena’s startled and scared by his tone, and she loses her courage; then Covenant “whirl[s] and [strikes] her a stinging slap across the face”. …Yeah, I think something like that was to be expected; given how stressed Covenant was, I’m not surprised that he lashes out like this. It does still suck for Lena, of course, and it’s not a bad way to show Covenant finally doing something bad to her… unlike what we’ll be getting now.

Now we’re getting into the rape scene, so I’ll clearly mark it so you can skip to the discussion if you’d like (or skip to the end to avoid it altogether):

Begin of rape scene

Well, Lena stumbles back to the gravelling, and Covenant quickly follows, “his face contorted into a wild grin”. Lena has a last look at him, and she feels sure he wants to murder her; this thought paralyses her and leaves her “dumb and helpless” as he approaches. It turns out that’s not what he wants, though, as he tears her shift off, and then looks at her “high, perfect breasts and her short slip, with grim triumph in his eyes”. Then he tears off the rest of her clothing and pushes her to the ground. Lena now wants to resist, but she find she can’t, and she’s “helpless with anguish”. A moment later, Covenant drops on top of her and rapes her. Lena finally manages to scream, but even as she does, she knows it’s too late and “[s]omething that her people [think] of as a gift [has] been torn from her”.

Covenant (whose perspective we now switch to), doesn’t “feel like a taker”, though. His “climax flood[s] him as if he [has] fallen into a Mithil of molten fury”, and he nearly falls unconscious. Then he loses track of time, and he lies still for what might be hours for all he knows, hours in which “his world could have crumbled, unheeded”. After a while he remembers that Lena exists and feels her sobbing beneath him, so he gets up and looks down at her, seeing “blood on her loins”. He abruptly feels dizzy, and walks over to the shelf of rock and vomits into the Mithil, after which he falls asleep again. He doesn’t hear Lena get up, pull her shredded clothing together, say something, or climb away. He only hears the “long lament of the river”, only sees the “ashes of his burnt-out passion”, and only feels “the dampness of the rock on his cheeks like tears”. And there the scene, and the chapter, ends!

End of rape scene

How can I do this… I think I’ll start with the smaller things about this scene: I do like that we get Lena’s perspective during this scene, and I think Donaldson handles it reasonably well (and I note that he gets rid of his more purple prose for her perspective, which helps quite a bit to convey the urgency of this scene). I further like that Lena freezing up is not portrayed as a failing on her part; she’s just too scared to do much, and the narration doesn’t blame her for it, or suggest that she should have done more. Then… I don’t quite know what to make of the emphasis on Lena losing her virginity here. I think it might be in part so that Donaldson doesn’t have to outright say it’s rape (that’s the feeling I get, at least), and I wouldn’t mind it if this was a thing… but we never hear about virginity being important to the people of Mithil Stonedown again, so it’s awkward, and I really don’t care about the implication that losing her virginity is the most important thing here.

Then… I’m quite sure Donaldson put this scene in to show Covenant doing something bad, since him raping Lena doesn’t have much impact on the plot beyond people hating him for it and his guilt influencing his decisions. I can get behind the general idea, though Covenant will be quite hatable without him hurting anyone here, but it’s hardly a good reason to use rape here. I think this would work just as well, for example: Covenant pushes Lena down the ravine they used to come here, and then doesn’t dare to go after her and feels too guilty to inform anyone. Lena survives, but is severely injured. In this example, we have Covenant doing something bad, him showing his cowardice (which will be quite relevant during the book), Lena getting hurt, and all that without rape. Because of that, it does come across like Donaldson was being edgy here, and I don’t like that.

What I’ve also come to notice is that this scene really doesn’t follow well from both the scene immediately previous and from its foreshadowing. For the first thing, Covenant goes from having a panic attack and hitting Lena to wanting to rape her in the space of a few seconds, which is not anywhere near enough time to make that switch in. Furthermore, I’m not seeing how he got to that idea; maybe it’s supposed to be because he thought about Joan just now, and he realised that he could get sex from Lena? If that was the case, though, we should have had more of him thinking about Joan to make that plausible. For the second thing… we have had Covenant leering at girls Lena’s age before now, so that does track, but when he was with Lena, he held back from trying to do anything sexual with her (and he said that he didn’t have the courage for it), so I doubt that he’d lose all of his control even during a panic attack.

To express myself a bit clearer, the setup for the rape scene isn’t badly done, but with the scene immediately before it, I get the impression that Donaldson meant for it to build toward the rape… when it just shows Covenant having a panic attack and not even thinking much about Lena. The setup also doesn’t match well with the payoff, since it takes quite a bit of prodding for Covenant to hit Lena when he was quite fine with often being angry at her earlier; given that he was much more reluctant to show that he’s sexually interested in her, I find it rather doubtful that he’d suddenly be alright with that, and much more so that he’d want to rape Lena. Finally, he switches to rape mode much too quickly to be realistic (and I find he behaves like a caricature after that, too).

A final thing that bothers me about this is that Covenant never sexually assaults (or rapes) anyone again and doesn’t even think about it, as far as I recall. I certainly don’t mind that, but if he’s constantly creeping on Lena and eventually rapes here, that behaviour shouldn’t disappear for good after the rape! It frankly makes me wonder if Donaldson first only wrote the rape, and only put the foreshadowing in later, to make it seem less out of the blue… In any case, this doesn’t help very much with making me hate Covenant, and given that the rape makes little sense for him to do, I find it quite hard to hate him about this at all.

In conclusion, while this scene is written well enough that I don’t hate it, I absolutely don’t care for it, either. The rape scene being mostly there to show us that Covenant is to be hated is bad enough on its own (especially since it can easily be done without rape), but since it can’t even manage that, I find it rather gratuitous, and if I’d been Donaldson’s editor, I’d have told him to get rid of the rape scene entirely. (…Come to think of it, I wonder if the rather slow pace of the previous chapters might be because Donaldson wanted to build up to the rape scene, especially given that the next chapters will go quite a bit faster. Whether or not that’s true, I’d certainly have got rid of the slow pacing, too.)

So yeah, I really don’t like this chapter at all, and I wish Donaldson had gone with something else, but now I’m done with it, at least! Next time, we’ll get underway with the quest to Revelstone, and we’ll learn more about how the Land works. Until then!