“I know nothing of that,” retorted Brinn.  “I know only that she attempted Ceer’s life.”

Without warning, Covenant broke into a shout.  “I don’t care!”  He spat vehemence at Brinn as if it were being physically torn out of him.  “Linden saved me!  She saved all of us!  Do you think that was easy?  I’m not going to turn my back on her, just because she did something I don’t understand!”

“Ur-Lord—” Brinn began.

“No!”  Covenant’s passion carried so many implications of power that it shocked the deck under Linden’s feet.  “You’ve gone too far already!”  His chest heaved with the effort he made to control himself.  “In Andelain—with the Dead—Elena talked about her.  She said, ‘Care for her, beloved, so that in the end she may heal us all.’  Elena,” he insisted.  “The High Lord.  She loved me, and it killed her.  But never mind that.  I won’t have her treated this way.”  His voice shredded under the strain of self-containment.  “Maybe you don’t trust her.”  His half-fist jabbed possibilities of fire around him.  “Maybe you don’t trust me.”  He could not keep himself from yelling.  “But you are by God going to leave her alone!”

Rating:

In this middle book of the second Covenant trilogy, Covenant decides his only hope is to create a new Staff of Law, to give him a way to heal the land without unleashing his increasingly erratic power.  So with Linden, Sunder, and Hollian, he heads east out of the Land, hoping to retrace the steps of Berek Halfhand, the legendary hero who created the first Staff from a limb of the One Tree.

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