In the Lost Deep, miracles of old lore had reminded the ur-viles that they had sprung from creatures not ruled by disgust for their own natures. There the ur-viles found that their first progenitors had conceived truths which spanned Time: truths which in turn enabled the ur-viles to estimate distant outcomes. They saw clearly where their service to the Despiser would lead them in the end—and what would be required to counter the syllogisms of Lord Foul’s scorn.

They hesitated. For centuries, they contemplated what they had come from, and what they were, and what they might wish to be. And eventually they reached new conclusions. As a result, they began the assiduous studies and exhaustive labors by which they created Vain.

Vain and manacles.

But while the Swordmainnir carrying Linden and her human companions followed the Waynhim, Covenant fell deeper. Other memories took the place of the ur-viles.

In a different fissure, he regarded an image which did not exist: an image which had never existed, except as a symbol or metaphor for a more profound and inarticulate truth. The image of a young woman. A woman fresh with loveliness and self-discovery. A woman brimming with new passion, ready to give and receive the kind of adoration which would define Her days. In his eyes, She was the reason that men and women had discovered love; the cause of every whole and holy desire.

Studying Her, he saw Her betrayed.

Hers was the tale which had given rise to that of Diassomer Mininderain, seduced and misled; abandoned to darkness. During the creation of the Earth, She had been cast down. By the sealing of the Arch of Time, She had been imprisoned. She was Mininderain and Emereau Vrai and the Auriference and scores or hundreds of other women. Indirectly She was Lena and Joan. At its core, Hers was the tale of every love which had ever been used or abused and then discarded.

The tale of She Who Must Not Be Named.

Heart-wrung by Her plight, Covenant watched Her arise amid water and flames, a lake of conflagration; and he understood that behind Her appalling malice and hunger lay a quintessential wail of lamentation, forlorn and deathless: the devouring grief of a heart that knew no other response to absolute treachery.

Perhaps deliberately—perhaps cruelly—Esmer had sent Covenant to this place among his riven memories. They might have been precious to him, had he been able to act on them. But they were the past: he could not change them.

Remembering love and loss, he, too, was lost.