Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever could feel the wild magic pulsing in his veins. He was the wielder of the white chocolate ring, and its argent fire had the power to destroy or redeem Christmas. This was the conundrum, the dilemma, the paradox. The vitality of the pagan winter solstice, the seminal life-force and spirit of Christmas, had been corrupted, first by the bane of religious revelation, scripture and liturgy, then by the malefic puissance of commercialisation, and finally by the insidious constriction and life-draining encroachment of Health and Safety bureaucracy. The wild magic had the capability to destroy this suppurating putrefaction, but also to destroy the Arch of Time, releasing Lord Mandelson the Despiser from his chancrous demesne.
Covenant knew he had to wield the wild magic, but also knew that he couldn't control it. As rapacious commercial Ravers stalked the land, disseminating their incentives to gluttony and avarice, now came the final desecration: the conical, synthetic Poole-centre Christmas tree. For a brief moment, Covenant thought he descried Lord Mandelson's carious yellow eyes from inside the tree. Instantly, his skin was enveloped in formication, and an eldritch nimbus formed around his body. As coruscations began to lance outwards, Covenant could feel the argent fire gathering itself, ready to blaze across the land in a conflagration of destruction. The Yuletide Log of Law had been broken, the Earthpower had been sundered from the people, and unless Thomas Covenant could find the point of balance, the Arch of Time itself was in peril.
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