Leaning against Grueburn’s stone cataphract, Linden waited; tried to hope. She felt no power gather around her. Nothing more eldritch than Andelain itself seemed to inhabit the night. But she had never been able to sense the peculiar magicks of the Insequent. Like the Theomach’s and the Mahdoubt’s, the Harrow’s form of wizardry articulated itself in a dimension of reality or time which lay outside the reach of her perceptions.

She did not know that anything had happened until the stars, and the deeper night beneath the surrounding trees, and the Hills themselves vanished into utter darkness. Then heavy stone and cold closed over her—over all of her company—like the sealing of a tomb.

Chapter 6. - Seek Deep Stone

6.

Seek Deep Stone

Tightly guarded by the Humbled, Thomas Covenant was snatched out of recollections of Cavewights to find himself standing on the wrought span, long and narrow, that bridged the abyss between the imponderable gutrock of Mount Thunder and the portal of the Lost Deep.

The magicks of the Insequent and his fear for Linden had wrenched him out of his memories. It was possible that no one else understood how badly she could be hurt here.

He saw nothing. The darkness was absolute, encased by leagues of complex stone. He was probably days of tortuous ascents below the nearest caves and tunnels of the Wightwarrens. Nonetheless he had no impression of the terrible chasm that stretched beneath his feet: he could hardly taste the ancient dust in the stagnant, dying air. The cold had not reached him yet. He was numb with leprosy, and had no health-sense to identify his circumstances.

Nevertheless the pervasive brume of Kevin’s Dirt was stifling. He was dangerously close to its source; to the living bane that Kastenessen and Esmer and moksha Raver had tapped or harnessed in order to generate the fug which hampered the Staff of Law.

So near that unanswerable evil, Linden and Liand and the Ramen were surely as truncated, as blind and nearly insensate, as he was. Anele’s heritage of Earthpower might preserve him; but even the percipience of the Haruchai and the Giants was likely to fail. In moments, every one of Linden’s companions would be effectively as eyeless as Mahrtiir, as deaf as seas, as unresponsive to touch as bluff rock.

Unaware of the danger—

The absence of light was so complete that the stubborn granite in every direction could no longer recall illumination.