In another step, Stormpast Galesend would leave the bridge. Then the weight of five Giants would be gone: Linden, Mahrtiir, Liand, and Anele would safe. And Grueburn and Stonemage had already set down their burdens. With Coldspray, they braced themselves at the edge of the abyss, ready to catch anyone who might be forced to jump.

Their breath steamed in great gusts like intimations of dread.

Beyond them, a crude tunnel twisted away into the sealed midnight of Mount Thunder’s roots. In the light of the Sunstone, Covenant saw that the roof of the tunnel was scarcely high enough to let the Giants stand upright. Before it writhed out of sight, the passage narrowed sharply. Where it debouched into the cavern, however, it opened like a fan formed of relatively level obsidian veined with malachite. The white purity of the orcrest’s illumination accentuated the green hue of the malachite. The branching of the veins through the obsidian gave them an eerie resemblance to the grass stains on Linden’s jeans.

Galesend and then Latebirth gained the mouth of the tunnel. Holding Covenant between them like a prisoner or an invalid, the Humbled matched Kindwind’s pace as she moved down the span.

Now Covenant could believe that the bridge would hold; and his balance improved. With each step, he found it easier to shut out the insistence of the gulf.

Presumably to ensure that Anele would not wander too near the abyss, Galesend put the old man on his feet within the mouth of the tunnel, near the area where the obsidian tapered to an end. Then she turned back to welcome Latebirth.

For reasons that had slumped from Covenant’s shoulders like a garment which he had become too small to wear, he felt a twist of anxiety on Anele’s behalf. Dooms hinged on him, as they did on the Harrow.—remember that he is the hope of the Land. Someone had said that: someone Covenant trusted. When your deeds have come to doom—His memories seemed random, involuntary; impossible to control. Cracks and crevices hemmed him on all sides, cutting him off from ordinary humanity.—as they must—In his own eyes, he would not have been more obviously a leper if the scar on his forehead had been a brand. Yet Linden’s gaze clung to his with the desperation of a woman who believed that he clasped her fate in his insensible hands.

Hell and blood, she must have been freezing—He may have been shivering himself: he was not sure. But the small tears in her shirt were as vivid to him as the bullet hole over her heart. Cold would leak through the red flannel like water. Whenever she exhaled, steam rose like frailty from her lungs.

She had given up so much, and had lost more. Too much.