And if or when Linden reached Jeremiah, Kastenessen and Esmer and the Elohim and even the buried bane would know where to look—

Whether Covenant’s companions realized it or not, they had no one to turn to for answers except the Ardent.

The beribboned Insequent stood in the mouth of the tunnel near Anele. He kept his back to the abyss; did not look at anyone. If he had received any benefit from Liand’s exertion of Earthpower, he did not show it. Instead he continued to breathe heavily, as if he had carried his fat and fear for leagues under the mountain. The multitudinous strips of his apparel remained clenched around him as tightly as a fist.

Had the will and power of his people deserted him? He seemed overwhelmed; too daunted to carry out their wishes. As useless as Covenant—

Covenant found everyone except the Ardent and Anele looking at him. Even Linden’s closest friends watched his every movement as though they expected him to perform a miracle of some kind. Take command of the situation. Tell them what to do.

Clearly they retained enough health-sense to see that his mind was present. As he had hoped, the orcrest’s Earthpower resisted the worst effects of Kevin’s Dirt. Linden’s eyes clung to him. She was unutterably precious to him, and wounded past bearing. In some other life—the life that she deserved—he would have wrapped his arms around her and held her until her loneliness eased.

But he had no value to her here: not as he was.

“Hellfire,” he muttered simply to break the silence. “That was fun.” Trying to rub sensations of futility from his face with his bound hands, he asked, “Can any of you see what the Harrow is doing? I’m afraid to look.”

No one glanced away. Even the Humbled regarded him stolidly.

Softly, as if she were reluctant to awaken echoes, Rime Coldspray replied, “The Harrow has gained the archway or portal at the foot of the span. Now he bows on one knee at the verge of an extreme dark which the Stonedownor’s legacy cannot penetrate. Perhaps he prepares incantations. Perhaps not. The white gold ring he holds to his forehead in one fist. The Staff of Law he grips upright before him. To my diminished sight, however, he appears to wield no magicks. Rather he remains merely bowed as in contemplation.”

The rim of the precipice was too near. Trickles and streams of water fell from the tips of the stalactites as if they were draining the life-blood out of the world’s veins drop by drop. The web of malachite that defined or defied the obsidian under Covenant’s boots created the illusion that its strands flowed ceaselessly toward the abysm.