The Humbled remained close to Covenant. Their halfhands seemed to mock him at the edges of his vision. He suspected that they would stop him if he tried to approach Anele. They had never trusted Anele’s legacy—or any use of Earthpower.

“Anele,” Linden whispered. “Tell me.”

“Even here it is felt,” the old man said as if he were answering her. “Written. Lamented.” But the words were not a reply. Anele’s fixation on the lines of malachite within the obsidian was complete. He responded to the world’s oldest secrets, not to her. “The rousing of the Worm. It devours the magic of the Earth. The life. But its hunger is too great. When it has depleted lesser sustenance, it must come to the Land.”

Lesser sustenance? He must have meant the Elohim. But Covenant could not be sure. His own memories were too fresh.

There is too much. Power and peril. Malevolence. Ruin. And too little time. The last days of the Land are counted.

On some level, however, he knew that Anele was right. The Worm was eating the magic out of the world. But it needed more than it could obtain from any Elohim—or from all of the Elohim.

By its very nature, the Worm would give Lord Foul what the Despiser had always craved.

Covenant did not know how Linden would be able to bear that responsibility.

“Heed him well,” the Ardent advised in a hushed murmur. “This has been foreseen. It is knowledge which has been hidden since the rising of the first dawn within the Arch, shared by none but the Elohim. He must be heeded.”

“We heed him very well,” returned Rime Coldspray in a low growl. She may have wanted to silence the Insequent.

“The Worm will come.” Gradually Anele’s voice took on a ritual cadence, a sound of litany, as if he recited a sacral truth. “It must. Bringing with it the last crisis of the Earth, it will come. Here it will discover its final nourishment.”

Become as trees, the roots of trees. Seek deep rock.

Liand’s upraised arm trembled with cold and effort. The Sunstone shook, stirring shadows like shaken leaves. Stave’s lone eye caught the radiance in a flicker of gleams as if he were gazing into the fiery face of apocalypse.

“Here?” Linden asked, still whispering. Bereft or abandoned: Covenant could not tell the difference. “In the Lost Deep? In that chasm? What nourishment?”

Surely she knew that Anele did not hear her?

—the necessary forbidding of evils—

If the Earth had no hope, there was none for Jeremiah—or for any love.