The blackness that filled the portal of the Lost Deep was not blank: it was a seething mass of magicks, twisted and insidiously recursive. And its implications were not contained within the archway. Instead they extended in long looping tendrils, and in clusters like knot work, to form a web or skein of utter fuligin around the entire length of the Hazard. In some respects, the portal’s dark strands resembled Jeremiah’s racetrack construct: if she tried to follow their flow from one place to another, she would find herself in a maze from which there was no egress. But Jeremiah’s construct had been a door: one through which only he could pass, but a door nonetheless. The tangle that enclosed the bridge was formed for destruction. If even one of its strings were plucked, it would convulse, taking the granite substance of the span with it. In an instant, the bridge would become rubble falling endlessly into the depths.

In the initial wash of Earthpower, Linden saw that the wards defending the Hazard were like the Demondim. Having no tangible forms, they would be lost to will and deed without some containing ensorcelment to preserve them from dissolution. Imagine that they were bound to themselves by threads of lore and purpose. And the Harrow had told her that he had learned the trick of unbinding them. But apparently his knowledge did not extend to undoing the magicks here—or he was unable to discern the similarity between the way in which the Viles had given shape to the Demondim and the manner in which they had guarded their hidden realm.

He did not know how to use the Staff—

To an extent, however, the web threatening the bridge was chaff; distraction. Anyone who did not try to enter the Lost Deep could cross the span repeatedly without harm. The real danger, the crucial tangle, was here, concealed inside the portal’s cryptic moiling. One touch to the wrong strand would release ruin. But plucking the correct thread would open the Lost Deep. Severing that thread would unravel the wards completely, erasing their power from the span.

Sighing to herself, Linden thought, Well, sure. If only it were that easy. Tugging or cutting the proper strand with Law and Earthpower might not be difficult. However, identifying that tendril within the sensory confusion of the Viles’ lore would be as arduous as finding the caesure through which the Demondim horde had invoked the Illearth Stone. And here she did not have the horde’s evanescent hints of emerald and migraine to guide her. She did not have the ichor of the ur-viles and Waynhim to augment her health-sense.

But that was not her only problem.

As she extended her discernment, the sensations of a malignant presence seething in the chasm suddenly increased. For a moment, a swift flurry of frightened heartbeats, she thought that the evil was rising—