Linden wanted to slap him, and could not. She wanted to reach into the pouch at his waist and take his Sunstone; but she lacked the strength, or the will. She had surrendered too much, and knew the cost. He did not deserve to have his heritage taken from him.

Fighting her own entrancement, her own weakness, she tugged Anele closer to Liand. Then, interlacing her fingers with Anele’s so that the old man would not pull free, she guided his free hand to Liand’s shoulder. Mutely she willed Anele to jolt the Stonedownor as he had jolted her.

Through his madness, Anele must have understood what she was doing; or he had his own reasons for desperation, his own fragmented needs. Still trembling, he stroked Liand’s shoulder—

—and Liand twitched. His black eyebrows arched. His eyes veered into focus on Linden. He peered at her as if she were veiled by water.

At the top of the stair, the Harrow passed between hanging curtains and disappeared.

“Liand,” Linden said again, “listen.”

“Li—” Liand tried to say her name. “Lin—”

“Listen to me,” she urged: a small sound, too distant and uncertain to compel attention. “I can’t explain. I don’t understand. But we need Earthpower. To remember who we are.

“We need orcrest.”

Even the Giants: even the Haruchai were beyond her. The palace had turned their inherent strengths against them. And none of them carried any instruments of power. Covenant retained Loric’s krill; but he had stumbled into his past before Linden’s company had crossed the Hazard. Nothing that she could say or do would pierce his memories.

She had to follow the Harrow. If Liand did not rouse himself a little more; just a little—

Anele tightened his grip.

This time Liand succeeded at saying her name. “Linden?”

“Orcrest,” she repeated. Her voice shook like Anele’s arms. The old man had saved her more than once. He had drawn her out of her paralysis when she had first entered a caesure, seeking the Staff of Law. “We need it.”

For a moment, Liand turned his bewilderment toward Anele. Then he appeared to shudder. “Orcrest?” he murmured distantly. “I had forgotten—”

Fumbling as if Anele had touched him with age and caducity as well as Earthpower, the Stonedownor opened his pouch and brought out the Sunstone.

For a time that seemed long to Linden, Liand frowned at the rock in his palm. He was relapsing into the magic of the palace; or she was. Dully she thought that his orcrest was not a stone at all. It was water impossibly piled onto itself when it should have poured away between his fingers. Soon he would hold nothing more than a few pellucid drops.

In spite of Anele’s clasp, Linden was drifting. Like Liand, she would dissolve into wonder and forget that she was lost.