“Oh, I do not question that he is aware of your location, as the Elohim are not. Indeed, I am certain that he participated in your choice to conceal yourself here, and that he assisted your passage hither. Yet when you erected the barrier which prevents the perception of the Elohim, you excluded him as well. Kastenessen’s hand has grown into him. It has become native to his blood. And Kastenessen is Elohim. Thus your own cleverness delivers you to me.

“No other power will redeem you. You are mine.”

With a flourish of the Staff, the Harrow sent sunshine flame blossoming into the dome.

Unintentionally he renewed a portion of Linden’s health-sense.

Roger had told Linden that Kastenessen craved only the destruction of his people. She believed that. Kastenessen’s pain ruled him. He had no other desires. Through Esmer, he had opposed the Harrow before. He would do so again, if he could—but only because he sought to prevent the Harrow from saving the Elohim. He did not want Jeremiah’s gifts for his own use.

Roger and the croyel had other ambitions.

Mimicking the Harrow’s display in its own fashion, the creature gestured with Jeremiah’s halfhand again.

Linden flinched. She expected an invisible blow which would deprive her of use and name and life. But the croyel’s might was not directed at her. She felt none of its energy in the chamber at all.

Instead she sensed a summons.

Immediately children like incarnations of acid began to emerge from the other openings in the wall.

She knew them too well. They were skest: creatures of living vitriol, deformed and corrosive; deadly despite their small stature. Lit from within by a gangrenous green radiance, as if they were the impossible offspring of the Illearth Stone, they destroyed their foes by dissolving mortal flesh, reducing bones and sinews to macerated puddles. At one time, they had served the lurker of the Sarangrave. But more recently, Linden had seen them tending Joan. Trapped in freezing and hornets and madness within a caesure, Linden had watched acid-children care for Joan’s physical needs while turiya Raver toyed with the frail woman’s derangement. Linden had not expected to encounter them here.

Now she guessed that the skest performed a similar service for Jeremiah, nourishing the croyel through her son’s possessed body. In effect, they kept Jeremiah alive for the creature’s sake—and for Lord Foul’s.

But the skest were also the croyel’s defenders. They issued from their corridors in numbers that seemed great enough to overwhelm the Harrow.

Studying him as closely as she could, Linden believed that he had not yet found a way to evoke wild magic from Covenant’s ring. But with the Staff, the Insequent could wield a flail of burning Earthpower. He would fight to protect himself.