He may be freed only by one who is compelled by rage, and contemptuous of consequence . Berek’s pronouncement seemed to refer to Jeremiah as much as to Lord Foul.

Will you condone this outcome—

Flagellating herself with dread and woe, she passed among the muttering ur-viles and Waynhim toward Onyx Stonemage. The Harrow’s corpse she ignored. Accompanied by Pahni’s anxiety, she approached Liand.

—merely because I propagate futility?

She would never forgive the old man in the ochre robe, the prophetic figure who should have warned her that she and Jeremiah were in danger. By his abandonment, he had betrayed her. If he had warned her, she would have fled, taking Jeremiah to a place where Roger could not find him. Every atrocity that had occurred since then—every abomination that Jeremiah and the Land had suffered, every crime that she herself had committed—would have been forestalled.

With each step, the pain in her knee increased. Her burned cheek seeped fluids. The nausea of Esmer’s presence galled her. She had to be stronger than this. Because she was needed, she used her Staff to soothe her stomach, relieve the burn on her cheek, seal her cracked kneecap. Then she forgot her own condition in order to focus on Liand.

He hung limp in Stonemage’s arms. Blood still pulsed from the corner of his mouth: a dwindling stream. His impact with Jeremiah’s construct may have broken his back. Certainly he had shattered ribs, ruptured his pleural membrane—and perhaps his lungs. And his head had hit the wall hard. Linden imagined cerebral hemorrhage and edema in addition to his other traumas. Brain damage. Coma.

“Liand.” Pahni murmured his name over and over again, beseeching him to live. “Liand.”

Stonemage offered to set him down. Linden shook her head. If any residue of the slain skest touched him—

I wish I could spare you.

Her anger at herself she misdirected at the Ardent. “Give him his Sunstone. It doesn’t belong to you.”

With orcrest, Liand had become the first true Stonedownor in uncounted centuries. The Sunstone was his birthright.

“In all sooth,” the fat Insequent murmured, “it does not.” He sounded chastened; shamed. “Gladly I restore it.”

Strips of his apparel stretched out. Deft as fingers, they slipped the Sunstone into the pouch at Liand’s waist.

As the ribbands withdrew, Linden dismissed the Ardent from her mind. Studying her stricken friend, she felt beaten before she began. He was too badly hurt—and she was utterly drained. Even the Staff could not fill the dry reservoirs of her spirit.