She needed to weep. If she did not, she would go mad with fury. The former granite of her heart had broken in Andelain, when she had seen and understood the outcome of Covenant’s reincarnation. The clenched igneous amalgam of extravagance and restraint which had carried her from the Land’s past to her meeting with the Dead was changed. It had become something uncontainable and careless. If it claimed her now, she would indeed be compelled by rage, and contemptuous of consequence.

But she was a surgeon, trained for emergencies; and her training ran deep. She could not refuse to treat the patient in front of her. Even if Liand had not been who he was—

“Why him?” Ire made her voice shake. “I was here. The Harrow was here. Covenant and Stave were already coming.” They must have been. Otherwise they would not have arrived in time to save her. “But that monster ignored us. It only hurt Liand.”

No one answered her. She did not expect an answer. Nevertheless she needed the question. It might help her regain a measure of her professional detachment, the ability to look at wounds as problems to be solved rather than as accusations.

There had to be a reason. No doubt the croyel had seen that she was powerless. And it had proven itself a match for the Harrow. But still—Liand was only Liand. And orcrest was only orcrest, a small thing compared to white gold and the Staff of Law. Facing such powers in the Harrow’s hands, why had the creature bothered to strike at Liand?

Why had it feared him?

Over and over again, he had demonstrated that he could use his Sunstone to counter the effects of Kevin’s Dirt. It had some kind of virtue against wrongness: a potential for spiritual restoration that she did not know how to gauge or define.

Covenant was right. If the croyel wanted Liand dead, Linden had to save him. He would be needed. Somehow.

If that thought did not count as detachment or clarity, it sufficed nonetheless. Will you waste the remnants of your life thus—? No. She would not.

Lifting flame into the air, she swept away the caustic fumes of corroded stone and burned flesh. Then she stepped closer to Stonemage and enveloped Liand in fire. Carefully, fearfully, she reached into him with her senses, seeking to identify the nature and scale of his wounds.

“Madness,” Esmer repeated. His exasperation sounded like a growl of distant thunder. “Delay hastens your deaths, yet you linger as though you conceive yourselves equal to every bane and betrayal. Does the Stonedownor’s life merit your destruction?”

“Mere-son—” began the Ironhand, warning him again.