But neither Cail’s son nor the approaching bane had brought Linden back from her immersion in Liand’s wounds. She had been retrieved by the croyel’s mockery—and by Covenant’s response.

I belong to the Despiser.

Esmer could wait. And the loremaster did not interrupt its efforts to preserve Covenant’s hands. They, too, could wait a little longer.

More than anything else at that moment, Linden wanted to ensure that she would never hear Jeremiah’s tormentor speak again.

I even learned to enjoy it.

Covenant had said, Even the Elohim don’t know how to kill one of the croyel without killing its host; but Linden intended to discover the truth for herself.

Uncoiling flames like the thongs of a scourge, she extended her power to quench the croyel’s life.

Covenant’s strangled protest she ignored. Law and Earthpower had renewed some of her percipience, in spite of her proximity to the source of Kevin’s Dirt. If indeed the monster could not be slain without killing Jeremiah as well, she would be able to discern their symbiosis before she unleashed her full force.

Facing the creature’s fright, the loose features of her son, Galt’s stoic countenance, and the clear argence of the krill’s gem, Linden thrust her senses into the cesspit of the croyel’s yellow gaze—

—into a ravening as absolute as caesures or the Sunbane, but far more thetic—

—and found herself gazing outward through Jeremiah’s vacant eyes. With his disfocused sight, she saw her own stricken expression as she struggled to understand what had become of him.

If he had any thoughts of his own, she could not find them. His mind had become a bubbling moil of fright and malevolence: his possessor’s passions filled him completely. The voice of his own identity, if he still had one, was too small to be heard amid the clamor of the croyel’s yearning for escape and murder.

They have done this to my son!

In a brief blaze of thwarted love and chagrin, she flung flame like a howl at the ceiling. Covenant was right. The croyel was too deep inside him. It occupied Jeremiah’s trapped self too intimately to be disentangled: not while Kevin’s Dirt hampered her. If she tried to distinguish one life from the other, she would certainly destroy her son.

Sick with failure and bitterness, she felt that she was committing an act of cruelty as she turned away from Jeremiah.

Her companions stared at her as if she had stepped back from the precipice of another misjudgment as fatal as Covenant’s resurrection. Liand tried to say her name. And Covenant sighed, “Linden.” His tone was laden with mourning. “I’m so sorry. I tried to warn you.”