Yet she was not likely to survive. She and Covenant and everyone with them were about to die.

He saw no great harm in his own demise. Linden esteemed him too highly. But the others—For reasons that he could no longer recall, Linden and Jeremiah were essential to the Land. Dire futures hinged on Liand and Anele. Manethrall Mahrtiir and his Cords were needed desperately. There was no hope without Stave and the Masters and the Giants. And Covenant did not discount the Ardent, who alone knew how to rescue the company. Nor did he dismiss the Demondim-spawn, who still yearned to relieve their instinctive self-disgust.

Everyone who had come so far in Linden’s name, or in the Land’s, had a part to play. Even Esmer might find within himself the will to become his father’s son rather than Kastenessen’s minion. Even Covenant—

He would have given much to believe the same of Roger. But Roger was his mother’s son, not his father’s; and Joan had chosen the path of her doom long ago. Like Elena, she could no longer escape what she had made of herself, except through extinction.

Covenant had been removed from the Arch of Time. His responsibility for it had been taken from him. But Joan and Roger remained. They were his burdens to bear.

Therefore he, too, needed to live.

She Who Must Not Be Named had no intention of letting any of Her victims survive. Doubtless Esmer would avoid Her hungers. The croyel would certainly try to do so, taking Jeremiah with it. And the ur-viles and Waynhim might be able to evade destruction. But everyone else—

Through Esmer’s treachery, they also had become Covenant’s burdens. And Covenant loved Linden. In different ways, he loved all of her friends and companions: even the Masters, who had misled themselves to the brink of the Land’s annihilation. There was no one else who could save them.

Yet he remained lost.

As he examined his circumstances, however, he began to imagine that he was not altogether impotent. Almost by definition, betrayals had flaws. Esmer’s were no different.

The Humbled had caused Covenant to swallow vitrim; and that musty liquid was an unnatural approximation of hurtloam. It provided a partial mimicry of hurtloam’s sovereign healing.

When he had been offered hurtloam in Andelain, he had refused it. He had insisted on numbness and leprosy. It doesn’t just make me who I am. It makes me who I can be.

Now the dour taste and energy of vitrim galvanized his desire to be himself: a leper and pariah who knew better than to heed Despite. Because it was an artificial elixir, it could not bring new life to his nerves. But it made him stronger—

And there was another flaw as well.