Tentatively she began to look outward again.

Now she heard Grueburn’s exhausted breathing rattle in her chest; felt Grueburn’s muscles quiver. Ahead of them, the Ironhand ascended, steady as granite, holding Jeremiah and the croyel and the krill; but her steps had slowed to a grim plod. Between Rime Coldspray and Onyx Stonemage—between the krill’s gem and Liand’s orcrest—Cirrus Kindwind floundered like a woman who had never fully recovered from her maiming. She seemed to batter her way along, lurching from wall to wall to thrust herself and Covenant higher.

The surface underfoot might not have supported the Giants at all if the shale and scree and dirt had not been damp, clotted by moisture oozing incessantly down the crevice.

Yet Esmer strode easily at Kindwind’s back. The slope seemed to require nothing from him. Stave kept pace with Grueburn as if he were impervious to fatigue. Around Kindwind and Covenant, the Humbled moved like men who could not be daunted.

Behind Linden, the other Swordmainnir followed in succession: Stormpast Galesend cradling Anele, Cabledarm holding Pahni, Halewhole Bluntfist with Bhapa, Latebirth with Mahrtiir. Then came the ur-viles in a dark surge, ravaged and scrambling. Above them, the Ardent rose between the walls. Too weary to walk, he wedged his way upward with his ribbands.

In the distance, She Who Must Not Be Named raved and glowered. The mad roil of faces followed without haste, as slow as a rising tide, and as inexorable. The evil that had consumed Diassomer Mininderain and Emereau Vrai and countless others was certain of its prey.

The bane’s unhurried stalking seemed to imply that the company was trapped; that the Waynhim were leading Linden and her companions into a cul-de-sac. Linden wanted to believe that the grey creatures knew what they were doing. They are not without cunning. But she did not know how to reassure herself.

She had been passive too long; had allowed herself to feel too badly beaten. Now she needed to become something more than just another victim. Attempts must be made, even when there can be no hope. Transformations were possible. It was time.

Risking maggots and worms, Linden reached out with Earthpower; spread her fire up and down the crevice until it touched all of the Giants. As fully as possible under the bane’s bale, and without endangering the ur-viles, she shared the Land’s essential bounty with women who struggled to surpass themselves so that she and Covenant and Jeremiah and the Earth might not perish.

The croyel’s abhorrence and Jeremiah’s vacancy impeded her, but she did not let them stop her. When vile things resumed their avid feast inside her clothes, she strove to ignore them, at least for a few moments. They were not real. They were only a disturbance in her mind, or in her soul: a spiritual disease. Gritting her teeth, she refused to heed them.