Briefly—too briefly—she bathed each of the Swordmainnir in light and flame, washing some of the fatigue from their muscles, cleaning some of the gall from their sore hearts. While she was still able to resist the noxious biting of centipedes and spiders, she extended a small touch of renewal toward the Ardent: a gift which he accepted with fearful eagerness.

Then she heard herself whimpering again, and her self-command crumbled. Frantically she turned her fire against beetles and worms and pinchers which did not exist.

Bit by bit, she was being driven closer to Joan’s madness. Her Staff was losing its effectiveness—or she was losing her ability to wield it. Transformations were impossible. Soon she would be crept upon and stung beyond endurance, pushed past the point of sanity. Eventually she might begin to crave the bane’s cruel embrace.

But not yet. God, please. Not yet.

Then she heard Liand’s voice echo down the fault. “Here the ascent ends! The walls open! Beyond them our passage appears less effortful!”

A rustle of tightened resolve scattered along the crevice. “And not before time,” gasped Cabledarm or Latebirth. “Stone and Sea! Am I not a Giant? Aye, and also a fool. I had credited myself with greater hardiness.”

“Fool indeed,” someone else responded hoarsely. “Have you numbered the days during which we have run for Longwrath’s life, or for our own? Truly, it appears that we have persisted in this exertion for an age of the Earth.”

Hang on, Linden told herself as if she were trying to encourage a cowed child. Hang on.

Somewhere above her, the light of Liand’s Sunstone vanished.

“It is a cavern”—the Ardent’s voice was a frayed groan—“immense, damp, and cluttered. I discern naught else.”

“Aye,” Kindwind answered, struggling for breath. “Immense. Damp. Cluttered. A pool, long stagnant.” She may have said more; but her voice was cut off as she left the crevice.

Linden writhed against the intrusion of spiders, the intimacy of centipedes. She Who Must Not Be Named rose like floodwaters.

“Linden Giantfriend is beset!” Frostheart Grueburn announced between fervid gulps of air. “I descry no ill, yet she suffers.”

“Mayhap,” suggested Stave stolidly, “it is an effect of the bane. I also perceive no bodily hurt, though her distress is plain. It is my thought that the strengths which have enabled her to exceed us time and again are also a weakness. Her discernment exposes her to the bane’s evil.”

Linden tightened her grip on herself. Involuntarily she tried to twist away from heinous things that scurried and nipped. Stave was mistaken. She had never exceeded her companions. She was weak because she was wrong. She belonged among the bane’s excruciated fodder. Each spider and insect and worm was an accusation. Good cannot be accomplished by evil means. She felt like carrion because she had committed Desecrations.