As the new lake mounted, however, the thunder changed. Water pounding onto itself rather than on stone softened the edges of the roar. Dimly Linden heard the Ironhand’s voice.

“The skurj perish! They perish, although the bane does not! But these waters have found the descent to the Lost Deep! They rise more slowly now!”

Coldspray added something about time and Esmer that Linden did not understand. The Ardent appeared to argue with other Insequent who were beyond hearing. Both Liand and Stave shouted pleas or warnings at Linden. But inflicted imaginary beetles had crept into her ears again. She could not distinguish individual words from the adumbration of ancient torrents.

If the rate of the flood’s accumulation had indeed slowed, that small reprieve was insignificant. It made no difference.

Through the bite of bitter spray, Linden thought that she saw a few submerged fires fail and die. But she was sure of nothing. Crawling things fed on her; took her life in small nips and stings. Thunder and failure became lassitude. Her parents spoke more loudly than any of her friends. In the bane’s voices, they assured her of despair.

Like them, she deserved her end. She had earned it with woe and wrongs and weakness.

No one had the right to make Jeremiah suffer. No one except Thomas Covenant could hope to save the Land. But there was nothing left that she could do for them.

She was not even surprised when the whole surface of the surging flood burst into flame.

Mere water could not harm She Who Must Not Be Named. The ancient poisons which fouled the torrents appeared to nourish Her. Now She had found Her own answer to the inrush of ages.

Below the precarious ledge, boiling currents and chaos were lashed with conflagration as though they had been transmogrified into oil. Waters crashing against stalagmites and walls flung spouts of fire at the wracked ceiling.

Voices cried for Linden, but they conveyed nothing. Weary and tormented beyond bearing, she surrendered at last to the paralysis from which she had fled throughout her life: the helplessness which had permitted Covenant’s murder ten years ago, and had left her at the mercy of turiya Raver: the ineluctable doom of her parents.

Carrion.

As the bane arose from the waters halfway between the company and the end of the cavern, Linden fell to her knees. Deep inside her, something fundamental succumbed.

Chapter 12. - She Who Must Not

12.

She Who Must Not

Like a ghost, Thomas Covenant occupied discrete realities simultaneously, and had no effect on any of them.