Nevertheless he knew everything that happened around him. He saw and heard and felt: he cared so much that the straits of his companions rent him. Above all, uselessly, he understood Linden’s protracted ordeal. He regarded the effect of finding her son, and of being unable to free the boy from the croyel. He saw the hopelessness of her decision to flee the Lost Deep. When she had found the strength to treat his hands, his pride in her had been as poignant as yearning. During her fall from the Hazard, the futility of his desire to leap after her had filled him with anguish. With the ineffable discernment of a spectre, he had witnessed the consequences of her plunge toward agony. The despair that had crawled and fed on her failing sanity, he had experienced as though it should have been his.

Still she had continued to struggle and strive. When the thews of her resolve, of her essential self, had parted at last, his most acute reaction had been relief for her. Later, if she lived, she would think the worst of herself. For the moment, however, she had found a small escape from pain.

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—