Coldspray carried Anele with her teeth set and defiance in her gait, daring the old man to become too heavy for her. A few paces ahead of her, Jeremiah trudged upward, Galt’s hand on his shoulder and the croyel’s cruelty on his back. The boy’s steps were as unsteady as Covenant’s, but Jeremiah gave no sign of flagging. As long as the creature dreamed of rescue, its host could probably out-walk everyone except the Haruchai.

A gradual descent. Another rise. Twisted by the shape of the hills, bursts of dust as transient as wraiths skirled around the legs of the company. Here and there, stubborn granite and weary bits of sandstone protruded through their cloaks of dirt, grit, and shale.

“Soon,” Coldspray panted through her teeth. “Soon.” But no one responded.

Whenever Covenant shambled into a stretch of shade, gloom thickened around him as if his eyes were failing. Courage, he thought. Clear sight. Ha! Such things were figments: he could no longer recall them. Yet he did not allow himself to fall behind Stave. Linden needed him. Or she would need him eventually. Or she would need her Staff. Weakness was only weakness, after all: he remembered that. It was as human as thirst, and as compulsory. But it was nothing more. Like pain, it could be endured.

If he did not intend to endure, why was he here at all?

There may have been more climbing, more descents. He had lost track. Voices carried along the eddying breeze like the distant cries of ghosts. Then he found himself standing in a gap like a rounded trough between hills pale with age. Through a smear of dehydration, he gazed down at the stream.

Under the wide sky and the sunlight, it looked like chrism.

A short way below him, the current hastened around a curve in a small canyon, muttering irritably against the rock wall on its far side. Here the watercourse was little more than a ravine, but wide enough to leave a swath of ground like a shore within the stream’s curve. Where the trough leaned down to the water, opening its arms as though to embrace the current, lay a wide expanse of sand interrupted by weather-softened boulders.

Impelled by the pressure of the sun, Covenant descended as if he were falling.

Stave and Linden were ahead of him. Coldspray and Anele. Galt with Jeremiah. Mahrtiir. Two other Giants. At a word from the Manethrall, Liand scrambled down the hillside, abandoning for the moment his watch on the south. But Covenant regarded none of them. Stiff-kneed and ungainly, he dropped Linden’s Staff on the sand, stumbled to the water’s edge, and lurched into the stream as if his legs had eroded under him.

How had he been reduced to this? How much of himself had he lost?

Golden boy with feet of clay