As Galt started upward, picking a careful path in the darkness, Stave said quietly, “Chosen, there remains one matter of which you have not been apprised.” Then he paused.

Concentrating on the uncertainties of the slope, Linden asked, “Yes?” to prompt him.

“While you were absent within yourself,” he replied, “the Unbeliever sought aid for you from the Ardent. He desired your return, as did all who accompany you. But the Ardent professed himself unable to succor you.”

Again Stave paused. When he resumed, Linden heard hints of anger and apprehension in his tone.

“Here I must be exact, for I cannot interpret his words. To the Unbeliever, the Ardent answered, ‘The lady has gone beyond my ken. I perceive only that her need for death is great.’”

Instinctively Linden flinched.

“ ‘Or perchance,’” Stave continued, “ ‘the need is her son’s. But do I speak of her death, or of her son’s? Does her plight, or his, require the deaths of others? Such matters have become fluid. Every current alters them.’”

Without inflection, the former Master admitted, “I have scrupled to speak of this. If it is indeed sooth that your fate is now ‘writ in water,’ of what worth are further pronouncements? The import of the Ardent’s words may be vast or trivial. Unable to distinguish augury from emptiness, I thought to spare you added alarm.”

“But now?” Linden asked more sharply than she intended. Why tell me now?

“Now,” Stave answered, “I fear for you. Should you fail, the outcome will be heinous to you. And should you succeed”—he appeared to consider the night’s implications—“we cannot know what will emerge from the clutches of the croyel. In this matter, I now perceive that I resemble the Unbeliever. I seek both to assure you of my place at your side and to caution you against every form of peril.”

“All right,” Linden muttered. “Fine.” The ascent that Galt had selected was not difficult: she was breathing harder than necessary. “So the Ardent thinks that one of us needs death. Or deaths. Or we did. Or we will. So what? How is that a surprise? The Worm of the World’s End is coming. Everything is about death.”

Her father had killed himself in front of her. She had ended her mother’s life. For her, becoming a doctor had begun as an attempt to reject the legacy of her parents. If she turned her back on Jeremiah’s plight, she would have nothing left except warnings and doom.

Stave’s only response was a firm nod, as if his acceptance of her had become complete.

Now I fear for you. That scared Linden. Its mere simplicity made it more ominous. But in her former life, she had faced innumerable emergencies: she knew the dangers of panic. Since that time, she had fallen so far from herself that Linden Avery the physician no longer seemed to exist. Climbing the hillside with a clog of dread in her throat, however, she felt old reflexes return to life. Her sense of peril triggered responses so deeply trained that they were almost autonomic. Gradually calm settled into her nerves. Step by step, she shed her fears, and began to breathe more easily.