After a moment, she murmured like the low voice of the stream, “Escape has a price. I learned that a long time ago. There’s always a price. Getting out of the Lost Deep”—she did not want to remember the bane—“was hard, and I think we’re still paying for it. Maybe that’s why everything looks so murky right now. We haven’t finished paying.”

“Chosen,” replied Stave quietly, as if her title were a commentary on what she had said.

Linden gave him a chance to say more. When he did not, she resumed.

“You told me that Covenant convinced Esmer to leave. But you didn’t tell me how he did it.” By cunning and desperation—“Or how he had time. The last thing I remember”—she clenched herself against nightmares—“we were all about to die.”

Stave’s tone became harder as he answered, “The Unbeliever’s efforts were made possible by Anele.”

Linden turned her head to study the former Master. Anele—?

“First,” Stave explained, “the Unbeliever endeavored to sway the bane directly. Then he sought aid from the old man. Perhaps because Anele stood upon stone, or perhaps because our peril clarified his madness, he met the Unbeliever’s appeal by claiming the sunstone. Then he reached out to his parents among the Dead. In response, Sunder Graveler and Hollian eh-Brand appeared before us as the bane prepared to strike. At once, however, they withdrew. In their stead, the spectre of High Lord Elena came or was compelled to our succor.

“Such was her anguish, Chosen, that she drew the heed of the bane. While the bane sought to consume her, the Unbeliever gained an opportunity to dissuade Esmer from our immediate ruin.”

Within herself, Linden staggered. Anele did that? He did that? At Covenant’s urging? How had the old man managed it? And how had Covenant known that Anele was capable of such things?

At least now she knew why she had encountered Elena in her nightmares. God in Heaven! Covenant had sacrificed his own daughter. Indirectly, perhaps: he may not have foreseen exactly what Anele would do, or what the outcome might be. Nevertheless—

But Linden could hardly blame him. In Andelain among the Dead, she had refused Elena’s tormented shade any form of absolution. Inadvertently she had ensured that Elena’s spirit would be the precise sustenance that the bane craved most.

Linden was as much responsible as Covenant—or as Anele and his parents—for the lost High Lord’s terrible doom.

Profoundly shaken, she could not find words for the questions which followed from what Stave had told her. And in his own fashion, he was surely aware of her distress. Nevertheless his voice did not soften as he added, “The arguments by which the ur-Lord banished Esmer ensured that Cail’s son will strike again.”