All right. Behind her, Liand and Pahni gained the spine of gypsum. Orcrest spread its forgiving light across Jeremiah’s slack form and scruffy cheeks. It humanized the silt that defined his gaze. Again Linden confirmed that Jeremiah’s racecar rested in her pocket, as ambiguous as runes. Then, gripping her Staff until her knuckles ached, she readied herself to examine the nature of the croyel’s hold over her son.

“Pay attention,” she murmured to no one in particular. “I don’t know what I’m getting into here. I’m going to try to make that thing let go. If I succeed, things might happen fast.” The croyel would seek another host, or defend itself in some other fashion. “And if I don’t, I might need help breaking away.”

Unexpectedly Jeremiah raised his head. Despite the emptiness of his eyes, he spoke with mordant sarcasm. “Do your worst.” Sarcasm or fright. “Or your best, if you think that’ll help. You can’t even read those runes. When it comes to power, you’re like a kid playing with bonfires. You’re too ignorant to do anything except kill your son. If that’s what you want.”

“Oh, stop,” Linden replied impatiently. “Have you forgotten the last time you tried to fight me? Have you already forgotten that you were terrified? You did your worst, and I’m still here.”

Unfurling cornflower fire like an oriflamme from her Staff, Linden Avery the Chosen cast herself into the core of Jeremiah’s enslaved mind.

Entering him was easier than she had imagined. The croyel could not ward against this specific manifestation of Earthpower and health-sense—or it did not wish to oppose her. And Jeremiah’s natural barriers were too weak to resist her. Between heartbeats, she found herself in a place like a graveyard at dusk, in twilight so dim and grainy that it might never have known full sunshine; a place littered with the poorly tended memorials of a fallen army.

Veiled in greyness as if a fine powder of midnight filled the air, the writhen mounds of graves sprawled in all directions as far as her senses could reach. At first, she did not understand them, or know where she was. The gloaming was pervasive and depthless, as if the failed light had no source. No stars shone overhead. The black sky was impermeable, as blank as the lid of a tomb. Nothing stirred the air, neither cold nor heat nor recognition. Nothing grew, or gave off scent, or implied life. Despite the wan illumination, there was nothing here except an innumerable clutter of graves: the buried remains of a multitude utterly decimated.

Bewildered and suddenly afraid, Linden extended the reach of her senses. She pushed hard against the flat vault of the heavens, thrust discernment down into the ground; strove to relieve the illimitable bereavement of the gloom.

By slow degrees, she began to see.