As long as Liand did not fail.

Still quaking in the marrow of her bones, she accepted the burden of herself from Stave. The touch of the Staff’s runes continued to hurt her hands, but the burn was receding. Soon she would be able to find comfort in the clean wood again.

Around her, eight Giants loomed like menhirs against the nightscape. Liand stood poised at her side, gripping his orcrest, eager to talk to her; as eager as a man who had identified the import of his life. A few steps away, blind Mahrtiir appeared to watch over Covenant. The Humbled could not: Clyme and Branl remained on their chosen hillcrests, and Galt’s hands were full.

Behind Liand’s far shoulder, Pahni waited with sun-yellow and silver lights like fears in her wide eyes. A stride or two behind the other Swordmainnir, Galesend still bore Anele in her armor. The old man watched Linden and Liand, Jeremiah and the croyel, with his head jerking fearfully from side to side as if he had stumbled to the edge of an inner precipice. With one hand, he made plucking motions in Liand’s direction as though he wanted the Stonedownor’s attention.

Halfway between Anele and Mahrtiir, Bhapa fretted, unsure of his duty to men who could not see.

“Linden Giantfriend—” began Rime Coldspray. But she appeared to have no language for what she wanted to say, or to ask. Her strong jaws chewed emotions which defied expression.

“I was afraid of this,” Covenant muttered. “Linden, I’m so sorry. Sometimes we just have to—”

He did not complete the thought. Like Jeremiah, he sank into silence as if it were a grave.

Quietly intense, Liand said, “Linden, I grieve for you, and for your son. Yet there is an admixture of eagerness in my sorrow, though it is selfish to feel thus. While the boy remains among us, hope also remains.

“And I have not yet tested my strength.”

His Sunstone glowed like a promise. He was the first true Stonedownor for millennia. There was no one like him in the Land.

Linden wanted to cry out, Don’t talk about it! Don’t explain it! Just do it! My God, he’s buried alive in there!

But she stifled her demand. Like her, other people needed to make their own decisions. Liand would do what he could. Somehow she contained herself while he sought words for his excitement.

“In Revelstone,” he said, almost whispering, “you spoke of orcrest. I had learned that it gives light at need, and has the virtue to find wholeness among the fragments of Anele’s thoughts. To this, you added other knowledge, lore which has proven its worth. And you spoke—”