Joan’s attacks were Linden’s doing: she knew that. She had announced her location. But the effort of turning her back on Jeremiah and Liand surpassed her.

She had to do it. If Liand failed now—If he failed because of her—

Shaking with strain, she lifted ebon flame to meet savagery and madness.

—when somebody uses white gold.

Nearly in tears, she faced the Fall squirming toward her from Clyme’s hilltop. It was closer. Again she tried to believe that she could do this. She had quashed other caesures by affirming the structures of Law and the passion of Earthpower. She could do the same here. Surely she could do the same here?

But Liand was reaching out to touch Jeremiah’s forehead with his Sunstone; and there were no ur-viles or Waynhim nearby to help Linden transcend herself.

The crash of the third caesure would have sent her sprawling if Stave had not caught her. It struck the ridge directly behind her. In the midst of the company.

While alarms squalled in her nerves, Stave spun her to confront the assault.

Virulent sickness nearly undid her. The caesure was not large: not by the measure of other evils which she had encountered. But it boiled and twisted right where—

God in Heaven!

—right where Covenant and Mahrtiir and several of the Giants had been standing.

In the first rush of panic, Linden could not count her companions. She did not know whether any of them had been taken. The Fall was no more than ten steps from Liand and Jeremiah.

Then her heart hammered once; and she saw Covenant plunge down the side of the ridge wrapped in Mahrtiir’s arms. Grueburn snatched Pahni aside. On all sides, Swordmainnir sprang out of the caesure’s path.

Frantic with haste, Stormpast Galesend staggered backward—

—and tripped—

—spilling Anele out of her armor.

With the second thud of her heart, Linden became flame.

God, she hated caesures!

She knew this evil; knew it in every nerve and sinew of her being. She had experienced it too often. She needed only percipience and dread to focus Earthpower on the complex distortions shredding Time’s necessary Law. If she had been stronger, or better, or clearer, she might have been able to reach straight through the Fall into Joan’s excoriated heart. But she did not require that much force to counter the storm itself. While she believed in the commandments of linear cause and inevitable effect, she could stitch them together as she had once sewn a patch of her shirt onto the Mahdoubt’s gown.

Watched by the abandoned stars, she flung black fire into the caesure and began its unmaking.