She expected him to plead for an explanation; a justification. Hell, she half expected him to castigate her. He and everyone else had earned that right. But he did not.

Instead he asked, hoarse with empathy, “Will you not heal him?” Helplessly he indicated Covenant. “Linden, the pain of his incarnation wracks him. He cannot contain the greatness of his spirit. There is also an illness which I do not comprehend, though it appears paltry by the measure of his rent mind.

“The Staff of Law lies there.” Liand pointed at the shaft of wood, iron-shod and ebony and runed. “Will you not grant him the benison of its flame? He has suffered beyond my power to imagine it.” His tone held no accusation. “Will you not ease his plight?”

Linden shook her head. She was too full of dismay to falter. And the first shock of horror had passed. She was beginning to regain her ability to consider what she did.

“Don’t you think,” she asked Liand precisely, “that I’ve done enough harm already?”

Covenant was not warded by any power which might repulse her touch. But she could not affect the state of his mind—his spirit—without entering into him with her health-sense. Without possessing him. Long ago, she had done such things: she knew now that they were violations as profound as any rape. In addition, she could not foresee the effects of any change that she might make in Covenant’s truncated transcendence. Years of experience had taught her that any sentience which did not heal itself might be forever flawed. And on this subject, the Ranyhyn had warned her clearly enough. They had shown her the likely outcome if she imposed her will on Covenant. Or on Jeremiah.

Some evils could not be twisted to serve any purpose but their own. Manipulating Covenant’s condition for her own benefit would make her no better than the vile succubus that feasted on Jeremiah’s neck. Perhaps some obdurate instinct for salvation would enable Covenant to find his way through the maze of his fissured consciousness. Linden would not.

Liand winced at her answer: at the words themselves, or at their acrid sound in the lush night. Pahni stifled a whimper against his shoulder. Mahrtiir’s fierce silence conveyed the impression that he was mustering arguments to persuade her.

But Linden moved past them as though she had been indurated to any simple or direct form of compassion. She made no effort to retrieve her Staff or Covenant’s ring. Jeremiah’s ruined toy in her pocket was enough for her: the bullet hole and the small tears in her shirt were enough. Ignoring the grim enmity of the Humbled, she went to confront Infelice.

Now that the crisis of Linden’s powers had passed, the echo of wild magic from Loric’s krill did not outshine the Elohim’s refulgence. Infelice stood before Linden like a cynosure of loveliness and aghast hauteur. Wreathed about her limbs, her bedizened garment resembled weeping woven of gemstones and recrimination.