Screaming like Elena, Linden finally hurled black Earthpower against the Elohim. But she was too late. Anele shed her fire like water as he slapped his hands to the sides of Liand’s head.

Compelled by Kastenessen’s strength, the old man filled Liand’s fragile skull with lava. In a spray of blood and bone and tissues, Liand’s head was torn apart.

Then Stormpast Galesend hurtled forward. She slammed into Anele; wrapped her arms around the old man’s incinerating force; carried him past Liand and Jeremiah, Galt and the croyel. Ignoring the murderous heat in her clasp, the instantaneous burn like a furnace-blast, she somehow remembered to roll as she fell so that Anele’s flesh lost contact with the ground.

In the instant before Galesend hit him, however, Anele contrived to catch the orcrest as it dropped from Liand’s dead fingers. Linden saw the old man clearly. Kastenessen was trying to destroy the Sunstone—

—until Galesend snatched Anele off the dirt.

When Galesend landed on her back in a welter of stones and snarled pain, Kastenessen’s power vanished. The orcrest went dark. Night seemed to crash down onto the ridge like the sealing of a sepulcher despite the hungry throb of the krill’s gem and the swelling rapacity of the caesures.

Galt remained as rigid as a carving in the Hall of Gifts. Jeremiah stood like an empty husk while the croyel gibbered and spat on his back. Gushing blood, Liand slumped to his knees; leaned forward until he rested like an act of contrition against Jeremiah’s legs.

When your deeds have come to doom—

Unconscious in Galesend’s arms, Anele still gripped the inert Sunstone as though his life depended on it.

—remember that he is the hope of the Land.

The impending Falls were all that kept Linden from wailing like a maimed child.

Chapter 4. - Attempts Must Be Made

4.

Attempts Must Be Made

Storms of time and anguish filled the night. Somewhere turiya Raver imposed purpose on Joan’s weakness by sheer brutality; compelled her to direct her blasts. Moments after Linden quenched the nearest caesure, a fourth made madness of the stream at the foot of the canyon, spun the sand where she and her companions had eaten and slept into a migraine tornado. A fifth nearly claimed Branl as he sprinted toward the company. He saved himself only by diving headlong down a bouldered slope. A sixth found the ridge a stone’s throw to the east and staggered closer.

After that, there were no more. The Raver must have exhausted Joan. Still five fierce instances of chaos converged on Jeremiah—or on the krill. Linden could not answer them all. Other storms raged through her, leaving her concentration in shreds.

Liand.