While the Elohim spoke, Linden’s friends came to stand at her back, leaving only Bhapa to watch over Covenant with the Humbled; but neither she nor Infelice regarded them.

“Without difficulty, the Creator could doubtless have placed as many earths and heavens as he desired within the Arch of Time. But he could not conceive a living world that did not contain the means of its own death.”

Abruptly Infelice looked toward the Harrow; and her wrath mounted. “There this flagrant Insequent reveals the folly of his greed. With Earthpower and wild magic, he imagines that he will be empowered to unmake the Worm, thereby ensuring the continuance of the Earth. But the unmaking of the Worm will unmake all life. Such power cannot be countered without unleashing absolute havoc. While the Earth endures, the Worm is needful. The Harrow dreams of glory, but he will accomplish only extinction.”

Now the Harrow laughed outright, rich and deep, and entirely devoid of mirth. “You mistake me, Elohim,” he replied. “Such has been your custom toward the Insequent for many an age. I am not your Wildwielder, steeped in ignorance and mislove. I have other desires, intentions which will transcend your self-regard.”

Linden had no interest in the hostility between the Insequent and the Elohim: it was of no use to her. Before she could intervene, however, Stave raised his voice to ask Infelice, “How, then, does it chance that the Elohim do not know death? Why have you been spared the hope and doom of all other life? I discern no merit in you to sanction your freedom from mortality.”

“Puerile wight!” Infelice snapped at once. “Do you dare? The Elohim do not suffer affront from such as you.”

Yet a glance at Linden caused Infelice to quell the chiming swirl of her wrath. Apparently Linden held a kind of sway over the suzerain Elohim; an influence or import which Linden did not understand.

With elaborate restraint, Infelice explained, “The Elohim do not participate in death because our purpose is deathless. We neither multiply nor change nor die because we were created to be the stewards of the Worm.

“Betimes we have intervened in perils which endanger life upon or within the Earth, but that is not our chief end. Rather our Würd requires of us that we preserve the Worm’s slumber. Understand, Wildwielder, that we have no virtu to impose sleep. Instead it is our task to pacify and soothe. Thus by our very nature we serve all lesser manifestations of life.

“When we have countered wrongs such as the skurj, or the decimation of the One Forest, we have done so that the Worm may not be made restive by harm. And when we have permitted powers such as Forestals, or the Colossus of the Fall, to be fashioned from our essence, we have done so to refresh the corresponding vitality of the One Tree, that we may be left in peace.” More and more as she spoke, her words seemed to weave the arching trees and the deep night and the light of the krill into an elegy, delicate as silver bells, and rich with grief. “Our purpose is peace, the means and outcome of our self-contemplation. The Forestals—and others—are our surrogates, just as we are the Creator’s surrogates. They serve as the Creator’s hold and bastion in our stead, preserving life which strives and dies while we preserve the Earth.”