Frostheart Grueburn, Latebirth, and Halewhole Bluntfist had already fastened their cataphracts around them, loosened their longswords in their scabbards. Now Bluntfist lifted Anele’s unresisting form out of Stormpast Galesend’s breastplate.

The old man did not react. He seemed oblivious to the activity around him. His thoughts remained fixed on something that no one else could see: the dilemma of his personal contradiction, Must and Cannot in unrelieved succession.

Soon Galesend was ready to reclaim Anele. The rest of the Giants had secured their armor and shouldered their bundles of supplies. Unasked, Galt turned Jeremiah and the croyel, and began to impel them carefully up the hillsides toward the gypsum ridge. Cirrus Kindwind offered to carry Covenant, but Manethrall Mahrtiir stopped her. “Other attempts have failed,” he explained. “Mayhap the exertion of walking will reassert the claims of his flesh upon his mind.”

Then he instructed his Cords to take Covenant’s arms, raise him to his feet, and support him on his way. In spite of their weariness, they obeyed at once. Pahni’s dull stare conveyed the impression that she was too numb to care what she did.

Acquiescing with a shrug, Kindwind joined her fellow Swordmainnir. Shortly Linden and all of her companions were in motion, repeating their angled ascent to the place where Liand had perished.

Her friends intended to make her decisions for her—but only until she felt able to become the Chosen again: the woman in whom they elected to believe. They did not understand that Liand’s death, and the state of Jeremiah’s mind, and the bane’s screaming power had taught her the truth about herself. At her heart, she was carrion. Food for maggots and vultures. She was done with choosing.

She had no other defense against the Despiser’s machinations.

Chapter 5. - Inheritances

5.

Inheritances

Carrying her Staff and Covenant’s ring and Jeremiah’s healed toy as if they were empty of import, Linden climbed the slopes with Stave and Mahrtiir like a woman ascending Gallows Howe.

The hills seemed high to her now; more difficult than she remembered. A kind of moral weakness dragged at her muscles. She did not want to see Liand’s cairn—and could not refuse. Like the company’s circumstances, the outcome of her efforts to save her son called for more courage than she could imagine.

Only Thomas Covenant had it in him to meet the challenge of doom and death: she believed that. Only his instinct for incalculable victories—But she did not know how to reach him.

She wanted to turn and simply walk away forever.—as she must—Unfortunately she had abdicated her right to choose. Her friends had promised to make her decisions for her. Looking at Liand’s monument was only the first of them. Obedient to her own surrender, she forced her way up the shale and grit of the hillsides until she reached the ridge.