Linden felt Roger’s power gather like the force of a volcano. She tasted Anele’s urgency and the croyel’s terror. As if Galt’s hand were etched in the air, she saw their tension on the haft of the krill. Around her, the Giants wheeled for a final effort. At the same time, the Demondim-spawn rushed to form a fighting wedge with their loremaster at its tip. But she could not help them. Everything was happening too quickly. Esmer and manacles. Ur-viles, Waynhim, Anele.—the hope of the Land. Jeremiah passive as a puppet. The massed throng of Cavewights. Roger Covenant.

The krill’s gem began to blaze as Joan poured wild magic through it. In another moment, the blade would grow hot enough to sear Galt’s skin. Joan—or turiya Raver—wanted him to drop the dagger; wanted the croyel set loose.

Linden needed enough sheer force to counter every attack simultaneously, and she did not know how to find it in herself.

She heard combat rage around her; felt the wedge of ur-viles and Waynhim summon their lore in a killing gout of vitriol; sensed Roger’s desperation to attack through too many intervening bodies. But she did not see the hurled axe spinning across the sunlight toward Anele.

Galt saw it. And he was Haruchai: he had time to consider the axe, the press of Cavewights, the company’s vulnerability. He had time to regard the distrusted old man and choose.

Instead of pulling Jeremiah and the croyel to either side—and instead of killing the monster so that he could fight for his companions with Loric’s krill—he spun in place. As swift as thought, he turned his back to the axe without taking Jeremiah beyond Anele’s reach.

Almost that quickly, Anele sprang in front of the boy.

The axe was flint, heavy as a bludgeon. Its jagged blade bit deep into Galt’s back between his shoulder-blades, deep enough to slice through the intransigent rectitude of his heart. Blood and life gushed from the wound, taking with them every pulse of determination. As his dead fingers uncurled, the krill rolled out of his grasp and fell. Then he folded to the ground as though all of his joints had been severed.

For an instant—no more than an instant—the croyel was free.

But its escape came too late; or it had misjudged its opportunity. It still clung to Jeremiah. Rather than flinging itself aside, it pounced at his neck with its fangs, seeking the nameless magicks hidden within him.

Too late. Too slow.

Anele had already pressed his hands and the Sunstone to the sides of Jeremiah’s head. Now he poured his birthright into the boy, using orcrest to channel his long-preserved inheritance into Jeremiah’s vacancy.

As he did so, the orcrest fell to powder in his grasp. It could not endure the forces streaming from it and through it.

Nevertheless it served its purpose.