Peering through a blur of weakness, she saw the black shapes of ur-viles and the grey forms of Waynhim moving among her companions. Dimly through the reek of spilled guts and gore, she caught the dank scent of vitrim. The Demondim-spawn were still trying to help. Their musty drink appeared to be all that kept some of the Giants and Mahrtiir alive. As far as she could tell, however, vitrim did nothing for Anele, although he did not refuse it. And Esmer laughed at it softly, without scorn, as if he had passed beyond the reach of any sustenance.

That the ur-viles and Waynhim offered kindness to Esmer confounded Linden. In a distant age, they had forged their manacles, foreseeing this day. Ever since she had first encountered them, the Demondim-spawn had come to her aid whenever Esmer had posed a threat. Yet now they showed him compassion?

For centuries or millennia, they had been among the most feared of the Despiser’s servants—

Closing her fingers on the warm wood of her Staff, she tried again to rise.

The bright silver of Caerroil Wildwood’s runes had vanished. They were inert again, as inarticulate as sigils. But the shaft retained the stark blackness of her fire. She could not imagine that any blaze would ever burn it clean. Still it was the Staff of Law, an instrument of Earthpower and health. When she asked it for a little strength, it replied with its familiar gifts.

Trembling, she braced herself on ambiguous commandments until she gained her feet.

Everywhere she looked, the ground had been desecrated by blood and offal, mangled limbs and bodies. Weapons and shattered armor littered the ridge. In the vicinity of the battle, the friable gypsum had been fouled until only a few random patches of whiteness remained to punctuate the carnage.

Above her, the voiceless sky seemed to retain echoes like memories of screaming and slaughter.

For a moment or two, she thought that she ought to cleanse the ridge. That should have been her next responsibility. A pyre for the dead: some form of sanctification for the betrayed hills. But then she sensed Thomas Covenant striding fiercely from the south as if he meant to deliver a burden of wrath and repudiation. At the same time, she felt Anele slip closer to his life’s last precipice. When he fell, others would follow him soon—and they, too, were her friends. Like Liand, they had given her more than she had ever given them.

Squaring her shoulders against the recrimination of the dead, Linden Avery left the cairn to resume the pretense that she was a healer.