Because she needed to do so, she went first to Jeremiah. With one hand, she stroked his flaccid cheek, confirming that he remained lost inside himself. That fact hurt her. Nevertheless it was true that he had been released from the croyel. Freed—To that extent, at least, the promise of his mended racecar had been kept. Received Earthpower enriched him with vitality. He gave no sign that he could use his new strength. Yet the grisly sores of the monster’s feeding had already begun to heal themselves.

Briefly Linden hugged him. She had been too long denied the simple comfort of touching him. Then, while Covenant was still too far away to judge her, she turned to acknowledge the sufferings of her friends.

Among the Giants, only Rime Coldspray and Frostheart Grueburn met the rue in Linden’s eyes. Stormpast Galesend knelt with her hands clamped on Cabledarm’s thigh, trying to slow the bleeding. In spite of her injuries and maiming, Cirrus Kindwind pressed repeatedly on Onyx Stonemage’s chest as if she feared that Stonemage would stop breathing. Stonemage’s breastplate hampered her efforts; but Kindwind clearly did not have the strength to remove it. Laboriously, like a woman with fractured ribs, Latebirth struggled to tie a tourniquet above the spear in Grueburn’s upper leg. After a glance at Linden, Coldspray continued working on Halewhole Bluntfist’s right arm, trying to reset dislocated bones.

The ur-viles and Waynhim gave vitrim to all who could or would accept it. Nourished by their weird lore, Manethrall Mahrtiir had recovered enough to stand facing Covenant’s approach. And Bhapa stood with him. They kept their backs to Linden. But she saw in the stiffness of their spines, the clench of their shoulders, that they were readying themselves to confront the Unbeliever’s ire on her behalf.

She might have said something, although every word that she knew how to utter had been burned away. The sight of Stave stopped her.

He sat spread-legged in the dirt and clotting blood, so motionless that he hardly seemed to breathe. With both arms, he held Galt against his chest. The last slow drops of Galt’s life joined the stains that stigmatized Stave’s tunic. Pain had curled Galt’s hands into claws. But Stave did not look at the body in his arms. Instead he regarded Landsdrop as though in his heart he gazed past the high cliff and Salva Gildenbourne and the plains and Revelstone toward the Westron Mountains. Tears spilled from his eye. They ran down his cheek into the cuts that marred his visage.

He did not glance at Linden. In a low voice as taut as choking, he said to her, or to the distant home of the Haruchai, “He is my son. To the last, he remained himself.”

As if that were Galt’s epitaph.

—it is their birthright—