As one, the ur-viles and Waynhim raised a tumult of barking. As one, they fell silent again.

With an air of scorn or disgust, Stave dropped the knife. His gaze met Linden’s consternation squarely.

“It is not murder,” he pronounced, as rigid as any of his kindred. “It is mercy.”

When he had shown her that he was prepared to accept her reaction, whatever it might be, he turned away.

For a moment, the manacles lay where they had fallen in the mire of drying blood and gypsum. Then they began to corrode. The purpose for which they had been forged was done. Now the effects of millennia seemed to dissolve the black iron. While Linden watched, the last makings of the ur-viles slumped into rust and crumbled. Soon they were just one more blot on the ruined whiteness of the ridge.

She wished that she, too, could sag into flakes of rust. She yearned to be done—But she was supposed to be a healer, and she had already permitted Liand’s death. She had failed her son. In Andelain, she had refused simple kindness to Covenant’s woe-ridden daughter. On this ridge, she had torn apart more Cavewights than she knew how to count. The legacies of her parents were wrapped like cerements around her soul.

She could not pretend that she was done.

And Stave had spared her a burden. His mercy was for her as much as for Esmer.

She understood his disgust.

Scornful of herself, and grieving, Linden Avery recalled black flames from her Staff and resumed her tasks.

Stave would need her soon. So would Mahrtiir, if to a lesser extent. But the Swordmainnir came first for the sufficient reason that they were closer.

She had treated all but the most superficial of Frostheart Grueburn’s wounds, and was working deep within Halewhole Bluntfist’s hacked frame, when Covenant arrived on the ridgecrest, trailing the Humbled and the Ramen behind him like a cortege.

The force of his appearance jolted her to a halt. Her mouth was suddenly dry: the air felt too thick with carnage to breathe. Struggling to remember that she had once been a physician, she had forgotten how much he meant to her—and how much she feared his repudiation.

Apart from the Cords, she was the only member of the company who did not wear the stains of her actions. Even Jeremiah had been splashed by Galt’s blood, and by Liand’s. How could Covenant look at her without feeling sickened?