Like the storms, the hues staining the air did not feel wrong or malevolent. Nonetheless they were palpably unnatural. The Upper Land was not a desert, or barren: it could not be lashed to produce so much dust. And the season was still spring. Its rains had been too plentiful to permit a conflagration on that scale.

“Stave!” Linden cried. The wind tore his name from her mouth. “What is that?” Shivering, she gestured at the sky.

At a word from Stave, Hynyn came to Hyn’s side. The former Master leaned closer to Linden.

“Chosen, I know not. The Haruchai have no experience of such weather. In a distant age, the Bloodguard saw evils storm from the east, the handiwork of Corruption. But this is altogether unlike those blasts.”

“You will observe, however,” called Rime Coldspray, “that these strange taints do not ride the wind! They spread from the east. In Bhrathairealm, such skies prevail upon occasion. They arise among the nameless theurgies of the Great Desert. Elsewhere we have not witnessed their like!”

The Worm, Linden thought. Oh, God. Caesures had not filled the sky with dust and ash. Lethal forces of a different kind were starting to spread—

The refusal of the Ranyhyn to hurry baffled her completely.

Yet the horses were sensitive to the condition of their drenched riders and companions. Without warning, Narunal veered aside into a breach between the nearest hills, a gap like Bargas Slit or the crooked cut of a plow. When Hyn followed the others, Linden soon found herself in a scallop on one side of the breach; a hollow of comparative shelter formed by the wearing away of softer soil from the hill’s underlying rock. It resembled a scaur in miniature, barely wide and deep enough to hold Linden, Jeremiah, Stave, Mahrtiir, and eight Giants. Still it offered a degree of protection from the blast’s flail.

The Manethrall dismounted; and at once, Narunal cantered away. Khelen did the same after Galesend lifted Jeremiah to the ground. Wearily Linden slipped off Hyn’s back. As her legs took her weight, neglected pain stabbed her shin. Unable to hide her reaction, she flinched.

There was still too much wind, too much cold. Nevertheless she was reluctant to call fire from her Staff. She did not want to be reminded of flames as black and lamentable as the wood. And she did not want to announce the company’s location to any being capable of spotting her power. But she and Mahrtiir needed heat, even if their companions—and Jeremiah, perhaps—did not.

Gritting her teeth so that they would not chatter, Linden summoned flames.

They were as dark as she had feared: an impenetrable ebony like obsidian which had never seen the light of day. Apparently the change in her was permanent. She could do nothing clean.