Linden scrambled—and could not catch up. She felt stupid with sleeplessness. What was Stave saying? He had not seen any indication of the lurker. But the Ranyhyn feared it: Mahrtiir had not denied that. And the horses were gone.

“My God,” she breathed, hardly aware that she spoke aloud. “Are those things minions? Servants of the lurker?”

Millennia ago, the skest had served the ancient monster. Horrim Carabal? Those creatures of living acid had tried to herd Covenant and Linden, Sunder and Hollian, and a small party of Haruchai into the lurker’s snare. Their quest for the One Tree would have died there, if Covenant had not risked his life to wound the lurker with Loric’s krill and wild magic. And if he, Linden, and their companions had not encountered Giants: the Giants of the Search. And if the skest had not been opposed by creatures called the sur-jheherrin.

Now the skest cared for Joan. They had tended Jeremiah.

How many of them were there?

They did not match Stave’s description.

Again the former Master shrugged. “Chosen, I know not. I cannot discern their intent, for good or ill. I am confident only that our presence has been marked. Now we are sought.”

The Ranyhyn had abandoned their riders.

Oh, hell! Without Hyn—Given room to move, the Giants could survive any force that resembled the skest. But without Hyn and Hynyn, Narunal and Khelen—

God, please. Not more killing.

While the Ironhand’s comrades chafed wakefulness into their cheeks, and donned their cataphracts, Coldspray commanded, “At once, Swordmainnir. We are too easily contained where we stand. Come boon or bane, we must meet it upon open ground.”

“Aye,” Stormpast Galesend agreed. “We hear you.” Scooping up Jeremiah, she cradled him in one arm; kept the other free to wield her sword.

“Hear, indeed,” growled Frostheart Grueburn, grinning. “When the Ironhand speaks in such dulcet tones, she is heard by the Lower Land entire.”

As if Coldspray had slapped at her, Grueburn ducked. Then she drew her longsword and ran from the hollow, heading toward the place where the company had first entered among the hills.

Halewhole Bluntfist and Cabledarm followed immediately. The other Swordmainnir arrayed themselves like an escort around their smaller companions. With the Ironhand in the lead, Linden and her friends went after Cabledarm.

Sheltered by the breach, Linden had forgotten the full force of the wind. In the lowland between this line of hills and the next, however, icy air struck her like the rush of a flood. She felt pummeled and tossed as if she had fallen into a torrent. Even in darkness, she would have seen or felt her breath steaming, condensed to frost, if the wind had not torn it away.

Dirt crunched under her boot heels as she walked among the Giants. The ground was freezing—

After High Lord Elena’s disastrous use of the Power of Command, when her spirit had been forced to serve Lord Foul, she had used Berek’s Staff of Law to inflict an unnatural winter upon the Land. Standing at the Colossus, she had scourged the Despiser’s foes with snow and ice.