As the horses neared Covenant, Clyme and Branl appeared, sprinting down the treacherous hillsides to join him as if nothing could undermine their steps. They reached him moments before the Ranyhyn and the destrier stamped to a halt.

With an air of ceremony, the Humbled greeted their mounts. They may have been speaking welcomes or rituals which had been ancient when Covenant had first visited the Land; but Linden refused to hear them.

Until she saw Covenant heave himself into the Harrow’s saddle, she did not realize that he had not taken any of the company’s supplies. He had no food, no water, no blankets.

He had said that he would come back; but he behaved like a man who did not expect to return.

He was doing it again; sacrificing himself to spare the people he cared about most.

Was there no one like her? Truly? She did not believe it. But beyond question there was no one like him.

Perhaps that was why he had turned away from her. She had never been his equal.

Chapter 7. - Implications of Trust

7.

Implications of Trust

Among eight Giants who towered over her, and Stave and Mahrtiir, who had never wavered, and Jeremiah, who remained as abandoned as a derelict, Linden Avery stood alone, staring hopelessly at the writhe of the ravine where Thomas Covenant, Branl, and Clyme had ridden out of sight.

If she had been able to look at herself, she would have seen a bedraggled figure, worn and unkempt. Her hair had not known the touch of soap or brush for more days than she could count. After her attempts to wash it, it had dried into matted, impossible tangles. Her features had been eroded by care and loss until they resembled Covenant’s flensed countenance, but without his indomitable strictures. And the red of her shirt had lost much of its vividness, its clarity. The flannel was a mess of plucked threads and little rents dominated by the bullet hole over her heart. The swatch of fabric which she had torn from the hem for the Mahdoubt no longer seemed to have any significance: it merely made her look even more like a refugee from a better life. The grass stains on her jeans below the knees were as indecipherable as Caerroil Wildwood’s runes.

And the Staff of Law, stained to fuligin when its shaft should have been as clean as the One Tree’s heartwood—Its import lies beyond my ken. Even her use of its flame had become darkness, echoing the condition of her soul: stark and irredeemable.

Covenant’s departure was an open wound. Without his ring, he had no defense against caesures and chaos. He could not even control the seduction of his broken memories. And Joan knew him: she—or turiya Raver—could sense his touch on Loric’s krill. Linden urgently wished to believe that he was not riding to his death; but that hope eluded her.