Where had Roger obtained a hand that spouted lava and anguish? With such strength, he would not have needed a gun, or Sara Clint, or Sandy Eastwall. He could have claimed Joan and Jeremiah, done whatever he wished to obtain Covenant’s ring. No force on this earth could have stopped him.

He did not have that kind of power.

The bane did. She Who Must Not Be Named had seen into Linden’s heart and judged her. She was the bane’s rightful prey, trapped in a gullet that had not yet swallowed her because uncounted devoured women were screaming.

The bane did not exist. The women did not. Linden knew nothing about Elena except tales.

Only her bag of instruments and vials kept the flames from consuming her. Only the bleeding of her palm gave the bag meaning; kept her alive.

Her lower leg throbbed like an open sore. She had pierced it on the window-frame. She could not run or struggle much longer; but there was no end to the hall and the flames, the smoke, the terrible heat.

This was death. It was hell. It was the agony of all things ending, irredeemable calamity. And she had brought it on herself. She had earned it with anger and folly.

Wind flailed the flames. Smoke thick with sparks gyred upward amid lightnings that came from nowhere and never stopped.

A spasm of pain snatched her leg away. She sprawled along the burning floorboards.

In a frenzy, she flipped over onto her back. Frantically she swung her bag at the rush of the blaze.

Damn it. This was impossible. The hall had an end. It ended at the wall of the room where Sara had died. Linden had not left enough glass in the window-frame to hurt her this badly.

But she had lost her chance to save Jeremiah. Her reason to live.

Trust yourself.

Covenant was crazy. Dead and insane. There was nothing in her that she could trust. The only thing that mattered was power; and her defense was failing. By now, every necessary resource in her bag had been smashed.

Trust yourself.

Trust what, you bastard?

She might not have resurrected him and roused the Worm if he had only spoken to her. In Andelain. When any word from him would have been as precious as her son.

She can do this. No, she could not. No one could.

No one except Covenant, who had refused her.

Her hair sizzled and stank. Her eyelashes burned, scorching her eyes. Flame and smoke scoured her mouth, her throat, her lungs. Charred blots like deserved torments marked her shirt.

Now she needed to die. Anything was better than spending eternity trapped in the nightmare of She Who Must Not Be Named.

The world will not see her like again.

But there were also marks on her leg, on her jeans: a tracery of blood-stains below her knee. They formed a pattern.