“Linden!” Grueburn insisted. She held Linden hard against her armor. “You must speak! Some horror has befallen you! Why did you cast away your Staff?”

Somehow the Manethrall made himself heard through the clamor of Giants, the turmoil of water, the gasp and pound of struggle. “She returns to herself! Ringthane, hear us! Why did you prevent our aid? What madness possessed you?”

Linden did not reply. She could not. She hardly had the strength to lift her head, focus her eyes. But she heard desperation, combat, fear. She should have died. Instead she tried to see.

At first, everything was a blur of darkness. Emerald flames shed no illumination: ordinary vision was useless. With her health-sense, however, her Land-given sight, she discerned sparse grass in damp sandy soil, an agitated boundary of water. Beyond that, details smeared into each other. Shapes bled until they became confusion, a flurry of writhing that flung water in all directions. The water smelled of rot, thick with muck and mold, like a marsh that did not drain.

Why had she discarded her Staff? She needed it now.

It was hers. Hers. She did not have to hold it in order to call up its strength. As long as she could sense its presence—

She could not. It was gone.

Or it was masked—

Christ!

—by a looming evil as thick as trees, as dense as a grove.

From the verge of the grass, a fen spread farther than her percipience could reach: a wetland clotted with mold and mud and swamp vegetation. Between small eyots of roots and muck, water lay dense and stagnant—and deeper as it stretched into the distance. It had been undisturbed for an age: it was not so now. Its ancient decay was in chaos, scourged and writhing, a welter of froth and spray. And from it came the stench of corpses, bodies by the thousands so long immersed that their putrefaction clogged the air.

The Sarangrave, Linden thought numbly. Sarangrave Flat. What was she doing here? Why had her companions brought her? They knew the danger—

Grueburn’s chest shuddered at each rank breath. From somewhere nearby, Mahrtiir made retching sounds. Galesend cupped her hand over Jeremiah’s mouth and nose as if she hoped to filter the reek with her fingers.

Gagging helplessly, Linden forced her perceptions farther.

Latebirth, Cirrus Kindwind, and Onyx Stonemage stood to the ankles in the edge of the marsh, poised to fling themselves into some fray. Yet they appeared to hesitate, uncertain of their enemy—or enemies. Latebirth faced the fen, aimed her sword toward the struggle that lashed the water; searched for an opportunity to attack. But Kindwind and Stonemage kept their backs to the Flat. Across a gap of a dozen or more paces, they confronted two clusters of the small, hairless creatures, the Feroce, one off to the left, the other on the right of Grueburn and Galesend, Linden, Jeremiah, and Mahrtiir.