Green flames gibbered in the hands of the creatures. Their muddy wailing rose through the stench and clash from the wetland, and was swallowed into silence.

Kindwind and Stonemage seemed to be waiting for the Feroce to attempt an assault.

Rank humidity clogged the air. It filled Linden’s lungs like stagnant muck. Her leg throbbed in response to the panicked theurgy of the creatures. But they paid no attention to her.

She had already thrown away her Staff. They had no further interest in her.

Out in the marsh, Coldspray, Cabledarm, Halewhole Bluntfist, and Stave fought the lurker of the Sarangrave.

Oh, God. Linden knew that evil, that fierce hunger. She remembered it. She could hardly breathe. Years or millennia ago, it had come close to killing her and everyone with her. In strength and savagery and sheer size, it dwarfed even Giants. Without Covenant and the krill and wild magic—

She counted three tentacles standing up from the water, no, four, each as thick as one of the Swordmainnir. Each could have stretched to three times the height of any Giant. To her, they tasted like the Illearth Stone and the shrieking bane; like the effluvium of the darkest deeds of the Viles and Demondim in their loreworks. They were reified corruption: long ages of seeping poisons, acrid and malign, accumulating until they became flesh swollen with craving.

Although the lurker had once commanded the skest, it wielded no magicks that Linden could perceive. Its physical bulk and muscle sufficed to feed it. Braced on its own immensity beneath the water, it struck at its opponents with enough force to shatter granite.

Cabledarm and Bluntfist stood against the tentacles, hacking with their swords, fending off blows; floundering through water that reached their thighs when they could not otherwise evade the lurker’s limbs. At first, Linden did not see Stave or the Ironhand. They had been driven underwater, were being held down—

No, they were not. The hard intransigence of Stave’s aura was there. Rime Coldspray’s courage shouted against the darkness.

When Linden concentrated on the former Master and the Ironhand, she caught a hint of her Staff.

Her leg hurt as if her cuts had become acid. As if the marks on her jeans were being etched into her bones.

Etched by an acid the hue of malign verdure.

Eruptions of water and violence bewildered her senses; thwarted her efforts to interpret what was happening. But she still had her map. She could still follow it.

Through the tumid obstruction of the air, the untrammeled logic of grass stains and pain led her to Coldspray, Stave, and the Staff of Law.

She had missed them in the rapid flurry of blows, the mad lash and slash of tentacles and swords, because they were not with Cabledarm and Bluntfist. They were not in the water at all.

Supple as snakes, the twisting arms of the lurker had caught them.