“Tell them,” she gasped. Her throat felt raw, scorched by flame, scraped by smoke. “Save Coldspray. I’ll help Stave.”

Grueburn must have heard her. Must have believed her. Clarion as a thunderclap, the Giant roared over the tumult, “To the Ironhand! Linden Giantfriend aids Stave!”

They all must have believed in Linden. Crashing like a berserker, Latebirth turned to head toward Rime Coldspray with Stonemage. An instant later, Halewhole Bluntfist did the same, leaving Cabledarm to engage three tentacles alone.

Without hesitation, Cabledarm dove beneath the fouled surface, the scourged spray. Then she surged to her feet near one of the arms. Streaming with muck and fronds, with gobbets of putrid flesh, she swung her sword two-handed; hacked into the thick muscle and sinew of the tentacle.

Her blow bit deep. The Feroce wailed as though they had been pierced. Acid pulsed in Linden’s leg.

Another tentacle struck Cabledarm down. But the arm that she had hurt toppled, loud as a scream, back into the fen.

It did not rise again. Instead it fled, plowing a writhen furrow in the water.

At the same time, Stonemage drove a headlong thrust into the heavy mass striving to crush Coldspray��and Latebirth threw her whole body into a horizontal slash—

—and Linden reached out with percipience and desperation for the Staff of Law.

It was hers. It was hers, Goddammit! She had fashioned it with wild magic from her own love and bereavement as much as from Vain and Findail. Only its iron heels had once belonged to Berek. And it had answered her call when she had needed Earthpower to heal a dying Waynhim. It would answer her now.

While one tentacle held Cabledarm underwater, and another swatted Bluntfist aside, knocking the Swordmain away as if she were weightless, Linden summoned fire from her Staff.

Panting the Seven Words, she did her best to spare Stave. But she could not afford to concentrate on his safety. To harm the lurker, she needed her fiercest flame. For reasons that she did not try to understand, the monster wanted the Staff. It would not let go unless she made it flinch.

From the Staff, she called one small tongue of fire, flame blacker than the tinged darkness. Then another. Another.

Every sign of Earthpower and Law made Linden stronger. The Seven Words filled her mouth. She could not recover the lost cleanliness of her theurgy; but she could make it hurtful. Between one heartbeat and the next, her little flames became ebon incandescence: a deflagration of condensed midnight.

The wails of the Feroce turned to bereft shrieks as power like a piece of an obsidian sun burned into the lurker’s flesh.

Floundering, the tentacle released its grip. Stave clung to the Staff as the monster dropped it and him into the marsh.