Over and over again, she had used her bag to beat back flames while she fled from ruin to ruin along the throat of She Who Must Not Be Named. The lurker’s creatures had found such things in her mind. Appalled past endurance, she had wielded her bag like a weapon against incineration. An instrument of power—

Some horror has befallen you!

Oh, hell. She must have used Staff-fire to repel her friends—to keep them away from her—as she ran down the engulfed hallway of hallucination or memory toward Sarangrave Flat.

Fortunately the Giants could withstand flames. Stave must have evaded her desperation. The Manethrall must have kept his distance, knowing himself powerless.

Nevertheless she was a danger to all of her companions.

But Covenant had also said, Just trust yourself. She must have done that; must have obeyed her instincts as well as her fears. She had seen a map in the random stains of blood and grass. And she had cast her Staff into the heart of her dismay. If she had not done so, the lurker would have taken her as well. The rupture imposed by the Feroce would have closed too late. No one would have been able to save her.

While she wondered how she would tell her friends what had happened to her, they brought her to the breach in the hills where they had sheltered earlier. When Grueburn set her on her feet in the hollow, Linden spent a quick moment confirming that Stave’s burns were not septic; that Rime Coldspray’s chest and neck and joints were indeed whole; that Cabledarm, Latebirth, Bluntfist, and Stonemage had no grave hurts. Then she turned the energies of her Staff on the stone around her, tuned Earthpower and Law to the pitch of heat. If Stave and the Swordmainnir did not suffer from the wind, at least she, Jeremiah, and Mahrtiir would be warm. And heat would dry wet garments. Then some portion of filth could be brushed off.

How had the Feroce mastered her so easily? She knew the answer. The cuts that she had made in her lower leg had exposed her true weakness. The gradient of her descent into despair was increasing. You tread paths prepared for you by Fangthane’s malice. Everything that she did and felt exacerbated her entanglement in the Despiser’s designs.

But her cuts had also saved her. There is hope in contradiction. They had given meaning to the mark of fecundity and long grass. Her own blood had interpreted a script which she had worn since she had visited the Verge of Wandering.

That rich valley was a habitation or resting-place for the Ramen and the Ranyhyn.

As she considered what had happened, Linden grew more troubled by the behavior of the Ranyhyn. The great horses had faced other horrors in her name. Why had they abandoned the company now? When she was becoming weaker?