Roger and Jeremiah. Covenant’s farmhouse. Sara Clint. The fire. Fighting the flames. She Who Must Not Be Named. Recursive agony and horror. Desperate flight.

Rime Coldspray’s eyes widened as Linden spoke. Frostheart Grueburn muttered Giantish oaths under her breath. But Linden did not allow herself to pause.

These people were her friends—

She elided as many details as she could. She did not wish to experience them again. But she interpreted the effects of the imposed hallucinations as she had explained them to herself.

“When I thought that I was beating at the flames, I must have been fighting you. Keeping you away while I tried to escape. But when I threw the Staff, the Feroce dropped their glamour. I wasn’t what they wanted.” Our High God hungers for it. The stick of power. “All at once, I stopped believing that I was trapped. The house and the fire disappeared, and I was here again.”

Finally Linden bowed her head. What more could she say?

Manethrall Mahrtiir regarded her in silence for a moment. Then, gravely, he nodded. “Ringthane, I am content.” He may have meant that she had accepted a burden as hurtful as the one he had been asked to bear.

Marveling, Rime Coldspray mused, “Much you have concealed from us, Linden Giantfriend—aye, and much revealed. You say nothing of the reasons for the Timewarden’s son’s deeds. Yet you make plain that you have long sought your son, at great cost. And though you speak little of your former world, you have allowed us to discern that it is fraught with hazard. With these scant words, too few to contain their own substance, you imply the import of your trials.

“Therefore I salute you, Chosen Ringthane.” Sitting, she pressed both palms to her chest, then spread her arms wide as if she were opening her heart. “Once again, you have wrestled life from the teeth of death, as by your own account you have done from the first. Had you not cast away your Staff—”

The Ironhand shook her head in wonder. “I am not shamed to acknowledge that eight Swordmainnir are no match for the lurker of the Sarangrave. We would have spent our last strength, and caused much hurt. But in the end, the monster would have taken your life as well as the Staff of Law, and all hope would now be lost. In Andelain, you surrendered your Staff to redeem your son. Doing so again, you have rescued yourself and us.

“Therefore,” she continued more quietly, “I ask your consent in one matter. I wish to forestall the necessity of further surrenders. By your leave, Frostheart Grueburn will assume guardianship of your Staff in the event that the Feroce essay another approach. We cannot be assured that her mind will not also fall into glamour, as yours did. However—”

“It will not,” put in Onyx Stonemage. “You speak of Grueburn, whose natural bewilderment excludes other confusion.”