She scanned the company; confirmed that Khelen bore Jeremiah easily, and that the Swordmainnir looked able to keep pace with the horses. Then she said to Stave sidelong, “You weren’t with us when Mahrtiir talked about Kelenbhrabanal. He did what he could to explain why the Ranyhyn are afraid of the lurker. But he didn’t say anything about why the Ranyhyn took us so close to the Sarangrave in the first place.”

The company’s present path demonstrated that the horses could have chosen a different route.

The former Master gazed at her steadily. “Chosen?”

“You probably don’t know any more about that than I do. But hearing about Kelenbhrabanal made me think about Kevin.” Both had sacrificed themselves, if by different means for dissimilar reasons. “I was wondering if you can tell me anything about him.”

Again Stave asked, “Chosen?”

Her query was too vague. But clarifying it would require her to reveal one of her deepest fears. Instinctively she wanted to keep the core of her emotional plight secret. Nevertheless the crisis induced by the Feroce had convinced her that she had to rely more on her friends. If she did not, she might never find a way to thwart Lord Foul’s intentions.

The next rise still looked insurmountable. Among steep slides of shale, sandstone, and gravel, massive knurls of granite and schist gripped each other like fists, too clenched and contorted for horses. Some of the slopes conveyed an impression of imminent collapse: any slight disturbance might unloose them. In places, slabs of sandstone leaned ominously outward, poised to topple. Yet the Ranyhyn approached the obstruction without slackening their pace, heading into the southwest as though they expected the hills to part for them.

Linden had fled flames in a hallway—a gullet—that had no end and no escape. She had only survived because she had turned to face the blaze; had read the map on her jeans and thrown away her only defense.

Trusting someone—

“There’s something that I want to understand about Kevin,” she told Stave awkwardly, “but I don’t know how to put it into words.” Grueburn’s presence discomfited her. Her friendship with the Swordmain lacked the earned certainty of her bond with Stave. Still she forced herself to proceed as if she and Stave were alone. “Ever since the Ritual of Desecration, he’s been called the Landwaster. I guess that makes me the Earthwaster. Compared to waking up the Worm, his Ritual looks like a petty offense. I want to know what he and I have in common.”

She needed a reason to believe that she had not already achieved Lord Foul’s victory for him.

“I can see how what Kelenbhrabanal did is different. He only sacrificed himself. And he did it because he thought that he was saving the Ranyhyn. He wasn’t trying to commit a Desecration. But what I’ve heard about Kevin sounds like how I feel.