It had already torn apart several of the sandstone teeth, swept them into insanity. Now it rushed downward, a stinging holocaust that made havoc of everything in its path. It came from the side of the crater opposite Jeremiah. In another instant, it would begin to devour bones, spinning them toward a future of infinite devastation.

Now Linden had no time for panic: no time and no patience. She wanted to watch her son. She wanted to watch her son. Exalted by outrage and frustration, she called a second flail of Earthpower from her Staff.

Instead of the Seven Words, she shouted as if she were yelling at herself, Damn you, Joan! Leave us the hell alone!

Where was Covenant? He should have stopped his ex-wife by now. Stopped her or died.

Her indignation for Jeremiah multiplied her strength. Her Staff was a howl of theurgy. It thrummed in her hands as she flung stark blackness against the Fall. Hardly aware of what she did, she drove the caesure back. Then she incinerated it.

It was gone before she recognized that she had succeeded. Enraged or enraptured, she went on lashing the air with Earthpower until Stave caught her arm, jerked her down from Hyn’s back.

He startled her enough to make her stop.

She had not seen him dismount. She had seen nothing except Jeremiah and then the caesure. Perhaps he had jumped down as he grabbed her arm. Now he turned her away from Jeremiah; forced her to look at him.

“Chosen!” he said like a slap. “You must attend to our peril as well as to your son. I acknowledge that his efforts are an entrancement. Yet we must not be ensnared.” When she finally met his glare, he added, “And we must free the Ranyhyn to provide for their own safety. Mounted, we hinder them.”

“That’s your job,” she retorted as though he had interrupted some vital task. “Your senses are better than mine anyway. I need to see this.”

Roughly she pulled away from him. Freed of their riders, the Ranyhyn remained behind her, far enough away that she would not accidentally strike them with her Staff or her fire.

Two steps took her closer to Jeremiah’s construct. Blind and deaf to everything except his own efforts, he had continued to work. Dissociated silt filled his gaze until he looked as sightless as Anele; but he had already balanced a broken femur upright on the base of a plate like a shoulder-blade, sealed it in place. Supported by phalanges, and by bones that mimicked snakes in agony, it rose taller than his head; taller than Linden’s. Now he selected another bone like it, splintered at one end, and positioned it standing an arm span beside the first. Together the two femurs looked like doorposts or the scantlings of a wall.