In the wake of her departure, the Harrow’s air of smug triumph made Linden wish that she could strike him down.

3.

Bargaining with Fate

Hardly conscious of her own movements, Linden turned her back on the Harrow and hastened toward Covenant. With all of her senses, she examined her former lover. Was it possible that the Wraiths had healed his creviced mind? That she had misinterpreted the effects of the eldritch flames? Had they made him whole?

Did he even know what he was saying when he gave Linden his support? When he horrified Infelice so profoundly that the Elohim fled in despair?

Unregarded, Giants loomed in front of her. Then they stood behind her. She passed among Ranyhyn and Haruchai without noticing them. Liand and the Cords hovered around Covenant: Mahrtiir supported the Unbeliever’s head. But she did not look at them. All of her attention was fixed on Thomas Covenant.

For the moment, at least, she had forgotten dismay and shame.

Braced by the Manethrall, Covenant now sat more upright, leaning against Mahrtiir’s chest. He seemed unaware of Linden’s approach. He may have been unaware that he had spoken. The scar on his forehead was turned away. While she held her breath and bit her lip, he concentrated on accepting treasure-berries one at a time from Pahni’s hands, or from Bhapa’s. In spite of his evident hunger, he ate with slow care. The seeds he gave to Liand, who scattered them gladly around the vale.

Peering into Covenant as intimately as she could without violating his spirit, Linden confirmed that the Wraiths had not mended the faults which fractured his thoughts. Nor had they ameliorated his leprosy. They could not: Kevin’s Dirt hindered them in spite of the power that they drew from Loric’s dagger. They had only repaired the physical violence of his return to life. They had not restored the man he had once been.

Linden had forced him too far beyond the bounds of Law. Now he appeared to exist outside any mundane definition of health. The profuse miracles of Andelain and the Land could nurture his flesh, but could not draw him back into the ambit of simple humanity.

Seeing him like this, alert and damned, and growing stronger in ways that would only enable him to endure more pain, Linden wanted to weep again. But she did not. Perhaps she could not. The consequences of her rage and folly and hope had left her siccant. Within herself, she resembled a wasteland.

She was only peripherally aware that the Wraiths had begun to drift away, chiming a lucent and inconsolable lament as they bobbed out of the hollow. Apparently they had done what they could. Now they went elsewhere as though they did not wish to witness what came next.

At the same time, the Ranyhyn turned aside. Alert and sure, they separated themselves from the company, heading south.

Linden hardly noticed their departure. Covenant, she tried to say. But she had no words for what she needed from him. They had been burned out of her by her own extravagance. Perhaps she could have suffered the awakening of the Worm if she had succeeded at reincarnating him as she remembered him. But her flagrant display of power had achieved something worse than failure. No mere expression of regret would exculpate her.