“You are Haruchai,” she said in a tone of regal disdain. “Have you forgotten that your strength is as weak as water to the Elohim, and as devoid of import? Yet I have heard you, hoping that the Wildwielder will reconsider her folly while you bandy words. Now you have said enough. I will hear no more.

“If the tool cannot be held accountable for its use, it likewise cannot be used if it does not exist. Hold yourselves blameless, if that is your desire. I have spoken of perils which transcend blame. They must be prevented at any cost.”

With a gesture of dismissal, as if she were banishing Stave from her sight, Infelice turned away.

Toward Jeremiah.

Linden was already summoning fire from her Staff when Stave barked harshly, “Chosen!”

Another caesure. As soon as Stave called to her, she felt it stinging her flesh, hiving in her guts.

The puissance of Jeremiah’s construct ramified into the grey heavens. He stepped back from it as if his work were done. Gazing blankly at his structure, his marrowmeld sculpture, like an artist who had expended every iota of himself, he extended his halfhand in Linden’s direction like a request for confirmation. But he did not turn his head, or shift his feet, or give any other indication that he wanted something from his mother.

Infelice was about to destroy him. One way or another, the Elohim would put an end to every possibility, every hope.

Nevertheless the Fall was more immediate. And Infelice feared it. She feared it at least as much as Linden did. She might hesitate while she was in danger.

Frantically Linden wheeled away to hurl black fury into the migraine storm of hornets and instants.

But she was wrong. As soon as she spotted the caesure, she saw that she was wrong. Joan had missed her aim. Her concentration, or turiya’s, was fraying. Vicious as a tornado, the Fall seethed on the far rim of the caldera. From where she stood, Linden could not have thrown a piece of bone to hit it. And it was moving away. Awkward as a cripple, it stumbled onto the outer slope of the crater and began to descend, a blind thing forsaken by its guide. If it did not suddenly change directions, it would drift out of sight and do no harm.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Linden had given Infelice a chance—

And Stave was powerless against the Elohim. Long ago, Linden had witnessed the negligent ease with which Infelice’s people had refused Brinn and Cail, Hergrom and Ceer, from their demesne.

Swinging the Staff’s howl of Earthpower, she spun back toward Jeremiah—

—and was instantly frozen; stopped where she stood, as if every imaginable motion had been stripped from her. Her arms and legs were paralyzed: her heart seemed to stop beating. Blood congealed in her veins. Her fire vanished as if she knew nothing of Earthpower and had never understood Law.