That small release was enough for Jeremiah. Three quick strides took him around the edge of his construct. Two more carried him into the center of his portal.

Infelice returned like a hurricane. Savage winds slapped Linden to the ground; flung Stave halfway up the slope of the basin; drove the Ranyhyn to their knees. Gales of rage and terror hammered at the portal; at Jeremiah. The sheer desperation of the Elohim staggered him.

Yet the magicks of his construct shielded him. Within its supernal walls, he recovered his balance, straightened his back. Storms ripped at his tattered pajamas, but did not sway him.

His begrimed face and soiled eyes looked entirely vacant, as empty of consciousness as an abandoned farmhouse, as he reached for the lintel of his doorway.

Infelice blared at him in fraught turmoil as chaotic as a caesure, but her powers failed to stop him.

He resembled an incarnation of Anele’s blind essence, ragged and enduring, as he wedged his racecar between two bones supporting the femur lintel. With Earthpower, he sealed the toy in place.

Before Linden could guess what he was doing, Infelice began to shriek like a banshee—and the entire marrowmeld sculpture became a white shout of radiance so pure that Linden could not look at it. She clapped a hand over her eyes, squeezed them shut; but the light pierced her hand and her eyelids, seemed to stab straight into her brain. She saw every bone of her palm and fingers limned in incandescence. Every phalange and metacarpal, the capitate, the scaphoid, the hamate: they all gleamed as if they were lit by the cynosure of the sun.

For a moment, she believed that she would never see anything else again; that she would be left as sightless as Anele and Mahrtiir. The defined framework of her hand would be all that remained of her world.

Then she felt Infelice disappear again, still shrieking.

The Elohim did not return.

Seconds or hours later, the portal’s blaze went out. There was no light except the dust and smoke of sunshine. Every sensation of power had left the caldera. Nothing endured to commemorate Linden’s lost sight or Infelice’s defeat except a wide pile of bones which should have been as white as Jeremiah’s innominate triumph.

But Stave was still here. Linden heard him calling her name. He did not sound hurt. And the Ranyhyn had survived. The hard thud of their hooves as they trotted, nickering proudly, around and around the pile seemed to promise that they had accomplished their intent.

Fearfully Linden lowered her hand, blinked open her eyes, and found that she had not been harmed. Dazzles like little suns swirled in her vision, confusing everything; but she could see. Experience and health-sense assured her that soon she would be able to see normally.

Squinting, she searched for her son.