Hellfire, Covenant thought. Hellfire and bloody damnation.

“Never mind.” Swallowing his vexation, he shrugged. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. Think about it another way.

“Down at the bottom, your accusation against Linden is, ‘Good cannot be accomplished by evil means.�� Breaking Laws is an evil means. Concealing her intentions is an evil means. So of course she has to be stopped. You couldn’t block the Fall she used to get to Revelstone. You couldn’t make her tell the truth about what she wanted in Andelain. You couldn’t get past Stave and Mahrtiir and the Ranyhyn when you realized what she had in mind. But I should have let you stop her when she first resurrected me.

“Well, sure,” he went on before the Humbled could respond. “That makes sense. There’s only one problem. There are always evil means. Nobody is ever as pure as you want them to be. You aren’t. I’m not. We all have some kind of darkness in us. So the only way to avoid evil means is to do nothing. And the only way to do nothing—to be innocent—is to be powerless,” which in effect was what the Masters had chosen for the Land. “If you have power, any kind of power at all, it always finds a way to express itself. Somehow.

“But you aren’t powerless.” Passion mounted in his tone. He did not try to restrain it. “Practically everything you’ve done proves it. You don’t trust how people use Earthpower—and you have good reason. So you’ve been trying to keep the Land innocent by making everybody else impotent. And you’ve succeeded. Liand was a perfect example.

“For all I know, you thought you were giving him a gift.

“That much, at least, I understand.” Covenant kept his gaze on the horizon, surveying reminders of devastation. “The first time I came to the Land, I almost turned myself inside out trying to be innocent.” After what he had done to Lena—The memory still made him cringe. “What I finally accepted wasn’t being weak, and it sure as hell wasn’t the consequences of my actions. What I accepted was evil means. Guilt. The crime of power.

“But there’s one part of all this you don’t seem to understand.” He was on the verge of shouting. “The thing that makes Earthpower terrible is the same thing that makes it wonderful. Even if innocence is a good thing, which I doubt, you’ve confused it with ignorance.

“That’s what’s wrong with being the Masters of the Land. You wanted to stop something terrible, so you stopped everything. Including everything that might have been wonderful. You’ve even stopped yourselves from being the kind of force that could have changed the world. And you’ve ensured nobody else changes it. Hell, you’ve subjugated everybody to choices they didn’t make.