Those memories were bitter to Covenant. He had been so tormented and sick—To him, and to Foamfollower, the jheherrin had described their legends. It is said that when the time is ready, a young will be birthed without flaw—a pure offspring impervious to the Maker and his making—unafraid. It is said that this pure one will come bearing tokens of power to the Maker’s home. He wanted to forget, and could not. It is said that he will redeem the jheherrin if they prove—if he finds them worthy—that he will win from the Maker their release from fear and mud—But he had done nothing to redeem the jheherrin: nothing except bear the burden of his ring. He was a leper. He would always be a leper. Birthed without flaw? There was nothing pure about him.

No, it was Saltheart Foamfollower who had provided for the Maker’s defeat. Cleansed in the savage caamora of Hotash Slay, he had laughed in Lord Foul’s face and died, giving Covenant the strength to destroy the Illearth Stone. He rather than Covenant had become the Pure One.

That the sur-jheherrin thousands of years later still considered Covenant to be their Pure One only exacerbated his grief for Foamfollower—and his sense of his own unworth.

Yet here he sat like a monarch in exile, awaiting creatures who wanted an audience with the Pure One. For the Land’s sake, and for Linden’s—even for Joan’s—he was willing to consider any alliance that the Feroce might mistakenly offer him.

Deliberately he shifted so that he sat cross-legged with the krill directly between him and the cave’s entrance. For a few moments, he massaged the sore muscles of his lower back. Then he forced himself to sit straight as a sovereign. Let the Feroce be fearful. Let them approach humbly. Trapped in this chamber, he needed every possible advantage of posture or certainty.

He needed to conceal that he feared touching Loric’s dagger.

“Ur-Lord,” Branl warned quietly. “Three Feroce have gained the outer ledge. Soon they will enter here.”

Covenant took a deep breath; held it. The krill cast a slash of brilliance through the break that gave admittance to the chamber. Silver light shone like a kind of purity on the far wall of the outer fissure. He fixed his gaze there, counting the thud-beats of his heart; watching for hints of emerald malevolence.

It came first as a slight taint at the edge of the argent, a tinge that might have seemed vernal from some other source. Then the sick green of acid and hunger grew stronger. That hue did not outshine the krill. Perhaps it could not. Nonetheless it stained the silver until the darkness beyond it seemed rife with menace.

One at a time, three creatures breached the light and stepped into the chamber.