“Forgive!” she cries with woe and pain;
Her treacher’s laughter hurts her sore.
“His blandishments have been my bane.
I yearn my Master to adore.”
For in her ears the spurning knells
Of a-Jeroth of the Seven Hells.

“But being trapped in Time is different for Love than it is for Despite.” Covenant frowned again. “This is all just words.” Then he resumed. “It outraged the Despiser, but it made Diassomer Mininderain insane. The Despiser tricked her. And the Creator can’t free her without dismantling what he created. She’s sort of like Joan, in a way. If words made any sense. If Joan weren’t so human and frail.”

Wrath is the Master—fire and rage.
Retribution fills his hands.
Attacking comes he, sword and gage,
’Gainst treachery in all the lands.

Mininderain he treats with rue;
No heaven-home for broken trust,
But children given to pursue
All treachery to death and dust.
Thus Earth became a gallow-fells
For a-Jeroth of the Seven Hells.

“The Despiser has to cause as much pain as he can while he tries to get free. It helps him fight off his own despair. Diassomer Mininderain feeds off anything that’s still capable of love. She eats—But that’s not all she does. She still hates. She had as much to do with making the merewives as Kastenessen’s mortal lover did. And she’s involved in Kevin’s Dirt somehow.”

Linden had lost her way. Covenant evoked a host of recollections and bafflements and lost affection. He seemed to have reached the point of what he was trying to say, but she could not guess what it might be. When he fell silent, gazing about him as though he had made everything clear, she asked the first question that she could find in her desiccated heart.

“So why didn’t I see that old man? The one who told me that ‘There is also love in the world.’ Why didn’t he warn me?”

You are indeed forsaken, by the Dead as by the Earth’s Creator. How could it be otherwise, when all of your deeds conduce to ruin?

If he had accosted her—if she had caught so much as a glimpse of him—she would have known what his presence meant. She might have been able to save Jeremiah.

Covenant’s face tightened, drawing his features into lines like strictures. Suddenly, for no reason that she could imagine, he was present in front of her, alert in every sense. Sliding along a flaw or fissure, he had returned to Andelain and night and the brilliance of the krill. The harsh compassion in his voice was so familiar that it made her ache.

“Maybe he’s given up. Maybe he knows there’s nothing he can do.”

Forget him in this ecstasy.

At once, several of the Giants protested, prompted by their instinctive passion for life. “What, abandoned his Creation? The Earth entire?” But their incredulity bypassed Linden, leaving her hollow. Of course the Creator had turned his back. He had looked into her and seen what she was. Now he was done with her.