Too much was happening. Blundering along flaws and crevices, he tried to find a fragment of memory that would save him. Skest emerged from the cleft, gleaming vilely in the shrouded gloom. He saw the Theomach divert Roger’s efforts to take Linden and the croyel to the time of Damelon Giantfriend’s arrival on Rivenrock. He heard the Elohim pride themselves on their uninvolvement. At least a score of skest thronged out of the maze. More were coming. He saw Joan appear, charred by lightning, on the promontory of Foul’s Creche. He watched turiya Raver pounce on her, into her; watched the Raver compel her to summon Roger, Jeremiah, and Linden. Because they were dead in their former lives, they would never escape this reality.

Without hesitation, Clyme left Branl and Covenant. He flung himself at the corner where the blockade of slate joined the sheer hill. Somehow he wedged or clawed his way upward. When he reached the top of the slate, he straddled it.

Branl lifted Covenant; threw him upward. Clyme snagged one of Covenant’s slack arms, nearly jerked it from its socket. While Clyme settled Covenant beside him, Branl climbed to join them.

Undefended, Mhornym and Naybahn faced the corrosive skest.

Blood pulsed from a cut on Covenant’s forehead. He recalled striking his head on the edge of a table. Blood formed trails around his eyes, ran down his cheeks, dripped from his jaw. A gash along his ribs throbbed. The side of Branl’s neck had been torn: a shallow cut. Clyme wore several minor hurts. The barricade must have shielded them from the caesure’s worst violence.

Alone within himself, Covenant strove to locate a recollection that might affect his plight.

Instead he stumbled into Joan’s recent past, perhaps moments before his resurrection. She looked worse than he had ever seen her in life: a madwoman unkempt and tattered, gap-toothed with malnutrition, no longer capable of focusing her eyes; so utterly frail that she required a throng of acid-creatures and much of turiya’s savagery to keep her alive. For some reason, she was clambering, friable as glass, down the granitic wreckage where Foul’s Creche had once stood. By weak increments painful to behold, she descended toward the Sunbirth Sea. Was she afraid? Trying to escape her own future? Did she think that turiya Herem would allow her to drown among the waves? Or was she seeking older stone, more fundamental rocks and boulders which she could then destroy to unleash greater caesures?

The skest massed at the opening of the maze. But they did not move to assail the Ranyhyn. Perhaps they were content to prevent escape. Perhaps their master, the Raver, had assured them that Joan would strike again soon.