Come on, damn it. You know it’s me. If you can recognize me all the way down in the Lost Deep, you can sure as hell feel me when I’m this close. And don’t tell me you’re too tired. You want this. It’s the only way to end what you’re going through.

Branl grabbed his upper arms, clamped them to his sides. Clyme moved to snatch away the krill.

“No!” Covenant shouted; raged. “Hell, no! If you stop me now, she wins! Lord Foul wins!”

Just for a moment, Clyme hesitated.

Then a caesure exploded to life directly ahead of Covenant, three or four paces behind Clyme. The Master wheeled away as if he believed himself capable of protecting Covenant from the violence of ruptured time.

Branl released Covenant’s right arm. Instinctively? Deliberately? Covenant did not care. He wrenched his left free.

The Fall was big, a tornado of chaos. Most of it had appeared within the substance of the hill. Dismembered instants as devastating as the Worm conflated every moment of the stone’s recent millennia. The force of their insanity chewed the bluff to grit and pebbles, flung scree like a barrage at the sky.

The caesure’s propinquity stung every inch of Covenant’s skin that could still feel pain. Nausea and wrongness knotted his guts. If he could have unclenched the muscles of his stomach, he might have puked.

But he was ready for this. He had to be. Why else had he forced himself to leave Linden?

The area around him was clear enough. He had room to move.

This is your mistake, Joan. Not mine. I’m coming for you.

Dropping the scraps of Anele’s tunic, he clutched the krill in both hands. Its heat was Joan’s fury; but he knew how to bear it.

Anchored to everything that he loved by nausea and stings and searing pain, he ran straight into the core of the Fall.

Clyme or Branl may have shouted after him, but he did not hear them. As soon as the gyre caught him, it swept him out of existence.

Chapter 12. - Sold Souls

12.

Sold Souls