Shaking in pain, he struggled to his feet.

She had hit him hard. He had landed hard. His chest felt like a jumble of fractured ribs. Rocks and coral had torn strips from his jeans and T-shirt. They had shredded his arms and torso, parts of his legs. Blood ran from his forehead and a score of other wounds. Every beat of his pulse spilled more of his humanity. He was scarcely able to swallow or draw breath or hold himself upright.

Nevertheless he stumbled toward Joan with the krill clenched in his fists and his own storm glaring in his eyes.

I’m sorry you’ve been through so much. I really am. But this is the wrong answer. It’s possible to be in pain without hating yourself and the whole world. You don’t have the right to make everybody else feel the same way you do.

She blinked at his staggering approach. Her wild eyes were empty of comprehension. She was not alarmed to see him coming closer with his incandescent dagger. Here the power was hers, not his. She would hit herself again. Hurl another bolt of wild magic. Flay the skin from his bones; burn out his soul. As soon as he came close enough. As soon as she was able to lift her arm.

In her own way, she was no longer afraid.

And the Humbled could not help him. They were still caught in the caesure. They did not exist in any defined time.

But turiya saw more than Joan did; understood more. He knew what was happening to Covenant. He knew what the krill could do.

In spite of his eager rapture, the Raver lived within Joan’s weakness. With torment and coercion, he could direct her outbursts; but he also shared her physical frailty, her prolonged emotional inanition. That was the price he paid for possessing her. He could not exceed her limitations through her.

Nonetheless turiya Herem retained his own powers. He could exert them. He delivered his separate assault while Covenant was still ten ravaged paces away.

He did not try to enter Covenant. He was unwilling to relinquish Joan. And he had reason to believe that Covenant knew how to defy him. Covenant had twice defeated the Despiser—

Unlike Joan, however, turiya recognized that Covenant had other vulnerabilities. Instead of striving to rule Covenant, the Raver turned Covenant’s reincarnation against him.

Reaching out, turiya tripped Covenant’s mind. A dark hand of thought sent Covenant sprawling into one of the fissures that flawed his ability to stand in his own present.