“Linden?” Liand murmured in alarm. “Ringthane,” asked the Manethrall, “are you certain?” But they were not trying to dissuade her. They were only cautioning her. In spite of everything, they believed in her—

Stave was Haruchai: she could not sense the character of his emotions. Nevertheless she trusted that he would not interfere—and that he would warn her if the Humbled came to stop her.

They must have been aware of her. Yet somehow Covenant’s concentration on the krill held them back.

With unwonted anxiety, Rime Coldspray said, “I mislike this course. Linden Avery, I have named you Giantfriend. We will not oppose you. But I fear that you sail seas as hurtful and chartless as the Soulbiter, where every heading brings despair.”

Linden ached for her friends. But there was nothing that she could say to reassure them. She feared as many things as they did, and with more reason. She knew her own inadequacy better than they could.

Deliberately she took a last step toward the Harrow.

Unable to quash the tremors that undermined her strength, she tried to lift both of her arms at the same time; tried and failed. Covenant’s ring was closed in her left hand: from her fist dangled the chain which for ten years had carried her only reminder of his love. Her right gripped desperation around the Staff of Law. For one more moment, she hesitated, torn between self-imposed bereavements.

Mere days or entire lifetimes ago, she had refused the ring to Roger Covenant even though she had believed that he was his father. Now, shivering as if she were feverish, she offered Covenant’s wedding band to the Harrow.

He snatched at the chain; took the ring from her like a man who feared that she would change her mind.

Releasing the Staff required a greater effort, not because Covenant’s ring had less emotional weight, but because the Staff was hers. With it, she had effaced caesures; mended wounds; unmade the Sunbane. She had transformed the pure wood to blackness in battle. Caerroil Wildwood himself had given her his gift of runes.

In dreams, Covenant had told her that she needed her Staff.

Unclosing her fingers was a fundamental abnegation. She felt that she was selling her soul; defying the necessity of freedom. Voluntarily giving up her right to choose. She could not have abandoned so much of herself for any cause except Jeremiah.

That boy doesn’t deserve what’s happened to him.

Then she had to avert her eyes. The Harrow’s glee as he grasped the Staff and held it high, brandishing it and Covenant’s ring like trophies, was too savage to be borne.

“Behold, my people!” he shouted at the stars. “Witness and tremble! Soon I will show myself the greatest of all Insequent, the greatest who has ever lived!”

If she had watched him, she might have lost heart altogether.