For a moment, she met Stave’s single gaze, the flat stares of the Humbled, Rime Coldspray’s troubled frown, the anxieties of the Cords. One by one, she scanned the Ironhand’s comrades, and Mahrtiir, and Covenant. To Anele she nodded, although she had no reason to think that he was aware of her. In her living room, Jeremiah had once built a construct of Mount Thunder. He had given her a hint—

Seek deep rock.

Leaving everyone else behind, she could still take Anele with her.

Finally she fixed her attention on Liand as if he were the spokesman for all of her friends and uncertainties; as if he were the only one who needed to be convinced. While Covenant wandered in the world’s past, he could not countermand her.

“It’s time,” she said carefully; almost steadily. “Anele and I are going with the Harrow.” And with the Ardent, presumably. “But we’re going alone.”

She felt reactions as quick as heartbeats around her; but she kept her gaze on Liand. If she could persuade him—

Ah, Liand. I wish I could spare you. Hell, I wish any of us could spare you.

—the others might follow his example.

His stark eyebrows arched in surprise. Objections crowded into his mouth so swiftly that for the moment he could not articulate any of them. The light of his orcrest faltered briefly. In that instant of wavering, he looked somehow younger and more vulnerable, as though he had been personally spurned.

Tightening her grip on herself, Linden said, “The rest of you have more important things to do. You’re going to stay here.” Where Andelain would preserve them for a while. “Jeremiah is my son. I can’t abandon him. I’ve already made that bargain. But I won’t risk you for him.

“And the Land still needs defenders,” she went on, hurrying to forestall Liand’s expostulations. “It needs you and your Sunstone. It needs Covenant and the krill. It needs Giants and Haruchai and Ramen and Ranyhyn. Even if we didn’t have so many enemies and monsters to worry about, someone has to do something about the Worm. Someone has to preserve the Elohim, as many as possible,” to slow or weaken the Worm, “and that someone isn’t me. I don’t have any power now.” No power—and no idea how she might reclaim her son from the croyel. “I’m not the one who saves worlds.

“I can’t actually imagine what hope is anymore,” she finished, bracing herself for a storm of protests. She had staked her whole heart on Covenant—and she had failed him. “But if there is such a thing—if it still exists—it depends on you. I have to go to Jeremiah. I can’t do anything else. You have to stay here.”