Chapter Twelve: 

Transformations

While her Command compelled obedience to her will, Linden remained clad in fire. Briefly she had become Earthpower, and could not be refused. She saw every detail with lucent precision while her desires were imposed on her companions.

Covenant’s jeans and T-shirt slumped away as the truth was revealed. They became an indeterminate grey shirt and khaki slacks. Three bullet holes formed an arc across the centre of his shirt. They had been healed; but their edges were still crusted with blood.

His features blurred as though she had begun to weep again, although she had not; could not. His face became rounder, softer. Lines of severity melted from around his mouth, leaving his cheeks unmarked. The corners of his eyes no longer expressed any intimacy with pain. And he shrank slightly, grew shorter. At the same time, his torso swelled with self-indulgence. Even his posture changed. He stood with a familiar combination of looseness and tension: the looseness of weak muscles; the tension of poor balance.

A glamour upon it—

It was not Thomas Covenant who stood before her, exposed by fire and Command. It was Covenant’s son, Roger, seeking such havoc that the bones of mountains tremble to contemplate it. Linden could not fail to recognise him now.

Do you not fear that I will reveal you? The Theomach must have known—

The embers were gone from Roger’s eyes: his gaze had regained the exact hue of his father’s, the troubled color of suffering and ruin and unalloyed love. Nevertheless he had been altered; terribly transformed. His right hand was whole, but it had lost its humanity. Instead it was composed of magma and theurgy, living lava and anguish. Its fiery brutality reminded her of the devouring serpents she had seen during her translation to the Land, the malefic creatures of lava and hunger that Anele had called the skurj.

Roger Covenant’s right hand had been cut off. It had been replaced by that—

And when that doesn’t work, he maims—

Somewhere in the background of Linden’s mind, a voice gibbered, Oh God. OhGodohGodohGod. But she hardly recognised her own fear.

Kastenessen had merged part of himself with the skurj. Roger himself in his father’s guise had told her that. The deranged and doomed Elohim’s escape from his Durance had been more painful than you can imagine.

Kastenessen is all pain. It’s made him completely insane.

She had been given hints. And she blazed with Earthpower: her perceptions were preternaturally acute. She jumped to conclusions instinctively, instantaneously—and trusted them completely.

Being part skurj isn’t excruciating enough, so he surrounds himself with them, he makes them carry out his rage. And when that doesn’t work—

Sweet Jesus. Kastenessen had severed his own right hand and given it to Roger Covenant. He had granted Roger the magic to conceal himself from her percipience; had turned Roger into an entirely new kind of halfhand—

The truth of the man who had brought her here appalled her; shocked her to the core. Roger’s presence in his father’s place exceeded her sharpest fears. Nevertheless the sight of her son was worse.

Jeremiah also had been concealed. Now his plight was unmasked. He stood gazing vacantly at her or through her; unaware of her. The stain in his eyes seemed to blind him. His mouth hung open, the lower lip slack. Drool ran down his chin. His twitch was gone, erased from his empty features.

Linden saw at a glance that he had relapsed to his former unreactive dissociation.

But there was more—

Despite his overt passivity, his arms did not dangle at his sides. Instead his fists were raised in front of him. In his right, his halfhand, he clutched his racecar; gripped it so hard that he had crumpled the metal. In his left, he held a piece of wood as slim and pointed as a stiletto, a splinter of the deadwood which he had gathered from Garroting Deep.

From his shoulders, his blue pyjama shirt hung in tatters. Horses reared from scrap to scrap, torn apart by blows and falling. Bruises covered his arms and chest. Yet the unassoiled discoloration of his contusions did not mask the violence of the bullets which had pierced his flesh. His rank wounds, one in his stomach, the other directly over his heart, oozed dark blood that formed a web of crust and fluid on his torso, trickling at last into the waistband of his pyjama bottoms.

He had died in his natural world. Like Linden: like Joan. He would never be freed from the Land.

Yet even that was not the worst.

A small hairless creature like a deformed child clung to his back. Its clawed fingers dug into his shoulders: its sharp toes gouged his ribs. Its malign yellow eyes regarded Linden while its teeth chewed ceaselessly at the side of Jeremiah’s neck and its mouth drank his life.

And from the creature came waves of eldritch force so cruel and bitter that they turned the air in Linden’s lungs to ash. In its own way, the creature was as mighty as Roger. Its power matched the potential for savagery and devastation of Kastenessen’s severed hand. But the creature’s strength had more in common with the black lore of the Viles than with the laval hunger of the skurj—or with the covert transformations of the Elohim. It was an altogether different threat; a danger comparable to the Illearth Stone in its violation of Law.

Nonetheless Linden recognised it instantly. Twice before, she had met a similar magic, a comparable ferocity.

The creature was one of the croyel: a parasite or demon which throve by giving power and time to more natural men or women or beasts as it mastered them. Long ago, Findail the Appointed had described the croyel as beings of hunger and sustenance which demnify the dark places of the Earth. Those who bargain thus for life or might with the croyel are damned beyond redemption.

But Jeremiah was not damned, she insisted to herself. He was not. He was not like Kasreyn of the Gyre: he had made no bargain. He could not have made one. Lost within himself, he more closely resembled the arghuleh of the Northron Climbs, mindless ice-beasts which had simply been enslaved by the croyel. The bargain here was Lord Foul’s, not Jeremiah’s.

Still her son was effectively possessed. The Ranyhyn had done what they could to forewarn her. But her fears had tended toward Ravers—or toward the Despiser himself. She had not come close to imagining Jeremiah’s true peril.

Empowered by the Blood of the Earth, Linden screamed raw fire down the stone throat of the tunnel.

Her flame was met by a blast of heat like the opening of a furnace. Roger’s given hand flung its own brimstone conflagration against her, vicious as scoria. If she had not been enclosed in Earthpower, and warded by the Staff of Law, she would have died before her heart could beat again. Instead, however, she was only quenched. The flame which the EarthBlood had given her was snuffed out: the illuminating fire of the Staff vanished as though it had been doused.

The sudden vehemence of the attack staggered her. For a brief moment, a small sliver of time, she tottered on the brink of the trough. Then, reflexively, she dropped to her knees, snatching herself back from a second contact with the Blood.

Reclaimed by mortality, her vision blurred again. Only Roger’s crimson virulence remained to light his malice and Jeremiah’s emptiness and the insatiable eyes of the croyel. But she saw them as nothing more than shapes and points of light; instances of bereavement.

“Actually, Dr. Avery,” Roger drawled, “I like this better. If you weren’t so damn determined to interfere, Foul and Kastenessen and I would already have everything we ever wanted. I suppose that ought to piss me off. But it doesn’t. Ever since I first met you, I’ve wanted to crush you. Now I can.”

If he had struck at her then, he might have slain her. She was lost and aghast, overwhelmed with rue: she could not have defended herself. White gold was a mystery to her, too complex and hidden to be approached in the EarthBlood’s presence. The resources of the Staff seemed to have passed beyond her reach.

But Roger held back. His desire to crush her entailed something more than mere death.

For her son’s sake, and the Land’s, Linden used that moment of life and breath to regain as much of herself as she could.

Vestiges of utter Earthpower lingered in her yet. They left incandescent suggestions in her veins. Her heart throbbed with remembered might. She could still think, and had already begun to tremble with fury.

Leaning her weight on the Staff, gripping it with both hands while she knelt, she panted as though she were nearly prostrate. “That’s why you didn’t want me to touch you. You weren’t afraid of my power. You knew that if I touched you, I would feel the truth.” Roger and the croyel had feared her health-sense. “Your disguise wouldn’t hold.”

Roger glanced at Jeremiah’s master; gave a harsh burst of laughter. Then he faced Linden again with flame frothing from his fist. “Of course,” he jeered. “I’m just astonished it took you so long to figure it out.”

She ignored his scorn: it could not hurt her now. “And it’s why you didn’t want me to summon the Ranyhyn. They would have recognised you right away.”

“Of course,” he repeated, mocking her. “Go on. You can’t stop there.”

Jeremiah did not speak. He did not react in any way. He could not. The croyel ruled him, and the creature no longer needed either words or gestures. It had stolen into her son’s mind in order to find the memories and knowledge which would give substance to its charade, and to Roger Covenant’s. Now it was done with pretence.

Linden trembled, scrambling inwardly, and grew stronger. “It’s also why you didn’t want me to go Andelain. You couldn’t fool the Dead. They would have exposed you.”

“Well, sure.” Roger shrugged. “If that’s the best you can do. But I have to admit, I’m disappointed. You’re supposed to be a doctor. Keen mind. Trained intellect. I expected more.”

Think, Linden commanded herself. If she could understand her straits, she might find her way through them.

Clearly Esmer had advised her well. And then he had counterbalanced his aid by opposing the ur-viles when they had tried to prevent Roger and the croyel from snatching her out of her natural present.

“Tell me,” she demanded hoarsely. “You like to gloat.” He coveted her dismay. “What am I missing?”

Roger snorted another laugh. “For one thing, you brought this on yourself. All of it. If you hadn’t gone to get that damn Staff—and if you hadn’t told Esmer you wanted to visit Andelain—nothing that’s happened since would have been necessary. You forced us to intervene. Once you had the Staff, we had to keep you out of Andelain.”

Linden sensed as much as thought that he was attempting to mislead her again. He was not closed to her now. Her senses discerned subtleties of truth and falsehood. He—or Lord Foul—had wished to preclude her from Andelain: she believed that. But her Staff was not his real concern. If he and Jeremiah had not ridden into Revelstone, they would have been in no danger from her.

Roger and his masters or guides—the Despiser and Kastenessen—had a deeper reason for seeking to ensure that she did not approach the Andelainian Hills.

Trying to probe further, Linden asked, “You said “for one thing”. What else have I missed?”

Again Roger appeared to consult his companion. Then he replied in a voice full of scorn. “Why not? You obviously think I’m stupid. You want to keep me talking so you’ll have time to recover. But you really don’t understand. You don’t understand anything. I can’t lose here.

“I’m going to answer your questions for a while because I want you to know what despair feels like.”

Long ago, Thomas Covenant had said to her, There’s only one way to hurt a man who’s lost everything. Give him back something broken. Roger and Lord Foul had done that to her now. But Roger’s father had not allowed his pain to rule him.

“Go on,” she said more firmly. “I’m listening.”

Roger flicked his lurid hand; sent an arc of fire like a streak of molten stone across the ceiling of the cave. But he did not direct his force at her. A grin of grim delight showed his teeth as he replied. “For another, there was always the chance you might actually give me my ring. That would have saved all of us no end of trouble.

“I tried to talk you into it. The croyel thinks I should have tried harder. But I knew you wouldn’t do it. You love power too much.”

Linden heard him clearly. He meant that in her place he would not have surrendered his father’s ring. He did not comprehend her at all.

“That’s not an answer,” she retorted. As the transcendence of her Command faded, she recovered more and more of herself. “Why did you care if I went to Andelain? Tell the truth for once. You’re part Elohim. And the croyel—” The creature had raped her son’s trapped mind in order to manipulate her. “They seem like they’re capable of anything. If the two of you aren’t strong enough to destroy the Arch of Time on your own, why didn’t you just come here? What did you need me for? What was so important about keeping me away from Andelain?”

Jeremiah himself, the ensnared boy whom Linden had adopted and loved, did not react. He could not. He wandered a chartless wilderness of loneliness and abandonment while the croyel clung like a tumour to his back. His disfocused gaze and his damp mouth promised only sorrow.

Nevertheless he struck without warning. Dropping his ruined racecar, he sprang at Linden. A reflection of ruddy fire flashed on his oaken dagger as he raised it high. Guided and compelled by the fulvous glare and sharp teeth of the croyel, he hammered his splinter of deadwood into the back of her right hand where it gripped the Staff.

He may have wanted to nail her hand to the long shaft; cripple her somehow. If so, he failed. The clean wood of the Staff was impervious to his stiletto. When it had pierced her hand, his sharp scrap of Garroting Deep was turned aside.

For a moment, however, the pain of her wound nearly unmade her. It bit into her nerves like fangs and acid. She scarcely felt the warm spurting of her blood as it streamed over her left hand and down the Staff; yet she might as well have been crucified. She would have lapsed into shock at once if the air of the cave had not filled her lungs with distilled Earthpower. But instead she cried out as though Jeremiah’s blow had ripped through the centre of her chest. A brief rush of tears joined the pulsing flow of her blood.

Then, as suddenly as a crisis of the heart, she detached herself from the pain; distanced it as though it belonged to someone else. Dispassionately she surveyed the shard jutting through her hand. The confusion of her health-sense was gone: in chagrin and desperation, she had at last tuned her perceptions to the precise pitch and timbre of the Earth Blood’s atmosphere, and her eyes no longer required the protection of tears. She could see her injury distinctly. Apart from the pain, it was not serious: that was plain. Her son’s—no, the croyel’s—dagger had skidded between the bones. It had missed the larger arteries and veins. She would not lose dangerous amounts of blood. If she survived Roger’s and the croyel’s intentions, any untainted application of Earthpower would heal her.

But she could not unclose her fingers from the Staff. The wound paralysed them: their nerves had shut down. And she had no attention to spare for them. Other exigencies consumed her.

She could see clearly; might never weep again. Nevertheless she made no attempt to stand. Instead she remained on her knees as though the croyel’s attack had accomplished its purpose.

Roger waited until Jeremiah had stepped back; resumed his pose of slack passivity. Then Covenant’s son jeered, “Shame on you, Dr. Avery. You should know this. The Theomach is a meddling asshole, but he doesn’t lie. And I told you the truth.

“Why did we need you? Because otherwise the Elohim would have stopped us. They’re terrified somebody is going to wake up the Worm of the World’s End. As long as we had the Sun-Sage, the Wildwielder”—he pronounced her titles contemptuously, scathing her—“they could convince themselves they didn’t need to do anything. They believe you’re going to protect the Arch and deal with Kastenessen, so why should they bother?

“No, Doctor. The question you should be asking is, why did we have to take you out of your own time to get what we wanted?”

He paused, apparently expecting her to respond—or enjoying her helplessness. But she was not beaten: not yet. Her detachment defended her from the excruciation of Jeremiah’s dagger in her hand. And her son’s enslavement galvanised her. While Roger mocked her, she gathered herself.

He still had not explained why he—or his masters—considered it vital to keep her away from Andelain. The creature had attacked to distract her.

Apart from the claiming of your vacant son, I have merely whispered a word of counsel here and there, and awaited events.

Goaded by her son’s suffering, Linden wanted to rage at Roger, This is all your doing. Kastenessen is in too much pain to think. Lord Foul isn’t willing to risk himself. And Esmer can’t pick a side. It’s on your head. Even your own mother—You’re responsible for all of it.

He had kidnapped her son; had dragged Jeremiah into the path of death.

But she remained where she knelt as if she were transfixed between her own agony and Jeremiah’s. She did not choose to waste the remnants of her will and courage on empty recrimination.

It was clear that Roger would not explain his fear of Andelain. She set that issue aside.

All right.” She did not raise her voice above a lorn whisper. She had no strength to spare. “Tell me, since that’s obviously what you want. Why did you take me out of my own time’?”

“It’s complicated,” he said at once, gleefully. “Of course, we told you the truth. The EarthBlood really isn’t accessible where you belong. Elena’s battle with Kevin is going to tear this whole place apart. There won’t be anything left of this tunnel and that nice convenient trough.

“But Foul still wants to tear down the Arch of Time. He wants to escape. He wants revenge. And he’s tired of being defeated by my shit of a father. This way—” Roger cast another swath of fire and eagerness around the cave. “Dr. Avery, this way he can’t fail.

“First,” he explained as if he were proud of himself, “there was always the chance you might do something to violate Time. We gave you plenty of opportunities. If you did, good. We’d be spared the trouble of coming here. But if you didn’t, you still might trust us enough to let one of us drink first. Then we could Command the Worm to wake up.”

He grinned ferociously. “Since you haven’t done either of those things, we can just kill you and drink anyway.

“But even if that doesn’t work—if we can’t kill you, which doesn’t seem very plausible under the circumstances—you’re still stuck here.” His halfhand blazed, casting familiar embers into his eyes. “Ten thousand years in your own past. With a Staff of Law. And my ring. Every breath you take is going to violate Time. And you can’t escape without a caesure.” He snarled a laugh. “I almost hope you survive so you can try that. Please. The Laws of Death and Life haven’t been damaged yet. You’ll shatter the world. But if you don’t, you’re still going to change everything.

“There’s more, of course, but I won’t bother you with it. Here’s the point. Frankly, Dr. Avery, ever since we got you away from your present, there haven’t been any possible outcomes that don’t give us exactly what we want. Plus, of course, we get to watch you cower. We get to watch you suffer for your poor kid. That alone makes all this trouble worthwhile.”

Linden should have quailed. His certainty was as bitter as the touch of a Raver: it should have defeated her. But it did not. How often had she heard Lord Foul or his servants prophesy destruction, attempting to impose despair? And how often had Thomas Covenant shown her that it was possible to stand upright under the weight of utter hopelessness?

Still kneeling, feigning weakness, she protested. “You aren’t making sense.” Deliberately she let the pain in her hand leak into her voice. “You want to rouse the Worm. You want to break the Arch. But then you’ll be destroyed. Lord Foul can escape. You can’t. Why are you so eager to die?”

“Well, it’s true,” Roger drawled happily. “Kastenessen hasn’t thought it through. All he cares about is wreaking havoc on the Elohim. If he’s killed in the carnage, at least he won’t hurt anymore.

“The croyel and I have other plans. Foul has promised to take us with him. And he’ll keep that promise. He needs your kid. Hell, he owns him. How else do you suppose the croyel got access to everything your kid knows, everything he can do? He’s belonged to Foul for years.

“But even if Foul tries to cheat us, we’ll still get what we want. The croyel can use your kid’s talent. You’ve seen that. He’ll make us a door. A portal to eternity.” He glanced around at the tunnel. “All the materials he needs are right here. While the Worm tears this world apart, we’ll open our door and go through it.

“Face it, Dr. Avery.” Passion and brimstone condemned Roger’s gaze. “You’ve done everything conceivable to help us become gods.”

Inadvertently Roger aided her. He hurt her more severely than any mere physical wound. The thought that the Despiser had claimed her son long ago—that Jeremiah may have participated in his own subservience to the croyel—was worse than any threat of absolute ruin, any image of apocalypse. Roger may have been lying in an attempt to break her. Instead he transfigured her.

They have done this to my son.

While Roger talked, she anchored herself on the muddy void of Jeremiah’s gaze, the slackness of Jeremiah’s cheeks and jaw, the useless dexterity of his dangling hands. Her pain and blood and repudiation she focused on the cruel parasite feeding from his neck.

“I’m sure that’s fascinating,” she said through her teeth. “You’ll enjoy it. But there are a few things you don’t understand.”

His eyes widened in amusement; false surprise. “Like what’?”

Linden bowed her head as though she intended to prostrate herself. Past the concealment of her hair, she muttered. “Like who I am.”

Then she drew lightning as pure as charged sunlight from the upraised iron heel of the Staff and hurled it simultaneously at both Roger and the croyel.

While her blast flared and echoed in the constriction of the tunnel, she surged to her feet. Unable still to uncramp her pierced hand from the Staff, she used her left to shift the shaft so that she could brace its length under her left arm, hold it like a lance.

Her attack was abrupt and brief; yet it should have damaged her foes. But it did not. It failed to reach them. Reeling backward, Roger flung out an eruption of magma to intercept the Staffs blaze.

Swift as prescience, the croyel emitted a vehement wall which blocked and dispersed Linden’s blow.

Roger caught himself; roared with fury. Aiming his fist at her, he unleashed a scend of fire and lava. At the same time, the creature sent waves of force toward her like crashing breakers in a storm. Together he and the croyel strove to drive her back against the lode-face of the EarthBlood.

If she fell there, the Blood itself would incinerate her.

She responded with untarnished Earthpower and Law; threw pure flame against the corrupted theurgy of Kastenessen’s hand and the savage unnatural coercion of the croyel. Shouting her son’s name as though it were a war cry, she met the ferocity of her enemies with power that filled the depths of the mountain like daylight.

Yet Roger and his companion were not damaged or daunted: they hardly seemed to feel her assault. Grinning as if he could taste triumph and delight, Roger poured out magic to cast down her fire; tried to melt her flesh. And the creature raised Jeremiah’s arms to invoke invisible forces. Pressures grated in the air like grinding teeth as they mounted against her; against the lash of flame which was her only defense.

The Staff bucked in Linden’s grasp. It seemed to burn. Its limitations were hers: it could not channel more force than her human blood and bone could summon or contain. She stumbled half a step toward the trough. Her flame no longer flooded the cave. The croyel’s barricade held it back. Crimson and sulphur tainted her sunfire as Roger’s eagerness probed into it; reached through it.

Abruptly the deadwood piercing her hand caught fire and burned away, searing the inside of her wound; sealing it. She was scourged backward again.

For an instant, she seemed to see herself falter and fail, see her flesh scorched like charcoal, see the Staff turn black as Roger’s heat devoured it. Then she rallied.

They have done this to my son.

With a wordless shout, she thrust the Staff behind her so that its end plunged into the trough of EarthBlood.

At once, fresh strength galvanised her. A torrent of Earthpower rushed through the Staff and became incandescence. Her conflagration spurned the stain of brimstone: it pounded heavily against the repulsion of the croyel. Light that should have blinded her and could not washed through the cave and along the tunnel as the brilliance of Law scaled higher; expanded until it appeared to transcend Melenkurion Skyweir’s constricting rock.

The wall emanating from Jeremiah’s enslaver receded. Eldritch dazzling effaced the croyel’s eyes: she could no longer see them, or they had been liquefied in the creature’s skull. Briefly Roger’s flail of scoria lost a portion of its virulence. Kastenessen’s might and pain contracted around Roger’s quivering fist.

But he seemed able to draw on limitless power as though he siphoned it from the magma of the Earth’s core. Even as Linden’s fire grew and grew, claiming more and more puissance from the mountain’s ichor, his ruddy heat swelled again. A furnace spilled from his hand. Heat like liquid granite drove back her bright flame.

Again the creature pressed its strength against hers. Its eyes emerged from the flood of sunfire. The Staff thrummed and twisted in her hands, against her ribs. Concussions ran unsteadily along its shaft: she felt the wood’s desperation pulse like a stricken heart. Every iota of force that she could summon spouted and flared from the iron which bound her Staff—and it was not enough.

Yet even then she was not defeated. They have done this to my son! Instead of recognising that she was lost, she remembered.

I do not desire the destruction of the Earth.

She did not believe that the Theomach had aided her entirely for his own ends. He had given her as many hints has he could without violating the integrity of the Land’s history.

In this circumstance—

And he had risked revealing secrets to Berek Halfhand in her presence; secrets which she would never have known otherwise.

—her mind cannot be distinguished from the Arch of Time.

She accepted the danger. She was Linden Avery, and did not choose to be defeated.

Bracing her Staff in the trough of EarthBlood, she shouted in her son’s name. “Melenkurion abatha! Duroc minas mill! Harad khabaal!”

Instantly her fire was multiplied. It seemed to increase a hundredfold; a thousand—She herself became stronger, as if she had received a transfusion of vitality. The fear—even the possibility—that she might fall and perish dropped from her. The Staff steadied itself in her clasp. The whole mountain sang in her veins.

They have done this to my son!

She shouted and shouted, and did not stop. “Melenkurion abatha!” And as she pronounced the Seven Words, both Roger’s pyrotic fury and the croyel’s invisible repulsion were driven back. “Duroc minas mill!” Roger gaped in sudden fright. The abominable gaze of the creature wavered, considering retreat. “Harad khabaal!” Flames like a volcanic convulsion staggered her foes.

And the Skyweir’s deepest roots answered her.

From Rivenrock, she had felt the imminence of an earthquake. Roger had confirmed it. It’ll be massive. Irrefusable pressures were accumulating in the gutrock; natural forces so cataclysmic that they would split the tremendous peak. But it won’t happen for years and years.

He had not expected her to fight so fiercely. Their battle must have triggered a premature tectonic shift; loosed a rupture before its time.

She did not care. The granite’s visceral groan meant nothing to her. She fought for her son, and went on shouting; invoking Earthpower on a scale that staggered her foes. When the floor of the cave lurched as though the whole of Melenkurion Skyweir had shrugged, she gave no heed.

But Roger and the croyel cared. Consternation twisted his blunt features: he feared the mountain’s violence. And the creature turned away from her, apparently seeking escape. They assailed her for a moment longer. Then the stone lurched again, and abruptly they fled.

“Melenkurion abatha!”

Pausing only to retrieve Jeremiah’s crumpled racecar, Linden followed them; harried them with fire. As she pursued them along the tunnel, she continued to shout with all of her strength. And she trailed the end of her Staff in the rivulet so that she would not lose the Earth Blood’s imponderable might.

“Duroc minas mill!”

Roger and the croyel did not strike at her now: they fought to preserve themselves. He sent gouts and gobbets of laval ire to hinder the impact of her sunflame. His companion filled the tunnel with a yammer of force, striving to slow her onslaught.

“Harad khabaal!”

Her power was constrained by the tunnel; concentrated by it. But theirs was also. Although she strode after them wreathed in fury, unleashing a continuous barrage of magic and Law, she could not break through their brimstone and repulsion swiftly enough to outpace their retreat. In spite of the EarthBlood and the Seven Words and the Staff of Law—in spite of the extravagance of her betrayed heart—they reached the subterranean waterfall unscathed.

The falls erupted in steam as Roger passed through it; but the croyel’s barrier warded off the scalding detonation. For a moment, no more than a heartbeat or two, Linden lost sight of them as they rushed down the piled rocks. Then the stone shuddered again, harder this time. She lost her footing, fell against the wall of the tunnel. At once, she sprang up again, borne by fire. With Earthpower, she parted the crushing waters and began to hasten perilously over the slick stones. But her foes were already halfway down the length of the cavern, limned in rocklight.

The mountain’s tremors repeated themselves more frequently. Their ferocity mounted. Soon they became an almost constant seizure. As Linden skidded to the cavern floor and tried to race after Roger and her helpless son, slabs of granite and schist the size of houses sheared off from the ceiling and collapsed on all sides.

Thunder filled the air with catastrophe. It seemed as loud as the ruin of worlds.

Now she had to fight for Jeremiah’s life as well as her own. She knew what Roger and the croyel would do. Given any respite from her assault, any relief at all, they would combine their lore to transport themselves out of the mountain. They might fail in the presence of so much Earthpower, but they would certainly make the attempt. She had to do more than compel them to defend themselves. She had to drive them apart, fill the space between them with a ravage of flame. Otherwise her son would be snatched away. She was ten millennia from her proper time, and would never find him again.

But the ceiling was falling. Even the sides of the cavern were falling. Massive stone columns and monoliths toppled as the roots of Melenkurion Skyweir shook. The river danced in its course; overran its rims amid the hail of shattered menhirs and rubble. Orogenic thunder detonated through the cavern.

The croyel repelled the rock. Despite the magnitude of the quake, the creature protected Jeremiah and Roger. But Linden had no defense except Earthpower; no lore except the Seven Words.

The rocklight grew pale and faltered as the damage to the cavern increased.

Screaming, “Melenkurion abatha!” she tuned her fire to the pitch of granite and made powder of every crashing stone that came near her. “Duroc minas mill!” Hardly conscious of what she did, she shaped the mountain’s collapse to her needs; formed pillars to support the Skyweir’s inconceivable mass; dashed debris from her path so that she could strike at Roger and the croyel. “Harad khabaal!” Striding through havoc, she pursued her son’s doom amid the earthquake.

But the titanic convulsion took too much of her strength. More and more, she was forced to ward off her own ruin. And she had lost the direct use of the EarthBlood. She could not reach Roger and Jeremiah; could not strike hard enough, swiftly enough, to penetrate her betrayers’ defenses.

In the Staffs flame and the last of the rocklight, she saw lightning arch between Roger’s arms and Jeremiah’s. She saw them vanish.

Then the earthquake took her; the river took her; and she was swept from the cavern.