Hunger and sorrow had taken his mind.

He reminded her of Nassic When she and Covenant had arrived together in the Land, they had been greeted by Sunder's father, Nassic, who had inherited a vague knowledge of the Unbeliever from a long line of half-mad hermits called Unfettered Ones. In spite of his confused grasp on events, he had done everything in his power to aid them.

A Raver had killed him for his trouble.

This old man might be in similar danger.

At once she set her own fears aside. Kneeling forward, she gripped him by his arms and pulled him fully onto the Watch. Then she crept to the gap and looked downward again, searching the shroud for anything that resembled turiya Herem's malice.

Still the cloud baffled her percipience; concealed its secrets.

Come on! she urged the long fall. Try me. I am in no mood for this!

Until now, she had been helpless to save any of Roger's victims. But Covenant's ring had power here. She was done with helplessness.

Nothing appeared out of the shroud.

Slowly she withdrew from the gap; returned her attention to the collapsed old man. For a moment, she studied him with her healthsense, trying to determine how close he had come to death. Now that she could observe him more precisely, however, she saw that he had not exhausted his life. In fact, he possessed an astonishing re silience, in spite of his inanition. He was sustained byNew surprise rocked her back onto her heels.

-by Earthpower.

Automatically she rubbed at her eyes, trying to sharpen her senses.

The old man was a being of some puissance. Human, undoubtedly: old, arthritic, and frail. Nevertheless an active pulse of Earthpower throbbed in his worn veins.

It made her think of Hollian, who had been brought back from death by Caer-Caveral's sacrifice and the krill of Loric. Linden remembered her vividly as she had stood at Sunder's side, lambent with Earthpower made tangible and lovely-and mortal. Sunder himself had shared her numinous glow. Even the child in her womb had shared it.

But neither Sunder nor Hollian had been mad.

And there was something else in the old man, another ill in addition to his arthritis and his instability. When Linden first became aware of it, she could not define it.

But then he groaned, stirred, and raised his head; and she saw that he was blind.

He had a face like a broken rock, all ragged edges and rough planes, softened by an old tangle of neglected beard and a patina of ingrained grime. His mouth resembled a crack in dried mud.

And above it, his eyes were the milky color of moonstone, devoid of iris or pupil. She thought at first that he suffered from cataracts; but when she looked more closely, she realized that his sightlessness ran deeper. His mind itself appeared to have rejected vision. In some way- perhaps by Earthpower-he had blinded himself.

With the Staff of Law she might have been able to heal him. She could certainly have eased his arthritis. But with Covenant's ring? She had used its power on herself successfully. Yet she hardly knew how she had done so. And she had been guided by her instinctive awareness of her condition. For this tattered old man She had little experience with wild magic; was not even sure that she could call it up at will. And it was called wild magic for a reason: it tended always toward increase; rampant flame; chaos. After his confrontation with the Banefire, Covenant had turned his back on the use of such power. He had feared that it would tower beyond the reach of his restraint: that it would rage and grow until it shattered Time, and the Despiser was set free.

Linden's control would not be delicate enough to help the abused figure in front of her.

If he had rejected sight, he might not want to be helped.

Nevertheless she was a physician: she wished to succor him in some way, despite the desperation of her circumstances-and, apparently, of his. Putting aside the surprise of his presence, she cleared her throat, then said cautiously, "Don't try to move. You're too weak-and this place isn't exactly safe. I'm here. I'll try to help you "

In response, he faced her with his blind eyes and broken mien. "Protect Anele." His voice was a cracked whisper, hoarse with exhaustion, uncertain with disuse. "Protect-"

"I will," she answered without hesitation. "I want to.

I'll do what I can. But-"

Who or what was Anele?

As if she had not spoken, he moaned, "They search for him. It pursues him. Always he is pursued. If they take him, he will not be able to escape it. His last hope. Poor Anele, who has lost his birthright and harms no one.

His sacred trust-" He reached one trembling hand toward her. "Protect."

A sound like a dusty sob escaped from his chest.

"I will" she said againtl "Y ,, more srongy.ou aren't alone." She had too many ques tions-and he was plainly in no state to answer them.

"We're in danger here. I don't trust this stone. And the only way down is the same way you came up. But I'm sure there's something I can do."

Covenant's ring would serve her somehow.

"Power," the old man croaked, "yes. Anele feels it. He climbed to find it."

On his knees, he shuffled toward her, groping with his gnarled hand until he touched her arm. Then, however, his hand flinched away as if he feared to presumeor feared the sensation of contact.

"They search for him," he offered abjectly, "but Anele tricks them. They can be tricked, a little." Again he touched her arm, appealing to her-and flinched back.

"But it is not tricked. It knows where Anele is. It pursues him. If it takes him "Ah!" he cried out weakly, "lost! All lost." Another sob broke his voice. "Anele climbed high. His last trick. If it comes close, he will jump and die."

His distress twisted Linden's heart. "Anele," she responded, sure now of his name, "listen to me. I'm here. I'll do everything I can. Don't jump."

She had already felt too much falling.

His hand fumbled toward her and away as though he feared to believe her. "Lost," he said again. "All lost."

"I understand," she told him, although she did not; could not. "I'm here. Whatever happens, you aren't alone."

He gaped at her blindly as if she were the one deranged, not he.

"But I need-" she began. Then, however, she hesitated.

She hardly knew where to start. Even if he had been sane, she would not have known which question to ask first.

She had to guess at the things he might be able to answer.

But she had spent years dealing with damaged minds.

She had learned how to probe them gently. "You're Anele?" she inquired quietly. "That's your name?" Begin with something concrete. Unthreatening.

He nodded as if in confirmation.

"And you have enemies?" A frail old man in his condition? "What do they want?" What was it?

His white eyes stared at her. "They seek to catch Anele. Imprison him. They are ter rible, terrible everywhere. It will take him. They can be tricked. It is not tricked." His reply explained nothing. She tried a different approach. "Why does it pursue you? Why do they?"

"Ah!" Anele broke into a low wail. "His birthright.

Sacred trust. Lost, failed. Anele failed. Everything, all lost."

Apparently he was too badly hurt to answer in terms that she could comprehend. Perhaps her questions were too abstract; too far removed from his immediate plight.

"I understand," she repeated, striving to calm him.

"I'm here. I have power." He had said as much himself. "Whoever they are-whatever it is-they have no idea what I can do."

Then she remarked as though she felt no threat herself, "It pursues you. Is it close?" "Yes!" he returned instantly. "Yes!" His head nodded vehemently. "Protect him. He must be protected!"

"Anele!" Linden spoke more sternly. "I'm here."

Perhaps severity would pierce his confusion. "I know you need protection. I want to help you. But I need to know. How close is it? Where is it?"

Without warning, Anele sprang to his feet. His blind eyes remained fixed on her, but his left arm gestured wildly behind him, indicating some portion of the shrouded cliff-face.

"There!"

"Now?" she asked in disbelief. Her senses had detected nothing. "It's there now?"

,,Yes!" Lifting his head, he shouted into the clear sky, "It pursues him!" Frantically he brandished his arms at the clean sunlight. Under their dirt, they looked as brittle as dry twigs. "Poor Anele. His last trick. He will jump. He must! "

Then he began to weep as if he had come to the end of himself, and even the vibrant Earthpower in his veins could no longer sustain him.

At once, Linden stood as well. "Anele!" she called softly, taking hold of his shoulders so that he would not fling himself from the Watch. "Anele! Listen to me.

I'm here. I'll protect you."

A heartbeat later, however, a swirl of distortion against the mountains snagged in her peripheral vision: caught and tugged so hard that she almost staggered.

Still gripping one of Anele's shoulders, she turned her head.

God in Heaven! What's that?

By standing, she had lifted her high enough to see the thing Anele dreaded.

The sight of it seemed to crawl over her skin like a rush of formication. The eerie kinesthesia of her healthsense was so intense that she could hardly restrain her impulse to slap at the squirming sensation.

Hundreds of feet tall, it stood against the western edge of the blunt cliff-face: a spinning chiaroscuro of multicolored dots like the phosphene aura of a migraine. Towering in the shape of a whirlwind, it seethed and danced hotly, each spot of color incandescent with force, each indistinguishable from the others. Its initial impact struck Linden so hard that she could not focus on it clearly: it appeared to be superimposed on the impenetrable shroud below her, as if it swirled in a different dimension. But then her senses sharpened, and she realized that she was seeing the manifestation through the cloud. It was definitely below her, beneath the obscuring blanket.

In all the region under Kevin's Watch, that aura was the only thing powerful enough to pierce the shroud.

And like the shroud, it was wrong. It violated her percipience in similar ways, but more acutely, as if it were the distilled essence of violation. In that swirl, fundamental Laws which enabled this world's existence were suspended or distorted: reality seemed to flow and melt into itself like the confusion in Joan's mind. Any living thing swallowed by it might be torn apart.

And it was moving; advancing along the cliff-face toward the Watch. Soon it would be near enough to touch the spire.

Moaning in distress, Anele wrenched at Linden's grasp. Now she understood his reaction. She might leap from Kevin's Watch herself, if that aura came near her.

"Release Anele!" he panted urgently. "It pursues him!

He must escape!"

His alarm helped her to step back from her own.

Pursues him? she thought fiercely. Not damn likely.

His madness misled him. That fatal aura had no interest in him. It had no interests at all; no consciousness and no volition. Her senses were certain.

It resembled a force of nature hideously perverted: blind, insentient, and entirely destructive.

Yet it continued to advance on the Watch, drawing closer with every beat of her heart.

"Anele, no!" she called with as much authority as she could summon. "Don't!" Deliberately she turned her back on the aura so that she could hold him more tightly. "I said I'll protect you. I can't do that if you jump."

His white, staring eyes glistened as if they were sweating in terror.

Why did he think that the mad distortion wanted him?

But she could not phrase her questions in words that he would be able to answer. With the whirlwind approaching at her back, she could hardly think. And it moved nearer at every moment. Clutching Anele, she abandoned her confusion and reached instead for the memory of her fall to this place. The memory of wild magic.

Under her boots, the stone seemed to shiver in anticipation or dread.

Linden had healed her wounds somehow. Yet wild magic was not inherently apt for healing. Its impulse toward rampage limited its ordinary, mortal uses. She did not know whether she could oppose the aura with white gold. She was not even sure that she could muster its fire consciously.

But she did not doubt that both she and Anele would die if the seething swirl touched them.

Moment by moment, the aura advanced. At the same time, the shivering of the stone mounted; became insistent. Earlier she had felt a flaw in the spire, a suggestion of frangibility. Her healthsense had told her that the Watch had been damaged Its instability undermined her balance. Only her grim grip on Anele kept her from stumbling.

-but she had not been able to guess what form of power had done the spire such harm.

Now she knew.

The aura was not the only manifestation of its kind. Or it had existed for a long time-a very long time-roving the Land as its energies dictated. In some form, it had been here before.

Then it had left Kevin's Watch barely standing. Even through her boots, the tremors in the stone assured her that the next touch would be the last.

The swirl would reach the base of the spire in moments.

"Anele!" she yelled frantically, "get behind me! Hold on! Don't let go, whatever hap pens. We're going down!"

With all her strength, she wrenched him aside so that she stood between him and the danger.

Obedient to her desperate command, he flung his arms around her neck, caught her in a hug of panic. When he shoved the side of his head against hers, his gasping sounded like a death rattle in her ear.

Seething viciously, the aura approached the base of the spire. Enveloped it.

For an instant nothing happened. The stone quivered and quailed-and held. Then a rending shriek shivered the Watch, and the ancient granite twisted to splin ters like torn kindling.In the Rubble Through a din like the destruction of the heavens, the massive spire of Kevin's Watch shuddered and snapped. Between one heartbeat and the next, it became rubble hopelessly poised a thousand feet above the hills.