If she had not lain along Hyn's neck and clung there, desolate and unyielding, her flesh would have failed her. There was malice in the gnashing rain, the fanged wind, and she could not have endured it without her mount.

Half weeping himself, and frantic, Liand carried her to the nearest shelter, the nearest cookfire, helped by Bhapa and Pahni. Eager to be of service, Char brought armloads of wood and baskets of dried dung to stoke the flames. Hami trickled warmed water between Linden's pallid lips while the Stonedownor stroked her throat to help her swallow. With unexpected tenderness, Mahrtiir bit into two or three treasureberries, removed the seeds, then kissed the pulp and juice into her helpless mouth.

Accepting no assistance, Stave staggered into the shelter so that he, too, would be warmed. And both Hyn and Hynyn shouldered their way in among the Ramen, although the sod roof was too low to let them hold up their heads, and the stallion's shoulders almost brushed the lattice of the ceiling. Together they watched over Linden. Their concern steamed the rain from their coats.

Then Linden gagged; swallowed convulsively; gagged again; and some of the rigor seeped from her muscles.

By slow degrees, the warmth of the water and the potency of the aliantha eased into her abused body, while the high heat of the fire wiped cold from the surface of her skin. Her pallid cheeks gradually acquired a hectic flush, stricken and febrile. Shivers began to surge through her, first in brief tremors like the aftershocks of a catastrophe, then in longer and more vehement waves, seizures violent enough to make her thrash in Liand's arms.

It appeared that she might rally.

After a time, the Ranyhyn withdrew as if they had been reassured. Turning away from the encampment, they disappeared into the teeth of the storm. Most of the Ramen did them homage as they departed. But Mahrtiir continued to prepare aliantha with his teeth; Hami offered small, steady sips of water to Linden's involuntary swallowing; and Bhapa and Pahni gently chafed her hands and feet, striving to restore her circulation.

Stave had seated himself on the opposite side of the fire. He, too, shivered heavily for a while, in spite of his toughness. But when the Ramen offered him warmed water, he drank it: he accepted a few treasureberries, a little rhee and stew. Soon he stopped trembling, and his brown skin lost its rime-gnawed hue. A dullness like the glaze of exhaustion remained in his eyes, but he had sloughed away the worst effects of the storm.

Then Manethrall Hami asked him quietly, "Will you speak now, Bloodguard? The Ringthane cannot reveal what has befallen her. Nor is she able to guide our care. The hurt of wind and rain and cold we understand, and will tend. But a fever rises in her which we do not comprehend. It is an ague of the spirit, beyond our ken. We fear to harm her.

"Will you not tell us what has transpired?"

The Haruchai turned his closed features toward Hami.

"Let the Chosen speak of it," he answered, "if she is able." Behind its exhaustion, his voice hinted at chagrin and old shame. "I will not."

Perhaps Liand would have replied with indignation or pleading. But he contained himself for Linden's sake, as did the Ramen, so that she would not be disturbed.

She seemed to sleep for a while. Her shivers receded somewhat. Then she opened her eyes briefly and stared about her with a terrible dismay, although she did not truly regain consciousness. When the moment passed, however, she began to breathe more easily.

Hami cajoled more water between her lips, which she swallowed without gagging. The pulped aliantha which Mahrtiir placed in her mouth she swallowed as well.

Little by little, she became visibly stronger.

Chills still wracked her without surcease, but now their character changed. The cold gradually lifted from the marrow of her bones, the depths of her lungs, the core of her internal organs; but another fever took its place. She continued to shiver because she had fallen profoundly ill: an ailment so deep that it appeared almost metaphysical.

The Ramen would have given her hurtloam, if their small store of the eldritch mud had not been expended.

They would have treated her with amanibhavam, if they had not feared that it would prove too potent for her-or that it was the wrong kind of febrifuge for her needs.

At last Liand was reduced to simply murmuring her name as he held her, repeating, "Linden. Linden," as if by that unadorned incantation he thought he might exorcise the fever from her soul.

Still she continued to rally. When next she opened her eyes, they were bright with fever, disconsolate as stars; but a faint patina of consciousness blurred their dismay. As if deliberately, she gulped at the cup of water Hami held to her lips. Then her tremors became coughing, and she struggled to sit up in order to clear her lungs.

Liand let her rise, although he held her shoulders so that she would not slump toward the fire or fall to the side.

"God, Stave," she coughed weakly. Her voice sounded tortured, fatally hoarse, as if she had spent innumerable hours screaming. "Those poor horses "Oh, my son."

Tears streaked her cheeks, although she had no strength for weeping.

he needed time to recognize where she was. Leagues and mountains and bru I, tal rain had intervened between her and the horserite; and at first she could recall only Stave, identify only his face across the lashing flames: the man who had accompanied her against his will.

If he had seen just a fraction of what she herself beheld But the horserite itself existed only in fragments. That she could not remember: not immediately. Not until she had reconstructed laboriously, in pain and sorrow, the links which connected her to this forgotten shelter, this lost heat; these unimagined faces, half-familiar and doomed. Shivers shattered the past, left it lying around her like splinters of broken glass.

In fever she seemed to pick them up one at a time to lacerate her aggrieved heart. Hyn Very well, she remembered Hyn. The mare had kept her alive. Hyn was Earthpower defined in flesh, at once glorious and suppliant; revered and vulnerable.

And Hynyn, who had borne Stave And the black tarn, its waters lightless as despair.

She was not ready.

Someone whom she may have recognized appeared to offer her a small bowl con taining pulped treasureberries. She ate a little of the vibrant fruit and grew stronger. Covenant had once said, There's only one way to hurt a man who's lost everything.

Give him back something broken.

She would have preferred to remember the storm. She had been forewarned-and did not know how to bear it.

So. Stave: Hyn and Hynyn: the bitter tarn.

And running -around and around the floor of the vale as if her heart would burst: as fervid as the Ranyhyn, if without their frantic speed, their fluid power. Together they pounded their shared visions into the beaten ground.

She should have been able to grasp the chemical transactions taking place within her. Her healthsense should have allowed her to name the deep potency of the tarn. But her consciousness, her willing mind, had vanished at the first taste of those waters. She had become one with the Ranyhyn; no longer herself.

Only two of them. Not because the others had spurned her, or Stave, or this horserite; but because they felt too much shame. Hyn and Hynyn had been elected to bear the guilt and remorse and risk of their great kin.

Elected for sacrifice Beyond question, Linden preferred to remember the punishment of the storm.

Yet memories of the storm could not protect her. The blast which had broken over the mountains during the night had only hastened the fading of her transfiguration; only soaked and lashed and chilled and, finally, numbed her; only restored her mortality.

And mortality was no excuse. It could not protect her from the consequences of what she had seen; or of what she meant to do.

Only death had that power.

She could not choose death. Not while the Despiser still held her son. Therefore she remembered. One by one, she retrieved whetted shards from the ground of her mind and cut Hyn and Hynyn, brave as martyrs. The mindblending waters of the tarn, cruel and unutterably cold.

Running.

Millennia of shame.

And Jeremiah.

Oh, my son.

"Ringthane," said a voice which may have sounded familiar. "Linden Avery." Was it Manethrall Hami?

Hami, who had been left behind days ago, behind vast mountains of despair? Linden could not be sure. "You must speak. You are ill. We know not how to succor you."

Was she ill? Oh, yes. Absolutely. But it was not an ailment of the body. Although everything within her shivered convulsively, she had spent too much time exalted by Earthpower to suffer from merely physical fevers.

She was sick with visions: the memories and prescience of the Ranyhyn.

In some sense, the great horses transcended the Law of Time. They knew when they would be needed. They knew how far they would be required to go Hands gripped her shoulders, attempting to steady her. A man's voice-Liand's?murmured her name repeatedly, called her back to herself.

She feared that he would stop if she could not answer.

Between tremors, she tried to say, "The tarn "

She thought that she spoke aloud. Certainly her strained throat felt the effort and pain of sound. But she could not hear herself. The loud rain on the roof of the shelter muffled her voice.

"The horserite."

Around her, Cords echoed, "Horserite," as though in awe that she had been so privileged. Softly the woman's voice, Hami's, said, "As we deemed. The Ranyhyn possess insight needful to her."

They did not understand. How could they? They barely existed, rendered vague by shivering. Linden could not focus her eyes on them. Only Stave seemed fully real to her beyond the intervening flames: as irrefutable as stone.

"Just Hyn and Hynyn," she croaked hoarsely. No other Ranyhyn. "The others couldn't bear it. They're too ashamed."

That shocked the Ramen. They blurred like tears.

Voices protested, "No," and, "No." Someone hissed through the rain, "It is false. She lies."

Stave blinked at the glaze in his eyes. Sternly he retorted, "It is sooth." He nodded at Linden past the fire. "Behold her. Do you discern falsehood?"

"Do not shame yourselves," Hami told the indignation of her people. "Do you lack sight? She has no falsehood in her."

Fever had burned away any lies that Linden might have wished to believe.

"We are Ramen," the Manethrall informed the Cords severely. "We will hear the truth."

They heeded her, but Linden did not. Her heart seemed to bleed memories for which she had no words and no courage. Running hard enough to vanquish time, she had shared the visions of the Ranyhyn: images not of Kelenbhrabanal and Fangthane, but of the child Elena, daughter of Lena and rape.

Another warning At that time, Elena was a young girl, lovely as only a child could be, and innocent in spite of her mother's instability. Lena had been deranged by violation and yearning, rendered unfit to raise a child. And both of Lena's parents, Trell and Atiaran, had been broken to some extent by the crime against their daughter. Thus Elena was effectively abandoned by her own family; left to the care of a young, unregarded man who adored Lena. For the Land's sake, he had effectively adopted Elena. His embittered tenderness, and the boon of the Ranyhyn, were all that had sustained her.

To Linden, the girl's loneliness and need were as vivid as Jeremiah's, as acute as her son's compelled maiming. The great horses had seen Elena clearly.

Once each year, every year, a Ranyhyn, an old stallion, had approached Mithil Stonedown in order to relieve Lena's bereavement; and so he had witnessed again and again how the child's life was transformed for that brief time. When the mare Myrha had taken the stallion's place, she had seen her potency in Elena's heart more vividly than any man or woman who might have loved the child.

"Because of Elena," Linden explained as clearly as she could, although she had no words. "That's why the Ranyhyn are ashamed. The horserite doomed her."

If Jeremiah had been granted Ranyhyn rather than hospitals and surgery after his ordeal in Lord Foul's bonfire, an excitement like Elena's might have drawn him out of himself.

Surely the Ramen remembered Elena's participation in that rite millennia ago? They had not been present.

Perhaps no Raman had ever witnessed or shared a horserite. But they must have heard the tale "They blame themselves," she told the eager flames, "for what she became."

Precisely because the Ranyhyn had recognized the nature of their power within Elena, Myrha had borne her to that long-ago conclave. They saw far ahead in time; sensed the danger which would confront Elena years later. And they had hoped to dissuade her from accepting her heritage of harm.

Now they knew that they had failed terribly.

They had shown Elena the arrogance of Kelenbhrabanal's despair, thinking to teach her that failure was preferable to violation. Lena should have resisted Covenant with all her strength. Better to combat Fangthane directly and die than to believe that some grand sacrifice might alter Fangthane's nature- or the Land's fate.

But Elena had missed the lesson. She was deafened to it by the thunder of hundreds of hooves; blinded by the communion of the Ranyhyn. Covenant's gift had left her insensible. She already adored the great horses.

From their rite, she had learned something akin to worship for Kelenbhrabanal. His sacrifice had seemed splendid to her: an act of valor so transcendental that it could not be tainted or surpassed.

The horserite had not dissuaded her from ruin. Rather it had set her more firmly on the path to destruction.

Speaking hurt Linden's mouth and throat: words bit like blades of glass, slivers of the past. Nevertheless she forced herself to say, "They think she got the idea of commanding Kevin from Kelenbhrabanal."

Perhaps she would have raised the Father of Horses himself if he had possessed the mighty lore of the Old Lords.

Now the Ranyhyn saw that they had fallen prey to an arrogance of their own. Discerning Elena's vulnerability, they had believed themselves wise enough to guide her future.

If Hyn and Hynyn had stopped there, however, Linden could have endured their self-blame; perhaps even refuted it. Her soul would not have sickened within her. The shame of the great horses, she might have said, was itself arrogant. The Ranyhyn had claimed responsibility for Elena's actions when that burden belonged properly and solely to Elena herself.

But the two horses did not stop. When they had shared their racial memories of Elena, they began their tale again from the beginning-with one appalling alteration. In their visions, they replaced Elena's visage with Linden's.

Still trying to warn her.

"Now they're afraid of me," she moaned, "for the same reason. They believe-"

She could not say it. It hurt too much.

Their minds united with her, Hyn and Hynyn retold the same story as if it had happened to Linden rather than Elena; as if Linden's mother and father had been Atiaran and Trell as well as Lena and Covenant. And she experienced it with them: it transpired anew. It held the same abandonment and grief, the same failed cherishing, the same loneliness-and the same exalting in-rush of love for the Ranyhyn. Mercilessly, Hyn and Hynyn described Elena's introduction to the murder and betrayal of Kelenbhrabanal as if that crisis were indistinguishable from Linden's experience of the Land with Covenant under the Sunbane.

And still the images of the horserite did not end. The Ranyhyn had erred with Elena, perhaps, by not revealing the true extent of her peril. She had been a child, too young to apprehend the truth of their prophecies. They had feared to overwhelm her.

On behalf of all their kind, Hyn and Hynyn did not make that mistake with Linden.

Instead they found within her a still graver hurt.

Galloping in frenzy, they touched the ravaged memories of moksha Raver's possession, the killing horror of Jehannum's malice. And with that knowledge, they caused her to experience what was being done to her son.

To damaged Jeremiah, who had no defense except blankness.

Linden could focus only on Stave. Surely he had seen the same visions, felt the same dismay? The Ranyhyn had not brought him to their horserite against his will in order to spare him. Yet he sat beyond the flames as though he were untouched, unmoved; implacable as blame.

Liand had not stopped murmuring her name. But now he crooned as if he meant to comfort her, "Linden, no.

No.

"The Ranyhyn do not fear you. They cannot."

His support could not interrupt her trembling. She was too ill for any solace.

Belaboring the floor of the dell with her pain, she saw Jeremiah's plight as Hyn and Hynyn wished her to see it: as if he were simultaneously herself occupied by a Raver and Thomas Covenant lost in the stasis imposed by the Elohim. She needed them back desperately, Covenant and her son. All of their lives depended on it: the Land depended on it. And so she reached-or would reach-into him with her healthsense, seeking the place where his mind still lived.

The Ranyhyn elicited it from her, shared it with her: a field of flowers under an immaculate sun, pristine with warmth and promises. Covenant and now Jeremiah met her there, or would meet her, both children again, and unharmed; capable of a child's love, happiness, joy. Yet the visions of the horserite were unutterably cruel; for when she reached out to Covenant and Jeremiah, trying to restore them with herself, the Worm of the World's End squirmed from Covenant's mouth, and her son's dear face seemed to break open and become vile, bitter as Despite.

Hyn and Hynyn would have been kinder to simply trample Linden under their hooves.

"The Ranyhyn believe," she said with her last strength, "I'll do the same thing Elena did."