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performed a Desecration which exceeds comprehension. The Humbled know it, if the Timewarden does not. The Chosen herself knows it.”
    “Enough, Loric-son,” Berek said in a voice of commandment. “The fate of life belongs to those who know love and death. It is not our place to judge, or to condemn. And Time remains to us, as it does to the living. The making of worlds is not accomplished in an instant. It cannot be instantly undone. Much must transpire before the deeds of the Chosen bear their last fruit.”
    Holding Linden’s knotted grief and horror, Covenant tried to grapple with all that he had lost. He needed to retain as much as he could; but a numbness like lethargy hampered him. When Kevin spoke of damnation and Desecration, the bedrock plates of Covenant’s mind shifted against each other. His concentration broke: he seemed to slip out of the present. He still held Linden; still saw that the Haruchai were barely able to contain their desire to deliver death; still felt the troubled emotions of the Dead High Lords. The Ramen and the Ranyhyn, the Stonedownor and one Haruchai , remained poised to defend Linden. At the same time, however, he found himself remembering—
    The Stonedownor had come to stand behind Linden; place his hands softly on her shoulders. “Ah, Linden.” His voice ached. “Do not weep so. I grasp little of what has occurred. But an august spirit has avowed that time remains to us. Can you not hear him? Surely the powers gathered here may accomplish much. And we have not yet attempted to redeem your son. In his name—”
    The young man said more, but Covenant did not recognize it. He was remembering Kevin’s confrontation with Lord Foul in Kiril Threndor, Heart of Thunder. Pieces of his mind witnessed the first moments of the Ritual of Desecration as if they were superimposed on Linden and Andelain.
    There Kevin’s despair was as vivid as the chiaroscuro glinting from Kiril Threndor’s myriad-faceted stone: his self-loathing; his desire to punish himself. His ravaged love and failure exalted the carious illumination of Lord Foul’s malice. If Covenant had been truly present in the chamber, he would have tried to stop Kevin. He would have had no choice: his own spirit would have been torn by the fangs of Lord Foul’s eyes, clawed by the ragged nails of Kevin’s desperation.
    But he could not stay to watch the Ritual enacted. He had seen it before, and was unable to control the images which slid along the fault-lines within him. One thing led to another in the wrong direction. Instead of witnessing the culmination of Kevin’s self-betrayal, he followed Lord Foul backward in time.
    While Linden struggled to master herself in his embrace, and the Stonedownor attempted to soothe or rally her, Covenant visited the Despiser’s brief decades masquerading among the Lords of the Council, accepted as a-Jeroth because none of the Lords could name their reasons for being reluctant to trust him. From there, Covenant’s recollections involuntarily retreated to the many centuries when Lord Foul had inhabited the Lower Land, unknown to the Council, or to any of the peoples who preceded the Lords; unrecognized by anyone except the Forestals who preserved the truncated awareness of the One Forest. During that long age, the Despiser was hampered by the Colossus of the Fall, and by the fierce strength of the Forestals. Therefore he had hidden himself even from the Ravers, until the first waning of the Interdict freed them to do his bidding. Instead he bred other servants among the twisted denizens of Sarangrave Flat and the Great Swamp, and built Foul’s Creche, and spawned his armies, and readied his powers—and quested unceasingly for the most useful of the banes buried deep under Mount Thunder.
    But before that—
    Covenant could not stop himself, even though Linden’s wretchedness wrung his heart, and her companions waited as if they expected him to offer some salvific revelation.
    Before that,