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hips. She could not straighten her legs. “Under here. Somewhere.”
    The Anchormaster shouted word down to the search parties.
    Honninscrave studied her with perplexity. “That seems a strange hiding,” he muttered. “From deck to keel below you lie only grainholds, foodlockers, waterchests. And all are full. Sevinhand”—he referred to the Anchormaster—“found pure water, wild maize, and much good fruit on the verges of the Great Swamp.”
    Linden could not look at him. She was thinking absurdly, The verges of the Great Swamp. Where all the pollution of Sarangrave Flat drained into the Sea.
    Gritting her teeth, she felt the darkness gather under her like a thunderhead. For a time, it lay fragmented in the depths of the ship—pieces of malice. Then it stirred. Thrumming like an assault through the granite, it began to swarm. The sunlight filled her eyes with recollections of bees, forcing her to duck her head, huddle into herself. Somewhere above her head, untended sails flapped limply. Starfare’s Gem had become still, braced for the onslaught of the Raver.
    It began to rise.
    Abruptly shouts of anger and surprise echoed from the underdecks. Fighting for breath, she gasped, “It’s coming!”
    The next instant, a dark gray tumult came flooding over the storm-sill out of Foodfendhall.
    Rats.
    Huge rats: rodents with sick yellow fangs and vicious eyes, hundreds of them. The Raver was in them. Their savagery filled the air with teeth.
    They poured straight toward Covenant.
    He staggered upright. At the same time, Brinn and Hergrom threw themselves between him and the attack. Ceer sped to their assistance.
    Leaping like cats, the rodents sprang for the
Haruchai
. Covenant’s defenders seemed to vanish under the gray wave.
    At once, Honninscrave and Seadreamer charged into the assault. Their feet drummed the deck as they kicked and stamped about them. Blood spattered in all directions.
    More Giants surged out of the housing in pursuit, pounded into the fray. Brinn and Ceer appeared amid the slashing moil, followed byHergrom. With hands and feet, they chopped and kicked, crushing rats faster than Linden’s eyes could follow.
    Without warning, she felt a concatenation of intensity as Covenant’s power took fire within him. But his defenders were too close to him. He could not unleash the wild magic.
    Yet for a moment she thought he would be preserved. The
Haruchai
were dervish-wild, flinging rats away on all sides; the Giants trampled slaughter through the pack. The air became a scream which only she could hear—the fury of the Raver. In her fear for Covenant, she thought that she was rushing to his defense. But she had not moved, could not move. The simple proximity of the Raver overwhelmed her. It violated her volition, affirmed everything she had ever striven to deny about herself; and the contradiction held her. Only her vision swept forward as Covenant stumbled and fell, grappling frantically at his right leg.
    Then he rolled back to his feet, snapped erect with a rat writhing clenched in both hands. White fire gutted the beast before he pitched it overboard. Revulsion twisted his face.
    He seemed unaware of the blood which stained the shin of his pants.
    In the confusion of the struggle, no one noticed that all the winds had died.

THREE: Relapse
    The Giantship went dark around Linden. The blood on Covenant’s pants became the blood of his knife-wound, the blood of her nightmare: it blotted out the world. She could taste the venom she had sucked from his forearm after Marid had bitten him. A moral poison. Not just sick: evil. It tasted like the nauseous breath of the strange figure on Haven Farm who had told her to
Be true
.
    In spite of that man’s putrid halitus, she had saved his life when his heart had stopped. But she could not save Covenant. The darkness was complete, and she could not move.
    But then the Raver disappeared. Its presence burst like an invisible bubble; sunlight and vision rushed back