LINDEN AVERY walked beside Covenant down through the ways of Coercri.
Below them, the stone Giantship, Starfare’s Gem, came gliding toward the sole intact levee at the foot of the ancient city; but she paid no heed to it Earlier, she had witnessed the way the dromond rode the wind like a boon-at once massive and delicate, full-sailed and precise-a vessel of hope for Covenant’s quest, and for her own. As she and the Unbeliever, with Brinn, Cail, and then Vain behind them, descended toward the headrock and piers of The Grieve, she could have studied that craft with pleasure. Its vitality offered gladness to her senses.
But Covenant had just sent the two Stonedownors, Sunder and Hollian, back toward the Upper Land in the hope that they would be able to muster resistance among the villages against the depredations of the Clave. And that hope was founded on the fact that he had given them Loric’s krill to use against the Sunbane. Covenant needed that blade, both as a weapon to take the place of the wild magic which destroyed peace and as a defense against the mystery of Vain, the Demondim-spawn. Yet this morning he had given the krill away. When Linden had asked him for an explanation, he had replied, I’m already too dangerous.
