However, at first she gets lost in the wonders of the Lost Deep and Stave can't shake her out of it, even when mentioning the threat for Jeremiah, that She may get to his and Covenant's location and lay them waste, or at least Jeremiah – not in posession of anything to rival She. It takes the ur-viles and the Waynhim dismantling the Lost Deep to bring her to her senses – and to make her wonder again how she may ever repay them.Linden had chosen this. It was not a reaction to the Despiser’s manipulations: it was her own doing. She had stepped off the path of his desires. If she served him now, she could not pretend that she had been misled or tricked. Her choice. Her doing, for good or ill. And she had promised herself that she would remember; that she would allow no effect of shame or pain, horror or failure, to confuse the fact that she had acted of her own free will.
So Linden calls for SWMNBN.
And Stave says his farewell words to Linden
“I must state plainly, Linden, that you have become wondrous in my sight. Here my life is forfeit. It may be that the bane will heed you. Me She will not suffer. In Her sight, all men are betrayers. I will be devoured.” Water streamed on Linden’s face, scattered from the lines of her jaw. Drops snapped against her skin. Here my life is forfeit. How had she failed to consider this? For hours, she had imagined her intentions as though they threatened only her. But of course Stave was right. He could not withstand the bane. She Who Must Not Be Named would not tolerate him. “As farewell,” her final companion told her, “I must say aloud that I regret nothing. My fears are gone. You risk much, as you have ever done. Whatever now ensues, know that I am made proud by my place at your side.”
However, when She appears, and before Linden gets swallowed, covered with only Wild Magic, Linden manages to get a way out for Stave.
And the first thing she understands she must do when within the bane – talk to Elena, for whom Linden once denied compassion. She does apologize, but Linden's craving to save and free the ones withing the bane gets a grim reply from Elena, that as bodyless souls thay can't be taken from She.Swift as her pulse in her veins, she spun silver puissance around her treasured friend, caught him in a fist of bright flame: a fist or a circle. She had no krill to enable a translation, but she had other resources. She had the unthinking reflexes which had allowed her to step outside the sequences of time during the collapse of Kevin’s Watch. She had the whetted senses with which she had created caesures without stumbling into Joan’s madness. And she was not hampered by her husband’s necessary reluctance. While the bane surged forward, Linden grasped Stave and threw him. Away from this moment. Away from this place, this stone, this fate. Trusting his instincts— his clarity of intent—to choose his destination, she spared him the cost of her choices.
Yet Linden gets a moment of an insight.
But then her preconceptions shifted. She had spent her life making promises that she did not know how to keep. She had never sufficed to keep them. And yet she had accomplished more than she could have imagined. But not because she was more— or not only because she was more. No, she had been able to do so much because she was not alone.
Berek Halfhand had seen Gallows Howe in her, a mound of ruin made barren by bitterness and slaughter. In Garroting Deep, however, she had discovered a deeper truth beneath the drenched dirt. More than bloodshed and revenge, the olden forest had yearned for restitution. The trees would have turned their backs on killing entirely if they could have recovered their ravaged expanse and majesty. She understood that now. She recognized, if the bane did not, that healing was both more arduous and more worthy than retribution.
Linden continues to toss spectres out of Her towards the awaiting ur-viles and Waynhym, provoking at first resistance, then an angry speech. Linden had a reply, that She could slip out from under the Arch of Time, leaving the souls She gathered behind - but She is unimpressed, She only wants Her real name. As the last option, Linden asks for Emereau Vrai, thinking that perhaps the Elohim were so angry at Kastenessen for passing to her some lore, their explanation about “harming an ordinary woman with his love” didn't sound remotely like their kind of thinking and caring. With the last of her strength Linden tosses Emereau Vrai to the Demondim-spawn, who start chanting something.What had the ur-viles and the Waynhim ever wanted, except to escape their loathing for their own forms? Linden waited until the loremaster met her gaze; until the tall creature nodded its assent. Then she did what she could for Elena. Risking the shroud of wild magic which protected her, Linden flung Elena out of the bane; tossed her like a wisp of hope or a kept promise into the waiting embrace of the loremaster.
What could She need? Just “Diassomer”, already known, just that nobody dared to pass it to Her? Or more like some other, more secret name – perhaps even unspeakable for human lips? But of course, all that would have been just names, not answers, not a gift of understanding. And there was the answer She needed, the absolute refusal to be a mere incarnation of Despiser's and everyone else's betrayal, the one answer against bathing in others' pain and the understanding of what matters still and what should be always remembered for anyone feeling like nothing, sure of being lost forever and betrayed:
Her response was a cry that sent spasms through the gutrock for leagues in all directions: “I AM MYSELF!”