He isn't hearing voices anymore, but that almost doesn't matter because Evandrin's, tender and desperate as the embraced between the planes, rings so fiercely in his mind. We can fix this, we can find another way, please. At the time it was the only way to save his son.

But there was another moment - a gift, from his brother, the mercy of a clean death - where he could have let go. Dead, but far beyond the devil's grasp; dead, but perhaps not forever. "I know I don't. I knew that before the Barge."

It sounds absurd, he knows, and his best explanation is, "I can't just leave. I don't know if it will matter but I have to try."