The Last Dark: The climax of the entire Thomas Covenant Chronicles (Last Chronicles of Thomas Cove)

time.
    But his secrets were too dark for him. They implied too much vulnerability, too much helplessness. They would reduce him to a whimpering child. They might send him back to the safety of graves.
    Seething, he filled his hands with fire again. Then he scrubbed it across his rough cheeks, ran flames through his tangled hair. While light like dishonesty shone in his eyes, he avoided Grueburn’s gaze.
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Deliberately he tried to sound callous. “Look for malachite higher up.” He waved a dismissal. “Find a piece you can lift. I see a few rocks I can manage.”
    Bitterly he turned away. He told himself that he was angry at Frostheart Grueburn because she had tainted the pure excitement of his talents and his task, but that was not the truth.
    Like the wind, the truth thronged with omens.

    t intervals, Grueburn and Latebirth asked for Jeremiah’s opinion of one ponderous fragment or another. Most of the time, they labored without him. And before long, Latebirth limped away to rejoin her resting comrades. After rolling one more boulder down the slope, Grueburn followed her. Eventually the Ironhand and Halewhole Bluntfist came to toil in their turn.
    Stave needed more of Jeremiah’s guidance, but he gave no sign that he required any respite. He worked steadily, moving chunks and slabs that would have tested the thick muscles of Giants.
    And Jeremiah also did not tire. He considered that he had already spent ten years effectively asleep. That was enough. In addition, Anele’s gift of Earthpower provided reserves that seemed boundless. Occasionally he paused to measure his growing collection of fragments against his temple’s requirements. From time to time, he asked Rime Coldspray and Bluntfist—or, later, Cabledarm and Onyx Stonemage—to position their burdens on one of his structure’s boundary-lines. But those interruptions were brief. Between them, he moved up and down the rockfall with the assurance of inspiration. Hidden deposits and delicate veins held his attention as if they made him complete.
    Displayed against the fathomless velvet of the heavens, the stars continued their gradual dance of death. And with every loss, the lights that remained seemed to shine more brightly, like beacons pleading for rescue. Only their vast profusion, and the immeasurable distances between them, suggested that the Earth’s demise was not imminent.
    For a while, Cirrus Kindwind with one maimed arm and Stormpast Galesend relieved Cabledarm and Stonemage. But soon, too soon, they wore themselves to the fringes of prostration. Then only Jeremiah and Stave were left to carry on the task.
    Midnight had come. It had not passed. Dawn and more help seemed impossibly distant.
    The wind gathered force through the darkness, rushing from nowhere to nowhere, and contradicting its own impulses incessantly. Dust and grit driven away in one direction flailed the ridge from another. Sudden blasts strong enough to stagger Jeremiah righted him in an instant. Nevertheless the gusts did him one service: they scoured away the dirt between the stones. As a result, he was able to locate portions of malachite more quickly. Chunks no bigger than his head and ragged menhirs the size of Giants revealed their secrets as if they were etched in possibilities.
    Still there was too little that he and Stave could accomplish alone. Long before dawn, they had gathered all of the lesser shards that the edifice required. Some pieces they put in place: others they could not. For the heavier labor, only Giants working together would suffice. And even when Jeremiah had identified every fragment that he would ask the Swordmainnir to move, he lacked one crucial element.
    Eventually he would need a capstone, a culminating lump of malachite. Not a large one: nothing bigger than his two fists together, or perhaps his goaded heart. And its precise contours were not critical. Any approximation would serve his purpose. But it had to be pure—
    Well, not absolutely pure. He could tolerate some slight admixture of other substances. But not much. Not much at all.
    Where in or under this rubble was he going to find enough unadulterated green? So far, everything had been veins, tracery, small nodes; threads deposited in trickles across centuries or millennia. Otherwise he would have needed rocks of lesser bulk.
    Without its capstone, his edifice would have no power over the
Elohim
.
    While the Giants rested, there was