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

are much altered,” he remarked. “Is your condition such that you are able to remember Galt, who kept the fangs of the
croyel
from your neck?”
    Jeremiah nodded. “I remember. He’s your son. He let himself be killed so Anele could get that monster off my back. So Anele could give me all this power.”
    —the hope of the Land.
    Linden watched the boy with a kind of awe. Some part of him must have remained conscious throughout the long years of his dissociation. Other aspects must have been evoked or informed by the
croyel
’s use of him. Otherwise he would not have been able to emerge so swiftly—or to know so much.
    “Then,” Stave said flatly, “I am content that you are indeed restored.”
    As if in confirmation, the Ranyhyn tossed their heads, and Hynyn trumpeted an imperious acknowledgment. From among them, Khelen came forward and nudged Jeremiah, apparently urging the boy to mount.
    Jeremiah, Linden tried to say; but she had no voice. She did not know where to begin. Too many aspects of her relationship with her son had taken on new meanings.
    Briefly the boy stroked the young stallion’s muzzle: a small gesture of affection. Then he turned back to his mother.
    “Mom.” There were tears in his voice again, if not in his eyes. His grin fell away. With his halfhand, he pointed at the bullet hole over her heart. “I’m sorry. I never wanted you to get shot. But I’m glad, too. I needed you so bad—” For a moment, the color of his gaze darkened, hinting at black depths of pain. “I needed you to come after me. I was worse than dead.”
    His pajamas remained torn and stained. The horses ramping across the tops were almost indecipherable. And Liand’s blood still soiled the tattered bottoms, in spite of Linden’s efforts to wash them. She could barely remember that the fabric had once been sky-blue. It would never come clean.
    But before she could reply, Jeremiah shook his head hard; blinked until his expression cleared. Gesturing around him, he snorted, “
Quellvisks
. They were good for something after all.”
    Something which Lord Foul had not foreseen. In a sense, the boy had reincarnated himself from the old bones of monsters.
    Oh, my son. Linden needed to stop weeping. Really, she could not go on like this. When Stave said her name again, his tone had become more peremptory. And he was right. They could not linger here without food or water or their companions. The wonder of her son’s emergence from his portal was a small detail compared to the threat of the Worm. The world’s end would not pause for any instance of mere human exaltation and relief.
    “Say something, Mom,” Jeremiah prodded. His tone suggested a teenager’s impatience. “Say anything. Tell me you heard Stave. He’s right, we need to go.” His next thought made him grin again. “And I want to see the Giants’ faces when they see me. They are not going to believe it.”
    Linden tried to refuse. She wanted nothing except to concentrate on her son. Her thirst for the sound of his voice was acute. There was so much that she yearned to know about him. About what he had endured—and how he had endured it. It did not matter where she began, as long as she could search for the truth.
    I never wanted you to get shot.
    But there was something else—Something in Stave’s tone nagged at the edges of her health-sense.
    She absolutely had to stop crying.
    When she rubbed at her eyes, the emptiness of her hands reminded her that she no longer held the Staff of Law.
    She felt strangely reluctant to retrieve it. It represented responsibilities which were too great for her. Nevertheless she was capable now of many things that would have surpassed her less than an hour ago. She was still the same Linden Avery who had raged and failed and despaired; yet somehow she had also been made new. And watching over Jeremiah was a task to which she could commit herself without hesitation.
    To meet that challenge, she might well need every conceivable resource.
    Unsteadily she stooped to reclaim her Staff.
    As her fingers closed on the engraved blackness of the wood, another faint pang touched her nerves: an evanescent breath of approaching
wrongness
. Frowning, she raised her head to scent the air, extend her health-sense.
    The atmosphere had a brittle taste, as if it were compounded of a substance that might shatter. She knew that the season was spring; but that fact seemed to have no meaning on the Lower Land. Hideous theurgies and