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

the edge. He took one abused step toward the hole in the center of the roof. Then he took another.
    And another, ascending the slope of the stones.
    Still his heart did not beat. He did not breathe.
    A sensation like terror gripped Jeremiah. He moved toward the
Haruchai
. He could not help Stave carry the stone, but he could guide it. As firmly as he dared, he placed his hands on the rock. By touch, he urged Stave to accommodate a subtle rotation: a shift of inches so that the rock would fit its intended seat.
    Stave did not appear to look at his target. His eye seemed sightless. No part of him reacted to the pressure of Jeremiah’s hands: no part except his feet. At his next step, he angled his failing stance slightly to match Jeremiah’s wishes.
    With the slowness of hindered time, one instant forced to pause for the next, he sagged to his knees. By rending increments, he extended his arms. Beyond the limits of his strength, he dropped his treasure of malachite into place.
    In almost the same motion, he thrust himself away. From his knees, he fell onto his back. Soundless as a figure in a dream, he rolled down the slant of the roof, fell over the edge.
    The jolt when he hit the ground restarted his heart. He began to breathe again. With a gasp that no one heard, he fought air into his lungs.
    Jeremiah did not see him. Suddenly faint, the Chosen-son crumpled as if his own heart had stopped.

    ut he was only unconscious for a moment. Then he jerked up his head like a swimmer who had been underwater too long.
    The roof under him felt as solid as the cliff looming across the southeast. It looked like an accidental spill of stone too heavy to hang in the air; but it was not. It had become something more. Delicate strands and small deposits of malachite held the roof and the walls together as if they had become one with each other. The hidden green was now a mesh of theurgy able to withstand shocks which would have broken a house.
    And the whole edifice thrummed with power. It sent a thrill of summons along the winds, out into the twilight and the rising dark.
    They had done it, the Giants and Stave and Jeremiah himself. Somehow they had vindicated Linden’s faith in them.
    But he did not know how many of his companions had survived.
    Then he did. As soon as he cast his health-sense farther, he located Stave. The
Haruchai
lay prone in the dirt. Respiration barely lifted his chest. His heart straggled from beat to beat. Nevertheless he lived.
    Apart from Cabledarm, the women were in no worse condition than Stave. Rime Coldspray, Cirrus Kindwind, and three others had managed to stagger out of the temple before they collapsed. Now they sprawled on the ground like invalids in the last stages of a wasting illness.
    Felled by their efforts, the remaining Swordmainnir lay like debris on the floor of the construct. Frostheart Grueburn and Onyx Stonemage were there. Their prostration resembled Coldspray’s, and Kindwind’s. Still Jeremiah could hope that they would recover. But Cabledarm’s plight was more severe. She had lost too much blood. He had no idea how much longer her heart would be able to sustain its beat.
    Yet she had succeeded. The whole company had succeeded. The construct was complete. It was exact. In some sense, it lived. That achievement counted. It may have been as costly as a defeat, but it was a victory nonetheless.
    Jeremiah wanted to hear a song of praise. He should have sung it himself, but he did not know how.
    Unaware that he was hurrying, he gained his feet, went to the edge of the roof, dropped to the ground beside Stave. “We did it,” he told the
Haruchai
. “You did it.” Then he trotted around the corner to the front of the structure.
    There he announced to the Swordmainnir, “You did it. All of you
did
it. You were
amazing
!”
    The Ironhand turned her head. She was too weak to lift it. Wan as a whisper, she asked, “Do the
Elohim
come?”
    Jeremiah looked up into a hard slap of wind, scanned his surroundings. Mottled by craters, the hardpan plain stretched away into the gloom. It looked as empty as a wasteland. Toward the east, darkness continued to swell, dimming the unnatural day, obscuring even the ravaged heavens. But full dark was still hours away.
    “Don’t worry about it,” he answered Coldspray. “They’ll come. They have to.”
    They could not refuse without ceasing to be themselves.
    His purpose for us is an abomination, more so than our doom in the maw of the Worm. But