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

slaughter had made a wasteland of the entire region. Muirwin Delenoth was as desiccated as its bones: it had been shaped by death.
    “Mom?” Jeremiah asked; but still she did not speak.
    Drawing warmth and sensitivity from her Staff, Linden considered the slopes of the hollow, the ragged plates around the rim. Then she lifted her attention to the declining sun and the tainted hue of the sky. The pall of ash and dust overhead was wrong in its own fashion: it was unnatural, imposed by some force beyond the reach of her senses. But it was not malice; not evil or deliberate. The almost imperceptible frisson of
wrongness
rose from some other source.
    “Stave—?” She had to swallow hard to clear her throat. “Do you feel it?”
    The former Master’s silence was answer enough.
    Slowly she turned in a circle, pushing her percipience to its limits. She expected the disturbance to come from the vicinity of Foul’s Creche; from Covenant’s search for Joan. But she felt nothing there. When she faced northwest, however, she found what she sought.
    It was faint, almost too subtle to be discerned. Yet it was thin with distance, not weakness. The fact that she could detect it at all across so many leagues bespoke tremendous power. As soon as she tuned her nerves to the pitch of this specific malevolence—and to the direction from which it spread—she knew what it was.
    It was Kevin’s Dirt, and it came from Mount Thunder.
    For the first time, Kastenessen was extending his bale over the Lower Land.
    Repeatedly he had tried to prevent Jeremiah’s rescue from the
croyel
. Now he was sending the fug of Kevin’s Dirt to hamper Linden and the Staff of Law. When it spread far enough, his theurgy would numb her senses, and Mahrtiir’s, and perhaps Jeremiah’s. And it would aggravate Covenant’s leprosy. If Joan did not kill him first. With forces drawn from She Who Must Not Be Named, the mad
Elohim
strove to ensure that Linden and her companions would not survive.
    A shudder like a chill ran through her. Her fingers clenched the Staff until her knuckles ached. Reflexively she confirmed that she still had Covenant’s ring. An old comfort, it had steadied her for years, until he had refused her.
    —the last crisis of the Earth.
    “I understand,” she told Stave abruptly. “We should go. Kevin’s Dirt is coming. And maybe the
skurj
.” Or Kastenessen might decide to challenge her himself now that he had lost Esmer. “We need to find the Giants and Mahrtiir. Then we’ll have to decide what we’re going to do.”
    Without Covenant—
    She meant to mount Hyn and ride at once. But when she looked at her son again, she faltered. He seemed eager: too eager. Did she detect an undercurrent of alarm? If so, she suspected that he chafed to flee from his memories before they could emerge from their coverts and ravage him. He needed movement.
    Stave waited for her impassively. Almost pleading, Linden asked him, “Do we have to ride hard? I need to talk to Jeremiah. There’s so much—” Her son had become someone she did not know. “If the Ranyhyn run, I won’t be able to hear him.”
    A quirk at the corner of Stave’s mouth may have implied a smile. “Chosen,” he answered, “the great horses have demonstrated that they are well acquainted with our straits. Mayhap they will moderate their haste for your sake, and for your son’s.”
    “Then let’s
go
,” urged Jeremiah. “I can’t wait to see the Giants. And Infelice gave me an idea. I want to try it.”
    He startled Linden. An idea? What could he possibly have gleaned from the interference of the
Elohim
? And how? Who had he become? Was he simply trying to pack down the earth that shielded him from his immured hurts? Or had he somehow learned strengths which she could not imagine?
    If his instincts prompted him to seek safety by outrunning his wounds, surely she should trust him?
    Pushing herself into motion, Linden turned toward Hyn.
    At once, Stave came to help her mount. And when she was seated astride the familiar security of Hyn’s back, he did the same for Jeremiah, boosting the boy effortlessly onto Khelen. Then he sprang for Hynyn.
    Hynyn whinnied a command to the other horses. Together the three Ranyhyn flowed into motion so smoothly that Linden felt no need to cling. Urged by Jeremiah’s shout of celebration, they accelerated at the slope of the caldera, pounding upward, flinging clots and plumes of dry dirt from their hooves. But once they had