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

feared that her love would corrupt some essential part of him. She did not know how to trust herself. She was the daughter of her parents, a mother and father who had feared every hurt of living, and had raised her for death. That knowledge endured in her bones. A Raver had confirmed it. Unforgotten and unredeemed, it ruled her even now, in spite of Covenant and Jeremiah and the Land.
    In your present state, Chosen, Desecration lies ahead of you. It does not cr
owd at your back
.
    It was here. Was it not?
    But because she was watching herself as if she were someone else, she was able to recognize that there were other ways to think. Her many friends had been trying to teach her that lesson ever since Liand had first introduced himself in Mithil Stonedown. By their devotion, they had assured her that she did not need to judge herself as if she were defined by her sins. In spite of her concealments and dishonesties, her fury
contemptuous of consequence
, she was not alone.
    If
courage and clear sight
exceeded her, they did not surpass her companions. From the first, she had been supported by people whose hearts were bigger than hers; by loyalties more unselfish than hers.
Every essential step along the path
, Stave had assured Infelice,
has been taken by the natural inhabitants of the Earth
. Linden’s friends had urged
trust
until even she had heard them.
    Trapped in the savagery of the
caesure
, she found that desperation was indistinguishable from faith.
    Attempts must be made
—
    Hyn had carried her willingly into the Fall. Mahrtiir on Narunal had accompanied her willingly. She could believe in them.
    —even when there can be no hope.
    And she had done some things right. Witnessing herself with the detachment of a spectator, she could acknowledge those deeds. She had fought her way through the machinations of Roger and the
croyel
. She had provided for her son’s rescue from the
croyel
’s covert in the Lost Deep. And when every other action had been denied to her, she had given Jeremiah his racecar: the last piece of the portal which had enabled him to step out of his prison.
    In those moments, no one else could have taken her place. To that extent, Anele had told the truth about her, as he had about so many things.
The world will not see her like again
.
    And there was more.
    Nothing ameliorated the extravagant burrow and sting of dismembered moments. Nothing eased the cruelty of the frigid wasteland which would arise from Desecrations like hers. Nothing could. Nevertheless she still held Covenant’s wedding band clasped in her hands. Silver fire still shone from the metal even though she was not a rightful wielder of white gold. It was as vivid to her as Covenant himself. It could be an anchor for her foundering spirit.
    Then she was no longer alone. She had always and never been alone. Manethrall Mahrtiir was at her side, holding the Staff of Law for her and looking ahead as if he had nothing to fear; as if he had finally identified the import of his life.
    And she was seated on Hyn’s back, as she had always been. Narunal was at her side. The horses were not moving. Movement required causality: it depended on sequence. Yet they ran. Stride for stride, dappled Hyn matched Narunal’s strength, Narunal’s certainty, as the palomino stallion raced from nowhere to nowhere across the white wilderness.
    In spite of the
caesure
’s excoriation, Linden clung to Covenant’s ring and endured.
    She did not have to wait long. She had been waiting forever, and did not have to wait at all. This moment did not move on to the next because it could not, or because there was no
next
. Nevertheless the hard circle between her hands flared suddenly; and Hyn carried her out of chaos into sunshine under a summer sky.
    Sunshine. A slow hillside clad in brittle grey-green grass as thick as bracken. A summer sky as lenitive as hurtloam.
    Without transition, Linden was released.
    The shock of change made her muscles spasm, made the world reel. Her stomach hurt as if she needed to spend hours puking. Blots of black confusion wheeled around her as though she were under assault by crows or vultures. The continuity of her personal world had been severed from itself. Unable to determine her position in time and space, she tumbled from Hyn’s back, landed hard on the grass.
    For a moment, she could not breathe; could not think. While her nerves floundered, she clung to the kind earth and wrestled with her impulse to vomit. She had