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

arrived somewhere. Some when. Hyn had brought her here. She smelled summer in the air, felt an insistence on life in the stiff grass in spite of a prolonged paucity of rain. Straining to inhale, she caught a whiff of distant desiccation, as if she had arrived too close to a desert. The sky held too much dust. She had expected Andelain and lushness. She was unprepared for this baked hillside, this heat, this—
    Something had gone wrong.
    “Ringthane,” Mahrtiir croaked as if he were retching. “Release the white gold. You must. Accept your Staff.”
    She heard him, but the words did not make sense. He sounded like an ur-vile, barking incomprehensibly. Something had gone wrong. The world was wrong: the grass, the sky, the sunshine. Only the writhing ruin of the Fall as it drifted away felt familiar. Narunal trumpeted a warning that she did not know how to interpret. Alarm fretted Hyn’s answering whinny.
    “Chosen!” insisted the Manethrall. “Linden Avery! Your
Staff
. You must quench the
caesure
! If it enters among the trees, it will wreak harm which no Forestal will pardon. We will not be heeded if you do not first spare the forest!”
    Linden recognized a few sounds. The sigh of an arid breeze. The consternation of birds somewhere in the distance. A few words.
    When she remembered to let go of Covenant’s ring, she began to breathe again.
    Mahrtiir stumbled to her side. Roughly he rolled her onto her back. “
Ringthane!
” Crouched against a glare of sunlight, he dropped the Staff of Law onto her chest. Then he fumbled at the dried remains of his garland, pinched off one of the last nubs of an
amanibhavam
bloom. Scrubbing the nub between his palms to powder it, he slapped one hand to his nose, clamped the other over Linden’s nose and mouth.
    Too many sensations.
Amanibhavam
stung her sinuses as if she had inhaled acid. She had no time to notice that it dispelled her nausea. The sunshine wore a faint patina of dust. Shadows blurred Mahrtiir’s visage.
    Then Earthpower flowed into her from the black shaft of the Staff; and she thought, Trees? A Forestal?
    Oh, God.
    You must quench the
caesure
!
    Caesures
destroyed stone. They would tear any forest to shreds. Even a forest defended by a Forestal—
    Where
was
she?
    Mahrtiir knew Andelain. Surely he would have called that woodland by name?
    Reflexively she clutched the Staff. Then she heaved herself into a sitting position; staggered to her feet.
    The Fall was already thirty paces away, forty. And it was big, as virulent as a tornado; a rip in the fabric of reality. Seething, it lurched toward a scatter of trees: Gilden, ash, sycamores, thirsty willows. They stood alone and in loose copses, punctuating the browning grass like the out-riders of an army in retreat. Like the grass, they looked parched, stricken by a persistent lack of rain, a dwindling watershed. She could not see past them to the forest itself, but she knew instantly that the forest was there. It seemed to glower in the distance, defying an inexorable drought.
    The
caesure
savaged the ground as it moved. It was going to plow a furrow of devastation into the heart of the woods.
    “
Melenkurion abatha
,” she gasped as if she were cursing. The burn of
amanibhavam
sent flames like tendrils along the channels of her brain. “
Duroc minas mill
.” She felt as blighted as the trees, wan with thirst.
    Where am I?
    What have I done?
    “
Harad khabaal.
”
    One fire led to another; enabled another. As if she were turning her mind inside out, she drew ebon conflagration from the Staff and flung it like outrage into the core of the Fall.
    Earthpower and Law, the salvific antitheses of the time-storm. Her flames were as stark as fuligin, as black as the immedicable gulf of a night sky after every star had been devoured. But the darkness was hers: it was not inherent to the Staff’s magicks. And here—wherever
here
might be—she was not hampered by Kevin’s Dirt. Riding the invocative force of the Seven Words, she hit the
caesure
with a deluge of extinction as if she were pouring a lake onto an inferno.
    The Fall could not withstand her. As she had done before, she caused the violent miasma to implode. With a sound like thunder, the
caesure
swallowed itself as if it sought to suck her with it into nothingness. Then it was gone.
    Its passage had galled the earth—a bitter wound—but the nearest trees had not been touched.
    “Mane and Tail, Ringthane!” breathed Mahrtiir. Already he sounded