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

had refused to forgive.
    She could not ask Caerroil Wildwood to pardon the foes and forces which had ravaged his demesne. His vehemence was necessary. It was just. It was—
    But the Forestal did not wait for her to sort through her confusions. His music demanded more of her. While she and Mahrtiir neared his gibbet, the tall figure commanded, “Speak, then.” Melodies sawed across her hearing as if they sought to cut away subterfuge and falseness. “I am done with forbearance.”
    Because she did not know what else to do, Linden lifted her Staff once more.
    “Great One.”
    Every word required an effort of will. Inwardly she slogged through a quagmire. How could she ask Caerroil Wildwood for anything? He was doing what she would have done in his place; what she had already done. Nevertheless she made the attempt for Jeremiah’s sake, and for the Land’s, and for Covenant’s—and perhaps even for her own.
    “A long time ago, you asked me a question. I think that I can answer it now. Or a piece of it, anyway.
    “That isn’t why I came. I’ve tried to imagine an answer for you ever since you spared my life, but I couldn’t think of one. I wasn’t even trying to reach you. But now that I am here, I see things differently.
    “Great One, I need your help. If I’m right, that’s your answer. You can help me.”
Must it transpire that beauty and truth shall pass utterly when we are gone?
“And you’re the only one who can. If you don’t, beauty and truth will be just the first casualties.” She meant the
Elohim
. “Eventually the whole world is going to die.”
    The Forestal studied her. In a voice as low as a hum, and as piercing as an auger, he commanded her again. “Set aside your blackness. I well recall the craving which inspired me to carve my will upon it. It has no virtue to preserve you.”
    He may have been asking for a show of good faith.
    As if the written wood had burned her hands, Linden dropped her Staff.
    Caerroil Wildwood allowed the limbs of his trees a brief flourish of approval. But he did not dwell on it. Still stringently, he sang, “You acknowledge that it was not your intent to seek me out. To that extent, I discern sooth. Now you will speak further. Do you ask me to credit that the desires of one human, or of two, or of a myriad myriad, suffice to determine the doom of the Earth? Justify your need, woman. Sway me or perish.”
    Linden shook her head. “You already know the truth.” She had come too far to hold back. And she understood the peril of revealing things which might affect the Wildwood’s role in the Land’s history. “You’ve known it for a long time. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have given me your runes.”
    He would not have prevented Hile Troy from accepting Covenant’s ring.
    “You asked me how life can go on without Forestals. It can’t. Thousands of years from now, it won’t. Evil doesn’t die. It doesn’t stop. And where I come from, it’s finally found a way to end everything. Unless you teach me how to
forbid
it.”
    There must be forbidding.
    “If I can do that, maybe I can save something.”
Without forbidding, there is too little time
. “I’ll start with the
Elohim
,” what was left of them. “If that works, I’ll do more. With my Staff and white gold and what you know, I’ll stop as much evil as I can.”
If it is not opposed by the forgotten truths of stone and wood
—“But I can’t do anything without the power to say
no
.
    “You blocked the Ravers from the Upper Land. I need to learn how you did that. I need to be able to do the same thing. If you don’t teach me, you might as well give up.” From her perspective, his surrender had already happened. Something had driven Caerroil Wildwood to abandon his devoir long before she had first entered the Land with Covenant. “There won’t be any hope for any of us.
    “Do you need a future for trees, Great One? This is your only chance. Without your help, I’m as lost as you are.”
    Silver flared in the Forestal’s eyes. It limned his gibbet and the surrounding trees, gave them a spectral cast as if they were etched with presentiments of ruin. The music of the woods became a threnody, forlorn and irredeemable. Leaves rose and sank like sobbing on their twigs. Song fell like tears on all sides.
    “Then you are lost indeed. You speak words which you deem sooth. That I acknowledge. And you have striven to satisfy my query. That, also, I acknowledge. Therefore I will not