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

require your heart’s blood to repay the hurt inflicted by your plea.
    “But I cannot grant your desire. You are human and ignorant, incognizant of deeper truths. You do not grasp that the forbidding which you seek is not lore. It is neither knowledge nor skill. It is essence. It is both my nature and my task. I cannot impart it.”
    His response was as simple as a sigh—and as fatal as an earthquake. Linden staggered as if the Howe itself had shuddered under her; refused her. Cannot? She wanted to wail in chagrin. You
cannot
? After what she had done?
    But he was Caerroil Wildwood, the Forestal of Garroting Deep. His grandeur and grief silenced her protests. Instead of yelling, she floundered for arguments.
    “Then how did you make your Interdict against the Ravers?” Her voice trembled on the verge of breaking. “If you can’t impart what you are, how did the Colossus of the Fall keep Ravers away from the Upper Land?”
    Abruptly Mahrtiir took a step forward. Like the woods around the Howe, like the gallows, he looked sharp with intensity, whetted by the Forestal’s shining. His eyeless visage seemed to yearn. His hands were ready for his garrote; for some demand that required death. But the Wildwood did not regard him.
    “By transformation,” the Forestal told Linden severely. “By the alteration of essence. There is no other means. The
Elohim
who became the Colossus of the Fall ceased to be who she was. She was made stone and could not unmake herself. Therefore her refusal endured. It did not wane until the forests dwindled, too grievously diminished to sustain her.”
    While Linden cried out inwardly, unable to articulate her sudden despair, Mahrtiir took another step forward; upward. Then he stopped, holding himself poised as if for battle.
    “Great One,” he said, insisting on Caerroil Wildwood’s attention. “The world of our time requires forbidding—and the forest of our time requires a Forestal to wield that stricture.” His tone defied contradiction. “You have it within you to create another of your kind, as you did with Caer-Caveral. Do so again with me. Make of me a Forestal for the woodland which will arise when its time has come, and for the preservation of the world. Permit me to carry on your labors. Share with me your mighty purpose, for I have none of my own, except to stand with those who shed their lives for the Land’s sake.”
    He was certainly as blind as Hile Troy had been: as blind and as valiant. Like Troy, he had already chosen his doom.
    Linden tried to object; but the Manethrall’s willingness and the Wildwood’s singing closed her throat.
No
, she pleaded,
no
, but her voice made no sound, or no one heard her.
    The guardian of the trees was going to refuse. Of course he was. His own fate was sealed, whatever happened. She had offered him only abstractions, vague predictions empty of substance. He had no reason to care about a world that did not exist for him.
    Yet he seemed to stand taller, towering over the Manethrall. The multiplicity of songs around him acquired a new tune that vied against the woods’ immedicable sorrow and ire. He raised his scepter. From its gnarled length sprouted notes woven to form harmonies which Linden had never heard before.
    “That gift,” he pronounced as if it were a sentence of death, “is mine to grant.”
    Oh, Mahrtiir—
    Were
all
of her friends going to sacrifice themselves?
    If she had snatched up her Staff, she might have been able to intervene. She could at least have made the effort.
And betimes some wonder is wrought to redeem us
. But she did not move. Perhaps she could not. Or perhaps she simply understood.
    I seek a tale which will remain—
    Still she had to say something. “Mahrtiir—”
    “No, Ringthane,” the Manethrall replied at once. “You are the Chosen, but this choice is mine.” He knew her too well. “In this, Anele spoke wisely, as he did on other matters. To you, he said, ‘All who live share the Land’s plight. Its cost will be borne by all who live. This you cannot alter. In the attempt, you may achieve only ruin.’” Then he gave her a fierce grin. “It is done. The Forestal of Garroting Deep has heard me. His heart and his pain are great. He will not refuse.”
    “Indeed,” Caerroil Wildwood hummed in harmony with his trees. “I do not recant my gifts.”
    A sharp skirl of music seemed to snatch her Staff from the dirt, carry it toward him. Holding his scepter in one hand, he caught