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

promise.
    Fire, he thought. Lamentation for the dead. The pain that consoles. In his own fashion, he understood how Giants grieved. Still he was reluctant to move. He had spent hours waiting for Linden: waiting and aching. Now he felt too heavy to stand, as if he were wrapped in iron chains. He would have preferred to go on waiting.
    But he might not get another chance to keep his word. For all he knew, Cabledarm was dying.
    “We need Linden,” he muttered to no one in particular. “I need her.” Then he extended a hand to Branl, let the Humbled lift him upright.
    After sitting against the wall for so long, his muscles had stiffened. He felt like an assemblage of mismatched parts as he accepted the
krill
. But he was accustomed to that. And the gem of Loric’s weapon shone steadily, answering the presence of white gold. With its magicks, he had already accomplished things which he had considered impossible. Why not more?
    You are the white gold.
    Holding the dagger by its wrapped hilt, he led his companions from the shelter of the fane.
    Outside he found that night had almost claimed the plain. Beyond the reach of the
krill
’s gem lay only blackness. Harsh buffets of wind seemed to hit him from every direction simultaneously. The chill pang of the air augured days of deeper cold. He had hoped for a moon; but it had not risen—or it was left in darkness by the sun’s absence from the world.
    Here even his blunted senses felt the violence glowering in the northeast: a crouched impression of storm as fierce as a predator, and as absolute as fuligin. He wanted to ask how far away it was, and how quickly it was moving, but the words caught in his throat.
    “It is the Worm, ur-Lord,” Branl stated like a man who could read minds. “Yet it is many and many leagues distant. Also the fury of its coming outruns the Worm itself. It is not imminent.”
    Covenant forced himself to breathe. After a moment, he managed to ask, “How much time do we have?”
    The Humbled looked at Stave. Something silent passed between them. Then Branl said, “If it does not increase its haste, it will not strike this region until the morrow, perhaps some hours after dawn.”
    In a low growl, the Ironhand confirmed Branl’s estimate. “Beyond question, the lurker and the Demondim-spawn have accomplished the wonders which were asked of them.”
    The force and confusion of the winds affected Covenant like vertigo. Lurching like a holed ship in an uneven gale, he moved toward Longwrath’s corpse.
    The two
Haruchai
accompanied him, and behind them came the Swordmainnir. Cabledarm the Giants supported between them, although her mind wandered the borderland between consciousness and delirium. Maybe they hoped that fire would cauterize her internal bleeding.
    Eventually Covenant spotted Jeremiah. The boy had climbed back onto the roof of the fane. Vague in the darkness, he stood there as if the crude edifice were a watchtower. Restlessly he scanned the plain from horizon to horizon, searching for some sign of his mother’s return.
    Covenant felt a pang for the boy, but he did not allow himself to pause. Winds slapped at his face. They came at him from one direction and then another as if they were trying to nudge him aside from his purpose. The Worm was a condensed apocalypse: it pushed turmoil ahead of it like a bow-wave. He kept moving so that he would not relapse to waiting for Linden.
    Lostson Longwrath lay where he had fallen, charred and lifeless: a darker shape like an omen outstretched on the benighted ground. Beside the
geas
-doomed Swordmain, Covenant stopped. Too many lives had already been lost. No doubt the Worm had left tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths in its wake, perhaps millions—and the carnage was just beginning. The
Elohim
would not be the only casualties of Lord Foul’s quest for freedom; his obsessive denial of his own despair. As it always did, Despite littered the world with victims.
    Covenant had to do what he could.
    While he secured his numbed grip on the
krill
, however, Rime Coldspray said, “A moment, Timewarden. One matter remains to be resolved. It concerns Longwrath’s flamberge.” She indicated the wave-bladed longsword where it lay near the man’s burned fingers. “He appeared to acquire it at the behest of his
geas
, and therefore of the
Elohim
, though we saw no clear purpose in it. Now, however, it appears in an altered light. The Harrow said of it that it was forged by theurgy to be