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

but the wind’s thrash and groan and howl tore the sound away.
    Linden reached out for Jeremiah; caught his arm as if her mere grip had the ability to protect him. When he glanced at her, she saw a wasteland of shock in his eyes. Nothing in his life had prepared him for the magnitude of the Worm’s violence.
    While she held her son, Stave held her. The Giants stared wildly, like women caught in the toils of the Soulbiter.
    Covenant struggled to keep his seat until Branl came to his side, helped him control the Ardent’s horse. Then the Unbeliever panted hoarsely, “Run! Hellfire! We have to
run
!”
    Transfixed by Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir’s daring, Linden could not drag herself away; but Hyn chose for her by surging into motion. Swordmainnir slapped themselves and each other, forced their limbs to move. Branl hauled on Mishio Massima’s reins until the horse sprang forward. A stentorian peal from Hynyn seemed to take Khelen by the throat.
    The company broke and ran as if it had been routed.
    On some level, Linden recognized that she and her companions had to do more than simply evade the Worm itself. They had to get beyond the Worm’s cloak of power. Those lightnings would sear the flesh from their bones. The winds would rip the riders from their mounts, knock even Giants to the ground. Yet she did not heed such things. Unregarded, her hand lost its hold on Jeremiah. She could not look away from the Forestal.
    Small against the background of the bright willow, Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir stood before the blast. It wrenched at him, tried to shred his robe. Shafts of lightning marched closer with every heartbeat. Gales tore the branches of his staff. Still the leaves clung to their twigs: the glitter of song clung to the leaves. With music and wood, he opposed the dark as if he had within him the authority to deny annihilation.
    Linden could not believe that he was strong enough. He was a Forestal, transformed scion of a lineage potent against armies and Ravers. His puissance surpassed the Lords of old with all their lore. But the Worm exceeded every other living force. It dwarfed the exertion of wild magic and Law which had plucked the huge creature from its slumber. And Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir could not draw on the spirit of a spanning woodland, the will and energy of trees in their millions. He had only the willow at his back.
    The willow—and the fane with its treasure of
Elohim
.
    Still the company ran. Urgent and frantic, straining to their limits, the horses and the Giants ran. Branl warded Covenant. Stave brought Hynyn between Hyn and Khelen, watched over Linden and Jeremiah with his lone eye. Rime Coldspray and her comrades stretched their strides and raced for the horizon, running heavy as boulders, and yet fleet as driven seas.
    Too frightened to shout, Jeremiah flailed his arms, flinging streams of Earthpower in all directions as if he sought to haul his companions forward. The storm brushed his theurgy aside like dust.
    Holding her breath, Linden watched the Forestal.
    He dwindled with distance, shrank in proportion to the Worm’s vastness. As the storm towered over him, an ebon and unanswerable tsunami, his staff’s gleaming and the willow’s seemed smaller and smaller. They became puny things, ineffable and frail. At any moment, they would be extinguished. In its hunger, the Worm would swat them out of existence and take no notice.
    Yet Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir stood. He sang, and refused to be silenced. The Worm’s tumult was less than a league away, less than half a league; and still he stood. He was more than Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir. He was also Manethrall Mahrtiir, Raman, given to service. He refused as if his
No
could sway even the unthinking appetite of the World’s End.
    Thunder shook the ground. When Linden risked a glance at the nearest lightnings, the boil of blackness, she saw that the company was too slow. The Giants and the horses were sprinting hard enough to burst the hearts of weaker beings, but they could not run fast enough. The storm was too wide: they had not begun their flight in time to avoid it.
    And yet the argent of Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir’s forbidding endured.
    “Linden Avery!” Somehow Stave made himself heard through the chaos of running and winds, lightning and thunder. “Chosen, attend! The Forestal succeeds! The Worm slows!”
    Impossible! She stared in disbelief. The Forestal could not—
    He could. Caerroil Wildwood and Linden herself had given him enough.
    The storm inundated