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

that Covenant’s use of the
krill
and his wedding band drew a response from her own ring. She might have become aware that she was being reincarnated as much as translocated.
    But she could not stand apart or think. Instead she simply went blank. And after an eternity or an instant, she returned to her mortality with a visceral crash while Hyn pounded beneath her, galloping back into the darkened world.
    She felt blind, blinded, yet she saw everything at once; saw it limned in argent, distinct as a cut against the gloom, as if each detail had been etched in her brain.
    Led by Branl on Rallyn and Covenant on Mishio Massima, the company hammered the ground. They had been stationary: now they ran like panic. Fleet and certain, Hynyn kept his position between Hyn and Khelen, Linden and Jeremiah. Stave’s flat visage showed no surprise. But Jeremiah reeled on his mount’s back, caught off balance: only Khelen’s care kept him from falling. Around him, the Giants staggered on the sudden surface. Their eyes rolled: they gasped and gaped. Yet they ran.
    Together they followed the bottom of a wide depression which may once have been a swale, before it was baked dry. Patches of scrannel grass still clung to the dirt, rough-edged and stubborn. Between them, the ground was erratically cobbled with worn stones. Pummeled winds brought whiffs of dampness and rot from Linden’s right: a direction which she instinctively knew was north. Ahead of the company, the terrain rose gradually toward a rumpled landscape a league or more distant.
    Covenant lurched in his saddle. He had dropped the reins to strike Loric’s dagger with his ring. His boots had lost the stirrups. In another instant, he might fall. But then Branl caught Mishio Massima’s halter to slow the beast. A heartbeat later, he snatched the
krill
from Covenant. Covenant slumped forward, clutched at his mount’s mane to keep his seat.
    The Humbled had done such things before. He must have done them often.
    The
krill
’s brightness shrouded the heavens, made night of the twilit morning beyond its ambit. Everything outside its illumination had a look of fatality, of waiting, as if the unnatural dusk masked an ambush.
    As Rallyn and Mishio Massima eased their pace, the other Ranyhyn shortened their strides. Around the riders, Rime Coldspray and her comrades relaxed their haste. Running became trotting; became walking. Covenant pushed himself upright, prodded his boots unsteadily into the stirrups.
    Winds boiled among the companions, tangled hair, flicked grit at faces. Here, however, the disturbance in the air was only a faint echo of the Worm’s harsh turmoil. As Linden struggled to recover from the shock of translation, her first coherent thought was that the company must have crossed a considerable distance: far enough to pass beyond sight or sense of the Worm’s storm. Whatever happened—or had already happened—to Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir and the fane, Linden and her companions had escaped.
    But they had not done so instantaneously. She felt in her nerves that a portion of the morning was gone, perhaps an hour, perhaps more.
    Her ring still burned in response to Covenant’s burst of wild magic, but its power was fading.
    “Oh, wow!” Jeremiah panted as if he rather than Khelen had galloped. “How did he do that? Where are we?”
    Eager for solid ground, he leaned forward, swung one leg to slide off his mount.
    Silver-edged images lingered in Linden’s mind, after-flashes of vision. Darkness clotted the surrounding twilight. Ahead of the company, the slope out of the depression or swale was still a stone’s throw for a Giant away. Half buried stones staggered like the remnants of a broken road among stretches of rough grass. The grass blades were more grey than green, a hue like a memory—
    Long ago, days or lifetimes in the past, Anele had stood on grass outside Mithil Stonedown. In a rancid voice, he had said,
There is more, but of my deeper purpose I will not speak
.
    On grass that resembled this.
    Abrupt connections snapped into focus. Too late, Linden cried out, “Jeremiah!
No!
”
    He reached out and took me like I was nothing.
    But Stave was faster. He seemed to know her thoughts; or he had his own fears. As she began to shout, he vaulted from Hynyn’s back. Swift as thought, he caught Jeremiah before the boy’s bare feet touched the ground and the grass. With a heave, Stave returned Jeremiah to Khelen.
    “Mom?” Jeremiah yelped.