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

wretch?” retorted the Despiser, bitter and gleeful. “I rely upon it. I forget nothing. I am prepared for you. If you think to confront me, you will discover that your efforts harm only yourself.”
    Covenant did not reply. With the
krill
gripped in both fists, he advanced like an incarnation of wrath.
    Instinctively Linden barred his way. She had no idea what his intentions might be. If she had taken time to think, she would have realized that he would not hurt Jeremiah. He was bluffing again. But she did not think. Jeremiah was her
son
. And she was capable of responses which Covenant could not match.
    Whatever you do to my son
, she had promised the Despiser long ago,
I’m going to tear your heart out
. Now she knew that she would not. She was not the woman she had once been. Events since her arrival in the Land had taught her expensive lessons. Covenant was still teaching her.
    Like Gallows Howe, the world had more important needs than retribution.
    Nevertheless she did not hesitate. She had made other promises as well, ones that she knew how to keep. With a sweep of her Staff, she unveiled Earthpower and Law.
    Her health-sense was precise. Her fire could be equally precise: as refined as a scalpel in spite of its blackness. Just for an instant, she sent it gyring skyward while she prepared it for her purpose; confirmed that it was exact. Then she swung it like the crack of a whip at her son.
    It poured through Jeremiah without touching him. She had tuned her theurgy to the pitch and timbre of Lord Foul’s malice rather than of Jeremiah’s body, Jeremiah’s appalled mind. Her dark flame struck only the Despiser.
    She could do so because Lord Foul’s mastery was of an entirely different kind than the
croyel
’s. That monster had merely reached into Jeremiah; fed on him; used him: it had not existed within him. And his defenses—his dissociation—had protected him. But now he had arisen from his graves. He inhabited himself. That change enabled Linden to distinguish between his reclaimed self and the force which ruled him.
    She may have been as frail as Lord Foul believed. She may indeed have become his daughter in despair. Still she was Linden Avery the Chosen, Jeremiah’s mother and Covenant’s wife.
    In a burst of conflagration, she banished the Despiser. His malevolence burst and vanished like a punctured bubble. Intangible gales swept away the stench of attar. The laughter of broken rocks dissipated until it was entirely gone.
    Like a discarded puppet, Jeremiah collapsed to his hands and knees.
    Linden reached him a heartbeat later, dropped her Staff, flung her arms around him. Through his skin, she felt his warmth and dismay, his wholeness, his horror. He strained to breathe as if his lungs were clogged with the sweet, sick odor of a body arrayed for burial.
    “Mom,” he croaked. “Oh, Mom. I can feel the Worm. I can
feel
it. It’s going up a cliff. A cliff! And it’s going fast. Like the cliff was nothing.”
    The Despiser’s gift.
    Shivers that began in the marrow of Jeremiah’s bones spread through him. Linden hugged him tightly, but could not still his trembling.
    Lord Foul had taught her son to fear him.

3.
    Summoned to Oppose

    Another race through the interstices between instants and leagues brought the company to a twisted heave of hills that Linden had never seen before.
    She had no idea how far Covenant’s eldritch circle had carried the riders and the Giants. She could be sure only that she and her companions were still on the Lower Land. As Hyn slowed her wild gallop, following Rallyn’s lead with Hynyn and Khelen, Linden saw Landsdrop massive on her left, thrusting its crooked rims thousands of feet above its foothills. And in the distance on her right, she caught troubled glimpses of water, grey and dim as tarnished silver: Sarangrave Flat between the barricade of the cliffs and deeper mire of Lifeswallower, the Great Swamp.
    Overhead the stars were no longer visible. Thunderheads like clenched fists battered each other back and forth between the cramped horizons, occluding the sky. The weather tumbled in confusion, affronted by the Worm’s passing far away. With every sunless hour, the air grew cooler.
    Abruptly the company plunged down a steep hillside. Skidding on loose shale, the Giants floundered to keep their balance. Hyn locked her knees for a moment and slid. Then she lifted into a light-footed prance that carried Linden safely.
    Jeremiah reeled on Khelen, but not