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

Covenant.
    The
gaddhi
of
Bhrathairealm
had called the Sandgorgons
more fearsome than madness or nightmare
. Baked to an albino whiteness in the Great Desert, the creatures were destruction incarnate. They could pulverize granite with the prehensile stumps of their forearms. And their heads had been formed for battering, lacking eyes or other vulnerabilities. They breathed through slits like gills protected by tough hide on the sides of their heads.
    If that Sandgorgon contrived to strike Covenant, it would snap every bone in his body.
    But Linden could do nothing to defend him. Half a dozen
skurj
had already thrust their heads and fangs out of the ground. More were close. Frantic and furious, she faced those threats, leaving her husband to Branl.
    She had devised a new defense. Whipping flame from place to place, she concentrated Earthpower on the lambent fangs. From maw to maw, she caused eruptions like bursts of agony along the kraken jaws. Small hurts: the
skurj
were huge, and their mouths held scores of scimitar-teeth. Nevertheless their pain was acute. It enraged the monsters—but it also distracted them.
    It slowed their emergence from the earth.
    Gripping her glaive, the Ironhand breathed, “Well done, Linden Giantfriend. I had not considered such a ploy.”
    It was no more than a delay, a transient interruption. But it might create openings for the Swordmainnir.
    While Linden lashed obsidian back and forth, accentuating her efforts with the Seven Words, Covenant and Branl finally turned to face the nearest Sandgorgon. As if they were sure of their strength, they strode to meet the charge. Branl held Longwrath’s flamberge poised to slash. Covenant’s halfhand gripped Loric’s shining dagger by its wrapped hilt.
    Behind them came a cluster of Feroce, perhaps ten of the naked child-forms. They held out their hands like gestures of supplication or worship. Rank green flames twisted and flared in each of their palms.
    At their backs, more fog piled out of the Sarangrave, obscuring the perils of the wetland.
    The Sandgorgon gathered itself, sprang over the water. For the flicker of an instant, it vanished below the rim of the riverbank. Then another leap brought it out of the Defiles Course. Silent as the fog, as the boundary between life and death, it sped toward the Unbeliever and the Humbled. Between one stride and the next, it became a juggernaut.
    Covenant and Branl did not hesitate.
    Instead the creature faltered. Five of its strides from its targets, it jerked to a halt. Its head turned from side to side, scanning with its arcane senses. It seemed to remember Covenant. Its blunt forearms aimed confused blows at the air.
    Before the Sandgorgon could recover—before the thwarted scraps of
samadhi
Sheol’s sentience regained their mastery—Branl delivered a cut that opened the monster’s torso from its neck down through its chest to its opposite hip. Blood and strange guts spouted from the wound as the Sandgorgon toppled.
    Branl did not pause to regard the corpse. Four more creatures were only heartbeats away. One had already leapt the river. Another was leaping.
    But Covenant turned to the Feroce in spite of his peril. “That was impressive,” he growled quietly. “What did you do?”
    The Humbled continued his advance. His blade shed blood and strips of flesh as if its old magicks repelled the gore of the Sandgorgon.
    In their one voice, moist and diffuse, the lurker’s minions answered, “We have caused it to remember that it is bestial, a creature of instinct, not of intent. We have caused it to remember that you are mighty. Alas, we are merely the Feroce. We are frail, unworthy to serve our High God. We cannot impose recall upon so many, or upon such savagery.”
    At the last instant, Branl stepped aside from the first creature, beyond the reach of its arms—but not the length of his sword. The Sandgorgon had no defense as he slid the flamberge across its trunk below its ribs. Reflexively it clamped its forearms over the slash; but they were not enough to keep its life from spilling out.
    Covenant nodded to the Feroce. “Do what you can,” he said; demanded. “And tell your High God I need more than just you. I need
him
. I need him
here
. This is what alliances are for. I have to have help.”
    Branl spun into a horizontal cut that bit through obdurate bone, nearly severed the top half of a Sandgorgon’s face and skull. But Longwrath’s sword caught there, grinding between bones which