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

were an incarnation of the fog. Five, no, six of them, two women, the rest men. Not Swordmainnir. They looked like sailors armed with implements from their ship. Their movements were swift and accurate, but they lacked the fluid poise of warriors.
    Still they were apt foes for Sandgorgons, more agile than Covenant, twice Branl’s size. One against one, their sheer muscle matched the savagery of the monsters. Their skin was not hide bred in the extremes of the Great Desert and the brutal gyre of Sandgorgons Doom. They could not slough off crushing blows and ruinous waters. But their instincts and reflexes were not hampered by single-mindedness. They fought with intelligence as well as strength; with skills which they had earned in storms.
    And they did not fight alone. The lurker’s tentacle continued its battery, pounding at as many creatures as it could reach. At the same time, Branl seemed to float through the contest as if he served his blade; as if he were a weapon wielded by the eldritch flamberge. If a Giant halted a Sandgorgon with a blow or a cut, the
Haruchai
arrived bearing death.
    Although the newcomers were only six, they fought like furies. Their weapons soon failed them. Knives broke on the hides of Sandgorgons. Knouts had no effect. Spears only pierced when they struck perfectly. Still the Giants were Giants, powerful of fist and arm. Few as they were, they thwarted the onrush of monsters.
    Somehow the Giants and the lurker and Branl cleared a space around Covenant.
    That should have been enough for him. He had been offered his chance. He only needed to gather himself.
    But his damaged chest sucked air in wracked gasps; and vertigo filled his head as if he stood on an appalling height, peering down into the valley from the fatal slopes of Mount Thunder; and he had never unlearned his fear of unrestrained wild magic. He could too easily imagine shattering the high cliff above the river.
    Then he was given more than a momentary reprieve. A kind of convulsion seemed to grip the Sandgorgons as if an invisible hand had taken hold of their minds. They paused; scanned the valley as if they sought more satisfying opponents. An instant later, they wheeled away.
    Some of them delivered a last flurry of blows, but soon all of them were pounding back up the valley. Massed and eager, they formed a bleached river pouring irresistibly uphill. At the same time, the
skurj
began to squirm downward, horrific numbers of the serpent-monsters. As the Sandgorgons ascended, they parted only to let scores of
skurj
pass among them.
    The attackers had traded targets. The Sandgorgons raced to assail Linden and Jeremiah and the surviving Swordmainnir. A tsunami of
skurj
plunged toward Covenant and Branl and their unforeseen allies.
    Covenant’s vision was too badly blurred: he could not tell how many Giants still stood with Linden. He recognized her only by the faltering fever of her Staff, her stained fire.
    Damnation. He did not know how she would fare against the Sandgorgons. Even aided by Branl and Giants, he would not be able to withstand the onslaught of
skurj
. Even if he ripped open the mountain—
    “
More!
” he cried at the Feroce. “We need
more
!”
    The lurker’s minions had withdrawn, flinching, toward the Flat. They may not have heard him. They or their High God may have chosen not to hear him.
    Cursing himself for every lost instant, Covenant dismissed his wild magic longsword. Now or never. What good was leprosy if he could not trust its implications? If it did not enable him to bear what he required of himself?
    In one quick motion, he pulled the blade of the
krill
across his left palm, drew blood sluggish with dehydration. He had no staff, no instrument of Law. Like Berek Halfhand before him, he needed blood and desperation to accomplish what even wild magic could not. Clenching his cut hand, he slapped red drops against the dagger’s gem. Then he flung his gaze upward, past Linden and the onset of Sandgorgons, past the outpouring of the Defiles Course, past the towering cliff to the highest slopes of the mountain. In his mind, he shouted the Seven Words: a prayer that had no voice.
    A prayer that meant,
Please
.
    Almost immediately, he was answered.
    Power without shape or sound exploded in him, through him, around him. A detonation both silent and invisible shocked the valley from end to end. Theurgy as old as the world seemed to ripple across the fabric of reality. It jolted the Sandgorgons in their