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

had been shifting. They needed to shift further.
    She did not mean that she had given up. Carried along by the syllogisms of prostration, she arrived at convictions which did not imply surrender. She had seen her husband find his way through an appalling conundrum of
skurj
and Sandgorgons. She had seen Giants appear out of nowhere to hazard their lives; seen the lurker of the Sarangrave set aside its old malevolence and choose to endure terrible pain. Rime Coldspray and four of her Swordmainnir had given battle while three loved comrades were slain. Stave and Branl had fought as though they wielded the prowess of every living
Haruchai
. The fact that Linden and Covenant and Jeremiah were still alive meant many things. It did not entail or require surrender.
    But she could not keep meeting peril with violence, striving to out-do the savagery of Lord Foul’s servants and allies. She could not. She needed a different purpose, a better role in the Land’s fate. She had passed through the wrath of Gallows Howe to the gibbet’s deeper truths; to the vast bereavement which had inspired Garroting Deep’s thirst for blood. The time had come to heed the lessons which her whole life had tried to teach her.
    If she did not give up, and did not fight, what remained? She thought that she knew, although she trembled to contemplate it; or she would have trembled had she been less weary.
    There is hope in contradiction.
    Maybe that was true. If she did not know how to forgive herself, she could begin by offering other forms of grace to people or beings who needed it more.
    The daughter of my heart?
she thought. Give me a chance. Let me show you what your daughter has in mind.
    She was still the Chosen. She could make decisions and go in directions which the Despiser might not expect.
    After that, her helpless clarity looped back to its starting point. She was done with fighting; with violence and killing. One idea at a time, she followed the same logic to the same conclusions. Exhaustion was like that, she knew. Under the right circumstances, it shed a certain amount of light; but its own conditions prevented it from casting its illumination further.
    Later Hurl came to her with a satchel of dried fruit and cured mutton. He also offered her a flask of
diamondraught
diluted with fresh water: enough of the Giantish liquor, he said, to restore her, but not so much that it would impose sleep. And when she had eaten a little and drunk more, she found that she felt strong enough to focus her eyes and look around.
    The survivors were lit like reincarnations of themselves by the silver of the
krill
in Branl’s grasp. Jeremiah’s distress called out to her. He sat huddled against the trunk of a tree nearby, but he did not look at her—or at anything outside himself. With his arms wrapped around his knees and his face hidden against his thighs, he rocked back and forth like a child in too much pain. Stave and Cirrus Kindwind stood with him. The Giant murmured reassurances that Linden could not hear. Stave’s stance suggested that he was keeping watch.
    Hurl had joined most of the other newcomers a short distance away. From somewhere—presumably among the fringes of the Sarangrave—they had retrieved sacks bulging with supplies: food and more
diamondraught
; other things which they considered necessary, and which they must have carried for many leagues. As Stonemage, Grueburn, and Bluntfist gathered with them, the canvas-clad men and women handed out viands and refreshment.
    The surviving Swordmainnir and several of the other Giants bore oozing scalds. Contact with the blood and entrails of the
skurj
had burned them. But they were Giants, able to endure fulminating hurts. One and all, they were grieving over their fallen comrades. Yet that hurt, also, they were able to endure, at least for a while.
    Down the slope from Linden, Covenant stood with Branl, Rime Coldspray, and another Giant, an implausibly thin man who appeared to speak for the sailors. Like Stave, Branl was unscathed. The hunch of Covenant’s shoulders told Linden that he had fallen hard, damaged his chest. Her nerves detected cracked ribs and some dislodged cartilage, but no broken bones. Nevertheless his manner resembled the ravaged hillsides.
    “I swear to you,” he was saying, “I thought it made sense. This is what happens when I convince myself I know what I’m doing. Even after Lord Foul touched Jeremiah, I thought we could sneak in here. I’m still not sure