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

released a pent up breath. “So tell me.”
    “I love you.” There was no good way to say it. Words were inadequate. “I want to help you. I want you to stop Lord Foul. I want the Land to be saved, and the Earth, and the stars, and the
Elohim
,” although she could not imagine how any of those deeds might be accomplished. “I want Jeremiah safe, and all of our friends, and everything that we’ve ever cared about.
    “But I’m done fighting.”
    Covenant stiffened as if she had frightened him. His voice was harsh with strain as he asked, “And you think you have a choice?”
    He did not let her go.
    She nodded against the thin fabric of his T-shirt.
    “So tell me,” he repeated through his teeth.
    To make room for what she had to say, she eased away until she could touch his chest. Kissing the tips of her fingers, she slipped them through the old knife cut in his shirt. “You said it yourself. We have to face the things that scare us the most. There’s really no other way. Escape isn’t worth what it costs.
    “But the Despiser isn’t what scares me the most. Even losing Jeremiah isn’t. Or losing you. That might break me, but it isn’t my worst fear. And the Worm—
    “Thomas, I’ve hardly seen the Land the way it was when you fell in love with it. That first time, when we came here together, it was all the Sunbane. And since then, we’ve lost too much, and I’ve been going crazy about Jeremiah.
    “Oh, Andelain has changed my life. More than once.” Glimmermere and
aliantha
and percipience and the Ranyhyn had all changed her. “But I simply haven’t learned how to care about this world as much as you do. The Worm isn’t my worst fear.”
    Before he could prompt her, she said, “My worst fear is what I might become. Or what I’ve already become. I need to face that somehow.”
    “Then how—?” Covenant began. But he stopped himself. For a moment, he seemed to scramble like a man who felt the ground shifting under his feet. Then his head jerked up as if his chest had been pierced again; as if she had stabbed him. She felt the jolt of his intuitive leap. “Oh.
That
fear. Now I get it.”
    Linden nodded again. Trying to be clear, she said, “Days ago, you left me because you had to deal with Joan. If we live long enough, I’ll have to leave you.”
    And her son.
    Gripping her shoulders, he stared like wild magic into her face. “That’s why you gave Jeremiah your Staff.”
    “One of the reasons,” she conceded. Now that he understood, she found it comparatively easy to bear his gaze. “Earthpower and Law can’t help me. I have to use my ring.”
    At once, he pulled her close again, hugged her as though his heart refused to go on beating without her. “Hellfire, Linden,” he breathed. “That’s insane. It might be exactly what we need.”
    She matched his embrace. “And I’m the only one who can even try. You said that, too. You have to face Lord Foul. And Jeremiah has to decide for himself. That leaves me.”
    “I remember,” he said gruffly. “I must have been out of my mind.”
    Then he held her at arm’s length again so that he could study the doubts and determinations following each other like ocean swells in her eyes.
    “Well, why not?” he growled. “I didn’t ask you and the First and Pitchwife to do my fighting for me when I decided to give up using power all those millennia ago, but you kept me alive anyway. Maybe I even expected you to do that. Why shouldn’t it be your turn now? Sure, we have more enemies this time. But we also have more friends. And I think we’re capable of things damn Foul has never seen before. Why shouldn’t you get a chance to take your own risks?”
    Linden smiled through a brief relapse of tears. “I knew that you would understand.” Then she added, “But I haven’t told Jeremiah. We aren’t there yet. We might not live long enough to get there. And he has other things on his mind. I don’t want to scare him until I’m sure that he needs to know.”
    Covenant nodded; but abruptly he was distracted. “I get it.” He was no longer looking at her. “But suddenly things aren’t as simple as they were a minute ago.”
    When she followed his gaze, her heart seemed to stop.
    Holding the Staff, Jeremiah had summoned his heritage of Earthpower. Small flames spread from his hands onto the shaft. They traced the cryptic lines of the runes, blossomed briefly on the iron heels, measured the wood.
    They were his—and they were