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

flames scurried up and down the length of the Staff. They were weaker than they needed to be, but they gathered enough purity to ease the company’s breathing.
    From her position in Grueburn’s clasp, Linden glanced at Jeremiah with an expression which he could not interpret. A warning? A prayer? Was she saying goodbye?
    She had found her own sense of purpose, but he had no idea what it might be.
    One after another, Rime Coldspray and all of the Giants followed the receding green of the Feroce. Holding the
krill
above his head to extend its illumination, Branl walked close behind the Ironhand near Stoutgirth and Covenant. Stave took a position between Grueburn and Kindwind.
    Striding as if they were about to burst into song, the Swordmainnir and the sailors left the world they knew. Beside the Defiles Course, they entered Gravin Threndor and darkness.

6.
    The Aid of the Feroce

    As Frostheart Grueburn carried her into the gutrock gullet of the Defiles Course, Linden lost her last glimpse of the heavens. It was cut off as if the whole of the world beyond the immediate channel, the immediate darkness, had vanished. As if the fate of every living thing, of life itself, had been reduced to this: impenetrable midnight; stone as slick as oil or black ice; Mount Thunder’s imponderable tons, ominous and oppressive. As if she herself had become nothing more than a burden.
    The decimation of the stars had been a constant reminder of the carnage which the Worm had already wrought. But what had been lost only made what remained more precious.
    Yet she had set aside her responsibility for the world. She had chosen her task. It was necessary to her, the only choice that offered any hope of forgiveness. But it would not stop the Worm. It would not hinder Lord Foul, or save her friends, or spare her son.
    At first, the watercourse became narrower, ascending in low stages like terraces or past obstructions like weirs. Beyond the Ironhand—beyond Stoutgirth, Covenant, and Branl—the Feroce clambered, elusive as eidolons, over a tumble of boulders barely wide enough to accommodate the Giants in single file. Long ages of poisons and leaking malice had pitted the stone, cut it into cruel shapes, left it brittle with corrosion. But the waters had also caked every surface with slime like scum. And wherever the tumult of the currents had left gaps, necrotic mosses clung, viscid as wax, treacherous as grease. Touching them would be like trailing fingers through pus.
    While the passage narrowed, however, its ceiling stretched higher. Here the Defiles Course ran down a fissure in Mount Thunder’s substance. A few arm spans up the walls, the green of the Feroce gleamed sickly on moisture and moss: the residue of the river’s former flow. Above that demarcation, the
krill
’s argent faded into the dark.
    The crevice was old: far older than Linden’s knowledge of the Land. It had endured for eons, perhaps ever since the convulsion which had created Landsdrop. It might continue to do so. Nevertheless the gutrock overhead seemed fragile. The clutter of boulders where the Feroce led the companions demonstrated that stones did fall.
    But the possibility that some tremor might release sheets of rock did not trouble her. She had more urgent concerns. More than the mountain or the darkness—more than slick surfaces and vile moss—she feared the air. It was not merely fetid and hurtful: it was thick with leached evils. Every breath brought dire scents from offal and corpses; from strange lakes of lava and ruin arising from the deep places of the Earth; from the detritus of horrid theurgies and delving. From time and rot and distillation.
    And from She Who Must Not Be Named. At intervals like the tightening of a rack, Linden tasted hints of the bane’s distinctive anguish, terrible and bitter. She could only bear the miasma which she drew into her lungs because Jeremiah was ameliorating it with Earthpower.
    Earlier he had sweetened some of the air in the valley. He could not do as much here. The atmosphere was more concentrated. And the fact that his companions were forced to advance one at a time exacerbated his difficulties. He had to push the Staff’s benefits too far. As a result, Rime Coldspray and the other Giants in the lead had begun to cough as if they were about to bring up blood. Between their stertorous gasps, Linden heard Covenant wheezing. Some of the Giants in the rear retched. The sounds of their distress rebounded from the