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

incongruously satisfied and eager, as if the heavens held nothing fearsome. Nothing except an opportunity. “I have an idea. I said that already. Infelice gave it to me. I mean, I got it from her. I’m sure she didn’t mean what I heard.”
    Fortunately Kevin’s Dirt had no immediate effect: it wrought its particular harm slowly. With her health-sense if not with her eyes, Linden watched her son. He no longer looked like a boy. He looked like a young man who did not need her.
    The sight made her heart shiver as if she were feverish.
    “You’ll have to start from the beginning, Jeremiah. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “You
do
, Mom,” he replied without hesitation. “You were there. You just haven’t thought about it enough.
    “The stars going out.” His assurance amazed Linden. It frightened her. “That’s the Worm. It’s eating the
Elohim
.”
    Too stricken to speak, everyone stared at Jeremiah. Beneath his familiar fierceness, Mahrtiir’s visage betrayed an ashen dismay. The muscles of Rime Coldspray’s jaws knotted and released like the hard beat of her heart. Latebirth had covered her eyes with her hands. Frostheart Grueburn gaped like a woman who had forgotten the meaning of her actions.
    Every Giant—
    “So what are they afraid of?” Jeremiah asked. “I mean, the
Elohim
. I’m just a kid. Why are they scared of me? What do they think I can do that’s worse than being
eaten
?”
    His purpose for us is an abomination, more so than our doom in the maw of the Worm.
    “Infelice told us,” he answered himself. “She thinks I’m going to
trap
them. And she knows I can do it. I can make a door they can’t refuse. No matter how far they scatter, or how hard they try to hide. They can’t refuse. That’s part of who they are. They’ll have to come if I make a door. I mean, the
right
door. The right size and shape. The right materials. I can construct a doorway that
forces
them. They’ll have to pass through it.
    “So of course she thinks I’ll make a door they can’t get out of.” —
the Worm is mere extinction
. “That’s what the Vizard wanted. It’s what she would do if she were me.”
The prison which the boy will devise is eternal helplessness, fully cognizant and forever futile
. “She thinks I’ll trap the
Elohim
forever.”
    Caught in such a construct, Infelice and her people would
out-live the ending of suns and stars
.
    Stave regarded Jeremiah without expression. Several of the Swordmainnir studied him as if he were changing in front of them, revealing unguessed aspects of horror or hope.
    “But she doesn’t know me, Mom.” Jeremiah sounded almost smug. “She doesn’t know what I’ve been learning all these years.
    “I’m not crazy like the Harrow. I know I can’t build anything big or strong enough to hold the Worm. But I can make a door that sucks the
Elohim
in. A door that takes them to a place where the Worm can’t get at them. Only it won’t be a prison because my door will let them leave whenever they want. I can keep them alive until they decide it’s safe to come out.
    “Then the stars will stop dying. And we’ll have a better chance to stop the Worm.”
    He was moving too quickly for Linden. She scrambled to catch up with him; to untangle the significance of what he was saying. What had he told her about the
Elohim
?
They’re like a metaphor?
A symbol?
They represent the stars
.
Or maybe they
are
the stars
.
Or maybe the stars and the
Elohim
are like shadows of each other
.
    The idea made a weird kind of sense. Saving the
Elohim
might actually stop—or at least delay—the destruction of the stars.
    Still Linden faltered.
His purpose for us is an abomination, more so than our doom in the maw of the Worm. But it is not the worst evil.
    Infelice believed that Lord Foul would eventually use Jeremiah to trap the Creator. Would that outcome be more or less likely if Linden’s son contrived to preserve some of the
Elohim
?
    Such questions were beyond her. She could not imagine their answers. She could hardly believe that they had answers.
    She required an act of will to avoid looking up at the slow ravage of the heavens.
    “I am exceeded,” muttered Mahrtiir under his breath. “Here even a youth of newborn mind surpasses a Manethrall of the Ramen. Serving only the Ranyhyn, my people are too small to comprehend or equal such powers.”
    When no one else found a response, Linden asked tentatively, “But Jeremiah, honey, what will