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

the walls and then the ceiling. With wild magic, he cut down great chunks of stone until the passage was sealed.
    After that, he collapsed inwardly. He could still walk, still go where he was guided; but he could not think or speak. Images of slaughter filled his head. Wounds gaped at him like the grins of ghouls. The tumult of falling stone volleyed against the boundaries of his mind. So much killing. So many dead. And he had lost the sailors. He had lost everyone with them.
    He had brought carnage into the dwelling-place of the Cavewights: just one more item on the long list of his crimes.
    What was it all for? Covenant knew his own reasons, but Lord Foul’s daunted him. The Worm could not be stopped. At last, the Despiser could be sure of his long-sought freedom. Then why had he been so profligate with the lives of his servants? Did he simply
enjoy
sacrificing them? Or did he secretly fear that Covenant might yet find a way to thwart him?
    No. The Despiser knew Covenant too well.
    But Lord Foul did not know Linden and Jeremiah: not with the same intimacy. The fane which had preserved the
Elohim
and delayed the Worm demonstrated that he had underestimated Covenant’s wife and her adopted son. Without their efforts, their opposition, he might already have escaped the Arch of Time.
    Maybe that explained the brutality of his defenses.
    The tunnel rose. Dragging the weight of his sins behind him, Covenant trudged upward.
    At his side, Linden stared ahead, wide-eyed as a woman who saw a holocaust waiting for her. Jeremiah wrung the Staff as though he wanted to twist it apart. His every step was a flinch. Leading their few companions, Coldspray and Grueburn slumped like derelicts. Only Stave and Branl, Canrik and Samil paced the ascent like men who could not be appalled by any sacrifice.
    A rift cut across the tunnel. It split the floor as though it had been made by an axe sharp enough to wound mountains. It yawned at Covenant, too black to be relieved by the
krill
’s shining. But it was thin: a fracture no wider than his thigh. Pretending to ignore it, he stepped across.
    More fissures appeared. They were little more than cracks, yet they served to remind him of the times when violence had torn through Kiril Threndor, Heart of Thunder.
    He was getting close—
    When the Giants halted, he nearly walked into them. Blinking and stupefied, he looked around.
    They had entered a chamber like an exaggerated vesicle, a natural formation left behind by some accident of volcanism. The passage continued, but Coldspray and Grueburn stood wavering as if they had come to the end of themselves: they looked like they wanted to lie down. The cavity was more than large enough to accommodate them prone. It could have held a dozen sleeping Giants.
    To one side rested a pair of large boulders. They seemed strangely out of place. Covenant could not imagine how they had come to be here. But plenty of room remained, and the floor was approximately level. When he found himself swaying on his feet, he realized that he was tired enough to stretch out and rest in spite of the Earth’s peril.
    And yet his weariness was a drop in the ocean of Coldspray’s and Grueburn’s exhaustion. Even the
Haruchai
were probably worn down, although they concealed it.
    Grueburn’s longsword dangled from her fingers. “Is it conceivable,” she asked, plaintive as the cry of a distant tern, “that we are done with combat? I cannot raise my arms.”
    “‘The mightiest of the Swordmainnir,’” muttered Coldspray dully. “So I have vaunted myself, and so I am. Behold.” She lifted her glaive. “My hand is firm.” It shook like a dying leaf. “My eye is keen.” Fatigue glazed her gaze. “Beyond question, I am—” Abruptly she dropped her sword. Her shoulders slumped. “Stone and Sea! I am undone by woe and killing. I cannot spit out the taste of blood. It will fill my mouth to the end of my days.”
    Sighing, Covenant roused himself enough to respond, “Join the club.”
    Jeremiah said nothing. He appeared to have lost interest in everything except his ambiguous struggle with the Staff of Law. Folding his legs, he settled himself against one wall, sat cross-legged with the black wood resting across his thighs. His head he kept bowed as if he did not want anyone to see the darkness deepening in his eyes.
    Linden studied him for a moment, then turned away. She had spent too long clenched inside herself; too long crowded with needs and fears which