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

Lord Foul did not understand him. After all of this time, the Despiser still had no real idea what he was up against.
    As Covenant left Linden’s son, Rime Coldspray spoke. In the
krill
’s light, she looked like a closed door. Her voice was rusted iron, a blade gnawed by neglect. Yet her gaze was sure in its mask of blood.
    “Do not fear, Timewarden. While we live, we will stand with the Chosen-son. If we cannot guide him, mayhap Canrik and Samil will do so. They have shown their worth. They will not fail in Stave’s stead, or in Branl’s.”
    Mute as an unmarked grave, Frostheart Grueburn nodded her assent.
    With that hope, Covenant followed Branl out of the chamber.

    he Humbled held Longwrath’s flamberge ready. He walked lightly, silent as a breeze.
That some great evil awaits us is plain
. Behind him, Covenant stepped over cracks in the wracked stone, carrying the illumination of Loric’s courage and lore into darkness. The tunnel twisted from side to side as if it were writhing.
I cannot credit that Corruption has no other defenses close about him
. Here and there, flecks of mica or quartz in the walls caught silver and glittered like eyes.
    More fractures flawed the gutrock. The forces unleashed here must have been appalling: High Lord Prothall’s struggle with Drool Rockworm for the old Staff of Law; Lord Foul’s fierce and increasingly frantic efforts to destroy Covenant’s spirit. Clutching the
krill
, Covenant rushed past thin splits that called out to him, urging vertigo and surrender. He had surrendered once. Not again. Not now. Linden had gone to meet her worst fear. He intended to do the same.
    Then argent caught the edges of an opening ahead. Covenant smelled sulfur, the dire reek of brimstone. He felt distant heat like the withering touch of Hotash Slay long ago. And attar.
    “Ur-Lord,” Branl said sharply. “Be warned. There is might and evil. Though I cannot name their source, they vow death.”
    Attar, Covenant thought. The sweet sick stink of funerals; of preserved corpses. Lord Foul.
    The
Haruchai
as a people did not know that smell. They had never confronted the Despiser.
    Hardly aware that he was struggling for breath—that sweat ran like tears down the galls of his visage—that his hands shook as if he had fallen into fever and delirium—Thomas Covenant accompanied the last of the Humbled into Kiril Threndor.
    He knew this place. He would have recognized it in any nightmare. Here he had been killed with his own power, his own ring. Here he had ascended in agony to participate in the Arch of Time, to defend with his soul the most necessary of the Laws which made life possible.
    The space was a chamber like an abscess in the deep chest of Mount Thunder, Gravin Threndor: round and high, large enough to hold scores of Cavewights worshipping, and acute with patches of rocklight like plague-spots. Random illumination oozed like pain from the walls. The walls themselves looked like they had been shaped by a brutal blade, cut angrily into facets that cast radiance in all directions. From the ceiling, the light was thrown back like a spray of shattered glass by stalactites that resembled burnished metal: reflections so bright and broken that they seemed to swirl on the verge of madness. Some of the stalactites, too, had shattered, leaving gaps like gouges overhead, scattering their debris across the floor. Around the cave’s borders, tunnels opened like unuttered screams. Among them were scattered a few boulders that resembled the stones where Covenant had left Jeremiah, displaced by violence or theurgy from where they belonged.
    Here was the source of the gutrock’s fracturing, here in Kiril Threndor. Those cracks were memories of terrible battles, recollections expressed in the language of wounds. Within the chamber, more splits spread insanity across the floor. From their depths, darkness swirled into the air. In places, the surface had buckled, tilting slabs at tormented angles.
    But the fissures did not touch the time-worn dais in the center of the chamber. Flaws avoided that stone as if they had been denied; as if no form of harm could alter the fundamental substance and meaning of the low platform.
    Two steps into Kiril Threndor, Covenant halted. He no longer noticed the stench of attar. He did not regard the allure of cracks in the floor, or the entrances from which Cavewights might pour forth at any moment. He was transfixed where he stood by the figure on the dais.
    The