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

sight was as
wrong
as a knife to the heart; as hurtful as the piercing which had twice ended his life, once in the woods behind Haven Farm, once here at the Despiser’s hands.
    Roger Covenant.
    Obviously waiting, Roger faced his father. A grin like a rictus stretched his fleshy cheeks. The slouch of his shoulders and the heaviness of his torso betrayed his disregard for his mortal flesh; his disdain. On his shirt and pants, he bore the scorch-marks of his battles with Linden. The puckered skin of healed burns showed through holes and tears in the fabric. For his deeds, he had paid a price in pain—
    His hands were empty of weapons, of any instruments of power. But his right was Kastenessen’s, hot and ruddy as lava, flagrant with power. It blazed like the jaws of the
skurj
. It, too, must have cost him excruciation.
    He gnashed his teeth at Covenant. “Well, hi, Dad.” His mouth sneered; but his voice was a tortured thing, twisted on a rack of unappeasable desires until its joints opened and its sinews tore. “You took your own sweet time getting here.”
    His eyes were Lord Foul’s, carious as rotting fangs.

10.
    All Lost Women

    Linden had chosen this. It was not a reaction to the Despiser’s manipulations: it was her own doing. She had stepped off the path of his desires. If she served him now, she could not pretend that she had been misled or tricked.
    Her choice. Her doing, for good or ill.
    And she had promised herself that she would remember; that she would allow no effect of shame or pain, horror or failure, to confuse the fact that she had acted of her own free will. She would not blame Lord Foul, or fault Thomas for failing to spare her, or think less of Jeremiah because he had been weak.
    She had made that promise to herself. Nevertheless she forgot it in the first instant of translation. She forgot who she was, and why she was here, and what she had intended to do. Such things were washed out of her by a scend of enchantment. Her world had become magic and majesty, and nothing was required of her except wonder. Something more than translation had occurred. She had entered a realm of transubstantiation where delight was the only possible response. Here she found contentment in awe and tranquility, the ineffable mansuetude of the redeemed.
    The rich rug luxurious under her feet was distilled solace. It overlapped others as hieratic as arrases depicting scenes of worship, humility, sanctification: tableaux in which the devout ached with joy. She could have gleaned comfort endlessly from each of them; but her eyes and her heart were enticed by rapture on all sides. Somehow the richness of the rugs was both complete and transparent, solid and evanescent. They lay on a lucent floor pristine as aspiration, enduring as marble. Enhanced by the intervening substance of the rugs, the stone seemed polished to the point of incandescence. She was only able to bear its marmoreal radiance because she had been exalted to the tone and timbre of her surroundings.
    Gazing around her, rapt and delirant, she saw a space like the ballroom of a grandiloquent palace; saw beauties in such profusion that she could not hope to appreciate them all. Loveliness effloresced in every direction. Near the walls, braziers of burnished gold offered flames redolent with incense and purity. Among the rugs, delicate filigree shafts like spun glass clean as crystal stretched upward to form arms that supported chandeliers as bright as the splendor of worlds. Beyond them, wide staircases graceful as wings swept toward higher levels and finer glories. Yet their treads and their immaculate banisters did not call her to rise and explore. She was satisfied where she stood, more than satisfied; already so dazzled and enraptured that any ascension—any movement—would diminish her perfect peace.
    High above her, mosaics sang like choirs: a reverent hymnody audible only as praise. They displayed constellations and firmaments like burgeoning creations, like galaxies and stars and worlds always new.
    Yet more delicious to her senses than any other munificence was the fountain. A geyser in the center of the floor, it reached high, flawless and faceted as a single diamond, until it spread its arching waters wide: a feathered spray of droplets as precise as wrought gems. There no small jewel fell. Each clinquant bead hung in abeyance, suspended, motionless. Static and lovely as ice, the fountain displayed its own splendor: an icon of transcended