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

strike again, until I am heeded. Alas, my heart will not suffer it. You must hear me.”
    She did not. She had forgotten him. She had almost forgotten that language had meaning. His words slipped past her. Then they were gone. Only ensorcelments remained.
    But Stave was not alone. At his back, an array of creatures crouched in the act of rising to their hind legs. Black things, no more than a dozen. And grey ones, smaller, half that number. Above the cruel slits of their mouths, they had no eyes. Wet nostrils dominated their faces. Pointed ears twitched on their skulls. Their heads and bodies were hairless.
    Stave turned and bowed to them as if they had earned homage.
    They made chittering sounds like his, language without meaning. One of them taller than the others held a jerrid of black iron, a scepter like a short javelin. A fuming liquid as dire as poison dripped from the iron. The tall creature snuffled at Linden, then turned away. With low growls and snarls, it used the point of its jerrid to sketch incomprehensible symbols in the air. Acid drops scattered here and there; but they evaporated before they touched the floor.
    For a moment without measure or duration, nothing changed. Linden remembered nothing. Only the ballroom endured. Like Stave, the creatures faded, the black ones and the grey. Like him, they were almost gone.
    Then a subtle tremor ran through the fountain, a vibration so brief and untenable that it defied sight. She could not believe that she had seen it. She hardly recognized her own fright.
    Slow and horrid as a plunge from a nightmare precipice, a single jewel of water high in the fountain began to fall.
    Light shone all around the small bead. It looked like an epiphany; like the essence of the Earth’s gems; like the last gleam of the ravaged heavens. It fell and fell forever, infinite and fatal; and while Linden watched it, her heart did not beat, her lungs did not draw breath. When at last it reached the floor, the largesse of the rugs, it made a tiny splash: the first faint quiver of a world about to shatter.
    Somewhere in the distance, hundreds of leagues away, the Worm—
    Linden blinked. A small frown knotted her forehead. Her heart offered up a weak beat.
    The creatures continued their guttural invocation—and another bead of water began its interminable demise—and Stave stood in front of her again, clutching her shoulders.
    When he repeated her name, she wanted to weep.
    A second little splash. A few ripples. In rugs? In marble?
    A third rare jewel of water, and a fourth, dropping from perfection into time and ruin. When they struck, they made a pattering sound, delicate and awful.
    Oh, God, she thought. Stave. The Worm. The bane.
    Ur-viles and Waynhim. Once again, they had come to her rescue when she did not know how to save herself.
    In this place, rescue was an atrocity. It destroyed a supernal achievement, the triumph of lore which had preserved the palace through the ages. And the effect on Linden was no less cruel. Raindrops brought back memories like devastations. Thoughts were carnage and cataclysm.
    Jeremiah. Thomas!
    Somehow she reached out to the
Haruchai
. Her voice was softer than the accumulating drip of the fountain. Her eyes should have been full of tears.
    “What did you say? About the bane?”
    His back straightened. His chin rose proudly. His eye shone.
    “She rises, Linden. If you do not call out to Her, She will assail the Timewarden. She will consume your son.”
    Damn
it! Linden wished that Stave had hit her. She wanted to pummel herself. She had chosen to face her worst fears. Then she had forgotten all about them. And while she had lost herself among marvels, the Earth’s peril had increased beyond bearing.
    She Who Must Not Be Named might take Thomas and Jeremiah.
    In a different life, a bullet had struck Linden. A scar over her heart matched the perfect circle in her shirt. There was no going back. Choices made could not be recanted.
    Thomas had unforeseeable strengths. He might survive. But mere Law and Earthpower would not suffice to ward Jeremiah.
    For Linden’s sake, or for the Earth’s, the ur-viles and Waynhim had disrupted the prolonged theurgies of the Viles; sacrificed their own heritage of splendor. Around the ballroom, a light drizzle fell. The fountain cast a fine mist that gathered into droplets. Drips leaked from the music of the ceiling. Ripples ran down the stairways. Gradually the chandeliers released their lights. Spots of water