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

spectre could be swept away.
    Elena did not struggle, yet Linden could barely hold her. The bane’s wrath lashed the eidolon in every direction. She Who Must Not Be Named pressed down on Linden’s shield with all of Her accumulated mass: the weight of ages. Only Linden’s cocoon preserved her. Only wild magic kept Elena with her, face to face.
    “Oh, Elena.” She spoke in flames. She had no other voice for her remorse and shame. Her words were the lament of her wedding band: the grief of an absolute promise broken absolutely. “I’m so sorry. You didn’t deserve what I did to you. You and Caer-Caveral brought Thomas to me. I should have been grateful. But I couldn’t think about anything except how much I hurt. I treated you like it was your fault. I wanted you to be stronger than I was. I wanted you to forgive me, but I couldn’t say that. I can’t forgive myself.
    “I’m like Kevin. I chose my own Desecration. You just made a mistake. You don’t deserve—”
    Elena’s cries made no sound that Linden could hear. Nevertheless the High Lord’s protests silenced Linden. They appeared like avatars in her mind; like reifications of every injury which had ever flensed Elena’s heart.
    Why have you come? My suffering is enough. I do not desire the sufferings of others. I did not call you to this doom.
    Terrible pressures distorted Elena’s features: stretched them until they tore; compressed them into granite knots. Her eyes were wounds.
    Do you conceive that I was compelled to eternal horror? The Dead are not so cruel. I acceded to the pleas of Sunder and Hollian out of love for my father, and because you are his beloved, and because you must be preserved.
    Linden Avery, you multiply my torment. You have damned yourself. I must go mad, as She is mad. Why have you come?
    At an unconceivable distance, the thunder of
Melenkurion
Skyweir’s destruction boomed. Surely the Worm had begun its feeding at the wellspring of the Earth’s Blood? Surely the world’s remaining life could be measured in heartbeats?
    Linden did not care. She had been trained as a physician, a surgeon, a healer. She knew in her bones that her first and only responsibility was to find an answer for the need in front of her.
    “To free you,” she answered in conflagration. “I’ll free as many of you as I can. I’ll tell the bane how to free Herself. But I have to start with you. You’re the one I hurt.”
    Thomas Covenant’s daughter, as precious as her own son.
    Elena’s wailing was inaudible. Still Linden heard her. Her voice seemed to burst from her eyes, from the veins throbbing in her temples.
    You cannot. Do you hear? You cannot. We are souls. Her anguish binds us. As we are, we cannot be divided from Her. We must live again to be free of Her. We must have flesh. We must be truly separate, spirit from spirit, thought from thought. Pain from pain. To release us, you must unmake our deaths.
    We cannot be freed!
    That cry rent Linden’s heart. It nearly snapped her resolve. For a moment, she could only gape at Elena.
Unmake
your death?
How?
Elena was not Thomas: she was not imprinted on Linden’s nerves, Linden’s needs, Linden’s love. Her body was gone beyond comprehension. And Linden did not have either the
krill
or the Staff. She had only her ring.
    Don’t tell me that I have to leave you like this!
    But then her preconceptions shifted. She had spent her life making promises that she did not know how to keep. She had never sufficed to keep them. And yet she had accomplished more than she could have imagined. But not because
she
was more—or not only because she was more. No, she had been able to do so much because she was not alone. From Liand and Anele and Stave to the Ranyhyn and the Swordmainnir and Thomas himself, she had been aided in every deed. She had been given gifts—
    They had taught her truths which should have been obvious, but which had nonetheless eluded her. Berek Halfhand had seen Gallows Howe in her, a mound of ruin made barren by bitterness and slaughter. In Garroting Deep, however, she had discovered a deeper truth beneath the drenched dirt.
    More than bloodshed and revenge, the olden forest had yearned for restitution. The trees would have turned their backs on killing entirely if they could have recovered their ravaged expanse and majesty.
    She understood that now. She recognized, if the bane did not, that healing was both more arduous and more worthy than retribution. And sometimes healing