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

required measures as extreme as the patient’s plight. Surgeons amputated or extirpated. They performed sacrifices. They transplanted. They did not judge the cost. They only did what they could.
    And even here, in the Lost Deep at the onset of the World’s End, Linden was not alone.
    In a blaze of wild magic, she reeled against the current of the bane’s savagery, dragging Elena with her.
    The bane’s resistance was brutal and blind, undirected. She Who Must Not Be Named could shatter entire landscapes, but She did not know how to fight within Herself. She had never needed to do so before. Linden seemed to struggle endlessly—and to find what she sought in an instant.
    Through the flame and hunger and abhorrence of the bane’s boundaries, she saw the Demondim-spawn.
    Under a deluge of collapsing theurgies, the ur-viles and the Waynhim stood together as if they had finally become kin, united by a common interpretation of their Weird. As one, they studied the bane with senses other than sight; or they studied Linden.
    Time and again, they had helped her when she had not known that she needed their gifts. Like Thomas. Like the Land itself.
    Peering at the creatures, she understood at last that they had not unbound the ancient magicks of the Viles merely so that she would be able to remember and act. They had cast down their purest heritage for reasons greater than her needs and desires. Their Weird demanded more. They had undone the wonders of the Lost Deep for the same reason that they had aided her and the Land repeatedly: so that they would be vulnerable now. So that they would be accessible—
    If you can ever figure out a way to let me know what you need or want from me—
    What had the ur-viles and the Waynhim ever wanted, except to escape their loathing for their own forms?
    Linden waited until the loremaster met her gaze; until the tall creature nodded its assent. Then she did what she could for Elena.
    Risking the shroud of wild magic which protected her, Linden flung Elena out of the bane; tossed her like a wisp of hope or a kept promise into the waiting embrace of the loremaster.
    The creature appeared to swallow. The spectre of Elena seemed to vanish. Linden could not be sure. She Who Must Not Be Named was roaring: a howl that stunned Linden’s chest, rattled her mind in its chamber of bone, stopped her ears and eyes and mouth and lungs. She hardly knew who or what she was.
    Time was fraying at the edges around her, starting to unravel. Soon its deterioration would unweave the world. Reality would lose its shape. Existence would cease.
    Still wild magic shielded her. Her own needs shielded her; her own loves. She was not done.
    She grasped the first spectre shrieking past her: a woman who could have been anyone, Diassomer Mininderain, Sara Clint, Joan herself, anyone at all. As she had with Elena, she gave the savaged soul to the loremaster, or to all of the Demondim-spawn. Then she reached for another victim.
    Before Linden could do more, the bane found a defense. Her ferocity seemed to have no beginning and no end as She began to compress Herself, condensing Her might and bulk around Linden, making Herself more solid. Linden no longer drifted on currents of fire and fury. Pressures great enough to rive mountains clamped down on her. Forces which dwarfed her threatened to rupture her eardrums, burst vessels in her lungs, squeeze blood from her eyes. Lost women were held motionless in their unutterable screams.
    But Linden did not need ears or eyes or air to hear She Who Must Not Be Named.
    “You diminish me! You dare to diminish me! You will not! You speak of save, but your purpose is
betrayal
. I will not permit you!”
    Linden had no voice. It had been crushed out of her. She could speak only with wild magic: the blazing paradox,
save or damn
, which formed the keystone of life.
    “This isn’t betrayal. It’s kindness. I can save all of these poor women. I can tell you how to save yourself.”
    “
How?
” The bane’s roar was a sneer, contemptuous as vitriol. “You are nothing! What do you offer that I have not attempted endlessly?”
    Linden could not move. She was effectively dead. The bane’s power was too much for her. Nevertheless she answered.
    “The Arch of Time is breaking. If you don’t believe me, look for yourself. You can see it. The Worm of the World’s End is drinking the EarthBlood. Everything is going to be destroyed. Your prison is starting to fall apart.
    “While it