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

falls, you can slip out. You’ll be free. But you have to go now. Otherwise I don’t know what might happen. You belong to eternity. If you don’t leave—if you stay inside Time—you might be extinguished along with everything else.”
    Perhaps She Who Must Not Be Named craved extinction, an eternal end to Her suffering. If so, Linden had failed. But at least her own anguish would end as well.
    “All I want,” she insisted in fire, “is to release your women. You don’t need them anymore. Not now. They’re part of this world.” They were dross, imperfections. “If you take them with you, they’ll only hinder you. They may even prevent you. You won’t be truly free.”
    The bane contracted around her. Terrible strength made pulp of her flesh and organs, her bones, her mind. Nothing existed for her except the raw rage of She Who Must Not Be Named.
    “Fool! Madwoman! Treacher! Do you conceive that I desire
freedom
? You do not know me. Freedom is
agony
. It is
abhorrence
. It is not
redemption
. I am anguish because I have forgotten who I am.
    “The destruction of this world is nothing to me. I cannot die.
I must have my true name!
”
    Convulsions shook Mount Thunder to its roots. Shocks distorted the definitions of existence. Slabs fell from the ceiling and were pulverized. Granite sifted like ash onto the heads and shoulders of the ur-viles and Waynhim. Stone lurched under their feet. Yet they stood as if they were rooted by pride: legs straight, backs regal, arms open to welcome released souls. The loremaster’s eerie visage shone with an inward exaltation.
    Linden felt ripples like imminent
caesures
trembling toward her, confusing the structure of instants. There were no risks left except this one.
    “Then give me Emereau Vrai.” Kastenessen’s lover: the only woman who had ever been loved by an
Elohim
. He had given her some of his magicks. How else had she been able to create the
merewives
? Perhaps he had also revealed secrets which no one mortal—which none of the bane’s other victims—could have known. Why else had his people considered his crime so heinous that he deserved his Durance? Linden had heard long ago that he had been punished for harming an ordinary woman with his love; but she did not trust that explanation. When had the
Elohim
ever been so protective of individual lives? Emereau Vrai might know—And if she did, the Demondim-spawn might be lorewise enough to understand her. “Let me show you that I’m telling the truth.”
    I’m a woman, damn it! I don’t want to seduce you.
    The bane contracted in fury. Her vehemence increased. It was unbearable, unanswerable. Though Linden clung to wild magic—to her wedding band—to the promise of Thomas Covenant—she was little more than a spark, a fading ember within the virulence of She Who Must Not Be Named. Hundreds or thousands of women shrieked their pain and despair, but they made no sound.
    Then the pressure eased. Yowling to Herself, the bane receded slightly. Linden remembered to breathe. She blinked at the blood in her eyes.
    An excoriated face appeared in front of her. A voice that registered only in Linden’s mind said, I am Emereau Vrai. Does Kastenessen love me still? I am betrayed to this doom, but not by him. It was his kindred who made of me a plaything for damnation. All that I have done, I did because he was taken from me.
    You have spoken my name. Know that I forgive nothing. Alone among this host, I approve my fate. She Who Must Not Be Named is my god. My anguish is worship.
    Linden might have said, Of course he still loves you. In his heart, he never let you go. He made himself insane for you. But she did not have the strength. Her life and her will were almost gone. She needed the last of herself to clasp Emereau Vrai and send Kastenessen’s lover into the arms of the Demondim-spawn.
    They accepted her gladly, barking their homage amid the devastation of the Lost Deep.
    Then Linden was done. Wild magic drained out of her, and she was swept unshielded into the excoriation of the bane. As far as she knew, she only remained alive because she had slipped into a fracture between instants. When the currents of the bane’s fury carried her back into the sequences of time, she would die.
    Yet that fracture—or some other pause—held her. She did not die, or move, or think. Entire realms of pain slid past her as if she had become untouchable.
    As if she had finally become worthy of her husband.
    With senses