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

could maybe teach himself how to help Coldspray and Grueburn recover. If nothing else, he should have been able to fill this cave with light and warmth. But the Staff’s possibilities only taunted him. They emphasized all of the things that he could not do.
    Covenant and Linden might as well have asked Jeremiah to remake the world.
    Gnawing his futility, he ignored the exhausted rasp of the Giants’ breathing, the useless stoicism of the
Haruchai
, the slow drip of blood from too many wounds. He had nothing to say to his companions. They could not help him.
    Maybe Roger had the right idea. Maybe we should all try to become gods.
    The idea was a cruel joke.
    He should never have listened to Linden. He should never have accepted her Staff. He should have stayed in his graves, hidden. He would have been better off. Nobody would have expected him to produce miracles.
    “Chosen-son?” asked Rime Coldspray: an abraded whisper. “Jeremiah? Do you hear me?”
    He wanted to snarl at her. The floor trembled under him. A fever gripped Mount Thunder’s gutrock. In the distance, the implied roar and clatter as
Melenkurion
Skyweir collapsed shook the world. He could feel it. Towering plumes of dust and ruin cast a pall across the Land’s last dusk. He could see it.
    Covenant was wasting his time. Linden had thrown her life away.
    But naturally the Ironhand and Grueburn did not hear what Jeremiah heard. He was alone.
    “I’m busy,” he muttered. “What do you want?”
    “Chosen-son.” Rime Coldspray made a palpable effort to speak clearly. “I am loath to burden you further. We are not altogether sightless in such dark. And I do not doubt that the vision of the
Haruchai
exceeds ours. Nonetheless some small flame would comfort our spirits.
    “I do not ask a
caamora
,” she added as if she feared that he would misunderstand. “I am undone by weariness, and have no heart for lamentation. Yet fire and light would be a kindness.” She sighed. “Mayhap they would enable me to remain upright until we are summoned by the Timewarden’s need.”
    “Aye,” breathed Grueburn. She sounded too weak to say more.
    “Then you should sit down.” Jeremiah remembered seeing a couple of large boulders against the walls. They were invisible now, blank to his health-sense, indistinguishable from the surrounding stone; but the Giants could rest on them. “Don’t you feel it? The floor is starting to shake. The Worm is sending out ripples. The more it drinks, the bigger they’ll get. Soon you won’t be able to stand. You’ll last longer if you don’t try.”
    “Stone and Sea!” the Ironhand panted. “Does the world end? Does time remain for the Timewarden to accomplish his purpose? Have we come so far at such cost, and arrived too late?”
    “How should I know?” countered Jeremiah sourly. “I’ve never watched a world die before.” Then he rasped, “Of course we’re too late. That’s what all those Cavewights were for. Lord Foul sent them to slow us down.”
    We were doomed, he added to himself, as soon as Mom and Covenant started thinking I could hold up my end.
    But Canrik said like a reprimand, “He is the ur-Lord, the Unbeliever. Twice he has wrested life from the clutch of Corruption, for the Land if not for himself. We are Masters and have doubted much. Now we are done with uncertainty. While Branl remains able to speak to us, we will fear nothing.”
    Jeremiah grimaced. “Fine. You do that. Fear nothing as long as you want. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you when this place starts to shake so hard you fall down.”
    The darkness of the cave and the darkness inside him mirrored each other. He could not distinguish between them.
    “Ah, Chosen-son.” Coldspray’s voice seemed to scrape the floor. It sounded as unsteady as the stone. “Your straits are indeed bitter. I know not how you may be consoled.
    “Yet surely you also would find comfort in light.”
    “Don’t you think I’m trying?” Jeremiah retorted, caustic as lye. “I’ve been trying ever since Mom”—he raised the Staff, slammed it back onto his thighs—“gave me this thing. But I can’t change what I am. It’s all just black.”
    The Staff had turned against him soon after he had begun trying to use its stained resources. Before that, his power had been the warm yellow of sunshine. He could have provided at least a taste of kindness for Coldspray and Grueburn. But his efforts with the wood had not changed it. Instead it had