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

fists. His momentum carried him into a straight lunge at the creature which had struck the Humbled.
    In spite of its antiquity, the blade retained some vestige of Kasreyn’s lore. It drove deep into the monster’s chest. When Stave wrenched out the longsword, the stone-thing toppled to one side. Dying, it turned to powder and drifted away.
    Reflections of brimstone and wild magic flashed in Stave’s eye as he hastened to stand between Covenant and the third monster. His mien was a taut mask of outrage and grief.
    Linden, Covenant thought. Oh, God. What have you done?
    But he did not stop fighting.
    “No!” Lord Foul roared again. “I will not
permit
it!”
    Scourged by his possessor, Roger shifted his aim. Fierce as a scream, he turned his power away from Covenant.
    A mistake—In the space between instants, Covenant thought that the Despiser had misjudged his foes—or had simply been overcome by his own fury. The
Haruchai
could not oppose him. Covenant was the real danger.
    Then, however, Covenant saw the frenzy in Roger’s eyes—saw the Despiser’s bitterness dulled by a more human anguish—saw Roger hurl coerced scoria, not at Stave, who shielded Covenant, but at Branl, who could not.
    The Humbled lay gasping against the wall. One shoulder had been shattered. Other bones were broken. His legs refused to hold him. Still he managed to wrench himself aside.
    Roger’s blast did not destroy him. Instead it made a smoking ruin of his wrecked arm, stripped the flesh from his ribs. Even that lesser damage might have killed him; but Roger’s attack cauterized as it burned. Branl was stricken unconscious: he did not bleed. His chest still heaved for air.
    Roger had done that:
Roger
. It was as close to an act of mercy as he could manage. In spite of Lord Foul’s mastery, Roger had left Stave alive to protect Covenant.
    And Covenant—
    Covenant recognized his chance.
    In a stumbling rush, he ran at Roger, gained the dais. Faster than he could think, he slashed with the
krill
.
    One swift stroke severed Kastenessen’s hand.
    The hand exploded; or Lord Foul’s presence in Roger did. The concussion tossed Covenant away. He hit hard enough to crack his skull. A whirlwind of little suns wheeled across his mind. He lost the dagger somewhere. Blood started from his eyes. It ran from his ears. He could not feel his arms, his legs. A gyre of disconnected instants sucked at the verges of reality.
    “
You
,” raged the Despiser, “will not
prevail
!”
    A clutch of theurgy yanked Covenant from the stone, threw him farther. He skidded like scattered bones over slabs and fissures.
    He had no strength, no weapon. He might as well have had no limbs. Another throw would finish him.
    Sightless and desperate, he answered with wild magic. His mind became white fire. Violent flames poured from every part of him that still had living nerves and could feel pain.
    “You bastard.” Roger seemed to be shrieking at Lord Foul, but Covenant heard only whispers. “You lied to me.”
    “And do you now take offense, little man?” snorted the Despiser. “I do not regard your umbrage. I do not speak lies. If you heard falsehood, it was of your own making. Now you will suffer the outcome of your folly. Take comfort in the knowledge that your abjection will be brief.”
    Radiating fire like waves of fever, Covenant tried to blink the blood out of his eyes; struggled to see.
    He lay on a canted sheet of basalt. Vaguely past its rim, he glimpsed the unharmed dais, the broken clutter of stalactites. The furious shape of Lord Foul still dominated the chamber, too immense to be opposed or endured.
    Branl lay where he had been struck. Stave had vanished or fallen. Had he confronted another monster? Covenant had no idea how many stone-things still moved in Kiril Threndor.
    But over there, to the left of the dais, stood Roger, unpossessed and human. Fountains of blood had streaked his clothes, stained his face. Facing the Despiser, he huddled over his pain with his gushing wrist clamped under his arm to slow the bleeding. He glanced at Covenant; at Covenant’s undifferentiated, useless flail of power. Then he turned back to Lord Foul.
    Tremors ran through the floor. They staggered Roger, rocked Covenant mercilessly. The Despiser and the dais they did not affect.
    Lord Foul’s biting eyes loomed over Covenant. “As for you,” he sneered, “beaten Unbeliever, impotent Timewarden, I have reconsidered your doom. Though I hunger for your