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

fleshless form, sent fiery harm careering everywhere along his disembodied nerves; but he was not dissuaded. He knew pain too well: he had spent eons wrapped in his own agony. Damage and diminishment could be repaired. His chance for freedom would never come again.
    Every force at his command, Lord Foul focused on Jeremiah. But now he did not strive to take possession. Instead he sought to destroy.
    He knew more about forbidding than Jeremiah did. He was stronger than the boy would ever be. When Covenant wounded him, he could call on long ages of despair to secure his concentration.
    At first, Jeremiah wielded the Staff with an exalted certainty. He had freed himself from
moksha
Raver: he had earned his power. And he had spent too much of his life immured in dissociation. His need to repudiate Despite defined him. Nevertheless he was only himself; only human. Lord Foul was the Despiser, eternal and insatiable. Although Covenant fought as hard as he could, flailed desperately and did ferocious damage, Jeremiah began to falter.
    The Staff trembled in his grasp. His arms shook. His eyes were cries of dismay. He gave his utmost—and it was not enough. Bit by bit, his forbidding began to crumble.
    “
Jeremiah!
” Covenant yelled: a shout of conflagration. “Hold on!
I’m coming!
”
    With Stave’s help, he floundered toward the dais, flaying his foe as he approached. But he already knew that he would fail. He could have torn open Mount Thunder’s entire torso—he felt destructiveness on that scale within him—but he could not block Lord Foul’s flight. Wild magic was the wrong kind of power. Like the Despiser, white gold aspired to freedom; and any forbidding required the structures and commandments of Law.
    Jeremiah dropped to one knee. Blood burst from his mouth. Earthpower pouring from the Staff began to gutter. In another moment—
    Jeremiah! Oh, God!
    Without warning, an overwhelming thunder swept through Kiril Threndor. It staggered the whole mountain. For an instant, Covenant thought that the Worm had drunk its fill; that the World’s End had come. Then he saw more clearly.
    A hand like the fist of a god struck down the Despiser. Strength that threatened to crack Covenant’s mind left Lord Foul crumpled on the dais, almost corporeal, almost whimpering. A transcendent touch secured Jeremiah’s forbidding. As if as an afterthought, something supernal deposited Linden at Jeremiah’s side.
    A heartbeat later, the thunder passed on, leaving the Earth to its own ruin. In the power’s absence, the rising convulsions of the Worm’s feeding felt like a reprieve.
    Linden clasped Jeremiah, helped him stand again. Her return renewed his resolve, his strength. Fresh Earthpower crowded the chamber. Refusals tightened around the Despiser.
    Covenant believed that he was deaf as well as blind. Wild magic was all that kept him alive. Nonetheless he heard Linden say, “She Who Must Not Be Named is gone. I gave Her what She needed. This must be what She calls gratitude.
    “I love you, Thomas.”
    It’s enough, Covenant thought. Thank you. It’s enough.
    But he could not afford to pause. Reality was coming undone around him, and he had not confronted his worst fears.
    He could do that now. Linden had come. She was whole and here. The emblem and summation of all betrayed women had given Covenant that gift.
    Mustering his own gratitude, he urged Stave to support him until he gained the dais.
    The Despiser was smaller now, beaten down or reduced by the bane’s retribution. He was almost Covenant’s size. He hunched into himself as though he sought to hide. As though he wanted to be smaller still.
    With wild magic and leprosy, Covenant reached out to him. With pity and terror, Covenant lifted Lord Foul upright.
    This was his last crisis. There could be no more.
    “Do you understand?” he asked like a man bidding farewell. “If I’m yours, you’re mine. We’re part of each other. We’re too much alike. We want each other dead. But you’re finished. You can’t escape now. And I’m too weak to save myself. If we want to live, we have to do it together.”
    The Despiser met Covenant’s gaze. “You will not.” The voice of the world’s iniquity sounded hollow as a forsaken tomb. His eyes were not fangs. They were wounds, gnashed and raw. “You fear me. You will not suffer me to live.”
    “Yes,” Covenant answered, “I will.”
    He was blinded now, not by fires and fury, but by tears as he closed his arms