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

raised both arms, held high his bright wedding band and hers. After an instant’s hesitation, Linden reached out to grip the cleansed Staff between Jeremiah’s hands, trusting the influence of the
krill
, or the accelerating collapse of Law and Time, or her own rightful use of wild magic to protect her from incompatible theurgies. She smiled at her son. He was concentrating too hard to smile back.
    A final convulsion tore through Kiril Threndor. Wracked beyond endurance, the whole chamber became rubble.
    Lifted by fire, Covenant, Linden, and Jeremiah stepped into the wake of the World’s End and rose like glory.

Epilogue
    “The soul in which the flower grows”

    Together in deep night, Thomas Covenant, Linden Avery, and Jeremiah walked west from the slopes of Gravin Threndor through the enduring woodland of Andelain.
    At first, they could hear the distant turmoil of the Soulsease as it rushed between the walls of Treacher’s Gorge: a plaint like a lament, compelled and swift. But gradually the sound faded among the rich hush of the trees. Stately Gilden and high oaks comforted the heavens. Broad-boughed sycamores and gnarled cottonwoods spread their limbs in welcome. Occasional rills chuckled through the dark, and lush greenswards cushioned walking. Amused breezes wafted their small jests here and there, caressing the Andelainian largesse with tranquility as pellucid as Glimmermere. Along the hillsides,
aliantha
and flowering forsythia gathered like guides or guardians, confirming a path through the night.
    The three carried no light, although Covenant and Linden could have etched the trees with argent, and Jeremiah bore the restored Staff of Law as well as his legacy of Earthpower. They preferred to make their way among the monarchs and nobles of the Hills without other illumination because they themselves had become light. The three of them glowed gentle silver as though they lived half in the realm of the Dead; as though they were in transition, passing into or leaving a dimension of refined spirit. And the scar on Covenant’s forehead held a more concentrated lucence both oneiric and definitive. He wore it like an implied coronet, the crown of all that he had loved and done.
    The ambiguous auguries of their marred clothes were gone. Instead of ruined red flannel or a cut T-shirt or blood-soaked pajamas, instead of jeans and boots, they were clad in robes of fine sendaline supple as woven ghost-silk, soothing to their hard-used skin, and their feet were bare. In their passage beyond Kiril Threndor, they had been made clean.
    Lifted by the verdant luxury of the grass, they walked easily, and the crisp air was an elixir in their lungs. On some other night, an atmosphere which had not known the sun’s touch for days might have left them shivering. On this night, the chill was refreshment, balm: an anodyne for iniquity and travail.
    The three figures luminous as spectres did not feel distance. They did not notice time. They had done what they could to answer their own questions, and were free of impatience. Certainly Covenant and Linden could have walked for hours in silence, content with Andelain, and with the communion of their clasped hands. But Jeremiah was young. He spoke first.
    “We did it.”
    Linden smiled at him. “We did.”
    After a while, Jeremiah asked, “Did we do it right?”
    “I think so,” Covenant said. Old and present pains complicated his tone. He did not share himself with his essential enemy without cost. “It’s hard to be sure.” Too much had been lost.
    Then he gestured ahead. There a glade bedecked with wildflowers opened among the trees. “But we did that part right.”
    Past the boughs, the reaching twigs, the abundance of leaves, a vast multitude of stars emblazoned the heavens, distinct and glittering and inspired, complete in their loveliness. Their myriads made magnificence of the sky’s black void.
    The three stopped in the heart of the glade. For a time, they simply gazed upward, rapt and reveling.
    “Of course,” Covenant added, “we had help.”
    From an innominate distance, Infelice came to stand with them. Sumptuous in her gems and beauty, the suzerain of the
Elohim
was herself an incarnation of stars. “Indeed, Timewarden,” she said like the chiming of faraway bells. “We who were preserved from the Worm have given our aid, though our diminishment has been grievous. Chiefly we have concerned ourselves with guiding the Worm’s return to its proper