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

blood. It shone into his eyes like the nova of a distant star. The power-whetted blade cut inward as though the stone were damp mud.
    When he took his hands away, his fingers and palms felt no heat: the numbed skin of his cheeks felt none. Nevertheless he trusted the efficacy of wild magic; believed that the
krill
was already growing hot.
    Blinking through dazzles, he squinted at Clyme and Branl. At first, they were bright with phosphorescence, as spectral as the Dead. Then they seemed to reacquire their mortality. But they were not diminished. Rather they looked as precise and cryptic as icons in the dagger’s brilliance. Together they confronted Covenant’s display of power as if they were prepared to decide the fate of worlds.
    As distinctly as he could, Covenant said, “I forbid you to put me on the back of a Ranyhyn. Find some other answer.”
    Then he sagged. He thought that he had come to the end of himself. The Humbled were right: he could not hold out against his wounds. He had lost too much blood, and was in too much pain. If Branl and Clyme did not obey him, he would have to trust the great horses of Ra to forgive him.
    When he felt certain that he was done, however, he found that he was not. A distant sensation of power seemed to call him back from the collapse craved by his ravaged body. Involuntarily he straightened his spine, sat more upright. He imagined that he heard either Clyme or Branl say, This delay will prove fatal. Then he saw them recoil like men who had been slapped. He felt their surprise.
    Directly in front of him, the figure of a man stepped into the light as though he had been made manifest by wild magic and the eldritch puissance of Loric’s
krill
.
    The newcomer seemed to emanate imponderable age. Indeed, he appeared to be fraying at the edges as he arrived, blurring as though he took in years and released vitality or substance with every breath. Nevertheless he looked taller than the Humbled—taller and more real—although he was not. His apparent stature was an effect of the light and Covenant’s astonishment and his own magicks. He wore the ancient robes, tattered and colorless, of a guardian who had remained at his post, rooted by duty, for an epoch. Yet his features were familiar; so familiar that Covenant wondered why he could not identify them. A man like that—
    After two heartbeats, or perhaps three, he noticed that Branl and Clyme were preparing to defend him. Or they were—
    Hellfire.
    —bowing.
Bowing?
    Together they each dropped to one knee and lowered their heads as if they were in the presence of some august figure incarnated from the dreamstuff of
Haruchai
legends.
    In Covenant, memories reopened like wounds, and he recognized Brinn.
    The
ak-Haru
. Brinn of the
Haruchai
, who had outdone the Theomach in mortal combat to become the Guardian of the One Tree.
    Here.
    If Covenant had ever doubted that the Worm was coming, he believed it now. There could be no surer sign than Brinn’s arrival. Even the absence of the sun, and the slow havoc spreading among the stars, did not announce the Earth’s last days more clearly.
    While Covenant stared, open-mouthed and helpless, the
ak-Haru
approached until he was no more than two strides from the
krill
. There he stopped, ignoring the obeisance of the Humbled. His gaze was fixed on Covenant.
    In a voice rheumy with isolation and too much time, he said, “My old friend.” Words seemed to scrape from his mouth as if they had grown jagged with disuse. The skin of his face had been seamed and lined until it resembled a mud-flat now baked and parched, webbed with cracks. “I perceive that your plight is dire, as it has ever been. The fact that I have come is cause for sorrow. Yet it is cause for joy that my coming proves timely. Once again, I learn that there is hope in contradiction.”
    Illumined by Loric’s gem, Brinn’s eyes shone among their wrinkles with a warmth of affection that Covenant had not seen in any other
Haruchai
face.
    “It is well,” Brinn continued, “that you have reawakened the Vilesilencer’s
krill
.” Strain complicated his tone, but not his gaze. “Lacking some beacon to guide me across the wide seas, my search for you might have been delayed. However, you have done what must be done, as you have done from the first. For that reason among many others, I swallow my sorrow and greet you gladly, ur-Lord and Unbeliever, Thomas Covenant, friend.”
    Still Covenant stared. Only the pervasive