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

admitted. “But it’s always helped me to have another source of power.” The Staff of Law in Elena’s hands. The Illearth Stone in Foul’s Creche. Sunder’s
orcrest
. Covenant had relied upon external catalysts or triggers until the Despiser’s venom had eaten away his instinctive defenses, his visceral reluctance. “And this ring is Joan’s, not mine. Using it won’t be easy.”
    In contrast, he had earned the privilege of wielding Loric’s eldritch dagger. He had paid for it with bloodshed.
    Branl did not hesitate. Removing the wrapped blade from its place under his tunic, he delivered it to the Unbeliever.
    Covenant hefted the dagger, felt its weight and its implied power. “Now what?” he asked, thinking aloud again. In spite of his millennia within the Arch of Time, the prospect of theurgy still disturbed him. Magic suited Linden. Her health-sense guided her: she could control herself. Covenant was only a leper. Nevertheless he had come too far to start shirking hazards that scared him.
    How often had he told Linden to trust herself?
    “Well, let’s see. I don’t understand
how
the Harrow and the Ardent did what they did. As far as I know, they just appeared and disappeared whenever they wanted. But Roger and the
croyel
are another matter.
    “They faced each other with Linden between them. They raised their arms to make an arch over her head. An arch like a door.” Instinctively he began to pace again. “A portal. But I can’t do that. I can’t stand in two places at once.”
    Could Clyme or Branl assist him? He rejected that idea.
Haruchai
did not wield magic. Whenever they could, they eschewed weapons of any kind. And Covenant had already required the Humbled to violate too many of their chosen prohibitions.
    “Sounds like an impasse,” he muttered. “But it can’t be.” He lifted his burden with a shrug. “So maybe I’m thinking about this the wrong way. Maybe Roger and the
croyel
weren’t making a door. Maybe it just looked like a door. Maybe it was really something else.
    “Like what?” For a moment, nothing occurred to him. Then he felt a surge of possibility. “How about an
enclosure
? A way to keep everybody together while Roger and the
croyel
combined their magicks?
    “
That
I can do.”
    “Ur-Lord?” asked Clyme. Another man might have sounded baffled. The Humbled’s tone expressed only polite disinterest. “Your meaning is obscure to us. Speak more plainly.”
    Nourished by
aliantha
, a sensation like eagerness throbbed in Covenant’s veins. Perhaps lepers were capable of hope after all.
    “Watch,” he said as if he were sure of himself. “Mount up.” He took a few steps to increase his distance from the Humbled and the Ranyhyn. “Keep my horse with you. I’ll join you when I’m ready.
    “And concentrate on
turiya
. Rallyn and Hooryl can find him if they know that’s what we want.”
    His companions may have hesitated. If so, he did not see it. He had already turned his attention to his task.
    His arms still ached. The
krill
seemed too heavy to bear. In spite of Brinn’s gifts, and the Land’s, he remained weak. Nonetheless he used the stubs of his halfhand to pull out Joan’s wedding band on its chain.
    Ah, Joan—Her ring had encircled a world of promises, but none of them were kept. If he got the chance, he intended to make better promises before the end.
    Drawing the chain over his head, he forced Joan’s ring onto the truncated end of the little finger of his left hand. With the chain dangling, he unwrapped the remnants of Anele’s raiment from the
krill
, carefully keeping fabric between the ring and any part of the dagger.
    When the silver purity of the gem blazed out, defying the dusk in all directions, he paused. While his eyes adjusted to the shock of radiance, he tried to take stock of his condition; his fitness for what he meant to attempt.
    At one time, he had feared white gold. He had been positively dependent on the idea that he was helpless; that he was capable of nothing, and that therefore nothing could be required of him. At another time, he had again feared wild magic, but for the opposite reason. Afflicted by Lord Foul’s venom, he had raised fire from his ring too easily. He had become capable of appalling destruction and bloodshed at any provocation.
    Now he felt like an amalgam of those two Covenants, an alloy: the leper who feared the responsibility of any power, and the poisoned man whose violence threatened to defy