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

sealed his throat.
    Covenant peered downward, but he saw nothing that did not resemble quicksand or some other mire. He smelled only the cloying scents of rancid plants and putrefaction. The tumid exudation of the lurker’s presence made breathing difficult.
    “What is it?” he murmured. “What do you see?”
    The Humbled appeared to wrestle words past an obstruction. “Ur-Lord, it is hurtloam.
Here
, where no clean thing grows, and no health flourishes. It cannot be, yet it is.”
    Hurtloam
. The word sent conflicted squalls through Covenant in spite of his near-prostration and his complex pains. Hurtloam would heal his wounds; but it might also cure his leprosy. It had done so before. It could restore his crippled health-sense. It could make him potent and capable in ways which were denied to lepers.
    It was life and ruin. It would rescue and damn him—
    —because his illness was essential to him.
I don’t expect you to understand
, he had told Linden’s company in Andelain.
But I
need
this
.
I need to be numb
. He had believed it then: he believed it now.
It doesn’t just make me who I am
.
It makes me who I
can
be
.
    His leprosy was all that enabled him to hold the
krill
. In some sense, it was a defense against the Ravers. And he was not done. He had to remain as he was until the end.
    And yet he wanted to be healed. Oh, he
wanted
it. He had become so much less than he needed to be. Wounds and weakness made him useless. He had nothing left to offer Linden. He would not be able to fight for the Land.
    Inadvertently cruel, the Feroce and their High God proffered a gift which might also be a curse.
    And while hurtloam healed him, it would make him sleep. He would miss his chance to redefine his alliance with the lurker; perhaps his only chance. After everything that he and the Humbled had done to secure the terms of the bargain—
    Fearing the worst, he croaked, “Wait!” If the tentacle dropped him now—“Hellfire! Just wait!”
    At once, the Feroce stilled their chanting. Horrim Carabal did not let go.
    Together the creatures spoke. “Memory is a potent magic. We are the Feroce. We serve our High God. We have caused this small portion of his vast realm to remember what it was. The task has been arduous. We have expended much to complete it. But we are unworthy of the majesty which we worship. We have prepared this consolation because our High God has commanded it, and because we have failed in our service.”
    Impassive now, Branl asked, “How have you failed?”
    A shudder passed through the throng. Emerald guttered in every hand. But the Feroce did not refuse to answer.
    “We hazarded much, fearing the Pure One’s wrath. Yet we are the Feroce. We serve our High God. For his life, we strove to awaken recall in the Pure One.”
    With those words, the small creatures drew Covenant’s attention away from the conundrum of hurtloam.
    “Our High God has not forgotten,” they explained. “He is vast in all things. He recalls a time when a strange force forbade the horror which you have slain from venturing beyond the great cliff in the west. We cannot conceive such might. But the Pure One knows forbidding. He has forgotten it.
    “For our High God’s sake, we sought to awaken memory. Forbidding would have served him better. It would have inflicted less agony. He would not have suffered abhorred metal and fire.
    “Alas, the Pure One has sealed himself against recall. We could not elicit his knowledge. In that, we failed our High God. Our shame is great.”
    “Wait,” Covenant demanded again. “You mean you weren’t fighting for your High God? You were trying to make me remember?”
    That accounted for his wasted regret that he had no lore to forbid
turiya
Herem.
    The creatures wailed. They cowered. “Now you are wroth. Forgive, Pure One. Our High God is himself, great in wonder and sovereignty. He has no need of our small magicks. If you will not forgive our attempt, forgive our failure.”
    “Wait,” Covenant insisted for the third time. “You don’t need my forgiveness. That’s not important. But forbidding—”
    He could not think. A fretwork of blisters covered his whole body. They seemed to cover his mind. Pain burst and bled wherever he turned. Whether or not he accepted hurtloam and healing, the Feroce were right: he had sealed himself against recall. For him, the strength of the Colossus was lost; irrecoverable.
    But Linden—
    She was capable of surprises that appalled and