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

have we come?”
    “A score of leagues, ur-Lord. Perhaps somewhat more.”
    Covenant winced. Only a score?
    “Did we lose much time?”
    “No other mount could have borne us so swiftly,” Branl replied with uncharacteristic asperity. He seemed to hear a complaint in Covenant’s tone. But then he continued more flatly, “Yet it is plain that our passages are not immediate. Though the sun no longer measures the day, I gauge that mid-morning is nigh.”
    Covenant frowned, thinking hard. To some extent, at least, the distances that he and Branl could cover appeared to be controlled as much by Rallyn’s instincts as by the size or even the precision of his argent enclosures. Nevertheless the abilities of the Ranyhyn clearly had limits. Otherwise they would not have needed two attempts to reach the Sarangrave the previous day.
    Still he was losing chunks of time. Where did the hours go? Where—if anywhere—did he and Branl and their horses exist during the interval?
    The lag may have been inherent to his specific use of wild magic; or it may have been an outcome of his relationship with Joan’s ring, a ring which was not his. After all, Linden had experienced something similar. When she had saved herself and Anele from the collapse of Kevin’s Watch, she had done more than pass from one place to another. She had also moved through time: in effect, she had fallen more slowly than the broken remains of the Watch.
    As soon as the horses halted near the stream, Mishio Massima jerked the reins away from Covenant and began cropping grass. Branl slid down from Rallyn’s back; offered to help Covenant. But Covenant dismounted on his own. For a few moments, he braced himself against the Ardent’s steed while the last sensations of vertigo faded, giving himself a chance to accept the returning numbness of his feet and the loss of sensation in his finger-tips. Kevin’s damn Dirt—Then he left the beast’s side.
    With Branl, he considered the nearby trees.
    They were wattle, fast-growing and resilient. In sunlight, they would have been a verdant green, fresh and promising. Now they resembled shadows cast by a different version of reality, although they swayed in the tumble of a growing breeze. Certainly they appeared to offer nothing that Covenant could eat.
    Nevertheless the Humbled seemed sure of his own perceptions. Firmly he beckoned Covenant to accompany him among the trees.
    The copse was thick. Pushing his way between the trunks, Covenant soon tripped. When he looked down, he found that he had caught one of his boots on the thick stem of a vine.
    In fact, vines twisted all over the ground among the trees. The whole stand was tangled with them.
    “Do you recall this, ur-Lord?” Branl sounded subtly amused. “You were once familiar with it.”
    “Huh?” Covenant had lost ages of memories, but he was sure that he had never heard one of the
Haruchai
sound amused. “When?”
    “During the time of the Sunbane,” answered Branl, “it provided nourishment when Corruption’s evil spawned no edible growth, and
aliantha
were scarce. It is
ussusimiel
.”
    For a moment, Covenant groped inwardly. Then he spotted the darker knob of a melon in the gloom; and he remembered. Long ago under a desert sun, Sunder had invoked vines and their fruit from parched, barren dirt.
At need it will sustain life
—
    It did not taste as piquant as treasure-berries. And it lacked their extraordinary vitality. But it would be enough.
    “Well, damn,” Covenant muttered. “If that isn’t providence, I don’t know what is.” He felt unexpectedly cheered, as if an old friend had taken him by surprise. “Hell, I don’t even know what the word means.”
    “Then, ur-Lord”—Branl held up the wrapped
krill
—“if you do not deem it an incondign use, I will harvest melons. While you break your fast, I will weave a net of smaller vines to carry a supply of the fruit.”
    Covenant found that he was too hungry to argue. “Do it. Somehow I’m sure Loric wouldn’t object, even if he did spend damn decades sweating over that knife.”
    But he did not stay to watch Branl work. Instead he turned away, sparing his eyes the stab of the gem’s shining. Lit by slashes of silver, he withdrew from the copse and went to the stream to drink.
    Providence in all sooth. Even here, so many leagues away from the wonders of the Land that he had known in life, there were still gifts—
    Now he prayed that food and water would sustain him well enough