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

comprehensions which the ur-viles and Waynhim had inherited or gleaned from their makers seemed to render Law meaningless. Together, the monster and the Demondim-spawn masked the scent of food.
    Baffled, the Worm slowed again. Gradually it heaved to a halt.
    A small tsunami pounded against the lurker, slashed at the web of sorcery. From border to border, the delta convulsed as if its foundations were vomiting. But Horrim Carabal withstood the assault. And the Demondim-spawn knew what they were doing. Their lore did not falter.
    The Worm’s storms and streamers searched to one side, explored the other. But the lurker had made itself
wide
. And the net of dark magicks covered Horrim Carabal from edge to edge. The webbing throbbed with acrid implications. The Worm’s hunger hunted—and did not find.
    This eerie equipoise between ruin and darkness would not last: Covenant knew that. The Worm was too powerful to be stymied indefinitely. The lurker or the Demondim-spawn might flinch at any moment. They might all die. But they were holding
now
. If they could stand until the Worm detected the spoor of some other
Elohim
—or until its primal needs urged it toward
Melenkurion
Skyweir—
    A turn in the direction of the EarthBlood would bring the Worm straight at Covenant and Branl.
    Clutching his companion, Covenant gasped, “Let’s go! While we still can!”
    His unlikely allies had achieved a tenuous pause. If the Land needed more time, Linden or some other power would have to provide it. Thomas Covenant had come to the end of what he could attempt as he was.

6.
    Promises Old and New

    The twilight did not change as Linden’s company rode. A harsh grey held the landscape, a half-light without the softening of dawn or the soothing after sunset. It might have been the gloom before the onslaught of a storm, but there were no clouds. Despite the intrusion of Kevin’s Dirt, the sky remained clear, fretted with doom, drawing the bright plaint of the stars closer, etching their deaths vividly against the fathomless abyss of their firmament. Linden could have believed that the Arch already trembled on the verge of collapse; but her health-sense insisted otherwise. The long strides of the Ranyhyn and the hoarse panting of the Giants insisted. Even in the absence of natural day, her pulse continued to measure out her life. And the blurred terrain continued to modulate around the company: a sign of movement that was also an affirmation that Time endured.
    Riding with the Staff of Law and Covenant’s white gold ring into the last dusk of the world, Linden tried to think of the unrisen sun in terms that did not terrify her. After all, the sun was simply another star. The Worm’s power to affect or even extinguish it made a kind of sense. And did not the gloom itself assert that the sun was not altogether destroyed? The final dark had not yet claimed the Earth. Even in this crepuscular blight, hope might be possible.
    Kevin’s Dirt asserted the contrary. Indeed, it seemed stronger here than it had on the Upper Land. Even now, no more than an hour or two after the failed dawn, the vile fug had begun leeching the sensitivity from Linden’s nerves, blunting her ability to discern the conditions of her companions and even the nature of the terrain; promising failure.
    Accentuated by the dull light, the bloodstains that darkened the bottoms of Jeremiah’s pajamas seemed to creep higher, opening like jaws to swallow him.
    But the Ranyhyn ignored Kevin’s Dirt. Running at a canter that accommodated the ragged endurance of the Giants, the horses had left behind the mounds surrounding the gully and the stream. Now they measured out the leagues across a hammered plain that appeared to stretch endlessly into an obscured future. Gloaming effaced the details of the landscape, rendered it effectively featureless in every direction. Still the eaten chart of the stars and Linden’s tarnished health-sense confirmed that the horses had not altered their heading. They reached for the northeast with every stride, never hesitating.
    Yet they did not neglect the needs of the Giants or their riders. In spite of Jeremiah’s impatience, they paused at every clump of
aliantha
, every thin rill and brackish pool. At such times, the boy refused to dismount. Instead he sat chafing until the company was ready to run again.
    By mute agreement, Linden, Stave, and Mahrtiir drank little and ate none of the treasure-berries, leaving them for Coldspray and