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

sense,” she muttered. “The last time, there were a lot more. And now I’m braced for them. What does that monster think three Feroce can do?”
    “Who can declare the lurker’s thoughts?” Stave responded. “Yet the peril remains. And it will be directed at you, Chosen. The monster covets the Staff of Law.”
    “Then be ready.” Linden tightened her grip on the ebon wood. “If they’re going to say anything, I want to hear it while I can still defend myself.”
    “Mom!” Jeremiah protested. But Stave did not remonstrate.
    Leaving the marsh, the creatures approached with an air of hesitation or timidity. They were still some distance away, but her nerves read them clearly. They were hairless and naked, apparently frail. In their large round eyes, green glints reflected like threats. Only their flames implied any force. But their magicks were strange to her, nameless and unrecognizable. The capering fires could have been desecrated Wraiths, captured and cruelly transformed. Or—
    Hell, they could have been anything.
    Why had the Ranyhyn fled without their riders?
    The question suggested possibilities that nearly staggered her. Perhaps it was deliberate. Perhaps the horses had taken her close to Sarangrave Flat once before precisely so that the lurker’s acolytes could draw her into the monster’s reach—
    The Ranyhyn feared the lurker: she knew that. Mahrtiir had accounted for their terror clearly enough. But she could not believe that they had betrayed their own devotion. So maybe they had risked attracting their ancient foe—then and now—for a reason. A reason that had nothing to do with shelter or weariness.
    What
reason? she asked herself wildly. Did they
want
her to lose her Staff? Did they want the lurker to have it?
    They were the
Ranyhyn
. They would not forsake their riders without a compelling reason.
    The Feroce were drawing near, still timorously, but still coming—and Linden was out of her depth; foundering.
    “Chosen,” Stave said like the night. “If you do not attend, I must claim the Staff without your consent.”
    “Give it to him, Mom!” Jeremiah demanded. “Do it
now
. You aren’t paying attention!”
    She gripped the Staff as though her life depended on it. She was paying attention to too many things at once.
    The Feroce stopped ten paces away. Instead of spreading out, they stood close together. “We are the Feroce,” they announced as if Linden had never faced them before. They all spoke, yet they seemed to share one voice: a voice as moist and malleable as mud. But they did not continue. In silence, they awaited a response.
    “What is it this time?” retorted Linden. “You’ve already attacked us once. Isn’t that enough? What do you want now?”
    The creatures flinched. Their voice quavered. “Our High God commands. We must speak.”
    Again they fell silent.
    Linden trembled with remembered distress and pain. Covenant’s farmhouse erupting in flame around her. Recursive memories looping back on themselves, blocking her escape. She Who Must Not Be Named. “Then speak,” she snapped. “But don’t think that you can hurt me again. I know you now. I won’t leave any of you alive.”
    The Feroce recoiled a step. They needed a moment to rally their resolve. When they replied, their voice was faint, squeezed out of them by pressures which they could not refuse.
    “We speak for our High God. We bear a message from the Pure One.”
    The Pure One? Where had Linden heard that term before?
    “I’m listening.”
    Her manner must have appalled the creatures. They quailed as though they might dissolve at any moment.
    “Our High God has offered an alliance with the Pure One. It has been accepted. No harm will come to you that our High God or the Feroce can prevent. You will be given aid at need.”
    Linden stared, reeling inwardly. She could hardly understand what she heard. Who would form an alliance with the lurker? Who was that crazy?
    Given aid—?
    Panting at the viscid air, she asked involuntarily, “The Pure One?”
    In a tone like a sheet of basalt, Stave said, “The
sur-jheherrin
spoke of the ur-Lord as the Pure One. They esteemed him by that title, though he deemed the Pure One to be Saltheart Foamfollower.”
    “Covenant!” Jeremiah crowed. “He must have done something to that monster. It’s afraid of him!”
    Now Linden remembered. In the Sarangrave with Covenant, Sunder, and Hollian. A few
Haruchai
. Her first meeting with the Giants. The