The Last Dark: The climax of the entire Thomas Covenant Chronicles (Last Chronicles of Thomas Cove)
lurker’s attack. Then the rescue by the
sur-jheherrin
.
The Pure One.
Covenant was alive? Alive?
The Feroce reacted as though Jeremiah had offended them. Their posture stiffened. The fires in their hands grew brighter, shedding green light like malice. Their voice gained strength.
“Afraid? Our High God fears the cruel metal. He does not fear the Pure One. Nor does he fear the wielder of the stick of power. Blades and burning he withstands. Yet a havoc which he cannot withstand approaches. He must live. Failing to obtain the stick of power, he sought alliance with the Pure One. The terms were agreed.”
Then the creatures appeared to remember that they were little and frightened. They shrank within themselves. Their tone suggested awe or dismay. It may have held gratitude.
“The Pure One has exceeded the terms. This our High God acknowledges. The alliance is sealed.”
“All right!” Jeremiah exulted. “All
right
!”
Covenant was
alive
. He had to be. Linden clung to that. She had only encountered the Feroce two nights ago, and Covenant had turned away from her two days before that, rushing to meet the crisis of
caesures
and
turiya
Raver and Joan. But he had so far to go—He must have met with the lurker, or the Feroce, after Linden did, but before he found his ex-wife. Indirectly Infelice had confirmed it. In Muirwin Delenoth, she had said that the lurker’s minions were aiding him. Yet when could he have fulfilled—exceeded—his promises to the lurker? He would not have allowed any agreement to distract him from Joan. Therefore he must have sealed his incomprehensible alliance
after
that confrontation. He must have survived it.
But Stave’s demeanor did not soften. “Continue,” he said, implacable as a force of nature. “You bear a message from the Pure One. When was it given to you? Where was it given?”
The Feroce made placating gestures. “The Pure One named his wishes in the early hours of this same night. Our High God was lost. Then he was redeemed. Far to the east, the Pure One made his desires known.”
This same night? Covenant had stopped Joan. He had lived through the ordeal. There was no other explanation. Linden wanted to fling herself at the creatures; hug them in gratitude. Covenant had
redeemed
the lurker? But she could not move. The extremity of her relief held her.
This
was what the Ranyhyn had done to her. For her. For the Earth. They had exposed her to their worst nightmares and fled so that she might inspire an alliance with the evil which had slain great
Kelenbhrabanal
, Father of Horses.
From the first, they had
trusted
her—
“Then deliver his message,” Stave commanded.
Bobbing and cowering, the creatures complied. “The Pure One has exceeded the terms,” they repeated. “Therefore our High God commands us to convey words from the Pure One. They are meant for the wielder of the stick of power. The words are these.”
Waved flames left emerald cuts across the darkness. “Remember forbidding.”
Like a sovereign enchantment, that utterance altered the conditions of Linden’s existence. Realities veered around her or within her, effacing the tangible world where she gripped her Staff; transforming the causes and sequences which ruled her known life. The night and the Feroce vanished. Stave and Jeremiah were gone. Every vestige of Sarangrave Flat passed away.
For one sickening instant, she understood that the creatures had done it to her again. They had imposed their glamour on her memories. Her belief that she was ready to resist was an illusion.
Then that knowledge was swept away in a moil of altered revelations. It was forgotten as if it had no meaning.
Without transition, she stood on a fan of obsidian marked like her jeans with green stains; with streaks of malachite crooked as veins. The light of Liand’s
orcrest
defined the stone. Utter darkness filled the rest of the world. Imponderable leagues of stone stretched overhead, held in place by their preserved recollections. Other figures clustered nearby, but she could not see them. Before her, Anele lay prone on the fan with his arms splayed as if in crucifixion. Grief and enduring pain marked every line of his emaciated form, the mute woe of Mount Thunder’s foundations.
“It is here.” The words were etched in Linden’s mind. “The wood of the world has forgotten. It cannot reclaim itself. It requires aid. Yet this stone remembers. There must be forbidding.” His voice sounded harsh
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