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

water?”
    The three mounts were already trotting back the way they had come. Eventually they would come to the place where the declining slope of the ridge met lower ground.
    “I’m not sure yet,” Linden answered. “Maybe there isn’t any. And if there is, I might not be able to use it.”
    Impatiently Jeremiah came to join her and Stave. “I don’t get it. Sure, I’m thirsty, but it isn’t bad yet. If you aren’t going to drink it, what do you want it for?”
    Life, Linden could have said. Hope. Fate. Doom. But she felt too uncertain to describe what she had in mind.
    “Just wait,” she urged her son. “Watch the Ranyhyn. We’ll know soon enough.” To ease his frustration, she added, “I don’t want to risk Stave if we don’t have to.”
    “But—” Jeremiah began, then clamped his mouth shut.
    Dim as shadows, the Ranyhyn were only trotting. Nevertheless they appeared to cover distance rapidly. And as Linden watched, they began angling closer to the ridge.
    She gripped the Staff hard; tried not to hold her breath.
    Before long, the horses quickened their pace. Rushing at the slope, they ascended the dwindling silhouette of the ridge. For a moment, they labored upward. Then they gained the ridgeline and disappeared from sight.
    Linden sighed. She could assume that the Ranyhyn were seeking water; but that did not necessarily imply that it arose from a source within the ridge. The horses might have to search to the south or east beyond the thrust of the cliff.
    Still she could hope—
    “All right,” she said finally. “So maybe there’s water. I won’t know for sure until I find it.”
    Jeremiah had reached the end of his restraint. “But
why
?”
    Impelled by the pressure of yet another burden which she might not be able to carry, Linden started toward the ridge. “The Lords,” she replied over her shoulder, “back when there were Lords—They must have known how to do lots of things with a Staff of Law. But I can only guess what those things were. I don’t know how to do any of them. I only know fire and healing.” And brute force.
    While Jeremiah caught up with her, and Stave followed in silence, she continued, “I can’t heal anything here. But fire makes heat—and heat makes water expand.” Trapped water would be ideal, or water that could only rise to the surface in trickles. But buried springs and even pockets of moisture might conceivably suffice. “Heat water fast enough and hard enough, and it explodes into steam. Maybe I can break part of the cliff.”
    For an instant, Jeremiah seemed stunned. Then he burst out, “That’s
brilliant
!”
    “It is a tenuous prospect,” remarked Stave. “The obstacles are many. I name only the site and quantity of water required, if indeed water exists within such a formation. Nonetheless the deed cannot succeed if it is not attempted.”
    Linden was not listening. As she walked, she summoned Earthpower to sharpen her percipience, bathed her nerves in fire like condensed midnight. Then she began to explore the ridgefront. Concentrating on the section that Jeremiah had indicated, she felt her way inward, searching into and through multitudes of rock as if she were probing for wounds hidden deep within living flesh.
    At the nearest obstruction, a boulder the size of a hut, she halted momentarily. But then she realized that she needed to be closer: close enough to study the face of the cliff with her hands. Cursing under her breath, she passed around the boulder and mounted a stretch of lesser rubble, the fallen residue of the cliff’s severance. When she stumbled, she caught herself on the Staff and climbed higher.
    Finally she reached the main wall. From far above her, it loomed as if it were glowering in suppressed wrath. But she ignored its impending bulk, its ire, its enduring intractability. She needed nothing from it except water.
    In one approximate location.
    In sufficient quantity.
    After all, it was only a cliff. It was not the cunning subterfuge and malice of the Demondim, seething to mask the
caesure
which gave them access to the Illearth Stone. Nor was it the recursive wards of the Viles, coiling themselves into a mad tangle to prevent intruders from entering the Lost Deep. It was only pieces and shards and spills and plates and torsos and veins and thews of the world’s rock compressed by their own weight until they formed a front which had outlasted millennia. It had no defense against her health-sense.
    But it was