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

tired?
    She had no time for weakness. The marks in her memory would fray and fade. Reeling against Jeremiah, she took up the Staff again. His aid vanished, but she ignored its absence. Her eyes stared at nothing. She saw only the places that she needed to remember.
    “Mom?” he asked anxiously.
    She staggered past him, nearly falling down the rubble toward Stave. When the
Haruchai
caught her, she panted, “Don’t say anything. I have to concentrate. Just get me away.”
    If she succeeded, and they were too close—
    Stave seemed to understand. With an arm around her waist, he half carried her toward the hollows or craters in the northwest.
    Have mercy, she groaned as she stumbled along. I can’t do this.
    She had to do it.
    A long stone’s throw from the ridge, Stave stopped; turned Linden to face the cliff. Jeremiah caught up with her there. He must have been able to see her fatigue. Standing behind her, he clasped her shoulders with both hands.
    Fresh theurgy set fire to her blood. Flame ran in her veins. Her heartbeats were conflagration. Blackness bloomed from her Staff as if Jeremiah had invoked it without her volition. Fuligin etched everything that she saw and remembered against the tarnished grey daylight.
    She told herself to start small. Begin with the tiniest bits of moisture. Try to force a few new cracks. Weaken the cliff.
    If she could find them from this distance.
    A troubled wind out of the east tumbled over the ridgecrest, skirling in plumes and dust devils out across the wasteland of craters. It chilled the unnoticed sweat on her forehead, tugged loose a few strands of hair that were not matted to her cheeks and scalp. But it did not soothe her whetted senses; her urgency. In this season, the Land’s prevailing winds were from the west.
    Straining, Linden Avery reached out to the cliff and tried to prove herself worthy.
    A damp patch between granite and sandstone. For a heartbeat or two, she focused her intentions there. Then she sent a dark burst of power to boil that small instance of moisture.
    She almost felt the dampness swell; almost felt microfissures mar the surrounding rock. Almost. But she had expected nothing more. She was only trying to create a slight frailty.
    With as much care as she could muster, she moved inward, upward.
    Pieces of wet marl and pumice strung together like beads: a thin crack separating granite and obsidian: a more difficult challenge. If she failed to heat all of the beads at the same time, her efforts would lose some of their effect. Force would dissipate along the string.
    It was too much for her.
    It had to be done.
    Gathering her resolve, she murmured the Seven Words. Her Staff became a scourge in her hands. Magic struck the string of moisture like a barbed flail. Black fire filled even the most miniscule hints of fluid with passion. For an instant, she thought that she heard the scream of over-heated water, the groan of stressed rock. Then the sound was gone.
    Involuntarily she sagged as if she had been overcome. Blots swam and burst across her vision, stars and small suns, stains like abysms.
    But Stave upheld her. Jeremiah gripped her shoulders, sharing the strength which Anele had concealed. Earthpower burned in her vessels and nerves, in the channels of her brain and the secret recesses of her heart.
    She could not afford to fail.
    The wind flicked grit into her eyes. She blinked rapidly, then shut them tight. Ordinary sight was a distraction. Looming huge and unmoved, the rock mocked her inadequacy. Only percipience would enable her to make her last attempt.
    She had found six spaces filled with water. She meant to superheat all of them at once. Then larger cracks might join with minor flaws. They might trigger any inherent instability which the immense bulk of the cliff suppressed. They might cause seams and plates to slip—
    If one puny human being, exhausted and trembling, could induce something that size to shift.
    The Staff shook in her hands as though it had become a burden too great for her to bear. Aching for puissance and accuracy, she invoked the Seven Words again. “
Melenkurion abatha
.” Her voice rose in desperation. “
Duroc minas mill!
” The invocation became a wailing cry. “
Harad KHABAAL!
”
    When she unleashed her fire, its blackness seemed to efface the world.
    Intense heat constricted by immutable mass created pressures which would have torn mere flesh to shreds. Pockets of water tried to expand. Granite and schist and