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

a mountain’s weight refused to move. The ridge had endured for millennia. Linden poured out power as if she were expending her soul. Given a voice, the stone would have laughed.
    Then it found a voice. Through the harsh beat of the Seven Words and her own gasping, she heard the cliff groan.
    A short sound, little more than a sigh; but it was enough to break her concentration. Unaware of herself, she dropped her Staff. Fighting a giddy swirl of phosphenes and oxygen deprivation, she opened her eyes; tried to see what was happening.
    In two or three places across the ridgefront, dust puffed outward. Almost at once, wind dismissed the small exhalations as if they had never occurred.
    After that—
    —nothing. The cliff stood glowering in the gloom. It had not been touched, and did not care.
    “Oh, Mom,” Jeremiah moaned. “No. That can’t be right. I saw—I felt—”
    Linden saw nothing. She felt nothing.
    “Indeed,” Stave pronounced. Abruptly he released Linden; left her to Jeremiah. Without explanation, the former Master strode toward the mountain.
    Perhaps he had decided to act on his original suggestion. Climb the ridge. Try to break loose pieces with his fingers.
    But he stopped before he had crossed half the distance. From the ground, he picked up a rock. For a moment, he hefted it in his hand, tested its weight. Then, fluid as water, he flung it.
    It struck the cliff-face above the places where Linden had seen puffs of dust. Three heartbeats passed. Four. Without her son’s support, she would have collapsed.
    Then a grinding shriek appalled the air. The earth under her trembled. Tremors kicked up spouts of grit like gusts of pain everywhere between her and the ridge.
    With the massive inevitability of a calving iceberg, a wide section of the wall shifted. For a moment, it seemed to hang on the edge of itself, clinging to its long stubbornness. But it could not hold against its own weight.
    When it fell in thunder, Linden fell with it. She had nothing left that might have enabled her to remain conscious.

    he did not know how much time had passed when a glad halloo awakened her. Only moments, she thought at first. But her head felt too heavy to lift, burdened by sleep. And when she tried to gauge the condition of her surroundings, estimate the effects of plunging rock, she found that her reality had contracted. She recognized only the pressure of the hard ground against her body, the leaden weariness of her limbs, the ragged effort of her breathing, the parched ache of dust in her throat and lungs.
    Eventually she realized that Kevin’s Dirt had reclaimed her. Her health-sense was gone.
    Not moments, then. She must have slept for hours. Kevin’s Dirt did not erode percipience so suddenly.
    Without opening her eyes, she fumbled around her for the Staff of Law.
    “It is here, Chosen,” said Stave. The warm wood of the shaft was pressed into her hand. “And now the Giants come. Manethrall Mahrtiir leads them. Soon the true labor of your son’s purpose must begin.”
    Linden hardly heard him. She had no attention to spare for anything except her Staff. Without her health-sense, she was less than useless.
    Fortunately Liand—lost Liand—had taught her how to find the possibilities beneath the written surface of the wood, even when she had no enhanced discernment to guide her. He had given her more gifts than she could count. Pulling the Staff toward her, she held it close until its natural beneficence began to enlighten her nerves. After that, she was able to absorb Earthpower more quickly.
    Stave had said something about the Giants—and Mahrtiir—
    Softly through the dirt, she felt the tread of heavy feet: distant yet, but closing. Within that staggered beat, she detected the sharper impact of hooves. As her health-sense expanded, she identified Narunal.
    Then she located Jeremiah. He was closer than the Giants, but in a different direction. He must have been scrambling over the wreckage of the ridgefront; but now he stood waving his arms eagerly at the Swordmainnir.
    Coughing, Linden tasted the air. Between what should have been sunrise and sunset, the grey half-light remained uniform, undefined by any obvious passage. Nevertheless the flavor of the gloaming modulated incrementally, measuring time. Its faint savor told her that she had slept past midafternoon. A more natural twilight was only a few hours away.
    Apparently Stave had kept watch over her for quite a while.
    Now the Giants and