The Last Dark (95 page)

As he raised his arm, fresh blood pumped from his severed stump. Red splashed across the stone like an accusation.

His screaming seemed soundless as he hammered the blade into Lord Foul’s impalpable shape.

A puny attack, too low and frail to accomplish anything. And the Despiser was mighty: he was scarcely physical. Nevertheless wild magic coruscated in the dagger’s gem. Loric had forged his blade to mediate between irreconcilable possibilities. It was the highest achievement of his vast lore. Somehow it
hurt
—

In spite of Lord Foul’s vast power, the
krill
appeared to nail him where he stood; fix him in one place. He gathered his fury into a fist. With a single punch, he crushed Roger to wet pulp. But he did not leave the dais. Did not slip past the restrictions of time.

Roger—

Now Covenant heard Stave yelling, “The Chosen-son has freed himself!”

At last. Now or never.

Covenant was battered and deadened, too weak to support his own weight, broken in ways which he was too fraught to name. But he was still a white gold wielder, a by God
rightful
white gold wielder. And he had made promises.
I am done with restraint
. He hit Lord Foul with fire as fierce as a bayamo.

The Despiser thrashed, howling. As if the effort were insignificant, he expelled the
krill
. Then he turned on Covenant. Enraged and savage, he countered with so much force that Covenant’s bones should have been pulverized.

Stones heaved. Igneous slabs were tossed like dried leaves. Repercussions ripped down the remaining stalactites, filled the air with whirling debris.

But Covenant withstood the blast. Wild magic withstood it. He had surrendered once. Never again.

Jeremiah had found a way to defeat
moksha
Jehannum. Help was coming. All Covenant had to do was survive. And keep hurting Lord Foul. Prevent his escape. The Despiser must have believed that he would still be able to claim Jeremiah before Time collapsed in on itself. Covenant had no intention of letting that happen.

Powers mounted in Kiril Threndor. Incinerating silver and Lord Foul’s sledge-hammer blows staggered the chamber. Covenant only knew that Stave still lived because he, Covenant, had not fallen to his knees. He no longer saw anything, heard anything. Yet he
felt
everything as if his nerves were white gold, as if his senses were wild magic. He recognized every concatenation of Lord Foul’s malevolence. He could have named each of his own responses.

His millennia within the Arch of Time had not been wasted on him. His heart and his mind and even his leper’s body understood wild magic. He was half translated out of reality himself, refined by fire and determination until he hardly needed his own physical existence.

He could not keep the Despiser here: he knew that. Instants were fraying. Moments bled into each other. Causes and sequences were becoming confused. Lord Foul might outlive such uncertainties: Covenant could not. He fought only to distract his foe, to engage the Despiser’s endless hatred. To make the Despiser
miss his chance
.

Then the chance came, Lord Foul’s or Covenant’s.

With flame and effort rather than sight, Covenant saw Jeremiah enter the chamber; saw Jeremiah running wreathed in Earthpower as clean and necessary as sunlight. The heartwood Staff in his hands blazed with a purity that pierced rocklight and argent, defied Lord Foul’s savagery.

Behind him came Coldspray, Grueburn, and Canrik, but this contest was not for them. Like Stave and Branl, they had done more than Covenant could have asked or imagined. Their part in the Land’s fate was finished. Only Jeremiah had the power to alter the terms of Covenant’s struggle.

And Jeremiah knew what was needed. While Covenant fought to block Lord Foul, preclude Jeremiah’s possession, Jeremiah fashioned his magicks—

The Despiser’s instant reaction was glee, triumph, exultation. He reached for Jeremiah as if he were pouncing. But wild magic tore through the hands of Lord Foul’s power, shredded his grasp. Covenant ripped apart the Despiser’s clutch while Jeremiah wrought Earthpower.

In the guts of Mount Thunder, the consequences of the Worm’s feeding expanded. Shock after shock, they mounted toward their final outcome. Waves ran up and down the walls as if the rock had become water. Granite pain dripped from facets of rocklight. Unnatural heat and cold gusted at Covenant’s face like gasping, like strained exhalations of time.

In a moment or an hour—in no time at all—Lord Foul appeared to realize what was happening. He appeared to recognize that he had to flee. If he wanted freedom, he had to abandon his
deeper purpose
against the Creator. He would be trapped otherwise. He would cease to exist.

Shrieking like the deaths of stars, he turned away.

But he was already too late. Because Jeremiah—

Oh, God, Jeremiah!

—had learned how to
forbid
.

With Earthpower and extravagance—the whetted extremity of a boy who had been hurt too much and was finally done with helplessness—Jeremiah forbade Lord Foul’s escape.

In horror, the Despiser wheeled to face his foes again.

Covenant he ignored. Wild magic ripped through his fleshless form, sent fiery harm careering everywhere along his disembodied nerves; but he was not dissuaded. He knew pain too well: he had spent eons wrapped in his own agony. Damage and diminishment could be repaired. His chance for freedom would never come again.

Every force at his command, Lord Foul focused on Jeremiah. But now he did not strive to take possession. Instead he sought to destroy.

He knew more about forbidding than Jeremiah did. He was stronger than the boy would ever be. When Covenant wounded him, he could call on long ages of despair to secure his concentration.

At first, Jeremiah wielded the Staff with an exalted certainty. He had freed himself from
moksha
Raver: he had earned his power. And he had spent too much of his life immured in dissociation. His need to repudiate Despite defined him. Nevertheless he was only himself; only human. Lord Foul was the Despiser, eternal and insatiable. Although Covenant fought as hard as he could, flailed desperately and did ferocious damage, Jeremiah began to falter.

The Staff trembled in his grasp. His arms shook. His eyes were cries of dismay. He gave his utmost—and it was not enough. Bit by bit, his forbidding began to crumble.

“
Jeremiah!
” Covenant yelled: a shout of conflagration. “Hold on!
I’m coming!
”

With Stave’s help, he floundered toward the dais, flaying his foe as he approached. But he already knew that he would fail. He could have torn open Mount Thunder’s entire torso—he felt destructiveness on that scale within him—but he could not block Lord Foul’s flight. Wild magic was the wrong kind of power. Like the Despiser, white gold aspired to freedom; and any forbidding required the structures and commandments of Law.

Jeremiah dropped to one knee. Blood burst from his mouth. Earthpower pouring from the Staff began to gutter. In another moment—

Jeremiah! Oh, God!

Without warning, an overwhelming thunder swept through Kiril Threndor. It staggered the whole mountain. For an instant, Covenant thought that the Worm had drunk its fill; that the World’s End had come. Then he saw more clearly.

A hand like the fist of a god struck down the Despiser. Strength that threatened to crack Covenant’s mind left Lord Foul crumpled on the dais, almost corporeal, almost whimpering. A transcendent touch secured Jeremiah’s forbidding. As if as an afterthought, something supernal deposited Linden at Jeremiah’s side.

A heartbeat later, the thunder passed on, leaving the Earth to its own ruin. In the power’s absence, the rising convulsions of the Worm’s feeding felt like a reprieve.

Linden clasped Jeremiah, helped him stand again. Her return renewed his resolve, his strength. Fresh Earthpower crowded the chamber. Refusals tightened around the Despiser.

Covenant believed that he was deaf as well as blind. Wild magic was all that kept him alive. Nonetheless he heard Linden say, “She Who Must Not Be Named is gone. I gave Her what She needed. This must be what She calls gratitude.

“I love you, Thomas.”

It’s enough, Covenant thought. Thank you. It’s enough.

But he could not afford to pause. Reality was coming undone around him, and he had not confronted his worst fears.

He could do that now. Linden had come. She was whole and here. The emblem and summation of all betrayed women had given Covenant that gift.

Mustering his own gratitude, he urged Stave to support him until he gained the dais.

The Despiser was smaller now, beaten down or reduced by the bane’s retribution. He was almost Covenant’s size. He hunched into himself as though he sought to hide. As though he wanted to be smaller still.

With wild magic and leprosy, Covenant reached out to him. With pity and terror, Covenant lifted Lord Foul upright.

This was his last crisis. There could be no more.

“Do you understand?” he asked like a man bidding farewell. “If I’m yours, you’re mine. We’re part of each other. We’re too much alike. We want each other dead. But you’re finished. You can’t escape now. And I’m too weak to save myself. If we want to live, we have to do it together.”

The Despiser met Covenant’s gaze. “You will not.” The voice of the world’s iniquity sounded hollow as a forsaken tomb. His eyes were not fangs. They were wounds, gnashed and raw. “You fear me. You will not suffer me to live.”

“Yes,” Covenant answered, “I will.”

He was blinded now, not by fires and fury, but by tears as he closed his arms around his foe. Opening his heart, he accepted Lord Foul the Despiser into himself.

hen it was done, Thomas Covenant turned to the people who had redeemed him. If he could have looked at himself, he would have seen the scar on his forehead gleaming.

“Thomas,” Linden breathed. Earthpower and argent shone like wonder in her gaze. “Oh, Thomas. I don’t understand. I don’t know what it means. I’m just glad that I got to see it.”

Stave nodded his acknowledgment. His assent.

Canrik’s face was hidden. Squatting beside Branl, he did what he could for the Humbled. Rime Coldspray and Frostheart Grueburn simply stared, too exhausted to recognize their relief.

Kiril Threndor stumbled as if Mount Thunder itself had flinched. Chunks of the ceiling broke loose. Fissures clenched the walls, unclenched. In the distance, the mountain’s shoulders shrugged avalanches. Covenant felt the Earth’s foundations failing. But Jeremiah’s forbidding protected everyone in the chamber. He hardly seemed to notice his own prowess.

“So am I,” the boy admitted. More sourly, he said, “Too bad we won’t get to enjoy it.”

Covenant tried to smile. “What are you talking about?” He spoke to Jeremiah, but he poured out his heart to Linden. “This is our chance. We can’t stop what’s happening, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try to save the Earth. I know that sounds impossible, but maybe it isn’t. We don’t have to create an entire reality from scratch. We just have to put the pieces of this one back together.

“If we follow the Worm—and if we pick up the pieces fast enough—and if we know where they belong—”

Perhaps the Arch and the world could be rebuilt from the fragments of their destruction.

“We have everything we need,” he assured Jeremiah. “Two white gold wielders. The Staff of Law. Linden’s health-sense. Your talent. Hell, we still have the
krill
. And I think—” His face twisted with pain and chagrin and hope. “I’m not sure, but I think I know everything Lord Foul knows.”

The Despiser had striven for eons to escape his prison. His knowledge of the created world was both vast and intricate.

Jeremiah stood straighter. His hands tightened eagerly on the Staff. “I’ve learned a few things myself.”

“And I’ve seen She Who Must Not Be Named without all of that agony and bitterness,” offered Linden. “I know what She means.”

In spite of its galls and strain, hers was the most beautiful face that Covenant had ever seen.

“We can do this,” he said as if he were sure. “We can do it together.”