The Last Dark by Stephen R. Donaldson

weak. She would have to go looking for greater power.
    If such power existed anywhere, and could be found.
    If Covenant did not return—
    She saw no consolation in the gradual reaving of the stars. The heavens were an abyss of uncertainty. Stave did not fear such things. She did. She would have met a kinder fate in the maw of She Who Must Not Be Named.
    Finally she forced herself to meet Rime Coldspray’s gaze.
    Because she could not bear to say what she was thinking, she murmured, “I would feel better about it if you were laughing. It’s going to be hard.” Earlier she had felt that the foundations of her life were shifting. Now they were being shattered. “We don’t just have to find whatever it is that Jeremiah needs to make his door. And we don’t just have to protect him. Somehow we have to live through it.”
    In response, Coldspray managed a wan chuckle. “Then I must concede that I have failed you. If joy is in the ears that hear, I have grown deaf. My hearing is whelmed by the clamor of an unrisen sun, and by the shrieking of slain stars.”
    “Don’t worry about it,” Linden answered as if she, too, were dying. “That makes two of us. I’m so deaf, I keep forgetting to be glad that my son is alive and eager.
    “Come on.” She gestured toward the waiting company. “Let’s go find out what Jeremiah needs to save the
Elohim
.”
    The Ironhand nodded. “Well said, Linden Giantfriend.” Now she made no effort to force a laugh. “Let us confront the challenge of these times together. While we do what we can, there is no fault in failure.”
    Confront the challenge, Linden mused as she and Coldspray began walking. What choice did they have? But if they succeeded in any fashion, they would not do so together. Eventually she would have to face her fears. And she would have to face them alone.
    Her yearning for Covenant was so acute that it brought tears to her eyes.
    Jeremiah seemed to swim through the blurring of her vision as he came to meet her. “Well, Mom?” he asked before she could say anything. “What did you decide?”
    Instead of replying, she wrapped her arms around him and hugged him hard, mutely pleading for his forgiveness. Then she took him with her to rejoin the rest of their companions.
    Stave regarded her return impassively, as if his resolve sufficed for both of them. But the Giants and Mahrtiir were more troubled. Grueburn, Cirrus Kindwind, and the others studied Linden with doubt in their eyes. Perhaps they worried that her desire for Covenant ruled her; that she would insist on waiting for him. But the Manethrall’s disturbance was of another kind. His sense of his own uselessness galled him like an unhealed wound. In the risk that Jeremiah wanted to take, Mahrtiir would be able to contribute nothing except his service to the Ranyhyn. He would have been better content if the loss of his eyes had killed him.
    Linden paused as though she wanted to be sure that all of her friends were paying attention. But in truth she was searching herself for courage, and trying to blink away her tears. She had always been vulnerable to the kind of paralysis that came from fear. From fear and despair.
    “All right,” she finally managed to say. “I’m willing to do this your way, Jeremiah. What do you need to make your door?”
    She suspected that it could not be formed of bone. Bones implied mortality, and the
Elohim
did not die. They could only be devoured. Or sacrificed.
    Jeremiah’s instant enthusiasm seemed to fill the gully from wall to wall. Indeed, it seemed to urge the stars closer so that they could hear him. Nevertheless his eagerness made him appear strangely fragile to his mother. What would happen to him if his intentions failed? Or if the Worm simply ate his door after he had gathered all of the
Elohim
in one place? How would he bear it?
    “Stone,” he replied at once. “A lot of it. In big chunks. I mean, really big. I won’t be able to handle some of them, even with