Read The Last Dark for Free Online Page A

shudder like a chill ran through her. Her fingers clenched the Staff until her knuckles ached. Reflexively she confirmed that she still had Covenant’s ring. An old comfort, it had steadied her for years, until he had refused her.
    —the last crisis of the Earth.
    “I understand,” she told Stave abruptly. “We should go. Kevin’s Dirt is coming. And maybe the
skurj
.” Or Kastenessen might decide to challenge her himself now that he had lost Esmer. “We need to find the Giants and Mahrtiir. Then we’ll have to decide what we’re going to do.”
    Without Covenant—
    She meant to mount Hyn and ride at once. But when she looked at her son again, she faltered. He seemed eager: too eager. Did she detect an undercurrent of alarm? If so, she suspected that he chafed to flee from his memories before they could emerge from their coverts and ravage him. He needed movement.
    Stave waited for her impassively. Almost pleading, Linden asked him, “Do we have to ride hard? I need to talk to Jeremiah. There’s so much—” Her son had become someone she did not know. “If the Ranyhyn run, I won’t be able to hear him.”
    A quirk at the corner of Stave’s mouth may have implied a smile. “Chosen,” he answered, “the great horses have demonstrated that they are well acquainted with our straits. Mayhap they will moderate their haste for your sake, and for your son’s.”
    “Then let’s
go
,” urged Jeremiah. “I can’t wait to see the Giants. And Infelice gave me an idea. I want to try it.”
    He startled Linden. An idea? What could he possibly have gleaned from the interference of the
Elohim
? And how? Who had he become? Was he simply trying to pack down the earth that shielded him from his immured hurts? Or had he somehow learned strengths which she could not imagine?
    If his instincts prompted him to seek safety by outrunning his wounds, surely she should trust him?
    Pushing herself into motion, Linden turned toward Hyn.
    At once, Stave came to help her mount. And when she was seated astride the familiar security of Hyn’s back, he did the same for Jeremiah, boosting the boy effortlessly onto Khelen. Then he sprang for Hynyn.
    Hynyn whinnied a command to the other horses. Together the three Ranyhyn flowed into motion so smoothly that Linden felt no need to cling. Urged by Jeremiah’s shout of celebration, they accelerated at the slope of the caldera, pounding upward, flinging clots and plumes of dry dirt from their hooves. But once they had crested the rim, passed between the sandstone sentinels, and started down the long slope northward, they eased their pace to a light-footed canter. Their strides raised a low drum-roll from the baked ground; yet when Linden settled herself to Hyn’s rhythm, she found that she would not need to shout in order to make herself heard.
    Ahead of her, Kevin’s Dirt expanded its maleficence by slow increments. Fortunately its peril was not exacerbated by
caesures
. Their absence troubled her on Covenant’s behalf—they might now be aimed at him as he approached Ridjeck Thome—but it also reassured her. For the moment, at least, she, Jeremiah, and Stave were relatively safe.
    Relying on the former Master and the Ranyhyn to warn her at need, she turned her attention entirely on her son.
    “Jeremiah?” She resisted an impulse to raise her voice over the rattle of hooves. “Can you hear me all right?”
    He flashed a grin at her. “Sure, Mom. I’ve been listening to you my whole life. I could probably hear you if you whispered half a mile away.”
    That simple answer was enough to stun her for a moment. Covenant had assured her,
None of the love you lavished on your son was wasted
.
That isn’t even possible
. All those years of speaking her love to Jeremiah without any response—and yet he had heard her. More amazing still, he had believed her in spite of what the Despiser and his natural mother had done to him.
    Until we know more about what’s happened to him, just trust