Stephen Donaldson - Covenant 7 - The Runes of the Earth

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Stephen R. Donaldson

to Jennifer Dunstan

the princess of my heart

Acknowledgments

My particular thanks to John Eccker, who went

"above and beyond the call" after the first draft and

never looked back.

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever

As a young man-a novelist, happily married, with an

infant son, Roger-- Thomas Covenant is inexplicably

stricken with leprosy. After the last two fingers of his

right hand are amputated, medications arrest the

progress of Covenant's affliction, but he is taught that

his only hope of survival lies in protecting himself

obsessively from any form of injury. He is devastated

when his wife, Joan, abandons and divorces him in

order to protect their son from exposure.

Other blows to his emotional stability follow. Fearing

the mysterious nature of his illness, the people around

him cast him in the traditional role of the leper: a

pariah, outcast and unclean. In addition, he discovers

that he has become impotent-and unable to write.

Grimly he struggles to go on living; but as the pressure

of his loneliness mounts, he begins to experience

prolonged episodes of unconsciousness, during which

he appears to have adventures in a magical realm

known only as the Land.

In the Land, physical and emotional health are

tangible forces, made palpable by an eldritch energy

called Earthpower. Because vitality and beauty are

concrete qualities, as plain to the senses as size and

color, the well-being of the physical world has become

the guiding precept of the Land's people. When

Covenant first encounters them, in Lord Foul's Bane,

they greet him as the reincarnation of an ancient hero,

Berek Halfhand, in part because he has lost two

fingers, and in part because he possesses a white gold

ring-his wedding band-which they know to be a

talisman of great power, able to wield "the wild magic

that destroys peace."

Shortly after he first appears in the Land, Covenant's

leprosy and impotence disappear, cured by

Earthpower; and this, he knows, is impossible. And the

mere idea that he possesses some form of magical

power threatens his ability to sustain the stubborn

disciplines on which his survival depends. Therefore he

chooses to interpret his translation to the Land as a

dream or hallucination. He responds to his welcome

and health with Unbelief: the harsh, dogged assertion

that the Land is not real.

Because of his Unbelief, his initial reactions to the

people and wonders of the Land are at best dismissive,

at worst despicable (at one point, overwhelmed by his

reborn sexuality, he rapes Lena, a young girl who has

befriended him). However, the people of the Land

decline to punish or reject him for his actions. As

Berek Halfhand reborn, he is beyond judgment. And

there is an ancient prophecy concerning the white gold

wielder: "With the one word of truth or treachery, / he

will save or damn the Earth." Covenant's new

companions in the Land know that they cannot make

his choices for him. They can only hope that he will

eventually follow Berek's example by saving the Land.

At first, such forbearance conveys little to Covenant,

although he cannot deny that he is moved by the

ineffable beauties of this world, as well as by the

kindness of its people. During his travels, however,

first with Lena's mother, Atiaran, then with the Giant

Saltheart Foamfollower, and finally with the Lords of

Revelstone, he learns enough of the history of the Land

to understand what is at stake.

The Land has an ancient enemy, Lord Foul the

Despiser, who dreams of destroying the Arch of Time-

thereby destroying not only the Land but the entire

Earth-in order to escape what he perceives to be a

prison. Against this evil stands the Council of Lords,

men and women who have dedicated their lives to

nurturing the health of the Land, to studying the lost

lore and wisdom of Berek and his long-dead

descendants, and to opposing Despite.

Unfortunately these Lords possess only a small

fraction of the power of their predecessors. The Staff

of Law, Berek's primary instrument of Earthpower,

has been hidden from them. And the lore of Law and

Earthpower seems inherently inadequate to defeat

Lord Foul. Wild magic rather than Law is the crux of

Time. Without it, the Arch cannot be destroyed; but

neither can it be defended.

Hence both the Lords and the Despiser seek Thomas

Covenant's allegiance. The Lords attempt to win his

aid with courage and compassion: the Despiser,

through manipulation. And in this contest Covenant's

Unbelief appears to place him on the side of the

Despiser.

Nevertheless Covenant cannot deny his response to the

Land's apparent transcendence. And as he is granted

more and more friendship by the Lords and denizens

of the Land, he finds that he is now dismayed by his

earlier violence toward Lena. He faces an insoluble

conundrum: the Land cannot be real, yet it feels

entirely real. His

heart responds to its loveliness-and that response has

the potential to kill him because it undermines his

necessary habits of wariness and hopelessness.

Trapped within this contradiction, he attempts to

escape through a series of unspoken bargains. In Lord

Foul's Bane, he grants the Lords his passive support,

hoping that this will enable him to avoid accepting the

possibilities-the responsibilities-of his white gold ring.

And at first his hopes are realized. The Lords find the

lost Staff of Law; their immediate enemy, one of Lord

Foul's servants, is defeated; and Covenant himself is

released from the Land.

Back in his real world, however, he discovers that he

has in fact gained nothing. Indeed, his plight has

worsened: he remains a leper; and his experience of

friendship and magic in the Land has weakened his

ability to endure his outcast loneliness on Haven Farm.

When he is translated to the Land a second time, in

The Illearth War, he knows that he must devise a new

bargain.

During his absence, the Land's plight has worsened as

well. A number of years have passed in the Land; and

in that time Lord Foul has gained and mastered the

Illearth Stone, an ancient bane of staggering power.

With it, the Despiser has created an army which now

marches to overwhelm the Lords of Revelstone.

Although the Lords hold the Staff of Law, they lack

sufficient might to withstand the evil horde. They need

the strength of wild magic.

Other developments also tighten the grip of

Covenant's dilemma. The Council is now led by High

Lord Elena, his daughter by his rape of Lena. With

her, he begins to experience the real consequences of

his violence: it is clear to him-if to no one elsethat she

is not completely sane. In addition, the army of the

Lords is led by a man named Hile Troy, who appears

to have come to the Land from Covenant's own world.

Troy's presence radically erodes Covenant's self-

protective Unbelief.

Now more than ever Covenant feels that he must

resolve his conundrum. Again he offers a bargain. He

will give the defenders of the Land his active support.

Specifically, he will join Elena on a quest to discover

the source of EarthBlood, the most concentrated form

of Earthpower. But in return he will continue to deny

that his ring holds any power. He will accept no

responsibility for the ultimate fate of the Land.

This time, however, the results of his bargain are

disastrous. Using the Illearth Stone, Lord Foul

slaughters the Giants of Seareach. Hile Troy is only

able to defeat the Despiser's army by giving his soul to

Caerroil Wildwood, the Forestal of Garroting Deep.

And Covenant's help enables Elena to find the

EarthBlood, which she uses to sever one of the

necessary boundaries between life and death. Her

instability leads her to think that the dead will have

more power against Lord Foul than the living. But she

is terribly wrong; and in the resulting catastrophe both

she and the Staff of Law are lost.

Covenant returns to his real world knowing that his

attempts to resolve his dilemma have served the

Despiser.

Nearly broken by his failures, he visits the Land once

more in The Power That Preserves, where he discovers

the full cost of his actions. Dead, his daughter now

serves Lord Foul, using the Staff of Law to wreak

havoc. Her mother, Lena, has lost her mind. And the

defenders of the Land are besieged by an army too

vast and powerful to be defeated.

Covenant still has no solution to his conundrum: only

wild magic can save the Land-and he cannot afford to

accept its reality. However, sickened at heart by Lena's

madness, and by the imminent ruin of the Land, he

resolves to confront the Despiser himself. He has no

hope of defeating Lord Foul, but he would rather

sacrifice himself for the sake of a magical, but unreal,

place than preserve his outcast life in his real world.

Before he can reach the Despiser, however, he must

first face dead Elena and the Staff of Law. He cannot

oppose her; yet she defeats herself when her attack on

him draws an overwhelming response from his ring-a

response which also destroys the Staff.

Accompanied only by his old friend, the Giant

Saltheart Foamfollower, Covenant finally gains his

confrontation with Lord Foul and the Illearth Stone.

Facing the full force of the Despiser's savagery and

malice, he at last finds the solution to his conundrum,

"the eye of the paradox": the point of balance between

accepting that the Land is real and insisting that it is

not. On that basis, he is able to combat Lord Foul by

using the dire might of the Illearth Stone to trigger the

wild magic of his ring. With that power, he shatters

both the Stone and Lord Foul's home, thereby ending

the threat of the Despiser's evil.

When he returns to his own world for the last time, he

learns that his newfound balance benefits him there as

well. He knows now that the reality or unreality of the

Land is less important than his love for it; and that

knowledge gives him the strength to face his life as a

pariah without fear or bitterness.

The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant

For ten years after the events of The Power That

Preserves, Covenant lives alone on Haven Farm,

writing novels. He is still an outcast, but he has one

friend, Dr. Julius Berenford. Then, however, two

damaged women enter his life.

His ex-wife, Joan, returns to him, violently insane.

Leaving Roger with her parents, she has spent some

time in a commune which has dedicated itself to the

service of Despite, and which has chosen Covenant to

be the victim of its evil. Hoping to spare anyone else

the hazards of involvement, Covenant attempts to care

for Joan alone.

When Covenant refuses aid, Dr. Berenford enlists Dr.

Linden Avery, a young physician whom he has

recently hired. Like Joan, she has been badly hurt,

although in en

tirely different ways. As a young girl, she was locked in

a room with her father while he committed suicide.

And as a teenager, she killed her mother, an act of

euthanasia to

which she felt compelled by her mother's illness and

pain. Loathing death, Linden has become a doctor in a

haunted attempt to erase her past.

At Dr. Berenford's urging, she intrudes on Covenant's

treatment of his ex-wife. When members of Joan's

commune attack Haven Farm, seeking Covenant's

death, Linden attempts to intervene, but she is struck

down before she can save him. As a result, she

accompanies him when he is returned to the Land.

During Covenant's absence, several thousand years

have passed, and the Despiser has regained his power.

As before, he seeks to use Covenant's wild magic in

order to break the Arch of Time and escape his prison.

In The Wounded Land, however, Covenant and

Linden soon learn that Lord Foul has fundamentally

altered his methods. Instead of relying on armies and

warfare to goad Covenant, the Despiser has devised an

attack on the natural Law which gives the Land its

beauty and health.

The overt form of this attack is the Sunbane, a malefic

corona around the sun which produces extravagant

surges of fertility, rain, drought, and pestilence in mad

succession. So great is the Sunbane's power and

destructiveness that it has come to dominate all life in

the Land. Yet the Sunbane is not what it appears to be.

And its organic virulence serves primarily to mask

Lord Foul's deeper manipulations.

He has spent centuries corrupting the Council of

Lords. That group now rules over the Land as the

Clave; and it is led by a Raver, one of the Despiser's

most ancient and potent servants. The Clave extracts

blood from the people of the Land to feed the Banefire,

an enormous blaze which purportedly hinders the

Sunbane, but which actually increases it.

However, the hidden purpose of the Clave and the

Banefire is to inspire from Covenant an excessive

exertion of wild magic. And toward that end, another

Raver afflicts Covenant with a venom intended to

cripple his control over his power. When the venom

has done its work, Covenant will be unable to defend

the Land without unleashing so much force that he

destroys the Arch.

As for Linden Avery, Lord Foul intends to use her

loathing of death against her. She alone is gifted or

cursed with the health-sense which once informed and

guided all the people of the Land by enabling them to

perceive physical and emotional health directly. For

that reason, she is uniquely vulnerable to the

malevolence of the Sunbane, as well as to the insatiable

malice of the Ravers. The manifest evil into which she

has been plunged threatens the core of her identity.

Linden's health-sense accentuates her potential as a

healer. However, it also gives her the capacity to

possess other people; to reach so deeply into them that

she can control their actions and emotions. By this

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StephenR.DonaldsonItoJenniferDunstantheprincessofmyheartAcknowledgmentsMyparticularthankstoJohnEccker,whowent"aboveandbeyondthecall"afterthefirstdraftandneverlookedback.TheChroniclesofThomasCovenanttheUnbelieverAsayoungman-anovelist,happilymarried,withaninfantson,Roger--ThomasCovenantisinexplicablys...

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