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1st answers to your most burning questions:
Donaldson read 19 pages from chapter 5 of The Runes of the Earth, book One of The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.
It is part of a 190 page prologue. (story synopsis below...)
The series will be a tetralogy and here are the, tentative, titles to the other books:
Fatal Revenant
Shall Pass Utterly
& The Last Dark
SRD says he has no publisher at the moment but expects publication of the 1st book by very late 2004 or Spring 2005 at the very latest.
The books will be published one after the other...
He said that the 1st Chronicles were the "muscle" books where Lord Foul is akin to Hitler forging armies and A-bombs to ruin his enemies and break his prison. In the 2nd Chronicles Foul's method is an attack on the natural order of things. But in the 3rd Chronicles Foul's final means of escape will consist of a massive attack and corruption OF TIME ITSELF!!!!!!!!
The audience was rendered speechless for 2 minutes straight after he said this--this answered any and all questions about the present, future and the past. "Well will go back before the Lords, back before the Old Lords, the whole history of the Land will become relevant to the present." he said.
Even during the question and answer sessions no could could think to pose any futher question re: The 3rd Chronicles, he had destroyed us all in one fell swoop!!!!!
Chapter 5:
Key elements and characters:
Set ten years after the end of The White Gold Wielder Dr. Linden Avery is now Director of the Berenford Memorial Hospital where Joan has been a patient in the psychiatric ward. Linden has adopted an autistic boy named Jeremiah. Sara Clint is one of Linden's top nurses and Sandy Eastwall is Jeremiah's babysitter. Roger Covenant has completely lost his mind and kidnaps Joan and Jeremiah, taking Sandy and Sara as hostages.
Linden, following the abduction at the hospital, arrives at her house to discover the Roger has taken Sandy and Jeremiah. She notifies Sheriff Litton, grabs her medical bag and a heavy flashight and runs to her car with a preeminent idea of where he is gone. It is night, friction lightening crackles constantly above her causing a strobe effect of alternate realities as the wind pounds her down. She finally gains her car and drives through a totally deserted downtown past the telephone company, the town's only department store and the courthouse where Thomas Covenant's marriage was dissolved. The lightening renders the heads atop the courthouse into grotesque monsters as the howling wind slows her speed. How far ahead is Roger? The streetlights flicker and then go out altogether...Perhaps the lightening has caused a tree to fall across the powerlines or has knocked out the main transformer?
Disoriented, she slams on the brakes, then hits the accelerator as hard as she can heading for Haven Farm, two miles away. She envisions Roger, with a gun, dragging Jeremiah away, ready to stop him at all costs. Her teeth bared in a rictous smile. Roger's madness is so lucid he has no need for life. She drives even faster now fearing that Litton may have already reached them, or simply may not care. Speeding towards Roger's home, as an infant, along Righter's Creek. She remembers Covenant taking care of Joan there and as she starts up the driveway sees a spot twenty yards away where she once worked to save an old man's life. "Be true.." he had said "...however he may assail you, there is also love in the world."
She still feels very lost without Covenant despite all the years of love she has given Jeremiah. She reaches, what is now, Roger's house and inheritance, the clapboard has turned from white to gray by years of neglect. There are no lights on, contrary to Roger leaving all of them on at Linden's house as a symbol of his work. She gets out of her car and sees Roger's black sedan with it's trunk open, as if he was carrying something important, something he needed. Or perhaps he has stuffed Sara and Sandy in there instead.? The Sheriff doesn't appear to be there and she is overwrought thinking about how these events could futher traumatize Jeremiah, who as a very small child was forced, along with his family, to stick his right hand into the Despiser's bondfire.
Fighting the wind she manages to open her trunk and retrieve the bag and flashlight. As she turns to go a huge swirling gust slams Roger's trunk shut. With a start she cluthes Covenant's wedding ring that hangs at her strenum. She tests the door and as the handle turns the wind blows it wide open. It is too dark inside and as the tears the dust has caused lessen she beings to make out the living room. It is as if an earthquake has struck; broads are cracked and broken, plaster from the cieling lies all over the floor, the couch has been slammed against a wall, gutted by rats and roaches. Many sections of the wall appear blasted away by a shotgun. Small darks patterns begin to emerge on the floor, the patches are slimy, thickening blood.
Linden had sworn that Roger would never claim Joan even over her dead body. She makes her way through the hallway to the kitchen seeing even more splotches of blood. Pieces of florescent lightbulbs lie scattered on the floor, the cabinets and widows all broken. She can waste no more time before Roger offers Jeremiah to Lord Foul. She makes her way down the long hallway past bedrooms and the bathroom to the room where Covenant tended Joan in her madness. Lightening flashes so close and with such a fierce white light that the walls seem transparent and the house shakes. As she tries to breathe throught the ozone she sees Mrs. Jason and her children by the altar. The bedroom feels toxic and doomed as if Covenant's leprosy has seeped into the walls.
Sara Clint lies desolate on the bed, a huge kitchen knife impaled in the pillow. Roger has strapped her ankles and wrists to the bed with duct tape, but no gag, and has made a series of cuts through her clean white uniform, but finally cut through her corotted arteries from ear to ear as if he wanted more blood than he could gather. Roger has taken Sandy, Jeremiah and Joan to open the way for the Land's destruction. As the ozone begins to clear she realizes she can't smell Sara's blood, but instead is assailed by smoke that smells like Foul's bondfire. She realizes that that last bolt of lightening has set the house on fire and stands transfixed in terror as if ready to merge into the Land. Then suddenly she snaps to the fact that Roger cannot open the portal because he lacks the ring!
She runs to the kitchen throught the heat, fire and wind--as a tumault of flame brusts towards her from Covenant's room. She goes to the window and uses her medical bag to break out the rest of the glass and tosses her bag and the flashlight to the ground. As she climbs out the window she catches her left palm against a shard of glass and sees that it is bleeding. Finally, she picks up the bag and flashlight light and runs towards the woods behind Haven Farm then stops and turns to watch Thomas Covenant's house die.
And now Danlo looked in that direction, too. He remembered that snowy owls mate in the darkest part of deep winter, and so along with this beautiful white bird perched in a tree a hundred feet away, he turned to face the sea as he watched and waited.
Ahira, Ahira, he called out silently to the sky. Ahira, Ahira<i></i>
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