The Runes of the Earth (Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Band 1) - Softcover

Donaldson, Stephen R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 044101304X ISBN 13: 9780441013043

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

New York Times bestselling author Stephen R. Donaldson presents the first novel of the four-volume finale to the series that’s become a modern fantasy classic: The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.

Thomas Covenant lost everything. Abandoned by his wife and child, sick and alone, he was transported while unconscious to a magical, dreamlike world called the Land. Convinced it was all a delusion, Covenant was christened The Unbeliever by the Land’s inhabitants—but gave his life to save this new-found world he came to regard as precious.

Ten years after Covenant’s death, Linden Avery still mourns for her beloved companion. But a violent confrontation with Covenant’s son, who is doing the evil Lord Foul’s bidding, forces her into the Land, where a dark malevolence is about to unmake the laws of nature—and of life and death itself. It is here that she comes upon Esmer, son of the Dancers of the Sea, a creature of strange powers who draws Linden backwards through time to witness Thomas Covenant’s return to life, and to reinvent the mysterious, dangerous, and violent history of the Land.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Stephen R. Donaldson is the author of the The Great God’s War Trilogy and the original six volumes of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, a landmark in modern fantasy. Every volume, beginning with Lord Foul’s Bane in 1977, has been an international bestseller. Donaldson returned to the series with The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, comprising The Runes of the Earth, Fatal Revenant, Against All Things Ending, and The Last Dark. Donaldson lives in New Mexico.

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1.

Mother’s Son

“No, Mr. Covenant,” she repeated for the third time. “I can’t do that.”

Ever since he had entered her office, she had wished that he would go away.

He gazed at her as if he had not heard a word. “I don’t see the problem, Dr. Avery.” His voice cast echoes of his father through her, flashes of memory like spangles off a surface of troubled water. “I’m her son. I have the right. And it’s my responsibility.” Despite the differences, even his features dragged a tangled net across her heart, dredging up aches and longing. “She’s nothing to you, just a problem you can’t solve. A burden on the taxpayers. A waste of resources you could use to help someone else.” His eyes were too wide-set, his whole face too broad. The flesh of his cheeks and jaw hinted at self-indulgence.

And yet—

If he were clay, only a slice or two with the sculptor’s tool, only a line of severity on either side of his mouth, and his cheeks would look as strict as commandments. A squint of old suffering at the corners of his eyes: a little grey dust to add years to his hair. His eyes themselves were exactly the right color, a disturbed hue like the shade of madness or prophecy. Oh, he could have been his father, if he had not been so young and unmarked. If he had paid any price as extravagant as his father’s—

He was certainly insistent enough to be Thomas Covenant.

He seemed to face her through a haze of recall, reminding her of the man she had loved. The man who had risen in fear and fury to meet his harsh fate.

Avoiding the young man’s gaze, she looked around the walls of her office without seeing them. At another time, the strict professionalism of this space might have eased her. Her displayed diplomas, like her tidy desk and heavy filing cabinets, served to vouch for her. She had found comfort among them on other occasions. But today they had no effect.

How many times had she held Thomas Covenant in her arms? Too few: not enough to satisfy her hunger for them.

She still wore his white gold wedding ring on a silver chain around her neck. It was all that she had left of him.

“I can reach her, Dr. Avery,” the son continued in a voice which was too bland to be his father’s. “You can’t. You’ve been trying for years. I’m sure you’ve done your best. But if you could have reached her, she would be sane by now. It’s time to let her go. Let me have her.”

“Mr. Covenant,” she insisted, “I’ll say it again. I can’t do that. The law in this state won’t allow it. Professional ethics won’t allow it.”

I won’t allow it.

Joan Covenant was as unreachable as her son claimed. She might as well have been catatonic, in spite of every conceivable drug and therapy. In fact, she would have died long ago without constant care. But she was not “nothing” to Linden Avery. If Roger Covenant believed that, he would never understand the woman who stood in his way.

His mother was Thomas Covenant’s ex-wife. Ten years ago, Linden had watched Covenant trade his life for Joan’s—and smile to reassure her. That smile had ripped Linden’s heart from its hiding place, rent away its protective lies and commitments. Sometimes she believed that everything she had now done and become had started then. Covenant’s smile had triggered a detonation which had blown her free of her own parents’ hunger for death. The new woman who had emerged from that explosion loved Thomas Covenant from the bottom of her soul.

For his sake, she would not abandon Joan.

Yet now Roger Covenant sat across her desk from her, demanding his mother’s release. If she had been the kind of woman who found the folly of the misguided amusing, she would have laughed in his face. Where did he get the nerve?

Hell, where did he get the idea?

“I’m sorry.” Apparently he wanted to be polite. “I still don’t see the problem. She’s my mother. I’m her son. I’m willing to take care of her. How can the law object? How can you, Dr. Avery? I don’t understand why she and I haven’t already left.”

She turned away for a moment to look out the window. It gave her an unilluminating view of the parking lot, where her worn old car crouched over its rust, waiting for the day when its welds would fail and it could finally slump into scrap. She had kept it only because it had carried her to her first encounters with Thomas Covenant.

If Roger would not leave, surely she could simply drive away? Go out to her car, coax its engine to life, and return to Jeremiah?

No. If she had wanted to be a woman who fled whenever her job became difficult, she should have bought herself a more reliable vehicle.

Old habit lifted her hand to press the hard circle of Covenant’s ring through her blouse. Sighing, she faced his son again.

“Let me try to be plain. Whether or not you understand is beside the point. The point is this. Unless and until you bring me a court order signed by a judge instructing me to release Joan Covenant to your custody, she stays where she is. End of discussion.” She gazed at him expectantly. When he failed to take the hint, she added, “That’s your cue to leave, Mr. Covenant.”

Don’t you understand that you’re not the only person here who cares about her?

However, she doubted that Roger Covenant cared at all for his mute mother. His oblivious manner, and the incipient madness or prophecy in his eyes, conveyed an entirely different impression.

He had explained that he had not come for Joan earlier because he had not been old enough. But he had passed his twenty-first birthday yesterday. Now he was ready. Yet Linden believed intuitively that he had some hidden purpose which outweighed love or concern.

In his unwavering insistence, he reminded her of some of the more plausible psychotics she had known in her tenure as chief medical officer for the Berenford Memorial Psychiatric Hospital. But perhaps he suffered from nothing more treatable than terminal narcissism, in which case he was telling her the simple truth. He could not “see the problem.”

This time, however, something in her tone—or in the conflicted fire mounting behind her eyes—must have penetrated his strange unction. Before she could offer to call Security, he rose to his feet as if he comprehended her at last.

Immediately she stood as well. She saw now that he was an inch or two shorter than his father, and broader in the torso. For that reason, among others, he would never evince the particular gauntness, the cut and flagrant sense of purpose—all compromise and capacity for surrender flensed away—which had made Thomas Covenant irrefusable to her.

He would never be the man his father was. He had too much of his mother in him. His carriage exposed him: the slight looseness in his shoulders; the tension which compensated for his poor balance. His arms seemed full of truncated gestures, expressions of honesty or appeal cut off prematurely. Behind his insistence, Linden heard hints of Joan’s weakness, forlorn and fundamentally betrayed.

Perhaps his real desires had nothing to do with his mother. Perhaps he simply wanted to prove himself his father’s equal. Or to supplant him—

Having gained his feet, however, Roger did not admit defeat. Instead he asked, “Can I see her? It’s been years.” He offered Linden an affectless smile. “And there’s something I want to show you.”

In spite of her impatience, she nodded....

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2005
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 044101304X
• ISBN 13: 9780441013043
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 561
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland