The Illearth War

Начало книги

THOMAS COVENANT is a happy and successful author until an unfelt infection leads to the amputation of two fingers. Then his doctor tells him he has leprosy. The disease is arrested at a leprosarium, but he returns home to find himself an outcast. His wife has divorced him and ignorant fear makes all his neighbours shun him. He becomes a lonely, bitter pariah.

In rebellion, he goes to town. There, just after he meets a strange beggar, he stumbles in front of a police car. Disorientation overcomes him. He revives in a strange world where the evil voice of Lord Foul gives him a mocking message of doom to the Lords of the Land. When Foul leaves, a young girl named Lena takes him to her home. There he is treated as a legendary hero, Berek Halfhand. He finds that his white gold wedding ring is a talisman of great power in the Land.

Lena treats him with a mud called hurtloam, which seems to cure his leprosy. The sensations of healing are more than he can handle, and losing control of himself, he rapes Lena. Despite this, her mother Atiaran agrees to guide him to Revelstone; his message is more important than her hatred of him. She tells him of the ancient war between the Old Lords and Foul, which resulted in millennia of desecration for the Land.

Читать дальше →