A sea of mist drifted through the cloud forest: soft, grey, luminescent. On the high ridges the fog showed brighter as the morning sun began to warm and lift the moisture, although in the ravine a cool, soundless dimness still counterfeited a pre-dawn twilight.　mander Cordelia Naismith glanced at her team botanist and adjusted the straps of her biological collecting equipment a bit more fortably before continuing her breathless climb. She pushed a long tendril of fog-dampened copper hair out of her eyes, clawing it impatiently toward the clasp at the nape of her neck. Their next survey area 　

　　1　　 mander James D. Swanson of the U.S. Navy was short, plump and crowding forty. He had jet-black hair topping a pink, cherubic face, and with the deep permanent creases of laughter lines radiating from his eyes and curving around his mouth, he was a dead ringer for the cheerful, happy-golucky extrovert who is the life and soul of the party where the guests park their brains along with their hats and coats. That, anyway, was how he struck me at first glance, but on the reasonable assumption that I might very likely find some other qualities in the man picked to mand the latest and most pow　

　1　　 The house was on Dresden Avenue in the Oak Noll section of Pasadena, a big solid cool-looking house with burgundy brick walls, a terra cotta tile roof, and a white stone trim. The front windows were leaded downstairs. Upstairs windows were of the cottage type and had a lot of rococo imitation stonework trimming around them.　 From the front wall and its attendant flowering bushes a half acre or so of fine green lawn drifted in a gentle slope down to the street, passing on the way an enormous deodar around which it flowed like a cool green tide around a rock. The sidewalk and the parkway w　

　　Gentle reader, hear Poliphilo tell of his dreams,　Dreams sent by the highest heaven.　You will not waste your labour, nor will listening irk you,　For this wonderful work abounds in so many things.　If, grave and dour, you despise love-stories,　Know, I pray, that things are well ordered herein.　You refuse? But at least the style, with its novel language,　Grave discourse and wisdom, mands attention.　If you refuse this, too, note the geometry,　The many ancient things expressed in Nilotic signs . . .　Here you will see the perfect palaces of kings,　The worship of nymphs, fountains and rich banquet　

　DEDICATION　　To Paty Cockrum, fan, friend, fine artist. You should see the pictures she sends me of Jean-Claud. She really is the voice of temptation.　　ACKNOWLEDGMENTS　　Ricia Mainhardt, my agent, who came up with the title.　Marion Stensgard who answered my questions.　The Wild Canid Survival and Research Center (Wolf Sanctuary) for letting me use their library.　Bonnee Pierson, who helped with a very different kind of research.　The Alternate Historians: Rett Macpherson who went above and beyond the call of duty for research, N.L. Drew who heard parts of this book over the phone, Tom Drennan, wh　

　　　It was Jackstraw who heard it first-it was always Jackstraw, whose hearing was an even match for his phenomenal eyesight, who heard things first. Tired of having my exposed hands alternately frozen, I had dropped my book, zipped my sleeping-bag up to the chin and was drowsily watching him carving figurines from a length of inferior narwhal tusk when his hands suddenly fell still and he sat quite motionless. Then, unhurriedly as always, he dropped the piece of bone into the coffee-pan that simmered gently by the side of our oil-burner stove-curio collectors paid fancy prices for what they i　

　　The caretaker stirred when he heard the crunch of tires on gravel. There was barely any light left in the sky, and he had just made coffee and was reluctant to get up. But his curiosity got the better of him. Visitors to Alexandria seldom ventured into the cemetery at Ivy Hill; the historic town on the Potomac had a brace of other, more colorful attractions and amusements to offer the living. As for the locals, not many came out on a weekday; fewer still on a late afternoon when the April rains lashed the sky.　Peering through his gatehouse window, the caretaker saw a man get out of an ordin　

　The gate was packed with weary travelers, most of them standing and huddled along the walls because the meager allotment of plastic chairs had long since been taken. Every plane that came and went held at least eighty passengers, yet the gate had seats for only a few dozen.　There seemed to be a thousand waiting for the 7 P.M. flight to Miami. They were bundled up and heavily laden, and after fighting the traffic and the check-in and the mobs along the concourse they were subdued, as a whole. It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving, one of the busiest days of the year for air travel, and as they　

　　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 neighbors shun him. He bees 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 overes him. He revives in a strange world where the evil voice of Lord Foul gives him a mocking message of doo　

　　CHAPTER ONE　　THE YOUNG curate shivered in the cold and felt uneasy. Something was wrong but it was difficult to work out exactly what. The atmosphere for a start; when he had set out on the quarter-mile walk from his home to the church, a warm spring breeze had fanned his cherubic features and the setting sun had almost blinded him. Now, and it could not be more than twenty minutes later, it was almost dark and very cold. Getting colder by the second.　　　　The Reverend Philip Owen felt slightly dizzy as he stood by the lychgate and tried to recollect his senses. The last twenty minutes seemed　

　　The drug-induced sleep wore off into nothingness, and the girl began the agonizing struggle back to consciousness. A dim and hazy light greeted her slowly opening eyes while a disgusting, putrid stench invaded her nostrils. She was nude, her bare back pressed flat against a damp, yellow, slime-coated wall. It was unreal, an impossibility, she tried to tell herself upon awakening. It had to be some kind of horrifying nightmare. Then suddenly, before she had a chance to fight the panic mushrooming inside her, the yellow slime on the floor rose and began working up the thighs of her defenseles　

Years and years later, I still start in the deepest part of night with his agonized face before me. And always, in these helpless dreams, I am helpless to ease his suffering.　　I will tell the tale then, in hope the last ghosts may be put to rest, if such a thing can ever happen in this place where there are more ghosts than living souls. But you will have to listen closely - this is a tale that the teller herself does not fully understand.　　I will tell you of Lord Sulis, my famous stepfather.　　I will tell you what the witch foretold to me.　　I will tell you of the love that I had and I lost..　

　　　　　　1.　　　　Fingers of lightning tore holes in the black skies as an angry cloudburst drenched the surrealistic landscape. It was 3 A.M. on a cold, wet morning in late November 1967. and the little houses scattered along the dirt road winding through the hills of West Virginia were all dark. Some seemed unoccupied and in the final stages of decay. Others were unpainted, neglected, forlorn. The whole setting was like the opening scene of a Grade B horror film from the 1930s.　　　　Along the road there came a stranger in a land where strangers were rare and suspect. He walked up to the door of a c　

　This novel is dedicated to Stan, Christopher, Michele and Howard; to Rosario and Patrice; to Pamela and Elaine; and to Niccolo.　This novel is dedicated by Vittorio to the people of Florence, Italy.　　　1　WHO I AM, WHY I WRITE, WHAT IS TO E　　WHEN I was a small boy I had a terrible dream. I dreamt I held in my arms the severed heads of my younger brother I and sister. They were quick still, and mute, with big fluttering eyes, and reddened cheeks, and so horrified was I that I could make no more of a sound than they could. The dream came true.　But no one will weep for me or for them. They have be　

1 - The Slow Fuse 32 - Odd Man In 83 - Correlation of Forces 244 - Maskirovka 325 - Sailors and Spooks 386 - The Watchers 477 - Initial Observations 528 - Further Observations 619 - A Final Look 6410 - Remember, Remember 6911 - Order of Battle 7712 - Funeral Arrangements 8213. - The Strangers Arrive and Depart 8614 - Gas 9815 - The Bastion Gambit 10816 - Last Moves/First Moves 12117 - The Frisbees of Dreamland 12618 - Polar Glory 13419 - Journeys End/Journeys Begin 15120 - The Dance of the Vampires 16721 - Nordic Hammer 18822- Ripostes 20723 - Returns 218...　

And he put on the garments of vengeance for clothing,and was clad with zeal for a cloak.Isaiah 59:17Edmund Loris, once the Archbishop of Valoret and Primate of All Gwynedd, stared out to sea through the salt-smeared windowpanes of his tower prison and allowed himself a thin smile. The rare display of self-indulgence did nothing to diminish the fury of the wind shrilling at the ill-fitted glass, but the letter secreted in the breviary under his arm gave its own grim fort. The offer was princely, befitting even the exalted status he had enjoyed before his fall.Exhaling softly of his long-hoarde