The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant is a series of ten high fantasy novels written by American author Stephen R. Donaldson. The series began as a trilogy, entitled The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever. This was followed by another trilogy, The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, and finally a tetralogy, The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.
The main character of the stories is Thomas Covenant, an embittered and cynical writer, afflicted with leprosy and shunned by society, and fated to become the heroic savior of the Land, an alternate world. In ten novels, published between 1977 and 2013, he struggles against Lord Foul, "the Despiser", who intends to escape the bondage of the physical universe and wreak revenge upon his arch-enemy, "the Creator".
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever
Lord Foul's Bane (1977) The Illearth War (1978; Gilden-Fire—first published 1981) The Power that Preserves (1979)
The story Gilden-Fire first appeared as an independent novella (illustrated by Peter Goodfellow), but is now most widely available as a part of most versions of the Donaldson short story collection Daughter of Regals (1985). It was set during the action of The Illearth War, and covers an episode from the doomed mission to contact the Giants. Gilden-Fire is told from the point of view of Korik, the senior Bloodguard on the mission. It describes Korik's selection of the mission's Bloodguard, then narrates the mission's passage through Grimmerdhore forest, where they defeat an ambush of ur-viles and kresh (wolves). The narrative ends as the mission leaves the forest.
According to the author's foreword, Gilden-Fire was originally part of a larger, planned section of The Illearth War that followed the mission to the Giants in "real time", but was cut due to space restrictions as well as point-of-view inconsistency with the rest of the Chronicles. The events during the trek through Grimmerdhore are not mentioned in the published narrative of The Illearth War, and some information shared here on the origin and motivation of the Bloodguard does appear in other contexts in the published Chronicles. The rest of the mission after the Grimmerdhore passage was included in the Chronicles, via the narrative device of Bloodguard messengers.
The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
The Wounded Land (1980) The One Tree (1982) White Gold Wielder (1983)
The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
The Runes of the Earth (2004) Fatal Revenant (2007) Against All Things Ending (2010) The Last Dark (2013)
Peoples and creatures of the Land
Cavewights are dimly intelligent subterranean creatures skilled in metal working and mining. They are weak-willed, and are easily intimidated by Lord Foul into serving him (though they once traded openly with the humans of the Land). They are described as having "long, scrawny limbs, hands as huge and heavy as shovels," plus "a thin, hunched torso, and a head shaped like a battering ram." Drool Rockworm is a cavewight.
The Creator is the mysterious being who created the Land and the universe in which it exists. This universe is referred to as "the Land" but is clearly a different reality than Covenant's world. The fundamental structure of the universe, the Arch of Time, prevents the Creator from intervening directly in events in the world of his creation, and he never appears in physical form within that world. He can, however, manifest himself in the "real" world—he appears to Covenant and Linden as an old man in an ochre robe—and guides those who attempt to make contact between the universes.
The Demondim are a now-extinct race spawned by the Viles. They had a semi-corporeal nature, and could only achieve physical presence by animating dead bodies. They were not originally wholly evil, but their inherent self-loathing was used by Lord Foul to gain their allegiance. They spawned two other races, the Waynhim and the ur-viles.