Kevin's Watch

FOREWORD

GILDEN-FIRE is, in essence, an "out-take" from THE ILLEARTH WAR. For that reason, it is not a complete story. Rather, it describes an episode which occurred to Korik of the Bloodguard and his mission to Seareach during the early days of THE ILLEARTH WAR, after Thomas Covenant's summoning to the Land but before the commencement of the actual war. This material survived through two drafts of the manuscript, but is entirely absent from the published version of the book.
On that basis, I think it requires some explanation. As a general rule, I use my out-takes for wastepaper. But I've made an exception in this case for a variety of reasons.
Some of them have to do with why GILDEN-FIRE was taken out of THE ILLEARTH WAR in the first place. The version of the manuscript which originally crossed the desk of Lester del Rey at Ballantine Books was 916 pages long -- roughly; 261,000 words -- That was manifestly too long. With much regret, Lester gave me to understand that I would have to cut 250 pages.
Well, I'm a notorious over-writer; and I was able to eliminate 100 pages simply by squeezing the prose with more than my usual ruthlessness. But after that I had to make a more difficult decision.
As it happened, the original version of THE ILLEARTH WAR was organized in four parts rather than the present three. Part II in that version dealt exclusively with Korik's mission to Seareach; and it eventually provided me with the 150 pages of cuts I still needed. Not because I considered the material to be of secondary importance (I have little sympathy for anyone who considers the fate of the Unhomed, the fidelity of the Bloodguard, and the valour of the Lords to be of secondary importance). On the contrary, I was quite fond of that whole section. No, I put my axe to the roots of my former Part II for reasons of narrative logic.
From the beginning, that section had been a risky piece of writing. In it, I had used Korik as my viewpoint character. For the first time in the trilogy, I had stepped fully away from Thomas Covenant (or any direct link to the "real" world). And that proved to be a mistake. It was crucial to the presentation of Covenant's character that he had some good reasons for doubting the substantial "reality" of the Land. But all his reasons were undercut when I employed someone like Korik -- a character with no bond, however oblique, to Covenant's world -- for a narrative center. (THE ILLEARTH WAR does contain two chapters from Lord Mhoram's point of view. But in both cases Mhoram is constantly in the company of either Covenant or Hile Troy. Korik's mission lacked even that connection to the central assumptions on which LORD FOUL'S BANE and THE ILLEARTH WAR were based.) In using Korik as I had, I had informed the reader that the people of the Land were in fact "real": I had unintentionally denied the logic of Covenant's Unbelief. Which was already too fragile for its own good.
Therefore I took the absolutely essential sections of that Part II and recast them as reports which Runnik and Tull brought back to Covenant and Troy -- thus preserving the integrity of the narrative perspective from which the story was being viewed. And in the process I achieved the 150 pages of cuts I needed.
But all of GILDEN-FIRE was lost.
That does not exactly constitute high tragedy. Cutting is part of writing; and narrative logic is more important than authorial fondness. My point is simply that GILDEN-FIRE was cut, not because it was bad, but because it didn't fit well enough.
However, the question remains: if this material didn't fit THE ILLEARTH WAR, why am I inflicting it upon the world now?
The main reason, I suppose, is my aforementioned fondness. I like Korik, Hyrim, and Shetra, and have always grieved over the exigency which required me to reduce their role in the story so drastically. But, in addition, I've often felt that the moral dilemma of the Bloodguard is somewhat obscure in the published version of my books; too much of their background was sacrificed when I cut GILDEN-FIRE. In fact, too much development of the people who would eventually have to face the destruction of the Unhomed was sacrificed. (How, for instance, can Lord Hyrim's achievements be fully understood when so little is known about him?) By publishing GILDEN-FIRE, I'm trying to fill a subtle but real gap in THE ILLEARTH WAR.
Finally, I should say that I think the logic which originally required me to cut out this material no longer applies. Since it cannot stand on its own as an independent story, GILDEN-FIRE will surely not be read by anyone unfamiliar with "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever". And those readers know that the question of whether or not the Land is ultimately "real" (whether or not a character like Korik is sufficiently "actual" to serve as a narrative view-point) no longer matters. In reality as in dreams, what matters is the answer we find in our hearts to the test of Despite. By publishing GILDEN-FIRE, I hope to give more substance to the answers Korik, Hyrim, and Shetra found.