Fantasy -- Lords and Bodyguards -- Donaldson?

[The Judge]

For the last several years I've been puzzling about a fantasy novel I read years ago (I thought in my late teens, which is... um... well, let's just say a lot of years ago...), but there was so little of it I remembered, that I fought shy of asking about it here. But I think I might now have a lead.

Two details have stuck with me. First, there was a group of people who possessed magical powers, and who were given the title "Lord" -- the thing most impressed on my memory being that this also applied to the women, ie they were "Lord [name]" not "Lady [name]". Second, they were protected by utterly loyal, but undemonstrative and taciturn, bodyguards. Nothing to go on there, I thought. Then this week I was reading Lord Foul's Bane, and I got to Revelstone with the Lords, including women, and the Bloodguards who protected them, and I started wondering...

Anyhow, there are only two scenes which I can recall:

• someone has to get down a cliff or ravine and the bodyguard simply picks him up and jumps, I think leaping from place to place in a zig-zag fashion
• they've arranged a meeting with the baddie where a Lord faces him and each tries to overcome the other in a mental fight. The Lord isn't strong enough and is being overpowered, which will result in his becoming evil and serving the baddie. Just as he's on the point of submitting/failing, his bodyguard kills him -- by breaking his back? -- as the Lord had previously ordered him to do in this event, even though it goes against the bodyguard's vow to protect him

Neither of these two incidents appears in LFB (though I note in relation to the first that Covenant is afraid of heights and Bannor would certainly do whatever is necessary) and nothing about Covenant himself rang a bell, though the sacrifice of the two Lords who lay on the ground together just before a battle gave off a very faint tinkling. But it occurs to me that perhaps in the very dim and distant past I've read more of the series and these scenes crop up in later books. Is that the case? If not, does anyone have any ideas what book this could be if it isn't one of the Donaldsons?

 

[HareBrain]

Anyhow, there are only two scenes which I can recall:

• someone has to get down a cliff or ravine and the bodyguard simply picks him up and jumps, I think leaping from place to place in a zig-zag fashion
• they've arranged a meeting with the baddie where a Lord faces him and each tries to overcome the other in a mental fight. The Lord isn't strong enough and is being overpowered, which will result in his becoming evil and serving the baddie. Just as he's on the point of submitting/failing, his bodyguard kills him -- by breaking his back? -- as the Lord had previously ordered him to do in this event, even though it goes against the bodyguard's vow to protect him

Both of those feel familiar, and I think the book must therefore be a later Covenant one, as I can't recall any other book which has female "Lords" or where the other details match. The baddie that threatens to turn the Lord evil would have to be a raver, I think. But I can't place the incident.

 

[ZlodeyVolk]

That sounds an awful lot like Donaldson's The Illearth War. From Wikipedia:

Covenant, Elena and their two Bloodguard protectors journey through the remote mountain region on the western frontier of the Land to the hiding place of the Ward. Elena gains the power, but foolishly uses it to summon the long dead High Lord Kevin from his grave, and send him against Lord Foul. This act breaks the Law of Death, the barrier preventing the souls of the dead from interfering in the world of the living. Kevin's spirit is easily defeated and then enslaved by Foul wielding the Illearth Stone, and commanded to destroy Elena. The two High Lords engage in a battle of magic, in which Elena and her Bloodguard are defeated and killed, and the Staff of Law lost again. Covenant is able to save himself and his Bloodguard by using the power of his white gold ring, again without understanding how.

 

[HareBrain]

That sounds an awful lot like Donaldson's The Illearth War.

I don't think so. I read TIW relatively recently (compared to the other books) and Elena isn't killed by her bloodguard.

I'm now less certain about this bit:

Just as he's on the point of submitting/failing, his bodyguard kills him -- by breaking his back? -- as the Lord had previously ordered him to do in this event, even though it goes against the bodyguard's vow to protect him

I think the thing I might have been vaguely remembering was one bloodguard killing another (a superior?) in similar circumstances. It seems too incredible for a bloodguard to kill a Lord. I'm sure it would have had greater repercussions.

 

[ZlodeyVolk]

One bloodguard killing another rings bells, too … Can't quite grasp it, though.

 

[The Judge]

Thanks, both. Looks like I'll just have to read the entire series to find out for sure! (It's odd. I expected there to be lots of Chronners who had read every word Donaldson wrote and who would be able to point me to the exact pages where the incidents happened, or, conversely, would scoff that any such incidents could possibly have happened in the Thomas Covenant Chronicles. Where are the Donaldson devotees?!)

HB, you may well be right re the Bloodguard killing another -- you've certainly read the relevant books(s) a lot more recently than I have! Yet I can't help thinking that the impact of the bodyguard killing his Lord is what fixed it in my memory, and within the novel the impossibility of it happening would be exactly why the baddie could never conceive he'd be cheated of his victory. When I was thinking over this yesterday I had an idea that the bodyguard went berserk because he'd had to kill the Lord, despite the fact it had been an order so it had to be done. Dunno. But enlightenment will doubtless come in time!

 

[ZlodeyVolk]

Lots of Chronners probably have read every word Donaldson wrote, but it's the weekend and we're on a skeleton staff. I'll try to do better next time, though—honest.

 

[HareBrain]

Might be worth putting the question (or a link) up in the Donaldson sub-forum, since quite a few members might not look in Book Search.

 

[nixie]

I've read all the Thomas Covenant books but it's a number of since I read the first two chronicles. It does sound familiar although I don't remember any the bloodgaurd killing a Lord.

Could it be from the second chronicles ?

Something is ticking the back of my, I may also be mixing up books , Linden Avery went on a voyage with some giants, bloodgaurd and a few others I don't remember any Lord being with them, there was something wrong with Covenant, a poison through the land. Searching for life tree ???? They also encounter the worm.
They stopped off at an island and were told a story about a Lord and his bloodgaurd.

I may be completely wrong and remembering other books and mixing them all together.

Now this thread has me wanting too read the first two chronicles again, will give the third a miss.

 

[HareBrain]

Something is ticking the back of my, I may also be mixing up books , Linden Avery went on a voyage with some giants, bloodgaurd and a few others I don't remember any Lord being with them, there was something wrong with Covenant, a poison through the land. Searching for life tree ???? They also encounter the worm.

This is in The One Tree, from the Second Chronicles, and I was thinking about it earlier, because in it two bloodguard have to fight each other: Brinn has to fight the guardian of the One Tree, who is also a Haruchai, and is killed and then resurrected to replace him. But it isn't the same as one killing another to stop them being possessed.

They stopped off at an island and were told a story about a Lord and his bloodgaurd.

This is intriguing, but the faint bell it's ringing might just be my imagination.

 

[nixie]

Thanks HB, I knew I got the tree wrong.

 

[HareBrain]

Incidentally, the sea voyage in The One Tree is the only one I know that's as long and arduous for the reader as for its participants.

 

[Peter V]

Incidentally, the sea voyage in The One Tree is the only one I know that's as long and arduous for the reader as for its participants.

Even all these years later I remember slogging through The One Tree. Overall I liked the first two chronicles but this particular volume is probably the reason I never re-read them. Much later I read the final chronicles of Covenant and my lasting memory of that is Donaldson's insistence on using long and sometimes quite obscure words to describe even the simplest of things - it felt to me like he was saying "look how clever I am, I know all these long words." I actually found it quite annoying.

 

[HareBrain]

my lasting memory of that is Donaldson's insistence on using long and sometimes quite obscure words to describe even the simplest of things - it felt to me like he was saying "look how clever I am, I know all these long words." I actually found it quite annoying

The obscure words I could cope with -- it became almost a bit of a joke after a while -- but what drove me near to despair in the third Chronicles was him having each character in a scene give their thoughts on every little thing in exhausting detail. I realised in one book that after two hundred pages the characters had basically just moved one room.

 

[ZlodeyVolk]

Huh. I never could fathom the reasons for which people are so put off by Donaldson's sesquipedalian tendency. I always viewed it as an opportunity to increase my word-hoard.

 

[Danny McG]

Huh. I never could fathom the reasons for which people are so put off by Donaldson's sesquipedalian tendency. I always viewed it as an opportunity to increase my word-hoard.

Yeah, you can learn some fat words as well.