Lord Foul's Bane Read Online Free PDF

every excuse he might have to go among them.
When he first understood his danger, his immediate reaction was to throw open a window and shout into the winter, “Go ahead! By hell, I don't need you!” But the issue was not simple enough to be blown away by bravado. As winter scattered into an early March spring, he became convinced that he needed to take some kind of action. He was a person, human like any other; he was kept alive by a personal heart. He did not mean to stand by and approve this amputation.
So when his next phone bill came, he gathered his courage, shaved painstakingly, dressed himself in clothes with tough fabrics, laced his feet snugly into sturdy boots, and began the two-mile walk into town to pay his bill in person.
That walk brought him to the door of the Bell Telephone Company with trepidation hanging around his head like a dank cloud. He stood in front of the gilt-lettered door for a time, thinking,

These are the pale deaths . . .
  
and wondering about laughter. Then he collected himself, pulled open the door like the gust of a gale, and stalked up to the girl at the counter as if she had challenged him to single combat.
He put his hands palms down on the counter to steady them. Ferocity sprang across his teeth for an instant. He said, “My name is Thomas Covenant.”
The girl was trimly dressed, and she held her arms crossed under her breasts, supporting them so that they showed to their best advantage. He forced himself to look up at her face. She was staring blankly past him. While he searched her for some tremor of revulsion, she glanced at him and asked, “Yes?”
“I want to pay my bill,” he said, thinking, She doesn't know, she hasn't heard.
“Certainly, sir,” she answered. “What is your number?”
He told her, and she moved languidly into another room to check her files.
The suspense of her absence made his fear pound in his throat. He needed some way to distract himself, occupy his attention. Abruptly, he reached into his pocket and brought out the sheet of paper the boy had given him. You're supposed to read it . He smoothed it out on the counter and looked at it.
The old printing said:

A real man- real in all the ways that we recognize as real- finds himself suddenly abstracted from the world and deposited in a physical situation which could not possibly exist: sounds have aroma, smells have colour and depth, sights have texture, touches have pitch and timbre. There he is informed by a disembodied voice that he has been brought to that place as a champion for his world. He must fight to the death in single combat against a champion from another world. If he is defeated, he will die, and his world- the real world- will be destroyed because it lacks the inner strength to survive.
The man refuses to believe that what he is told is true. He asserts that he is either dreaming or hallucinating, and declines to be put in the false position of fighting to the death where no “real” danger exists. He is implacable in his determination to disbelieve his apparent situation, and does not defend himself when he is attacked by the champion of the other world.
Question : is the man's behaviour courageous or cowardly? 
This is the fundamental question of ethics.

Ethics! Covenant snorted to himself. Who the hell makes these things up?
The next moment, the girl returned with a question in her face. “Thomas Covenant? Of Haven Farm? Sir, a deposit has been made on your account which covers everything for several months. Did you send us a large check recently?”
Covenant staggered inwardly as if he had been struck, then caught himself on the counter, listing to the side like a reefed galleon. Unconsciously he crushed the paper in his fist. He felt light-headed, heard words echoing in his ears: Virtually all societies condemn, denounce, cast out- you cannot hope.
He focused his attention on his cold feet and aching ankles while he fought to keep the violence at