The Garden of Fear E-Book

Robert E. Howard

• Herausgeber: SAMPI Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 30

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Driven by love and vengeance, Hunwulf crosses treacherous lands, climbs perilous cliffs, and defies death to rescue Gudrun, his beloved, from the clutches of a winged, bat-like man. Deep within the remote Garden of Fear, Hunwulf faces a brutal and primal battle for her freedom. A gripping tale of raw strength, relentless pursuit, and fierce devotion, from the legendary Robert E. Howard.

Leseprobe

The Garden of Fear

Robert E. Howard

SYNOPSIS

Driven by love and vengeance, Hunwulf crosses treacherous lands, climbs perilous cliffs, and defies death to rescue Gudrun, his beloved, from the clutches of a winged, bat-like man. Deep within the remote Garden of Fear, Hunwulf faces a brutal and primal battle for her freedom. A gripping tale of raw strength, relentless pursuit, and fierce devotion, from the legendary Robert E. Howard.

Keywords

Sword and Sorcery, Rescue quest, Old tales

NOTICE

This text is a work in the public domain and reflects the norms, values and perspectives of its time. Some readers may find parts of this content offensive or disturbing, given the evolution in social norms and in our collective understanding of issues of equality, human rights and mutual respect. We ask readers to approach this material with an understanding of the historical era in which it was written, recognizing that it may contain language, ideas or descriptions that are incompatible with today's ethical and moral standards.

Names from foreign languages will be preserved in their original form, with no translation.

The Garden of Fear

Once I was Hunwulf, the Wanderer. I cannot explain my knowledge of this fact by any occult or esoteric means, nor shall I try. A man remembers his past life; I remember my past lives. Just as a normal individual recalls the shapes that were him in childhood, boyhood and youth, so I recall the shapes that have been James Allison in forgotten ages. Why this memory is mine I cannot say, any more than I can explain the myriad other phenomena of nature which daily confront me and every other mortal. But as I lie waiting for death to free me from my long disease, I see with a clear, sure sight the grand panorama of lives that trail out behind me. I see the men who have been me, and I see the beasts that have been me.

For my memory does not end at the coming of Man. How could it, when the beast so shades into Man that there is no clearly divided line to mark the boundaries of bestiality? At this instant I see a dim twilight vista, among the gigantic trees of a primordial forest that never knew the tread of a leather-shod foot. I see a vast, shaggy, shambling bulk that lumbers clumsily yet swiftly, sometimes upright, sometimes on all fours. He delves under rotten logs for grubs and insects, and his small ears twitch continually. He lifts his head and bares yellow fangs. He is primordial, bestial, anthropoid; yet I recognize his kinship with the entity now called James Allison. Kinship? Say rather oneness. I am he; he is I. My flesh is soft and white and hairless; his is dark and tough and shaggy. Yet we were one, and already in his feeble, shadowed brain are beginning to stir and tingle the man-thoughts and the man dreams, crude, chaotic, fleeting, yet the basis for all the high and lofty visions men have dreamed in all the following ages.

Nor does my knowledge cease there. It goes back, back, down immemorial vistas I dare not follow, to abysses too dark and awful for the human mind to plumb. Yet even there I am aware of my identity, my individuality. I tell you the individual is never lost, neither in the black pit from which we once crawled, blind, squalling and noisome, or in that eventual Nirvana in which we shall one day sink--which I have glimpsed afar off, shining as a blue twilight lake among the mountains of the stars.