96 Days to Opening Day 2008

Opening Day 2008 for the Timber Rattlers is April 3. That is 96 days from today. This off-season, the countdown will be based on books. Each day between now and Opening Day 2008, I will pick a random book out of my library and excerpt a passage off the page number corresponding with the number of days remaining to the first pitch of the new season. I will try not to repeat a book during the countdown.

Today’s excerpt is from The Power that Preserves by Stephen R. Donaldson. This is book three in the first Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. Covenant has just been summoned to the Land by someone he thinks would like him dead.

He was on Kevin’s Watch again, standing atop a stone shaft which joined that cliff-face somewhere out of sight below him.

For a moment, he was too surprised to be dizzy. He had not expected this; he had expected to be recalled to Revelstone. Who in the Land beside the Lords had the power to summon him? When he known Triock, the man had been a Cattleherd, not a wielder of lore. Who but the despiser could make such a summons possible?

Then the sight of the long fall caught up with him, and vertigo took the last strength from his legs. Without the hands which held him, he would have toppled over the parapet.

“Steady, my fried,” Triock’s companion said reassuringly. “I will not release you. I have not forgotten your dislike of heights.” He turned Covenant away from the wall, supporting him easily.

Covenant’s head rolled loosely on his neck, but when the Watch stopped reeling around him, he forced himself to look toward Triock. “How?” he mumbled thickly. “Who – where did you get the power?”

Triock’s lips bent in a hard smile. To his companion he said, “Did I not say that he would understand retribution? He believes that even now I would break my Oath to him.” Then he directed the bitterness of his mouth at Covenant. “Unbeliever, you have earned retribution. The loss of High Lord Elena has caused –“

“Peace, my friend,” the other man said. “He has pain enough for the present. Tell him no sad stories now.”

Put today’s excerpt in a baseball context.