The Runes of the Earth

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “Now she hits herself, Mr. Covenant. She wants the pain for some reason. She needs to hurt herself. I don’t know why. As punishment?” For her role in her ex-husband’s murder? “It certainly looks like she’s punishing herself.

  “And she won’t tolerate a bandage. Her own bleeding seems to comfort her. Like a kind of restitution—It helps her regain a little balance. I tried to think of some way to sustain that. If restitution calmed her, I wanted her to have more of it.

  “Her ring,” the symbol of her marriage, “was the only thing I had that I could restore.”

  At the time, Linden had placed the chain around Joan’s neck with acute trepidation. The language of that gesture could so easily have been misinterpreted; taken as a reminder of guilt rather than as a symbol of love and attachment. However, Joan had lapsed into her comparatively pliant trance as soon as the ring had touched her skin.

  Since then Linden had often feared that she had made a terrible mistake: that it was precisely the reminder of guilt which calmed Joan: that Joan’s catatonia endured because she had been fundamentally defeated by the touch of white gold. Nevertheless Linden did not remove the ring.

  Joan’s present trance was all that kept her alive. She could not have survived her battering desperation much longer.

  Roger nodded as if Linden’s explanation made perfect sense to him. “You did well. Again, I’m impressed.” For the first time since Linden had met him—hardly an hour ago—he seemed satisfied. “I can see why you’re reluctant to let anyone else take care of her.”

  At once, however, he resumed his irrational insistence. “But you’ve done all you can. She won’t get any better than this unless I help her.”

  He raised his hand to forestall Linden’s protest. “There are things you don’t know about her. About this situation. And I can’t explain them. Words won’t—” He paused to rephrase his point. “They can’t be conveyed in words. The knowledge has to be earned. And you haven’t earned it. Not the way I have.

  “Let me show you.”

  She should stop him, Linden thought stupidly. This had gone on too long. Yet she did nothing to intervene as he approached the bed. He had touched a forgotten vulnerability to paralysis deep within her.

  Gracelessly he seated himself as close to his mother as the bed rail permitted. A touch of excitement flushed his cheeks. His respiration quickened. His hands trembled slightly as he undid the restraint on her right wrist.

  Flowers cast splotches of color into Linden’s eyes, deep red and blue, untroubled yellow. A few minutes ago, she had known exactly what kind of flowers they were; now she had no idea. The sky outside the window seemed unattainable, too far away to offer any hope. The sunlight shed no warmth.

  Joan stared past or through Roger vacantly. Linden expected her to strike herself, but she did not. Perhaps the fact that her hand was free had not yet penetrated her subterranean awareness.

  Roger lifted his palms to Joan’s cheeks, cupped them against her slack flesh. His trembling had become unmistakable. He seemed to quiver with eagerness, avid as a deprived lover. Unsteadily he turned her head until he could gaze straight into the absence of her eyes.

  “Mother.” His voice shook. “It’s me. Roger.”

  Linden bit down on her lip. All the air in the room seemed to concentrate around the bed, too thick to breathe. In the bonfire where Joan’s captors had destroyed their right hands, she had seen eyes like fangs look out hungrily at Covenant’s impending murder. At the time, she had believed that they held malice. But now she thought that the emotion in them might have been despair; an emptiness which could not be filled.

  “Mother.”

  Joan blinked several times. Her pupils contracted.

  With an effort that seemed to stretch the skin of her forehead, her eyes came into focus on her son.

  “Roger?” Her disused voice crawled like a wounded thing between her lips. “Is it you?”

  Suddenly stern, he told her, “Of course it’s me. You can see that.”

  Involuntarily Linden recoiled a step. She tasted blood, felt a pain in her lip. Roger sounded disdainful, vexed, as though Joan were a servant who had disappointed him.

  “Oh, Roger.” Tears spilled from Joan’s eyes. Her free hand fumbled to his shoulder, clutched at his neck. “It’s been so long.” Her face held no expression: its muscles lacked the strength to convey what she felt. “I’ve waited so long. It’s been so hard. Make it stop.”

  “Stop complaining.” He scolded her as if she were a child. “It isn’t as bad as all that. I had to wait until I was twenty-one. You know that.”

  How—? Linden panted as if she had been struck in the stomach. How—?

  How had Roger reached Joan?

  How could Joan have known anything?

  “I’ve been good,” Joan responded, pleading. “I have.” Her damaged voice seemed to flinch and cower at his feet. “See?”

  Dropping her arm from his neck, she flung her fist at her bruised temple. Fresh blood smeared her knuckles as she lowered her arm.

  “I’ve been good,” she begged. “Make it stop. I can’t bear it.”

  “Nonsense, Mother,” Roger snorted. “Of course you can bear it. That’s what you do.”

  But then, apparently, he took pity on her, and his manner softened. “It won’t be much longer. I have some things to do. Then I’ll make it stop. We’ll make it stop together.”

  Releasing her cheeks, he rose to his feet, turned toward Linden.

  As soon as he left the bed, Joan began to scream—a frail, rending sound that seemed to rip from her throat like fabric tearing across jagged glass. As if in sympathy, the pulse monitor emitted a shrill call.

  “You see, Dr. Avery?” he remarked through his mother’s cries. “You really have no choice. You have to let her go with me.

  “The sooner you release her, the sooner I can free her from all this.”

  Over my dead body, Linden told his ambiguous smile and his bland eyes. Over my dead body.

  2.

  “Outside,” Linden ordered him aloud. “Now.”

  She was fortunate that he complied at once. If he had resisted, she might have hit him, trying to strike the certainty from his face.

  As soon as she had closed Joan’s door behind her, she wheeled on him. “You knew that would happen.”

  Joan’s screaming echoed in the corridor, reflected by the white tile floor, the unadorned walls. Her monitor carried its alarm to the nurses’ station.

  He shrugged, untouched by Linden’s anger. “I’m her son. She raised me.”

  “That’s no answer,” she retorted.

  Before she could go on, a woman’s voice called out, “Dr. Avery? What’s wrong?”

  A nurse came hurrying along the hall: Amy Clint. Her young, diligent face was wide with surprise and concern.

  Roger Covenant smiled blandly at Amy. “Give her a taste of that blood,” he suggested as though he had the right to say such things. “It’ll quiet her down.”

  Amy stopped. She stared in dismay at Linden.

  “Ms. Clint”—Linden summoned her authority to counteract Amy’s shock—“this is Roger Covenant. He’s Joan’s son. Seeing him has upset her.”

  “She’s never—” For a moment, the nurse fumbled to control her reaction. Then she said, more steadily, “I’ve never heard her scream like that.” Joan’s wailing ached in the air. “What should I do?”

  Linden took a deep breath, mustered her outrage. “Do what he says. Let her taste her blood.” To ease Amy’s consternation, she added, “I’ll explain later.

  “Now,” she insisted when the nurse hesitated.

  “Right away, Doctor.” With distress in her eyes, Amy entered Joan’s room, shut the door.

  At once, Linden confronted Roger again. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  Still smiling as though his mother’s screams had no effect on him, he held up his hand, asking Linden to wait.

  Moments after Amy had entered the
room, Joan suddenly fell silent. The abrupt end of her cries throbbed in the hallway like an aftershock.

  “You see, Dr. Avery?” replied Roger. “I’m really the only one who can take care of her. No one else is qualified.” Before Linden could protest, he added, “I knew what would happen because I’m her son. I know exactly what’s wrong with her. I know how to treat it.

  “You can’t justify keeping her now.”

  “You’re wrong.” Linden kept her voice down. “I can’t justify releasing her. What you just did is unconscionable.”

  “I reached her,” he objected. “That’s more than you can do.”

  “Oh, you reached her, all right,” Linden returned. “That’s pretty damn obvious. It’s the results I object to.”

  Roger frowned uncertainly. “You think she’s better off the way she is.” He appeared genuinely confused by Linden’s reaction.

  “I think—” Linden began, then stopped herself. He was beyond argument. More quietly, she stated, “I think that until you bring me a court order to the contrary, she stays here. End of discussion.

  “The front door”—she pointed along the hall—“is that way.”

  For an instant, anger seemed to flicker in his dissociated eyes. But then he shrugged, and the glimpse vanished.

  “We’ll resolve this later, Dr. Avery,” he said as if he were sure. “There’s just one more thing.

  “Can you tell me what happened to my father’s wedding ring?”

  Without transition, Linden went cold. In the Land, Covenant’s white gold ring was the symbol and instrument of his power. With it, he had wielded wild magic against the Despiser.

  Roger wanted more than a chance to take his mother’s place. He wanted his father’s theurgy as well.

  “I understand he always wore it,” he went on, “but it wasn’t found on his body. I’ve asked Megan Roman and Sheriff Lytton, but they don’t know where it is. It’s mine now. I want it.”

  Old habit caused her to raise her hand to the irrefusable circle of the ring under her blouse. Roger meant to bear white gold to the Land so that he could tear down the Arch of Time, set Lord Foul free. The Despiser had already renewed his assault on the beauty of the Earth, and an ordeal that had nearly destroyed Linden once before was about to begin again—

  No. No. It was impossible. Such things had exhausted their reality for her ten years ago.

  Nevertheless she believed it. Or she believed that Roger Covenant believed it.

  And if he believed it—

  He smiled his vacant smile at her.

  —then she could not afford to let him know that she had guessed his intent. If he realized that his plans were endangered, he might do something she would be unable to prevent.

  Already she might have given away too much. He could have seen the ingrained movement of her hand.

  People were going to die—

  A heartbeat later, however, she recovered her courage. “I have it,” she answered. She did not mean to diminish herself with lies. And she would not disavow her loyalty to his father. “I’ve had it ever since he died.”

  Roger nodded. “That’s why Sheriff Lytton didn’t find it.”

  “Your father left it to me,” Linden stated flatly. “I intend to keep it.”

  “It belongs to me,” he countered. “His will left everything to my mother. I inherited it yesterday.”

  She shook her head. “No, you didn’t. It came to me before he died. It isn’t part of his estate.”

  In fact, Covenant had not handed her the ring directly: she had retrieved it when the Despiser had slain him with its argent fire. Nevertheless she considered it hers as much as if he had wedded her with it.

  “I see.” Roger frowned again. “That’s a problem, Dr. Avery. I need it. I can’t take her place without it. Not entirely. And if I don’t take her place, she’ll never be completely free.”

  He seemed unconcerned that he had revealed so much. Perhaps he did not consider Linden discerning enough to understand him.

  “But it’s not my problem,” she said precisely. “We’re done here. Good-bye, Mr. Covenant. The door is—”

  “I know,” he interrupted. “The door is that way.

  “Doctor Avery”—now he sneered her title—“you have no idea what you’re interfering with.” Then he turned and strode away.

  Oh, she had some idea. Despite his power to disturb his mother, he clearly understood nothing about the woman who opposed him. But she could not imagine that she had any advantage over him.

  She could only guess what he might do next.

  Urgently she wanted to know how he had earned his knowledge.

  Her stomach clenched as she reentered Joan’s room to explain the situation as best she could to Amy Clint.

  By the time she returned to her office, her resolve had hardened, taken shape.

  She could not allow herself to be drawn into Roger Covenant’s mad designs, whatever they might be. She had made her life and her commitments here: people whom she had chosen to serve and love were dependent on her. And Joan deserved better than whatever her son might do to her.

  Linden had to stop Roger now, before he carried his intentions any further.

  To do that, she needed to know more about him.

  She also needed help. Joan was not her only responsibility. She had other duties, other loves, which she did not mean to set aside.

  Clearing space on her desk, she pulled the phone toward her and began to make calls.

  First she contacted Bill Coty, the amiable old man who ran what passed for security at County Hospital. He was generally considered a harmless, ineffectual duffer; but Linden thought otherwise. She had often suspected that he might rise to a larger challenge if he ever encountered one. Certainly he had made himself useful during the crisis following Covenant’s death, when the hospital’s resources had been stretched by burn victims, concerned citizens, and hysterical relatives. His characteristic smile twisted with nausea, he had soothed some people and shepherded others while shielding the medical staff from interference. And he could call on half a dozen volunteer security “officers,” burly individuals who would rush to the hospital if they were needed.

  “I know this is going to sound odd,” she told him when he came on the line, “but I think there’s a man in the area who might try to kidnap one of my patients. His name is Roger Covenant.

  “You remember his mother, Joan. He thinks he can take care of her better than we can. And he doesn’t seem to care about legal niceties like custody.”

  “That poor woman.” For a moment, Coty sounded inattentive, distracted by memories. Then, however, he surprised Linden by asking, “How violent do you think this Roger is?”

  Violent—? She had not considered Joan’s son in those terms.

  “I ask, Dr. Avery,” the old man went on, “because I want my guys ready for him. If he’s just going to break a window and try to carry her off, any one of us can stop him. But if he comes armed—” He chuckled humorlessly. “I might ask a couple of my guys to bring guns. I’m sure you know we aren’t bonded for firearms. But I don’t want a repeat of what happened ten years ago.”

  Linden scrambled to adjust her assessment of Roger Covenant. “I’m not sure what to tell you, Mr. Coty. I just met him this morning. I don’t think he’s in his right mind. But nothing about him seemed violent,” apart from his emotional brutality toward his mother. “Guns might be an overreaction.”

  Could she be wrong about Roger’s intentions? Was she inventing the danger? That was possible. If so, he hardly deserved to be shot for his dysfunction.

  “Whatever you say, Doctor.” Bill’s tone suggested no disappointment. Apparently he did not fancy himself—or his volunteers—as gunslingers. “We’ll start to keep an eye on her room tonight. Unless he’s stupid, he won’t try anything during the day. I’ll make sure one of my guys is on duty all night.”

  Grateful as much for his lack of skepticism as for his willingness to help, Linden tha
nked him and hung up.

  Could she leave the matter in his hands? she asked herself. Did she need to do more?

  Yes, she did. Joan was not Roger’s only potential victim. If something happened to Linden herself, Jeremiah would be lost. He was entirely dependent on her.

  The simple thought of him made her glance out the window at her car. She felt a sudden yearning to forget Joan and go to him; make sure that he was all right—

  Sandy would have called if he were not.

  Roger did not know he existed.

  Her hands trembled slightly as she dialed Megan Roman’s number.

  Megan had been Thomas Covenant’s lawyer, and then his estate’s, for more than twenty years. During much of that time, her diligence—as she freely admitted—had been inspired by shame. His leprosy had disturbed her deeply. She had felt toward him a plain, primitive, almost cellular terror; an innominate conviction that his disease was a contagion which would spread through the county as it would through her own flesh, like wildfire.

  But she was a lawyer, a thinking woman, dismayed by her own irrationality. While he had lived, she had waged a running battle with her alarm, continuing to work for him because she was ashamed of herself. And after his death she had become a staunch and vocal advocate for the kind of tolerance and social responsibility which had eluded her during his life. The bloody events that had brought about his murder should not have been allowed to happen. Like Julius Berenford, she had made a personal crusade out of trying to ensure that they never happened again.

  Linden considered Megan Roman one of her few friends. Certainly Megan had always given Linden her assistance unstintingly. After Jeremiah’s maiming by his stricken mother, and his troubled history in the county’s various foster facilities, his adoption had posed a legal tangle that Linden could not have unsnarled for herself.

  While she waited for Megan’s receptionist to put her call through, Linden had time to wonder why Megan had not already contacted her about Roger Covenant. As his father’s executor, she must have been dealing with him for years.

  “Linden.” Megan had a professionally hearty phone manner that Linden disliked. It sounded false to her. “This is an unexpected pleasure. What can I do you out of?”