The Runes of the Earth: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - Book One

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Afterward Linden tackled more of her procedural duties. But she cancelled her sessions with her patients, as well as her remaining appointments. The thought that Sheriff Lytton might ignore her vexed her too much for such responsibilities.

  To her surprise and relief, however, he did call her back. As soon as she picked up the handset, he said, “Dr. Avery?” He spoke in a good-ol’-boy drawl, perhaps for her benefit. “You wanted to talk to me?”

  “Thanks for returning my call, Sheriff.” Now that she had her chance, Linden felt flustered, unsure of herself. He was decidedly not a “fan” of hers. Somehow she would have to persuade him to take her seriously.

  “We have a situation here that worries me,” she began unsteadily. “I hope you’ll be willing to help me with it.” Taking a deep breath, she said, “I believe you’ve spoken to Roger Covenant?”

  “Sure have,” he replied without hesitation. “He came to see me yesterday. Pleasant young man. Son of that writer, the leper who lived on Haven Farm.” He stressed the word leper trenchantly.

  “He came to see you?” Her voice broke. She had assumed that Roger had phoned Lytton. Had he known that she would call the sheriff? That he would need to forestall her?

  “Sure. He’s new in town,” Lytton explained, “but he’s going to be here from now on. He says he’ll be living on Haven Farm. Seems he inherited the place. It’s been abandoned so long, he didn’t want me to think he’s some vagrant squatting where he doesn’t belong.

  “Like I say, he’s a pleasant guy.”

  Pleasant, Linden thought. And plausible when it suited him, that was obvious. No doubt to Lytton his explanation sounded perfectly reasonable.

  Her sense of peril mounted, carried by the hard labor of her heart.

  But she did not quail. Medicine had trained her for emergencies. And she was Linden Avery the Chosen, who had stood with Thomas Covenant against the Land’s doom. Men like Sheriff Lytton—and Roger Covenant—could not intimidate her.

  As if she were merely making conversation, she asked, “What did you tell him?”

  Lytton laughed harshly. “I told him to burn it to the ground, Doctor. That leprosy shit isn’t something he should mess around with. His mother did him a favor when she moved out of that house.”

  A flash of anger pushed away Linden’s fear; but she kept her ire to herself. Calm now, settled and cold in her determination, she continued, “Did he happen to say why he wants to live there? Did he explain why he came back?”

  “No, he didn’t. And I didn’t ask. If he wants to live in the house where he was born, it’s none of my business. I told him what I think of the idea. We didn’t have anything else to talk about.”

  “I see.” For a heartbeat or two, Linden hesitated, unsure of her ground. But then she informed Lytton, “I ask because he came to see me this morning. He told me why he’s here.”

  “Do tell,” Barton Lytton drawled.

  “He wants custody of his mother,” she said, praying for credibility. “He wants to take care of her.”

  “Well, good for him,” retorted Lytton. “He’s a dutiful son, I’ll give him that. Too bad you can’t just release her, wouldn’t you say, Doctor?”

  “Not without a court order,” she agreed. “That’s why I called, Sheriff.” Summoning all the force of her conviction, she said plainly, “He made it clear that he doesn’t intend to wait for legal custody. If I don’t release her, he’s going to take her.”

  “Take her?” Lytton sounded incredulous.

  “Kidnap her, Sheriff. Remove her by force.”

  “Don’t make me laugh.” Lytton snorted his scorn. “Take her where? He’s going to live on Haven Farm. He’s probably putting clean sheets on the beds right now.

  “Suppose you’re right. Suppose he sneaks her out of your precious ‘psychiatric hospital’ while Bill Coty is taking one of his permanent naps. Half an hour later, you call me. I send out a deputy, who finds Roger Covenant at home on Haven Farm, spooning Cream of Wheat into his mother’s mouth and wiping her chin when she slobbers. That’s not kidnapping, Doctor. That’s an embarrassment.” The sheriff seemed to enjoy his own sarcasm. “For you more than for him, maybe.

  “Tell me the truth now. Is that really why you called? You’re afraid Roger Covenant might kidnap his own mother? You’ve been working in that place too long. You’re starting to think like your patients.”

  Before Linden could tell him why he was wrong, he hung up.

  3. In Spite of Her

  Damn the man.

  For a while, she stormed mutely at the unresisting walls of her office. Lytton was wrong: Roger Covenant was not a “pleasant young man.” He was dangerous. And Joan was not his only potential victim.

  But her outrage accomplished nothing, protected no one; and after a few minutes she set it aside. The sheriff could not know what his disdain might cost. He had never been summoned to take his chances against despair in a world which baffled his comprehension. He lacked the experience, the background, to react effectively.

  Although she chose to excuse him, however, her anger did not recede. It had settled to a thetic hardness in the center of her chest. Damn him, she repeated, thinking now of Roger rather than the sheriff. His year with the Community of Retribution must have done him such harm—And of course he had been raised for weakness by his grandparents as well as by his mother.

  Why in God’s name did he want Covenant’s ring? If he took Joan somehow, he would also gain possession of her wedding band. It, too, was white gold, no doubt essentially indistinguishable from her ex-husband’s. Surely it was white gold itself that mattered, an alloy apt for wild magic, not any specific piece of the metal?

  What difference could it make whose ring Roger wielded when he took Joan’s place?

  Thomas Covenant probably would have known the answer. Linden did not.

  Was it possible that Lytton was right? Had she misread Roger? By any ordinary measure, this explanation made more sense. Anyone except Linden, anyone at all, would have accepted it without question.

  And she had at least one other reason to believe that she was wrong: a reason she had not yet had time to consider.

  Leaving her anger in her office, she went to the staff lavatory to splash cold water on her face and think.

  With the door locked and her cheeks stinging, Linden Avery contemplated her wet features in the mirror over the sink. She was not a woman who studied her appearance often. When she did so, she was occasionally surprised or bemused by what she saw. This time she was taken aback by the alarm that darkened her gaze. She seemed to have aged in the last few hours.

  In some ways, the past decade had marked her noticeably. Oh, her hair retained most of its wheaten luster, trammeled by grey only at the temples. The structural harmony underlying her features made her look handsome, striking, in spite of the years. She had what men called a good figure, with full breasts, slim hips, and no unnecessary weight—a womanliness which had seemed gratuitous to her until she had met and loved Thomas Covenant. The right light gave the ready dampness in her eyes radiance.

  But her once-delicate nose had become prominent, emphasized by curved lines of erosion at the corners of her mouth. That erosion seemed to drag at her features, so that her smiles often looked effortful. And the knot between her brows never lifted: apparently she frowned even in her sleep, troubled by her dreams.

  Nevertheless if she had examined her face yesterday she might have concluded that she wore her age lightly. Her days with Thomas Covenant, and her years with Jeremiah, had taught her things that she had never known about love and joy.

  Now, however, she saw hints of Joan’s mortality in her troubled scrutiny. Roger’s intrusion had brought back more than her memories of struggle and pain in the Land. He made her think as well of her own parents: of her father, who had killed himself in front of her; and of her mother, whose pleading for release had driven Linden to end the suffering woman’s life. Like Joan, if in her own way, Linden had known too
much death, paid too high a price for living.

  If she had been asked to explain why she worked for Berenford Memorial Psychiatric Hospital, instead of practicing some other form of medicine, she would have replied that she was here because she understood her patients. Their damaged spirits were eloquent to her.

  At the moment, however, she had more immediate concerns. Her dilemma, she thought as she watched water drip from her cheeks and jaw, was that she might be wrong about Roger Covenant. Her time with his father gave her at least one reason to doubt herself.

  She had seen no harbinger.

  Before her first encounter with Thomas Covenant, she had found herself unexpectedly striving to save the life of an ochre-clad old man with thin hair and fetid breath. When at last he had responded to her frantic CPR, he had pronounced like a prophet, You will not fail, however he may assail you. There is also love in the world. Then he had disappeared into the strange sunlight on the fringes of Haven Farm.

  Do not fear, he had commanded her. Be true.

  Less than thirty-six hours later, she had fallen to the summons of the Land. At Covenant’s side, she had been assailed and appalled past bearing. But in the end she had not failed.

  And ten years earlier, Thomas Covenant had met the same prophet himself. Walking into town in a desperate and doomed attempt to affirm his common humanity, he had been accosted by an old man with compulsory eyes and an ochre robe who had asked him, Why not destroy yourself? When Covenant had responded to the man’s manifest need by offering up his ring, he was refused.

  Be true, the old man had instructed him. You need not fail.

  Shortly thereafter, Covenant had been drawn to the Land for the first time. His devotion to Lord Foul’s defeat had finally cost him his life. Nevertheless he, too, had not failed.

  So where, Linden had to ask herself, was the old man now?

  If Roger’s intentions threatened the Land in some way, surely that ragged figure must be somewhere nearby? And if he did not appear to forewarn her, surely Roger could not be as dangerous as she feared?

  Deliberately she chose to believe that. Roger might well attempt to take his mother. But as long as the old man did not accost Linden, the Land was safe—and neither she nor Jeremiah were truly at risk.

  Pulling a couple of paper towels from their dispenser by the sink, she dried her face and hands. Then she returned to her office to call Megan again, as she had promised.

  When she had done that, she warned her staff to call Security as well as her if Roger put in another appearance. But she could think of no other precautions to take.

  If the old man appeared, she would have to choose between the Land and Jeremiah. She could not challenge Lord Foul in the Land’s defense without abandoning her son; and that she would not do. No matter how many people died, or how much beauty was destroyed.

  Driving home after work, she involuntarily scrutinized every face she saw, every figure she passed. Anxiety daubed her peripheral vision with ochre, added years and desuetude to every man whom she failed to recognize. Yet she saw no sign of peril.

  And soon she reached her home: a small two-story wooden-frame house she had bought when she had decided to adopt Jeremiah. Parked in her short driveway, she remained in her car for a few minutes, granting herself that brief opportunity to set aside her concerns in order to concentrate on her son.

  The gratitude that she so often felt when she came home helped settle her attention. She did not have to care for her house herself. A neighbor whose son she had treated after a crumpling car wreck tended the lawn for her. The family of a woman who had been one of her early successes at Berenford Memorial supplied her with maintenance, patching her roof when it leaked, conditioning her heat pump for the changing seasons, repainting her walls every few years. And twice a week an appreciative wife came in to clean, cook, and do laundry: simple thanks for Linden’s attention to her disturbed husband.

  Linden valued the help. It simplified her life enormously. And she was grateful that she lived in a community that honored what she did.

  In addition, her gratitude for Jeremiah was too great to be contained in words. He was the center of her life. He gave her a use for the capacity for love which she had learned from Covenant; from Sunder and Hollian, the First and Pitchwife; and from the Land. His mere presence seemed to validate her. He was like a flower which had bloomed within her, fragile and inestimable. She could not have removed it, or turned away, without tearing herself open. The fact that its petals had been crushed in the Despiser’s fist, and had never regained their natural shape and scent, only caused her to cherish him more. As long as he remained to her, she would never entirely lose heart.

  Thomas Covenant had told her that some decisions could not serve evil, no matter how severely they appeared to harm the Land. When he had been summoned to Revelstone’s last defense, he had refused to comply: not because he had no love for the Land, but rather because a little girl in his present world had been bitten by a rattlesnake and needed his help. That refusal had delayed his arrival in the Land by many days. And during those terrible days many of the Land’s most valiant champions had fallen. Yet the conditions of the delay had enabled him to challenge Lord Foul in ways which might never have been possible otherwise. In the end, Covenant’s rejection of the Land for the sake of a little girl had provided for the Despiser’s defeat.

  Fervently Linden prayed that Covenant’s promise would hold true for her as well.

  With that, she left her car, climbed the steps to the front porch, and let herself into her home.

  The door admitted her to Jeremiah’s domain; and at once she had to duck her head. During her absence, the short hallway which joined the living room on one side, the dining room on the other, and the stairway to the second floor had been transformed into the site of a high, ramified castle of Tinkertoys.

  Turrets of wooden rods and circular connectors rose above her on both sides. If she had not ducked, she would have struck her head on the flying rampart stretched between them. Other ramparts linked the turrets to a central keep: more turrets proliferated beyond it. The whole edifice was at once enormously elaborate, thick with details like balconies and bartizans, and perfectly symmetrical, balanced in all its parts. Its strangeness in her entryway, a pedestrian place intended for the most ordinary use, gave it an eldritch quality, almost an evanescence, as though some faery castle had been half translated from its own magical realm, and could be discerned by its outlines in slim rods and wheels like a glimpse into another dimension of being. Seen by moonlight, blurred and indistinct, it would have seemed the stuff of dreams.

  As perhaps it was. Jeremiah’s dreams—like his mind itself—lay beyond her reach. Only such castles and his other constructs gave her any hint of the visions which filled his head, defined his secret life.

  “Sandy?” she called. “Jeremiah? I’m home.”

  “Hi,” Sandy answered. “We’re in the living room.

  “Jeremiah,” she added, “your mother’s home.”

  One of the things that Linden appreciated most about Sandy was that she consistently treated Jeremiah as if he were paying attention.

  Smiling, Linden worked her way between the turrets to the living room.

  Sandy put down her knitting as Linden entered. “Hi,” she said again. “We were going to put the Legos away, but I wanted you to see what he made.” She gestured around the room, pleased by what her charge had accomplished.

  Linden was accustomed to Jeremiah’s projects. Nevertheless this time she stopped and stared, stricken with shock. At first she could not grasp the import of what she saw.

  Sandy sat in an armchair in one corner of the room. Opposite her, Jeremiah knelt on the floor as he usually did when he was not busy, feet splayed out on either side of him, arms across his stomach with both hands folded under them, gently rocking.

  And between them—

  From the floor up onto an ottoman in the middle of the rug, he had built a mountain of interlockin
g Legos. Despite the stubbornly rectangular shape of the Legos, and their uncompromising primary colors, his construct was unmistakably a mountain, ragged ravines cut into its sides and foothills, bluffs bulging. Yet it also resembled a titan kneeling at the edge of the ottoman with its elbows braced on the ottoman’s surface and its crown raised defiantly to the sky. A canyon widened between its legs as its calves receded into the floor. The whole structure stood almost to the level of Linden’s shoulders.

  The mountain or titan faced the sofa; and there Jeremiah had been at work as well. He had adjusted one of the seat cushions so that its corner jutted outward; and out onto the floor from that corner as from a promontory he had devised another castle. However, this one was entirely unlike his towering, airy construct in the entryway. Instead it resembled a wedge like an extension of the cushion’s corner—a wedge which had been hollowed out rather than built up for habitation. Its high walls were marked with tiny windows, clever ramparts, and delicate battlements, so lifelike in spite of the materials from which they had been formed that they might have been limned from memory. And at the tip of the wedge stood a sturdy watchtower, nearly half the height of the wedge itself, connected to the main castle by a walled, open courtyard. In the base of the tower, and again in the base of the high keep, he had built entrances like tunnels, guarded by gates that closed like teeth.

  “Jeremiah,” Linden gasped involuntarily, “oh, Jeremiah,” while all her fears rebounded through her, and her heart labored in her throat as if she might choke.

  She had seen such shapes before. She recognized them, even though they had been constructed of bright plastic, all flat sides and right angles. The resemblance was too exact for confusion. The mountain was Mount Thunder, ancient Gravin Threndor, its bowels full of Wightwarrens and buried evil. And the castle was Revelstone beyond question, Lord’s Keep, delved from the gutrock of its mountain promontory by Giants millennia before she had known it during her time with Thomas Covenant.