The Runes of the Earth

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Vexed in spite of herself, Linden responded bluntly, “Why didn’t you warn me about Roger Covenant?”

  At once, Megan changed her tone. “Oh, God. What has he done?”

  “You first,” Linden insisted. She needed a moment to absorb Megan’s immediate assumption that Roger had done something. “Why didn’t you warn me?”

  “Well, shit, Linden,” Megan muttered uncomfortably. “Will you believe that it wasn’t any of your business? He’s a client. I’m not supposed to talk about him.”

  “Sure,” Linden conceded. “But that’s not the only reason you didn’t tell me.”

  Clearly Megan distrusted him—

  The lawyer hesitated, then asked, “Will you believe that I just didn’t think of it?”

  “No. That I won’t believe. I’ve known you too long.”

  “Well, shit,” Megan repeated. “What good is having friends if they know you too well to believe you?

  “All right, all right,” she went on as if Linden had objected. “I didn’t tell you because”—she faltered momentarily—“well, because I was trying to spare you. I know, you’re a big girl, you can take care of yourself. But he’s Thomas Covenant’s son, for God’s sake. That means something to you, something I don’t understand.”

  Deliberately Linden bit at her sore lip. That smaller pain steadied her.

  “You don’t talk about it,” Megan said more harshly. “You hardly knew him. You’ve always said you just wanted to help him with Joan. But whenever I ask you about it, you don’t really answer my questions. Instead I get the distinct impression that you had more at stake than you let on. He looms for you somehow. Your whole face changes when his name comes up.

  “I don’t know what his son means to you, but I thought it might be something painful.” Her tone conveyed a brusque shrug. “So I wanted to spare you.

  “Now it’s your turn,” she added before Linden could respond. “ ‘Warn’ you? Why should I need to warn you about anything? What has he done?”

  But Linden was reluctant to describe Roger’s encounter with his mother. She feared hearing the experience put into words.

  “He came to see me an hour ago,” she said slowly. “He thinks I should give him custody of his mother.” Words would make it more real. “And he’s very insistent . . . ,” Linden trailed into uncertainty.

  “Yes?” her friend prompted.

  “Megan, you’re going to think I’ve lost my mind.” She touched Covenant’s ring for courage. “He made me believe that he intends to take her if I don’t let her go.”

  When Lord Foul put forth his power, people died. The beauty of the world was torn apart. He had to be stopped here.

  “Oh, God,” Megan groaned. “Made you believe it how?”

  “I don’t know how to explain it,” Linden admitted. After all these years, she could not now suddenly tell Megan what had happened to her during Covenant’s death. If she did so, she would lose all of her credibility. “Will you believe that he just gave me a bad feeling?

  “I’ve been working with unbalanced people for a long time, and I think I have an instinct for it. He’s off-kilter somehow. And I know for a fact that he didn’t listen to a thing I said.

  “He seems obsessed with the idea of taking care of Joan. Nothing else affects him. As far as he’s concerned, she belongs with him. End of story. I’m afraid there aren’t any ordinary social or legal or even practical considerations that will hold him back.”

  Megan did not reply for a long moment. During the silence, Linden heard a ticking sound like a heartbeat along the phone line. Then it stopped. At last Megan said slowly, “In fact, I do believe you. I have a bad feeling about him myself. And I can’t explain it, either.

  “Do you know—?” She paused, apparently gathering her thoughts. “We started corresponding three years ago. He wrote to me when he turned eighteen. At that point he was still technically a ward of the state—his grandparents never actually adopted him—but the welfare people found it easier to let him start managing his own affairs.

  “He wanted to know everything about his father’s estate. How much money there was, where it came from exactly, how it was invested, what kind of real property was involved. He wanted to make all the arrangements to take possession of the estate the minute he turned twenty-one. He understood that much about the law, at any rate. And he wanted to know everything I could tell him about his father personally. Hell, he even wanted to know about you, even though you hardly knew Thomas Covenant.”

  Linden stifled an impulse to ask Megan what she had told Roger. Instead she looked out the window again. Her car seemed to call to her, insisting that she drive home; that Jeremiah needed her protection.

  “But he never said a word about his mother,” added Megan. “Based on our correspondence and conversations, I would have thought he didn’t know where she was. Or care.”

  He had not discussed Joan with Megan because he had not wanted to forewarn anyone.

  Linden forced herself to turn away from the window. “So what do you know about him? Has he talked about himself at all?”

  “He doesn’t volunteer much,” Megan responded. “But he answers direct questions. You may know some of his background.”

  In fact, Covenant had told Linden a little about Joan’s past; but she did not interrupt Megan to say so. When Joan had divorced Covenant, she had moved back to her hometown to live with her parents. For several years, apparently, she had striven to relieve her shame with conventional forms of exoneration: counseling, psychotherapy. When that approach had left her pain untouched, however, she had turned to religion: religion in more and more extreme forms.

  “According to him,” Megan began, “he doesn’t remember much of his early life. But I got him to tell me a bit about that commune she joined. I guess that was about a year before she came back here.

  “He says the commune called itself the Community of Retribution. Reading between the lines, they sure sound like a bloody-minded group. They didn’t believe in salvation for people who acknowledged their sins and accepted God’s grace. They thought the world was too far gone for that, too corrupt—” Megan muttered a curse under her breath. “It needed violence, bloodshed, sacrifices. Ritual murder to destroy sin.

  “Anyway, that’s how I interpret what he told me. According to him, they spent most of their time praying for revelation. They wanted God to tell them who had to be sacrificed. And how.”

  In protest, Megan demanded, “Where do people like that come from, Linden?”

  Thinking about Lord Foul, Linden replied, “From despair. They’re broken by their own hollowness. It makes them implode.”

  Roger and Joan had studied fanaticism in the same places, from the same sources. But his was of another kind altogether.

  “I suppose you’re right,” Megan conceded. “I don’t really understand it.

  “The way he tells it,” she went on, “he didn’t understand it, either. It didn’t touch him. He was just along for the ride. What was he? Shit, nine years old?”

  She swore again, softly.

  “Then—?” Linden prompted.

  Her voice heavy, Megan said, “After the better part of a year watching hysterics work themselves into a lather, Joan took Roger back to her parents and left him there. I guess she’d had her revelation. He never saw her again. And I got the impression that his grandparents never talked about her. He knew she was still alive. That’s all.

  “I asked him if he had trouble adjusting to a normal life after all that. You know—middle school, ordinary teachers and classmates, clothes, homework, girls. Hell, he’d just spent a year helping the Community of Retribution pick its victims. But he said it was easy.” Sourly Megan concluded, “He said—this is a direct quote—‘I was just passing the time.’ ”

  “Until what?” asked Linden.

  “That’s what I wanted to know. If you believe what he says about himself, the only thing he’s actually done since Joan abandoned him is wait for his t
wenty-first birthday. So he could inherit his father’s estate. That’s it.

  “Why it matters to him, I have no idea.” Megan’s tone conveyed her bafflement. “Or what he wants to do with it. He has nothing to say on the subject. He doesn’t seem to understand the question.”

  Linden probed at her sore lip with the tip of one finger. It was no accident that she had become Joan’s keeper, caretaker. With every nerve of her body and beat of her heart, she knew how Joan felt. She, too, had been paralyzed by evil; left effectively comatose by the knowledge of her own frailty. Like Joan, she knew what it meant to have her mind erased—

  But somehow Roger had made his mother look at him.

  Still groping for comprehension, Linden said, “I assume he graduated high school. What’s he been doing since then?”

  “Shit, Linden,” Megan growled. “It’s easier to get him to talk about the commune. But I pushed him pretty hard. He says he took some classes at the local community college. Pre-med, apparently. Biology, anatomy, chemistry, things like that.

  “And,” she added in disgust, “he worked in a butcher shop. Thomas Covenant was one of the most remarkable men I’ve ever known, not to mention a hell of a writer, and his son worked in a butcher shop. ‘Just passing the time’ until he could live off his father’s accomplishments.

  “You make sense out of it,” she finished. “I can’t.”

  He wanted to take his mother’s place. And his father’s.

  “That isn’t much help,” Linden said distantly.

  “I know,” Megan sighed. “But it’s all I’ve got.”

  As steadily as she could, Linden replied, “If you can believe it, he says he’s been waiting all this time for Covenant’s estate so that he’ll have money and a place to live while he takes care of Joan. He’s obsessed with the idea. It may be the only thing he thinks about. He believes he can reach her.”

  Abruptly she leaned forward against the edge of her desk. “Megan, he has to be stopped.” An urgency which she could not control crept into her voice. “I’m absolutely sure about that. There’s something about him that scares me. I think he’s dangerous. With his background—” She shuddered. “We all know perfectly decent people who’ve been through worse. But this place,” Berenford Memorial, “has plenty of patients who haven’t been through as much. What only bends one person breaks another. And I think he’s broken.”

  Unwilling to say more, she repeated inadequately, “He has to be stopped.”

  At once, Megan’s manner became crisper, more businesslike. “You say dangerous. Can you give me anything more concrete than that? Anything I can take to a judge? I can’t get a restraining order unless I have something solid to go on.”

  In response Linden wanted to shout, Tell the judge people are going to die! But she controlled herself. “I don’t suppose you could just ask him to trust my instincts?”

  “Actually, I could,” Megan answered. “In this county, anyway. You have a fair amount of credibility.” Then she reconsidered. “But even a judge who thinks you hung the moon will want some kind of evidence. He might give us a restraining order for a few days on your say-so, but that’s all. If we don’t offer him real evidence before it expires, we’ll never get another one.”

  Linden sighed to herself. “I understand.”

  Again she considered dropping the problem, washing her hands of it. She could leave work right this minute, if she chose. No one would question her. God knew she was entitled to a little time off every once in a while. And Joan’s claim on her did not run as deep as Jeremiah’s.

  He was her adopted son: he filled her heart. Nothing could replace him. Indeed, his irreducible need for her only made him more essential to her. Simply remembering the way his hair smelled after she washed it for him could bring tears to her eyes.

  Anything that threatened her endangered him profoundly. Any attack on her would find him in the line of fire: at risk because she loved him, and he was dependent on her.

  He had already been damaged enough.

  But she also belonged here. All of her patients had already been damaged enough. And Joan did not deserve what Roger intended for her.

  Quietly Linden asked Megan, “Can you think of anything else?”

  Megan hesitated. “Well,” she said uncertainly, “you could call Lytton—”

  Linden had already thought of that. “He’s next on my list.” Barton Lytton had been county sheriff for nearly three decades. If anyone had the knowledge and experience to stop Roger Covenant, surely he did?

  “Be careful with him, Linden,” Megan cautioned. “He isn’t what we might call a fan of yours. As far as he’s concerned, Berenford Memorial is just a liberal ruse to keep crooks out of jail. From his point of view, that practically makes you an accessory.”

  “I know.” Linden was familiar with Lytton’s attitude. However, she hoped that he might feel otherwise about Joan. How could he not? Beyond question he had played a part in her condition. For the sake of his self-regard, if for no other reason, he might be willing to protect her now.

  “Call me after you talk to him.” Megan’s voice held an undercurrent of anxiety. “I want to know what he says.”

  “I will.” Now Linden was in a hurry to get off the phone. Her urgency had shifted its focus. She needed to get in touch with Sandy.

  She was about to thank Megan and hang up when a new concern occurred to her: a possibility like a touch of foresight. Quickly she added, “Call my pager if you need to reach me.”

  Roger might call Megan, trying to enlist her aid—

  “I will,” replied Megan. “I always do.”

  Finally they hung up.

  Staring blindly around her office, Linden looked for some way to contain her primitive alarm. She had made it clear to Roger that he could only obtain his father’s ring by theft or violence. He did not know that Jeremiah existed. Nevertheless she understood obsession well enough to be sure that her own claim on the ring meant nothing to Roger. Inadvertently she had placed her son in peril.

  A butcher shop—?

  Instead of calling Sheriff Lytton, she dialed her home number. Helpless to do otherwise, she counted the rings while she waited for Sandy Eastwall to pick up the phone.

  Sandy answered after the third. “This is Sandy.”

  Brusque with concern, Linden asked, “Is Jeremiah all right?”

  “Sure he is.” Sandy sounded worried, troubled by Linden’s manner. “Why wouldn’t he be?”

  Linden could not explain. “Has anything happened this morning? Anything out of the ordinary? Phone calls? Someone at the door?”

  “Nothing important,” Sandy replied defensively. “Sam called. He wants to know if Jeremiah can come Tuesday instead of Monday next week. I was going to give you the message when you got home.”

  Linden wished to soothe Sandy, but other considerations impelled her. “And Jeremiah?” she insisted.

  “Sure,” said Sandy again. “He’s fine. Why wouldn’t he be? I’ve done everything—”

  “I’m sorry,” Linden put in hastily. “I didn’t mean that. Of course you haven’t done anything.” In fact, Sandy’s unquestioning regard for Jeremiah, like her cheerful attendance to his needs, was precious to Linden. “I trust you. I’ve just been worried about him this morning for some reason.” Trying to account for herself in terms that would make sense to Sandy, she said, “You know those feelings you get sometimes? Out of the blue, you suddenly think that something bad has happened to someone you care about?”

  “And they’re almost always wrong.” Sandy’s tone conveyed a mollified smile. “But that doesn’t make you feel any better. I know what you mean.

  “I’ll be especially careful today,” she assured Linden. “Just in case.”

  For a moment, Linden hesitated on the verge of telling Sandy about Roger. She wanted Sandy to understand her fears. But Sandy was easily frightened; and Jeremiah would not be better off if she panicked.

  “Thanks, Sandy,” Linden said
instead. “I appreciate it.”

  Abruptly she stopped, caught by the same anxiety which had urged her to insist that Megan page her. Without transition, she asked, “Is there any chance you could be on call tonight? We have a situation here that might need me.”

  If Bill Coty’s men caught Roger lurking around the hospital—

  “Sure.” The request was routine between them. Sandy often stayed with Jeremiah when Linden was needed at night. “I don’t have any other plans.”

  Occasionally Sandy went out with Sam Diadem’s son; but she always gave Linden plenty of warning when she would not be available.

  Mustering gratitude to counteract her apprehension, Linden thanked Sandy again and put down the phone.

  Thomas Covenant had watched over his ex-wife with all of his considerable strength and intransigence, but he had not been able to prevent her abduction. If Roger had designs on Covenant’s ring, Linden hardly trusted herself to stop him. Sandy would pose no obstacle at all. And Jeremiah might be hurt in the struggle.

  Grimly determined now to organize every possible resource, she put in a call to Sheriff Lytton.

  Unfortunately Barton Lytton was “unavailable.” Linden was promised that he would call her back. With that she had to be content.

  For the rest of the morning, she struggled to concentrate. She wrote up her rounds; returned phone calls; read or reread a sheaf of advisory faxes on how to treat some of her patients; signed requisitions for medications and supplies. Studiously she did not look out at her car.

  When the pressure to do something, anything, about her gravid fears became too severe to be pushed aside, she went to check on Joan. But she found no relief there.

  Over lunch, she pumped Maxine shamelessly for gossip, hoping that some rumor of Roger’s actions or intentions had plucked a thread in Maxine’s vast web of friends. Uncharacteristically, however, Maxine knew less than she did herself. In a town as small as this one, it was difficult for anyone to visit a lawyer—or wander onto a long-abandoned property—without being noticed; remarked upon. Yet somehow Roger Covenant had escaped comment.