The Runes of the Earth

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  After what she had suffered—

  “She asked me why,” he went on. “She was fucking hysterical about it. So I told her.”

  Linden stared at him. His gaze held a throng of conflicts. Her pager signaled again; but now she could not force herself to glance away from him.

  “Told her—?” she asked weakly.

  “The truth, Dr. Avery.” His tone was thick with disgust. “Her ex was a fucking leper. And she was married to him before she knew he had it. She probably had it herself. Hell, she probably still does. If nothing else, she’s a damn carrier.

  “I made her ride in back because I didn’t want to be infected.”

  Linden heard him clearly. He was trying to sound justified. But he failed. The plain cruelty of his actions defeated him.

  Before she could react, he leaned over her desk again. “That upsets you, doesn’t it, Doctor. You don’t think I should have been so mean to her.

  “Well, fuck you. We should have talked about your complicity in that murder ten years ago. You’re an accessory too, but the sainted Julius Berenford protected you. The two of you hid the truth. I’m the sheriff of this county, and you didn’t let me do my job.

  “Now you’re at it again. But this time you won’t get away with it. I’ll find them without you. And when I do, I’m going to make damn sure you get your share of the blame.”

  Then he stood up and wheeled out of her office. Before he reached the lobby, he started shouting orders at his deputies.

  Linden swore to herself. She could have told him where to look for Roger. She should have. But she did not trust him. He was too eager for violence. His solution to Joan’s dilemma might leave no one alive.

  Her pager beeped again, insisting on her attention. Reluctantly she looked down at its display.

  For a moment, she did not recognize the number. She stared at it, frowning, while she pushed the button to make the pager stop chirping.

  Who—?

  Then she had it: Megan Roman. That was Megan’s home phone number.

  She groaned under her breath. She did not feel equal to the challenge of telling Megan about Bill and Joan and Sara.

  But what else did she propose to do, now that she had driven Barton Lytton away? Go after Roger on her own? No. She would not risk her life—risk abandoning Jeremiah—in that way. And it was possible that Megan would be able to help—

  She might know someone in the State Highway Patrol. Or, better yet, the FBI. Kidnapping was a federal crime, was it not? Megan might be able to have Joan’s plight, and Sara’s, taken out of Lytton’s hands.

  Swallowing her reluctance, Linden reached for her phone and dialed Megan’s number.

  The lawyer picked up almost instantly. “Yes?”

  “Megan, it’s Linden.”

  “Linden,” Megan cried at once, “where are you?”

  Her urgency seemed to knock Linden back in her seat. She heard crises in Megan’s voice; dangers she had not imagined. Quickly she asked, “Megan, what’s wrong?”

  “Damn it, Linden!” Megan yelled back. “Listen to me. Where are you? At the hospital?”

  “Yes, I—” Linden began, floundering.

  “Then go home!” Megan demanded. “Right now! No matter what you’re doing. Listen! I heard what happened. Roger and Joan. Sara Clint. Bill Coty.

  “I’ve—” Abruptly she faltered, fell silent. Dead air filled the phone like keening.

  “Megan?” Linden urged her friend. “Megan?”

  “Oh, Linden.” Without transition, Megan’s voice changed. Now she sounded like she was in tears. “I’ve made a horrible mistake.

  “I mentioned Jeremiah to Roger. A few days ago. He was asking questions about you. I told him you have a son.”

  Somewhere in the background of herself, Linden started screaming.

  5.

  The Cost of Love and Despair

  She saw everything with a terrible clarity. The edge of her desk looked sharp enough to draw blood. Across its surface, sheets of paper in confusion whetted each other to the incisiveness of anguish. The clock hanging on the wall above her seemed to jut outward, its hands as stark as cries. In her grasp, the black plastic of the phone’s receiver looked desperate and fatal. Its cord coiled about itself, binding her to Megan’s voice.

  She had lost her chance to flee with Jeremiah. It would never come again.

  Her friend was saying, “Linden, I am so sorry.”

  She was saying, “Go home now. Maybe I’m wrong. Don’t take the chance. Don’t let this become any worse than I’ve already made it. No one else needs you the way he does.”

  Linden did not reply. If she had, Megan would not have heard her: she had already dropped the handset. Borne along by screams, she left her office at a run. The skirts of her coat flapped behind her like Furies.

  Stop, she tried to tell herself, go back. Assume he has Jeremiah. Get Lytton’s help. Tell him where to look, make him take you with him, with your help he might find Roger in time.

  But she did not stop running, or turn. The voice of her own sanity could not reach her. She flung aside the staff door, and the wind caught it: she might have cracked the safety glass. But she did not pause to close it. Instead she raced headlong for her car. The wind battered at her; struck tears from her eyes. The heels of her shoes slapped the sidewalk awkwardly, making her stumble. One of them flipped from her foot. She kicked the other away and ran on.

  He is threatening my son!

  How far ahead of her was Roger? Half an hour? An hour?

  Even half an hour was too much.

  As she neared her car, she tugged the keys from her coat pocket. The wind seemed to snatch them out of her fingers: they dropped to the pavement in a buffeted arc through the false illumination from the light poles. Without pausing, she stooped to retrieve them.

  She did not need to unlock her car: she seldom locked it. Gusts and turbulence resisted her momentarily, then tumbled away to let her pull open the door, slide into the driver’s seat.

  As soon as she had closed the door and shut out the wind, she began to quake. Her hands faltered and shook like scraps of paper enclosed with gusts. She could not fix her fingers to the right key. It fumbled from her grasp as she strove to push it into the ignition. Her heart beat interminably while she struggled with it.

  Raging through her teeth, she clutched the keys in her fist and punched the dashboard hard enough to gouge metal into her palm.

  If she failed I would need to take her place.

  Jeremiah needed her. No one else needs you the way he does.

  She thumbed the key into the ignition; cranked the starter. The old engine roared to life like an act of will. Violent as gunfire, she aimed her car out of the parking lot and jammed her foot down on the accelerator.

  Roger did not know this town. He did not know where she lived. Even given directions, he would have to drive slowly, peer through the darkness for street signs and house numbers. And Sara Clint—Joan would not resist him, she was already lost. But Sara would do whatever she could to escape him, frustrate him. He could not make an attempt on Jeremiah unless he controlled her somehow.

  He could not move quickly. If Linden did not reach her house ahead of him, she might catch him while he was there.

  If Sandy had been forewarned—

  The wind or her tires shrieked through a corner. The car lurched on its springs. Again she punched the dashboard. Damn it, she should have called Sandy from her office; or asked Megan to do it for her. She had been too long away from the Land. She had gotten out of the habit of fighting against Despite.

  Three more houses. Two. Then she reached her home.

  Tires squalling, her car slammed to the curb. She made no effort to pull into her driveway, or park sanely; did not turn off the engine. Lightning shrieked overhead, a static discharge rubbed to life by the pressure of the wind. It left a glare across her vision as she shoved out of the car and saw the door of her house gaping open to the night.

 
; Jeremiah—!

  She seemed to rush forward in sheets and tatters, lifted by wind and slapped at the front of her house. The lawn and the steps were nothing to her. She noticed only the door banging on its hinges and the bullet-torn lock; only the ruined castle which littered the entryway.

  Roger had left all of the lights on as if to welcome her home. Of course. How could he have known where to look for Jeremiah? He must have held Sandy at gunpoint while he searched from room to room. Or else he had killed—

  Fearing more blood, Linden scanned the Tinkertoys quickly, the living room carpet, the hallway to the kitchen. But she saw nothing to suggest that he had harmed Sandy.

  He had another use for her life.

  She took the stairs three at a time, surged upward in her fluttering coat and her exposed feet to confirm her worst fears.

  Every light blazed. Roger had been into every room, left no part of her home unviolated. The whole upstairs shone as if she were being welcomed to a wake.

  He had searched—

  Jeremiah’s bed lay empty. Roger Covenant had not touched the racetrack and towers. He had disturbed nothing. He had taken only her son.

  There Linden stopped running.

  Her terror and fury did not let her go. Instead they seemed to drive her into another mode of being, onto a new plane of existence. Between one heartbeat and the next, she ceased to be the Linden Avery who could panic or be paralyzed. In that woman’s place, she became Linden Avery the Chosen, who had transcended Ravers and despair in the name of those she loved.

  She knew what Roger would do. And she had already made all of the choices that would be required of her.

  Deliberately, sure of herself now, she went to her bedroom to change her clothes. She could not go to meet the Despiser barefoot, clad only in her loose coat and the impersonal blouse and skirt she had worn to work.

  That room also Roger had violated. He had swept everything off the top of her bureau and dressing table; emptied her drawers onto the floor; rummaged out the contents of her closet. Cosmetics, earrings, and shampoos complicated the floor of her bathroom.

  He wanted something more than Jeremiah from her.

  He could no longer surprise her: she had already guessed the truth. He had hoped to find his father’s wedding band.

  Now she knew why Roger had taken Jeremiah. It was not simple malice; a desire to hurt her for refusing him—or for opposing the Despiser. Jeremiah had no worth in himself: no power, no ring. And Roger did not need another hostage to protect him from Sheriff Lytton’s outrage. Jeremiah’s only value was to Linden herself.

  Roger wanted him as leverage against her. Either here or in the Land, Roger intended to use her son to extort what he needed from her.

  Would he have claimed Jeremiah if he had found her ring? Perhaps. It was possible that white gold lost its power if it were stolen, or reft by violence. She did not know—or care.

  Steadily, without haste, she stripped off her clothes. As she did so, she found a dull pain throbbing in the palm of her right hand; and her touch left slight smears of blood on her skirt and blouse. When she looked at her hand, she saw crusted blood around a crescent cut into her palm, a small rent of vulnerability. She had cut herself when she had punched the dashboard with her keys in her fist.

  If she failed I would need to take her place.

  From the litter on her floor she selected comfortable jeans, a warm red flannel shirt that Jeremiah had seen her wear many times and might recognize, and a pair of sturdy boots. Soon she was dressed very much as she had been when she had followed Covenant into the night behind Haven Farm in order to rescue Joan.

  Her coat she rejected. It could not protect her from the mounting storm. Without it, she went back downstairs to call 911.

  Speaking precisely, she told the operator to give Sheriff Lytton a message. Roger has taken my son. He has another hostage, Sandy Eastwall. Look for him on Haven Farm.

  Now that she had stopped running, she no longer feared what Lytton might do. He had harmed Joan out of spite, not malice, because Julius Berenford—and Linden herself—had made him feel emasculated after Covenant’s murder. With so many lives at stake, he would act with more restraint. And she needed his help. She was no match for Roger’s gun, or his madness.

  There were other people whom she could have called, Sam Diadem and Ernie Dubroff among them. Megan Roman would have begged for a chance to make restitution. But Linden was unwilling to risk any more innocents.

  Leaving her house as she had found it, she strode down the steps and across the lawn back to her car.

  The wind seemed to grow stronger by the moment. She had to lean against it in order to walk forward. Stark in the cloudless dark, friction lightning streaked among the treetops. She had never seen a storm like this before: it appeared to rip at the laws of nature, altering realities with every strike. When she gained her car, she was vaguely surprised to find that it still ran; that the street itself had not been torn apart. She half expected the trees to crash and fall under the force of the wind and the lightning.

  Her car shuddered at every blast, as if at any moment it might shiver itself to scrap; yet it brunted stubbornly ahead. A few blocks took her to the main street through the center of town. From end to end, the whole town looked deserted. There were no other cars at the intersections, no vehicles moving anywhere. Every inhabitant of the area had gone to ground like a threatened animal. If Sheriff Lytton or his deputies were abroad, Linden saw no sign of them.

  Alone, she passed the phone company offices, the town’s only department store, the county courthouse. The sheer intensity of the wind seemed to dim the streetlamps, truncate their illumination; but for a moment lightning etched the courthouse out of the crowded night, casting a bright wail across the old columns which upheld the roof. In the harsh white glare, the giant heads atop the columns gaped like ghouls.

  Thomas Covenant had lost his marriage there. He had nearly lost his home.

  And Linden had adopted Jeremiah—

  How far ahead of her was Roger now? How much harm could he inflict before she caught up with him?

  She clung to the steering wheel, forcing the car forward. Sweat stung her gouged palm.

  Abruptly every lamp along the street let out an incandescent blare and went dark. Midnight seemed to tumble out of the sky, filling the town as all the lights failed. Lightning must have hit a transformer somewhere; or a tree had fallen across the power lines. The beams of her headlights appeared to sag to the ground directly in front of her, unable to penetrate the sudden blackness. Reacting on instinct, she stamped at the brakes, and her car slewed to a stop.

  At once, however, she punched the accelerator again, battling the wind for speed. She knew this road: it had few intersections and hardly curved between town and Haven Farm. And Haven Farm itself was only two miles away. Clearly she did not need to worry about traffic. If the mounting gale did not blow her off the road—and if lightning did not strike her—

  Roger was already there: her fears discerned him too vividly for her to believe otherwise. She seemed to see him through her windshield, his bland unction whetted to eagerness, his teeth bared. He had reached the farmhouse. He was inside. With one hand, he dragged Jeremiah along: the other brandished his gun. In her imagination, terror flashed from Jeremiah’s eyes, and his slack mouth quivered on the verge of wailing.

  She could not see Sara or Sandy; could not guess what Roger would do without electricity. Perhaps his madness had grown so lucid that he did not need light—

  Gusts kicked the car hard, and its front wheels seemed to lift from the road. Lightning brought the pavement to life, then snatched it away into darkness. Fighting for control, Linden shoved down on the gas and went faster. She was afraid that Lytton might reach Haven Farm ahead of her—and afraid that he would not. Roger’s actions would become more extreme as time passed.

  There, on her right: the dirt road that served as Haven Farm’s driveway. A quarter of a mile away beyond open
fields, invisible against the wood which clustered around Righters Creek, stood the small farmhouse where Thomas Covenant had lived. Linden knew it well, although she had not been there for years. In memory she had preserved its rooms. Even now, with Jeremiah in danger and her nerves primed for battle, she could see Covenant’s flagrant eyes as he had striven to prevent her from sharing his peril.

  And there, not twenty yards from the main road, lay the spot on which she had swallowed nausea and fear in order to save the life of the old man in the ochre robe—

  —who had told her to Be true—

  —and who should have by God warned her that Jeremiah’s life was at risk.

  Wheels skidding in the dirt, she drove toward the house through winds that gathered a tornado’s force.

  Then the scant reach of her headlights found one wall of the farmhouse. It had once been white, but over the years neglect had peeled the paint away to grey wood, and a few of the boards had sprung from their frame. No light showed in the windows: apparently the power failure covered this whole section of the county. Otherwise, she felt sure, Roger would have left every lamp lit here as he had in her home, welcoming her to his handiwork.

  In a spray of dirt that disappeared instantly along the wind, Linden stopped.

  Beside the house stood a dark sedan: Roger’s car. He had closed the doors, but left the trunk open. Its interior light gave off a faint glow that seemed to efface the rest of the vehicle, so that only the trunk retained any reality in this world.

  Only the trunk and whatever Roger had transported in it—

  For a moment, she thought that he must have carried Jeremiah there; and she nearly burst raging from her car. But, no, Roger would not have done that, for the simple reason that there was no need. Like Joan, Jeremiah would have caused him no trouble, put up no resistance. Regardless of what happened, her son would have remained rocking wherever he was put, passive and doomed.

  Roger must have used the trunk to contain Sara or Sandy. Or both—

  Linden saw no other cars. Either the sheriff had not received her message in time, or he had elected to ignore it.