The Runes of the Earth

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “Jeremiah!” she called like an echo of the storm. “I’m here! I won’t let him hurt you!”

  At once she plunged down the hillside, heedless of the dark.

  Again lightning hit the night. Stone and sparks seemed to reel toward her as she rushed downward. In the flash, she saw fresh blood stream from Joan’s right temple. Joan had smeared the blood into her mouth. Without that lunatic strength, she would surely have collapsed.

  “My dear Doctor,” Roger answered, “I have a gun. I don’t see how you can stop me.”

  Linden heard no strain in his voice, no effort to outshout the wind. Nevertheless his words reached her as though he had spoken them directly into her heart.

  She jerked to a stop half a dozen paces from him. Her flashlight reached the plane of rock now, found four dim shapes poised in the dark. Its beam seemed to concentrate of its own volition on the black weight of Roger’s gun.

  “Linden!” Sandy gasped, “Oh, my God, he killed Mrs. Clint, back in the house, he cut her apart—”

  With a negligent flick of his wrist, Roger swung the gun against Sandy’s head. She sagged to the side; nearly fell.

  “You don’t talk now,” he informed her, smiling through another wrench of lightning that seemed to endure for a heartbeat too long. “This is between me and the good doctor. You don’t have anything more to say.”

  Wind shoved at Linden’s back, urged her forward. She held her ground. She wanted to spring at Roger and tear the smile from his face; but she understood the danger too well. He needed nothing from Sandy now except her blood. He could pull the trigger at any moment, any provocation, to supply his desires.

  With an effort, Linden turned her flashlight away from the gun and Sandy’s stricken face toward her son.

  More lightning rent the night. The blasts were growing more frequent, fiercer; accumulating toward a convulsion which would crack the boundary between realities. In silver fire, she saw Jeremiah gaze blindly through her, his sight and his mind imprisoned. Horses reared uselessly across the blue flannel of his pajamas. If Roger’s grip on his wrist caused him any pain, he did not show it.

  He still held his free arm across his stomach, the hand closed into a fist. Lightning and the wan touch of Linden’s torch caught a brief flare of red from his fist: the artificial red of bright paint, as raw as a cry.

  The next furious flash showed her clearly that he gripped one of his racing cars in his tight fingers. He must have picked it up from his bureau as Roger dragged him away.

  Forgotten screaming rose in her. When he had been captured, her mute, blank, helpless son had reached out—

  On some level, he must have understood his danger.

  At any other time, she would have wept at the sight; but now she had no tears. The moisture which the wind and her whipped hair drew from her eyes was only water, not weeping.

  “You bastard!” she yelled at Roger through the gale. “What do you want?”

  She knew what he wanted.

  He gazed at her. “Don’t embarrass yourself, Doctor.” His voice reached her effortlessly. “You already know.”

  At his back, Joan made sounds that might have been pleading; but Linden could not identify words through the wind’s roar and the sizzling ire of the lightning.

  “Linden,” Sandy panted, “get help. He has a gun. He’ll kill you, he’s going to kill all of us. You can’t—”

  “Yes!” Linden shouted at Roger to forestall another blow. “I know! I have it.” It hung on its chain against her chest. “But I don’t understand.”

  “That’s right. You don’t.”

  He struck again, despite Linden’s attempt to distract him. This time, Sandy slumped to the stone and lay still. Respiration stirred her chest slightly. Blood oozed through the hair on the side of her head.

  Nothing touched Roger’s bland smile.

  A bolt of lightning struck the ground scarcely twenty feet from the plane of rock. It burned in the air, impossibly prolonged, for two heartbeats; three. Static flashed along Linden’s skin as if she were about to burst into flame.

  In the hot core of the blast, she saw two curved yellow marks that might have been fangs. Or eyes.

  Then darkness slapped the light away. Her flashlight revealed nothing. Until her eyes adjusted, she could not see.

  The wind might have been the voice of her own cries.

  When the lightning came again, it had receded from the stone as if to make room for Roger’s madness. It struck now with horrific frequency, pounded into the hollow at quick, erratic intervals, first on one side, then on the other, behind her, off to her left. Each blast clung to the ground for two or three seconds, sealing off the bottom of the hollow from the rest of the woods; interdicting help. The trapped space between the bolts swarmed with static. Linden’s hair seemed to crackle about her head. Roger, Jeremiah, and Joan were wrapped in a penumbra of potential fire.

  If a bolt hit the trees, these woods might burn like Covenant’s home—

  “You said,” Linden shouted at Roger, “you know things I don’t.” Each word wore an aura of electricity. “You said I haven’t earned the knowledge. But you don’t know anything about me.

  “How did you earn it?”

  She did not care how he answered. She wanted only to make him talk. Distract him. Encourage him to drop his guard.

  He may have believed that her right hand shook with fear; but it did not. Rather it trembled at the severity of her restraint. Every nerve in her arm burned to swing the flashlight into his face, hit him and hit him until she had destroyed his false image of his father. But his gun still threatened Sandy. Linden could not risk attacking him until he gave her an opening.

  Had she seen eyes in that one long discharge? When he had split open Sandy’s scalp, spilled her blood?

  “By being her son,” he replied without a glance at Joan. “And Thomas Covenant’s. My parents were a leper and a victim. Really, Doctor. You could at least try to imagine who I am.”

  Linden did not need to imagine it. She saw him clearly, revealed by the harsh silver stutter of lightning.

  “So what?” she shouted back. “My father killed himself in front of me. My mother begged me to put her out of her misery. I know what having damaged parents is like. As far as I can tell, the only thing you’ve earned is the right to not do this!”

  Roger shook his head. Joan’s thin fingers plucked weakly at his shoulders, beseeching him. Her touch left faint streaks of blood on his shirt.

  “It’s too late,” he told Linden. “You’re already lost. You should be able to see that.

  “Your hand is bleeding, Doctor.” His tone betrayed a hint of eagerness. “Why do you suppose that is?”

  She gaped at him, momentarily silenced. How had he—?

  But he gripped her son by the wrist; pointed his gun at Sandy’s head. For their sake, Linden retorted, “Because I cut myself.”

  “No.” Again he shook his head. “It’s because you’re already doomed. You can’t get out of it now.”

  Her blood also was necessary to him.

  Another prolonged shaft of lightning hit and held the ground. For a moment, its brilliance dazzled Linden, cast Roger’s face into shadow. This time from within the heart of the blaze Linden felt rather than saw the hungry yellow reach of fangs. They seemed to strain toward her while the bolt endured.

  Calmly Roger added, “But I like you, Doctor. I like what your parents did to you. I’ll give you a choice.

  “I see you brought your bag.” He nodded at the weight which anchored her against the compulsion of the wind. “I’m sure you have a scalpel in there somewhere.

  “Get it out. Cut off your right hand.”

  He smiled avidly. “Do that, and I’ll let this woman live.” His gun indicated Sandy’s crumpled form.

  Joan lifted a tremulous hand to her wounded forehead.

  Another long shaft of lightning: another impression of fangs like eyes, carious and malevolent.

  In that in
stant, Linden was transformed. The fierce strobe of the lightning no longer staggered her. Shock and horror had no power over her.

  “What about Jeremiah?” she cried into the storm.

  Roger’s inhuman gaze held her. “First your hand.” No light reflected from his eyes. They remained as dark as catacombs. “Then we’ll discuss it.”

  She let the wind and her bag’s bulk buffet her forward a step as if she were stumbling. Just one step, to the edge of the stone. Sparks in shards of silver mica swirled before her feet.

  Jeremiah’s mouth hung open, slack. His gaze was closed to her. He was her chosen child, the son whom she had loved and tended in spite of his shuttered blankness. But nothing in him hinted at comprehension except the red metal racing car clutched in his left hand.

  Deliberately she aimed her voice and her fury and her trembling flashlight at Roger.

  “You’ve got it all wrong, asshole! I’ll give you a choice. You give me Jeremiah. And Joan. And Sandy. Alive! And I give you your father’s ring.”

  He blinked as if she had surprised him. Joan made small mewling noises at his back, apparently begging him to hasten.

  Lightning struck near the plane of rock again; so near that its force sent a stinging wave across Linden’s skin. This time she was sure that she could see eyes and hunger in the depths of the blast.

  “Now why would I do that?” Roger asked her. “That ring is already mine. When I’m ready, I’ll just shoot you and take it.”

  “No, you won’t.” Another step. Now she stood among the sparks. “That craziness in your head. Lord Foul. He won’t let you. He can’t get what he wants that way. If he could, you would have killed me already.”

  “Roger,” Joan gasped audibly. “Roger!”

  Prone at Roger’s side, Sandy shifted inconsolably, trying to twist away from the pain in her head.

  Roger ignored his mother to concentrate on Linden. Briefly he seemed to consider her proposal. Then he announced, “It’s an interesting suggestion. There’s just one problem. Why would I ever trust you? If I let them go, you’ll just run away.

  “No, let’s keep it simple. I have the gun. I have your son. If you don’t feel like cutting yourself, I’ll shoot this nice lady.” Sandy. “Then I’ll start on—what did you call him?—Jeremiah.

  “He’s just meat. Don’t you know that? An empty carcass. There’s nothing you could do to save him. There hasn’t been anyone in there for ten years.”

  The lightning had become almost constant, firing the sky and the earth in violent blasts only a small handful of heartbeats apart. And in the core of each bolt hung Lord Foul’s eyes, rapacious and unmistakable, flickering in and out of this world as each flash clung and faded.

  Instead of answering, Linden took another step. Blood from her cut palm crusted her hand to her flashlight. With every flash of lightning, pain pulsed in her grasp as though her heart kept time to the music of the storm.

  “You’re wrong!” she shouted over the wind. “You don’t understand. You haven’t earned anything. You’re no better than your mother. The only thing you’ve ever done with your whole life is let a crazy woman”—and Lord Foul—“tell you what to do!”

  Still smiling, always smiling, Roger lifted his right arm in a slow arc to point his gun at Linden’s head. Its muzzle seemed to gape at her like a mouth, open and hungry.

  “Hold it right there!” Sheriff Lytton yelled through the tumult. “Put the gun down! Let’s talk about this!”

  “Roger!” Joan moaned distinctly, “I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it anymore.”

  Roger’s weapon did not waver as he slowly turned his head in the direction of Lytton’s voice.

  Deliberately Linden turned as well, letting her knotted arm lower the flashlight to her side, tightening her grip on her bag.

  Sandy groaned painfully. Her hands made small scratching movements on the stone.

  Lit by the strobing frenzy of the lightning, and watched by fangs, Barton Lytton picked his way down the slope into the hollow. He walked with a rigid, stiff-kneed gait as if he fought panic at every step. Silver snatched reflections of fear from his staring eyes. Nevertheless he advanced until he neared the boundary of the storm-blasted ground around the plane of rock. There he halted, swaying on his feet as if he were about to fall.

  His holster was empty. He had come down into the hollow unarmed.

  “Sheriff Lytton,” Roger remarked. “You’re a brave man.” The ease with which he made himself heard through the wind’s outcry mocked Lytton. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

  Lightning flared and yowled, accelerating toward a crisis. Fangs hung poised for violence in every flash. Static mounted in the air. The wind gusted like a wail torn from the throat of the night.

  “You’re in trouble here, boy.” Lytton’s voice shook. Somehow he forced himself to stand his ground. “You need to understand that. I’ve got half a dozen men up there.” He jerked his head at the rim of the bowl. “They’re all around you. And some of them shoot pretty good. If we can’t talk our way out of this, you and me, they are going to cut you down.”

  Linden glanced toward him, then shifted her gaze back to Roger. Her concentration left no room for surprise at Lytton’s presence—or his actions.

  Roger gave Jeremiah’s wrist a warning wrench that nearly snapped her restraint. “You’ve been listening to the things Dr. Avery says about me,” he commented to Lytton. “That’s a mistake. A law enforcement officer like yourself can’t afford mistakes.”

  Facing the steady muzzle of his gun, Linden eased forward cautiously.

  Lytton swayed on his locked knees. “You can’t either, boy. Do you understand that you’ve already killed two people? Bill Coty is dead. Avis Cardaman is probably going to die. And God knows what you’ve done with Sara Clint.” In the lightning, he looked pallid and frail, as if he were about to faint. “That’s life in prison. Life, boy. But if you stop now, that’s all it is. You fire that gun one more time, in cold blood, and my men will execute your ass.

  “Even if you live through being shot a couple dozen times, you’re still dead. You’ll get the death sentence for this. They’ll stick one of those big needles in your arm, and you’ll sleep until you rot.”

  Apparently he thought that he might be able to frighten Roger into submission. Plainly, however, he did not comprehend Thomas Covenant’s son at all.

  Yet he did not give up.

  “But you drop that gun now,” he went on, “and maybe they’ll just declare you incompetent. If that happens, you’ll end up in a psychiatric hospital with women like Dr. Avery taking care of you.

  “What’s it going to be, boy? You want a soft bed in a hospital? Or are you so pitiful you would rather be dead?”

  Sandy moved one arm, braced her hand on the stone, and tried to push herself upright.

  In that instant, Joan slumped backward as if she were about to fall. For one heartbeat, she seemed to sag down into herself, breaking inward like a woman with crumbling bones. Then she raised her face to the dark heavens and cried out with her last strength, “Make it stop!”

  As if in response, a long harsh shaft of lighting rife with eyes caught her where she stood, impaling her to the stone. It burned her life away; must have seared the marrow of her bones. While it endured, she hung in the bolt as though her death upheld her. When the blast ended, however, she dropped like shed spilth.

  Linden tottered. The rock on which she stood had become a plunge into darkness. Jeremiah gazed vacantly past her. On the hillside, Lytton staggered backward; barely caught himself.

  Placidly Roger made his reply as loud as the wind, as large as the hollow. “You’re wasting your time, Sheriff,” he said as if Joan’s death could not touch him. “What makes you think I would believe a word you say?”

  Without warning, he swept his gun from Linden to Lytton and fired.

  The gun made a hard, flat, coughing sound, immediately torn away by the wind. The heavy slug caught Lytton high on his
right shoulder, kicked him off his feet with the force of a thunderclap. He landed on his back without a sound. His arms and legs recoiled, bouncing. Then he lay still.

  No time had passed. Linden’s heart had not yet beat again. But already Roger had shifted his aim. His right arm dropped as he pointed his gun at Sandy’s struggling form.

  His left hand gripped Jeremiah’s wrist as though he meant to hold her son forever.

  In that sudden absence of time, Linden made her choice. Releasing her pent arm, she flung her flashlight at Roger’s head.

  Her cut hand betrayed her. Drying blood stuck the flashlight to her skin just long enough to reduce its momentum. It appeared to tumble across the short gap toward Roger in slow motion. When it struck the side of his neck, it had no impact.

  He ignored her failure.

  She did the same. With all the strength of her legs, heaving upward from the soles of her feet, she swung her physician’s bag into motion and let it fly.

  It collided with Roger’s ribs just as he fired at Sandy.

  This time the shot seemed to make no noise. Instead Linden heard only the slug as it spanged off the stone beside Sandy’s head and whined away into the ravenous lightning.

  At last Linden’s heart beat again. She drew breath; gathered herself to spring for Jeremiah—

  —and the rim of the hollow on all sides exploded in a barrage of gunfire.

  The sheriff’s men.

  Helpless to stop them, she watched muzzle flashes and streaking death, fire as destructive as any conflagration of wood and flesh. She would have cried out for the men to stop, spare her son, but she had no air and no voice. She could only strain with all her heart toward Jeremiah.

  As she moved, Roger’s chest erupted in a spray of blood.

  Still he did not release his grip on her son.

  Then his life splashed into her eyes, and she could no longer see. Instead she felt the heavy punch of lead slap her down as if she, too, had been struck by lightning.

  In that brief falling interval, she tried to find her voice and cry out Jeremiah’s name; but she made no sound that he could hear.