The Runes of the Earth t3cotc-1

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  She wanted to clutch for courage at Covenant’s ring hanging against her sternum, but she needed both hands. Grimly she thumbed the switch of the flashlight. Like her car’s headlights, its beam seemed to fall ineffective to the ground. It barely reached the house; cast no illumination at the front door.

  Wind snapped her sleeves against her arms. Holding the flashlight before her like a weapon, she advanced on the dark farmhouse.

  He is threatening my son.

  Her light traced the outlines of the door. It had no windows, offered her no way to see past it. Its panels had held their paint better than the wall, and that white made the door look somehow newer than the rest of the house, fresher: a portal pulled forward in time by recent use.

  Shifting the flashlight in her grasp, she used two fingers and the tip of her thumb to test the doorknob.

  It turned easily; and at once the wind ripped it away, kicked the door open inward. It hit the limit of its hinges hard enough to shake the frame.

  Her flashlight could not penetrate the darkness. Wind and dust lashed more tears from her eyes. She had to rub the moisture away with her wrist before she could step over the threshold, force the beam of her light into the house.

  The open door let her into the living room.

  If she had not remembered the room so clearly, she might not have recognised it. Seen in the brief gleams and streaks cast by her flashlight, it seemed ruined, uninhabitable: the scene of an earthquake or some other catastrophe. Amid funnels of wind-driven dust lay chunks of plaster from the ceiling and broken boards from the walls. The couch against one wall had been gutted, eaten alive by rats and roaches. Its stuffing blew like snow among the dust devils. Shards from shattered windows lay on the armchairs, the coffee table, the rank carpet. Sections of the walls looked like they had been blown apart by shotguns.

  Roger Covenant had made no attempt to pretend that he and his mother would actually live here. If anyone-Megan Roman, Sheriff Lytton, Linden herself-had had the foresight to visit his intended “home,” they would have seen the truth beyond any possible contradiction.

  At first, Linden could find no sign that Roger and his victims had been here. Any marks which they might have left in the dust had been blown to confusion. But then she noticed darker patches among the room’s debris. She had taken them for clotted dust and dirt. Now, however, she saw that they clung to the floor as if the wind had no power over them. Some of them caught a moist gleam from her flashlight.

  Crouching to examine them, she found without surprise that they were blood: viscid and thickening, but still wet, recently shed.

  “God damn you,” she muttered at Roger through her teeth because she already knew what he had done; knew what he was doing. “You will not get away with this.”

  Linden had sworn that he would claim Joan over her dead body; but she had not kept that oath. She had talked herself out of taking her fears seriously enough. Now she knew better. She would not make that mistake again.

  In God’s name, that bland bastard had not even had the decency to slaughter an animal instead-

  Knowing the truth, and dreading it deep in her guts, she tightened her grip on her bag and went forward, into the short hallway which connected the living room and the kitchen.

  The kitchen was as bad as the living room. Half the windows had been blown out. Splintered fluorescent bulbs intensified the litter of glass, plaster, and broken cabinets on the floor. And knives and utensils: whoever had cleaned out the house after Covenant’s death-Megan Roman? – must have neglected the kitchen. Open drawers had spilled their contents like scree.

  Here, too, Linden found smears and puddles of blood.

  She should have been terrified for Jeremiah, but she was not. Her fears were certain: Roger’s intentions for her son would not end so soon.

  He had not yet had time to offer Jeremiah to the Despiser.

  From the kitchen another short passage led to three doors, a bedroom, the bathroom, and another bedroom. Her flashlight showed the way in splashes of illumination. Dark drips and smears marked the floor as if Roger had blazed a trail for Linden to follow to the end of the hall.

  She did not have far to go to reach the last room, where Covenant had cared for Joan. Six forthright strides: ten hesitating steps. The door stood open ahead of her, inviting her deeper into the night. Even though she knew what she expected to find, her dread mounted.

  She clung to the handle of her bag. Its weight comforted her. She had neglected it ten years ago, when she had followed Covenant into the woods after Joan. It might have helped her then, counteracting her terror. Perhaps it would aid her now.

  Stabbing her light ahead of her, Linden approached the open door; stepped past the edge of the frame.

  With a splintering crash like rent heartwood, lightning struck somewhere nearby: so near that she seemed to feel the impact in her stomach. For an instant, fierce white filled the hall as though it shone straight through the walls into her eyes; as though in that moment the hallway and Linden herself had been ripped into another reality by the accumulated ferocity of the blast. Every hair on her body seemed to stand on end as darkness recoiled over her, stifling her flashlight, leaving her blind. The ripe reek of ozone shouted in her nostrils.

  She had time to think, God, that was close-

  Then her struggling flashlight brought the room beyond the door back into being.

  She gazed inward at more ruin, the wreckage of a dwelling that had been left without love or care for ten years: fallen plaster and sprung floorboards, broken window glass, drifted refuse and dust. Abandoned so, the bedroom looked toxic, fatal, as if during his years here Thomas Covenant’s illness had seeped into the walls.

  Like the cushions of the living room couch, the mattress on the single bed had been torn apart by time and vermin. Briefly Linden seemed to see the bed as it had lain since Joan’s abduction and Covenant’s death; forlorn and unused. But then her flashlight asserted its tangible vision; and lightning glared from the windows; and she saw the truth.

  On the bed lay Sara Clint, desolate in her own blood.

  Beside her head, a large kitchen knife had been driven into the remains of the pillow. Perhaps Roger had found it here, and had used it because it had belonged to his father. It stood like a marker at Sara’s head. A warning-

  Involuntarily Linden dropped her bag. It could not help her now. No medical power would undo Roger’s cruelty.

  Blood dried on the edges of the cuts which had been made in Sara’s uniform, soaked from the wounds in her flesh. As Linden stepped into the room, she saw more and more places where the white fabric had been sliced through; and at first she feared that Sara had been cut and cut and cut until she had simply bled to death: slowly, helplessly; in terror. Sara’s wrists and ankles had been secured to the bed frame with what appeared to be duct tape. She could not have avoided Roger’s knife to save her soul. Then, however, Linden saw the raw wound that grinned under Sara’s chin across her carotid arteries. Roger had pulled his blade through her life there, ending it quickly.

  Apparently he had wanted more blood than he could gather from less fatal cuts.

  Or he had known that he was running out of time-

  Had he seen Linden’s headlights approach from the road? How far ahead of her was he?

  She should go after him: now, before he increased his lead. She could move more swiftly than he did. She did not have to drag Sandy Eastwall along, shepherd both Jeremiah and Joan. She might be able to catch him before he carried out the next phase of his madness. Before he butchered Sandy as he had Sara, to open the way for the Land’s destruction, and Jeremiah’s.

  She would go. She would. As soon as she had given a moment of shock and grief to Sara’s corpse. The nurse deserved that much. She had been among the best people at Berenford Memorial. And her husband

  Linden should have been able to smell blood. Not at first, her nose full of ozone. But that heavy scent was gone now, torn away by conflicting winds which
seemed to tumble through the walls. Surely standing so near the bed she should have been able to smell Sara’s blood?

  She could not. She smelled smoke.

  As soon as she became aware of it, it seemed to gather strength: the fug of burning wood; smoke like the malice of the Despiser’s bonfire. Tension mounted in her chest. She must have been holding her breath; or smoke had already begun to ache in her lungs. Now her flashlight caught wisps of it amid the gloom. Tendrils curled toward the bed until the winds clawed them apart.

  Dear God! That blast of lightning-the one which had blinded her outside this room. It must have struck the house-

  All this dry, untended wood would burn like tinder.

  For an instant, her peril trapped her as it had ten years ago, when she had failed to save Covenant’s life. The thought that Roger had re-created Lord Foul’s blazing portal here, with her snared in its centre, stunned her like a fist to the heart. Roger might be outside at this moment, waiting for her agony to open the way-

  Then she remembered that he still lacked his father’s ring; and she surged into motion. Snatching up her bag, she retreated from the room to hasten toward the kitchen.

  Already worms of fire gnawed at the edges of the boards between the bathroom and the other bedroom, Covenant’s room, glowing in the benighted space. Before she could take a step, a blast like the slap of a hurricane struck the house, and the whole building staggered.

  The door to Covenant’s room jumped from its latch and blew open. At once flame like a breaking wave tumbled along the sudden release of air into the hall: a roar of torment from the throat of the house. Heat struck at her face, a palpable blow. Staggering herself, she fell backward against the end of the hall. Rotten boards flexed at the impact.

  The hungry howl mounted. A tumult of flame cascaded from Covenant’s room, barricading the hall. She could not escape that way. The fury of the heat warned her: if she strove to pass, she would catch and burn like an auto-da-fe.

  Smoke piled toward her, too thick already for her light to dispel. Ducking under it, she sprang back into the room where Sara Clint lay. Instinctively she swung shut the door, although she knew that it would not protect her. For a moment, she gaped at air which had already lost its capacity to sustain her. Then she rushed to the nearest window.

  Half of its glass had cracked and fallen long ago. She used her bag to break the rest from the frame. Then she tossed the bag and her flashlight to the ground outside. Bracing her hands on the sill, she climbed out through the window. Scraps of glass tore fresh blood from her right palm.

  Sitting on the sill, she dragged her legs out of the room, dropped to the ground. She landed with a jolt that jarred her spine, as if she had fallen much farther; but she kept her balance. Gasping for good air, she retrieved her bag and her flashlight, and stumbled away to put distance between herself and the blazing house.

  Helpless to do otherwise, she left Sara for cremation.

  When the heat no longer hurt her skin, no longer threatened to set her hair on fire, she turned to watch Thomas Covenant’s home die.

  Now gouts and streamers of flame poured from all of the windows. Fire licked between the roof’s remaining shingles, showed in the gaps which marred the walls. Every lash of wind spread the flames, intensified the conflagration. Sparks gyred into the sky and were torn away. In minutes the structure would collapse in on itself, reduced to ash and embers by the eerie storm.

  From Linden’s perspective, Roger’s sedan seemed too close to the house. Surely it would catch fire as well? Her own car might be safe-

  In the flagellated light of the blaze, she saw no sign of Roger Covenant or his other victims.

  He had not gagged Sara. Jeremiah must have heard her cries. Sandy and Joan must have heard them. Perhaps Joan was beyond caring: Sandy was not. And for Jeremiah-

  Running now, frantically, Linden turned her back on the roaring house and headed into the woods behind Haven Farm.

  Wind kicked at her legs, tried to trip her among the first trees: it caught at her clothes. She knew where Roger would go, now that he had destroyed his father’s home, his father’s example of concern and devotion. She had not returned to these woods since the night of Covenant’s murder, but she was sure of them. Where else could Roger go, if he wished to undo his father’s self-sacrifice?

  The woods twisted like a thrown ribbon among the fields of the county, following the crooked course of Righters Creek. Scrub oak, sycamore, and ivy crowded against each other along the gully of the stream. As soon as she had outrun the light of the burning house, she had to slow down. The wind or a fallen branch or a gap in the ground might trip her.

  Gusts of wind flung limbs and leaves at her face, confused her senses with the wet odour of rotting wood and loam. Repeatedly her bag banged into her leg. Her flashlight was ineffective against the scourged dark. It had a will-o’-the-wisp frailty; cast only enough light to lead her astray. No trod ground opened in any direction: the woods were cut off from the world she knew. If she had not been sure, she might have wandered there for hours.

  But she had forgotten nothing of the night of Thomas Covenant’s death: she followed her memories. The wind whipped branches to bar her way, sent tangles of ivy reaching for her neck. But she could not be turned aside.

  Roger’s pace would be slower than hers. He could not be far ahead of her.

  Standing somewhere else in these woods, on a hillside above Righters Creek, Thomas Covenant had once seen a young girl threatened by a timber rattler. On his way down the slope to help her, he had fallen-and found himself summoned to Revelstone. Yet he had refused the Land’s need. Instead he had chosen to do what he could for the child in his own world.

  Roger would avoid such a place. The ground itself might retain too much of his father’s courage. But Linden clung to it in her mind as she forged among the trees, following her faint light through the rending wind.

  She had every intention of refusing the Land, if she had to; if Roger left her no other choice.

  Lightning flared and snapped overhead, flooding the woods and then sweeping them into darkness. Repeatedly she pressed the heel of her right hand against the uncompromising circle of Covenant’s ring. She needed to assure herself that she still possessed one thing Roger wanted; one talisman with which she could bargain for Jeremiah’s life.

  Her cut palm stung whenever she shifted her grip on the flashlight. Its plastic case had become sticky with her blood. How far ahead of her was Roger? A hundred yards? A quarter of a mile? No, it could not be so far. She remembered the way. He was already near his destination.

  Over my dead body.

  Then the ground began to rise, and she recognised the last hill, the final boundary. The cluttered terrain climbed to a crest. Beyond it, the ground dropped down into a hollow, deep as a stirrup cup, its sides steep and treacherous. Within the hollow nothing grew, as if decades or centuries ago the soil had been anointed with a malign chrism which had left it barren.

  As Linden reached the crest, she half expected to find fire burning below her. Roger could have readied a conflagration here. Not tonight: he had not had time. But he might have begun to prepare for this night from the moment when he had first known what he meant to do.

  However, there was no fire; no light of any kind. In the bottom of the hollow, she knew, lay a rough plane of exposed stone like a rude altar. Covenant had been sacrificed on it: she had fallen there herself. But she could not see it now. Her flashlight’s beam did not reach so far. Before her, the ground seemed to sink away into deeper blackness like a plunge into an abyss.

  Then lightning split the heavens; and in its shrill silver glare she saw the hollow as if it had been etched onto her retinas. When night closed back over the flash, she saw the scene still, limned in argent and terror.

  Flecks of mica in the native stone glittered so that Roger Covenant appeared to stand amid a swath of sparks. He faced up the hillside toward Linden as if he had been expecting her-and had known exac
tly where she would appear. His smile had the empty pleasantry of an undertaker’s.

  In his right hand, he held a gun as heavy as a bludgeon, pointing it at Sandy Eastwall’s head. She knelt on the stone beside him, her hands clasped over her heart in prayer. Her features were swollen, aggrieved with tears.

  She knew her peril. Roger must have forced her to watch while he had shed Sara Clint’s blood, preparing the way-

  At his back stood Joan, her head bowed in submission. Around the betrayed sticks of her arms and legs, her nightgown fluttered like a pennon.

  With his left hand, Roger gripped Jeremiah’s wrist. The boy’s maimed hand dangled in his captor’s grasp. He held his free arm over his stomach, rocking himself as best he could on his feet. His lost eyes stared at nothing.

  In the image burned onto Linden’s retinas, sparks surrounded them all like a nimbus: the first touch of power which would translate them to ruin.

  She could see nothing except dismay. Her flashlight hardly revealed the ground at her feet. Wind rushed wailing among the trees, lashed their limbs to frenzy. Its gusts seemed to cry out her son’s name.

  “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.