The Runes of the Earth: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - Book One (5 page)

But she was a lawyer, a thinking woman, dismayed by her own irrationality. While he had lived, she had waged a running battle with her alarm, continuing to work for him because she was ashamed of herself. And after his death she had become a staunch and vocal advocate for the kind of tolerance and social responsibility which had eluded her during his life. The bloody events that had brought about his murder should not have been allowed to happen. Like Julius Berenford, she had made a personal crusade out of trying to ensure that they never happened again.

Linden considered Megan Roman one of her few friends. Certainly Megan had always given Linden her assistance unstintingly. After Jeremiah's maiming by his stricken mother, and his troubled history in the county's various foster facilities, his adoption had posed a legal tangle that Linden could not have unsnarled for herself.

While she waited for Megan's receptionist to put her call through, Linden had time to wonder why Megan had not already contacted her about Roger Covenant. As his father's executor, she must have been dealing with him for years.

“Linden.” Megan had a professionally hearty phone manner that Linden disliked. It sounded false to her. “This is an unexpected pleasure. What can I do you out of?”

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 twenty-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.