The Runes of the Earth: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - Book One (9 page)

R
elieved for the first time since she had met Roger Covenant, she heated a casserole and fed Jeremiah while she ate. At intervals she paused to talk about anything she could think of—horses, Sam Diadem's toys, places of wonder in the Land—hoping that the sound of her voice would also feed him, in its own way. When he stopped opening his mouth for the spoon, she took him upstairs to bathe him. Afterward she dressed him for bed in his—actually her—favorite pajamas, the sky-blue flannel shirt and pants with mustangs ramping across the chest.

In his bedroom, she took a moment, as she often did, to marvel at how he had decorated it.

One day two or three years ago, she had purchased a set of flywheel-driven model racing cars that featured tracks which could be snapped together into structures as elaborate as roller coasters, complete with loop-the-loops and barrel rolls. She had been drawn to the set because it included materials like plastic Tinkertoys for building towers and pylons to support the tracks. And because Jeremiah appeared to prefer large projects, she had bought every set in the store, four or five of them.

He had shown no interest in the cars. In fact, he had disappointed her by showing no interest in the tracks, either. He had not so much as touched the boxes, or turned his eyes toward them.

Maybe he needed time, she had told herself. Maybe his occult, hidden decisions required contemplation. Reluctant to surrender her hopes, she had carried one of the boxes up to his bedroom and left it there for him to consider.

That night he had gone to bed still oblivious to the box. The next morning, however, she discovered that during the night he had opened it and used every available piece to build towers on either side of the head of his bed. Through the towers he had twined tracks twisted into implausible shapes. And—uncharacteristic of him—the construct was plainly unfinished. He had run out of parts before he could connect the towers and tracks to each other above the head of his bed.

At once, she brought the remaining boxes up to his room. Like the first, they were ignored all day. And like the first, they were opened during the night; put to use. Now supports like drawbridges and catwalks extended along the walls, under the window, over the bureau, and past the closet toward the door. Sections of track linked themselves and their pylons like the ligaments of some self-proliferating rococo robot.

The racing cars themselves lay in a clutter on the floor, unregarded. And still he obviously had not completed his design.

After a fervid search, Linden finally found a few more sets. Fortunately they sufficed. When Jeremiah had used every last plastic beam and connector, every section of track, he was done.

Now towers festooned with curlicues of track reached up on either side of his bedroom door to meet in an arch at the height of the lintel. Raceways in airy spans linked those structures to the ones which he had already finished. Yet the design would have been useless to its cars. The track through all of its loops and turns and dives formed an elaborate Möbius strip, reversing itself as it traveled so that in time a finger drawn along its route would touch every inch of its surface on both sides.

She had never asked him to take it down. Surely it was special to him? Why else had he only worked on it late at night, when he was alone? In some sense, it was more uniquely his than anything else he had built.

Respecting what he had accomplished, she left it as it was. Cheerfully she ducked under its spans whenever she needed to reach his closet.

The racing cars remained where she had placed them, arrayed like a display on top of his bureau. She hoped that one day he would take an interest in them; but they were still meaningless to him.

Shaking her head now in familiar astonishment at his arcane gifts, she settled him into bed and asked him which of his books he would like her to read. As ever, he did not respond; but on the theory that the adventures of a lone boy triumphing over impossible odds might convey something to his snared mind, she took out one of his “Bomba the Jungle Boy” books and read a couple of chapters aloud. Then she kissed him, adjusted his blankets, turned out the light, and left him to sleep.

In one respect, at least, he was a normal boy, even a normal teenager: he slept deeply, unself-consciously, his limbs sprawling in all directions as though they belonged to some other body. Only on very rare occasions did she find him awake when she checked on him before she went to bed herself. And she never knew what had roused or troubled him.

If this had been some other night, she might have used her time to catch up on some paperwork, or perhaps read. But tonight she was not alone. A throng of memories accompanied her through the house: they seemed as restless and compelling as ghosts. In particular, she recalled Thomas Covenant's gaunt face and stricken
eyes, as dear in their own way as Jeremiah's undefended slackness, and as precise as etch-work.

Others also she could not forget: Sunder and Hollian; the Giants of the Search; all her friends in the Land. Thinking that she would spend an hour alone with them, sharing at least in memory her gratitude and grief, she went downstairs to the kitchen to heat water for tea. Steaming mint might console her while she ached.

As she boiled water and prepared a teabag, filled a cup, she chose to concentrate on the Giants. She found consolation in remembering their open hearts, their long tales, and their ready laughter. She had not seen the First of the Search and her husband, Pitchwife, for ten years. No doubt in their own world they had passed away centuries or millennia ago. Nevertheless they had a healing power in her thoughts. Like Jeremiah's faery castle, they seemed to defend her from her fears.

They alone had willingly accompanied Linden and Covenant to their confrontation with the Despiser. They alone had stood with Linden after Covenant's death while she had formed her new Staff of Law and unmade the Sunbane; begun the restoration of the Land. And when she had faded away, returned to her old life, they had carried with them the hope that she and Covenant had made for all the Earth.

Thinking of the First and Pitchwife reminded her that her worries were like the difficulties of caring for Jeremiah, or of working at Berenford Memorial: transient things which could not disturb the choices she had made.

She would have gone on, drawing solace from her memories; but an unexpected idea stopped her. Perhaps it would be possible to hide Joan from Roger. If the nurse on duty, Amy Clint's sister Sara, moved Joan to another room—no, to a spare bed in County Hospital—Roger might not be able to find her. Certainly he would not be able to search for her without attracting attention. Bill Coty or one of his men—or even Sheriff Lytton—would have time to intervene.

Then what would Roger do? What
could
he—?

He would have no difficulty discovering Linden's address.

The phone's shrill ring startled her so badly that she dropped her cup. It hit the floor as if in slow motion and bounced once, apparently held together by hot peppermint tea splashing past its rim: then it seemed to burst in midair. Shards and steaming tea spattered around her feet.

None of her friends called her at home. Neither did her colleagues and staff. They all knew better. When they wanted or needed to get in touch with her, they dialed her pager—

The phone rang again like an echo of the shattered cup.

Roger, she thought dumbly, it was Roger, someone must have given him her number, it was unpublished, unlisted, he could not have found it out unaided. He meant to impose his insistence on the private places of her heart.

And then: no, it was not Roger. It was about him. He had done something.

Something terrible—

The phone rested on an end table in the living room. She pounced for it as it rang a third time. Snatched up the handset; pressed it to her ear.

She could not make a sound. Fright filled her throat.

“Dr. Avery?” a voice panted in her ear. “Linden? Dr. Avery?”

Maxine Dubroff, who volunteered at the hospital.

“I'm here.” Linden's efforts to speak cost her a spasm of coughing. “What's wrong?”

“Dr. Avery, it's Bill—” Maxine's distress seemed to block the phone line. What she needed to say could not get through. “He's—Oh, dear God.”

Linden's brain refused to work. Instead it clung to the sound of Maxine's voice as if it needed words in order to function. Still coughing, she managed to croak out, “Slow down, Maxine. Tell me what happened.”

Maxine sucked in a harsh breath. “Bill Coty,” she said in pieces. “He's dead.”

The room around Linden seemed to veer sideways. Of course Maxine knew Bill: she knew everyone. But if the old man had collapsed at home—

Linden had asked him to protect Joan.

“Shot.” Maxine's voice came through the handset, jagged as chunks of glass. “In the head. By that—that—” She paused to swallow convulsively, as if her throat were bleeding.

“Maxine.” Linden fought down more coughing. “Tell me what happened.”

“I'm sorry, Doctor.” Now Linden heard tears in Maxine's voice. “I'm just so upset—I should have called you sooner. I came as soon as I heard the sirens”—she and Ernie lived only a block and a half from Berenford Memorial—“but it didn't occur to me that somebody hadn't already called you. I wanted to help. Ernie told me you were worried about trouble. Bill called him about it. But I never expected—

“That young man. The one who was here this morning. He shot Bill Coty.”

Ice poured along Linden's veins. Her hands started to shake. “What about Joan?”

Again she heard wind thrashing under the eaves of the house. One of the kitchen windows rattled plaintively in its frame.

“Oh, Linden.” Maxine's weeping mounted. “She's gone. He took her.”

Automatically Linden answered, “I'll be right there,” and put down the handset.

She could not think: she was too full of rage. The old prophet had betrayed her. He had given her no warning at all.

Apparently he no longer cared what happened to the Land.

 The sirens were police cars, then: Sheriff Lytton responding too late to Berenford Memorial's call for help.

Bill Coty must have failed to rally enough of his volunteers to Joan's protection. Or he had simply cared too much to forget about her when he went off-duty—

Hands shaking wildly, Linden picked up the handset again and dialed Sandy Eastwall's number.

For the first time in years, she wished that she had bought a cordless phone. She wanted to rush upstairs and check on Jeremiah while she waited, shivering, for Sandy's voice.

Buffeted by wind, the front door thudded dully against its latch. Surely nothing had happened to Jeremiah since she had left his room? But Bill Coty had been shot—by Roger. Who obviously had a gun.

Linden had told Bill that Roger was not dangerous enough for guns. Now she knew better.

Providentially Sandy answered the phone almost at once. “Hello?”

“Sandy, it's Linden. I'm sorry, I'm needed at the hospital. It's an emergency.”

Bill Coty was dead because Linden had underestimated Roger's madness.

Sandy did not hesitate. “I'll be right there.”

“Thanks.” Linden hung up and headed for the stairs.

Joan's son would be in a hurry now. He meant to precipitate the crisis for which his heart hungered immediately.

With her hand on the knob of Jeremiah's door, Linden paused to gather herself. How could anything have happened to him? Scarcely twenty minutes had passed since she had put him to bed. Yet she feared for him. Her whole body trembled at the possibility that Roger wished him harm.

Easing open the door, she peered into his room.

Light from the hall behind her reached across his floor to the raceway towers guarding the head of his bed. Between them he lay outstretched, his blankets already rumpled and twisted around him, one arm extended like an appeal. He made faint snoring sounds as he slept.

Roger had shot Bill Coty in the head.

Linden's trembling grew more acute. She shut the door and hurried downstairs to wait for Sandy.

At the bottom of the stairs, standing amid Tinkertoy spires and buttresses, she heard the front door rattle again as if someone outside struggled to open it. Sandy could not have arrived yet—and in any case, she always rang the doorbell. Nevertheless Linden ducked under a rampart to unlock the door, pull it aside.

Wind slapped into her face, snatched tears from her eyes. The gust felt unnaturally cold; and abrasive, full of grit. A storm was on its way, a serious storm—

In the porch light, Linden saw Sandy lean toward the house as if she were tacking through the wind. Gusts plucked at her coat so that it fluttered like a loose sail.

Swept forward, Sandy mounted the steps to the porch. Linden let her into the house and pushed the door shut, then said, “That was fast.”

Light chased the shadows from Sandy's face. Strain pinched her mouth, and her eyes were dark with doubt.

“Are you all right?” Linden asked quickly.

“I had a feeling—” Sandy began, then stopped herself to attempt an unconvincing smile. “Whatever bothered you today must be catching. It came on me while I was driving home. I couldn't relax—” She smiled again, more successfully this time. “I knew you were going to call. I already had my coat on when the phone rang.” Then her expression resumed its indefinite distress. “I hope nothing bad has happened.”

“I'll let you know,” Linden replied to avoid explanations. “I'll call as soon as I can.”

Sandy nodded. She appeared to be listening to the wind rather than to Linden.

Still shivering, Linden took her own coat from the entryway closet, belted it around her, and impelled herself out into the night.

When she had pulled the door closed after her, however, she paused where she was until she heard the lock click home. She could not imagine what had unsettled Sandy's usual phlegmatic calm, but she was fiercely glad of it. Scared, Sandy would be particularly cautious; and Linden desired every scrap of care which Sandy could provide for Jeremiah.

She needed that reassurance to help her bear the inchoate conviction that she was abandoning her son. She yearned to flee with him now, take him and run—

Surely Roger was unaware that she had a son?

She had to close her mouth and squint her eyes against the grit in the wind. Clutching her resolve around her like another coat, she forced herself to hasten down off the porch and across the lawn to her car.

A hard gust nearly tore the car door from her hand as she pulled it open. She stumbled into the driver's seat as if she had been shoved. The door resisted her tug for an instant, then slammed shut after her. At the impact, the car staggered on its springs.

The starter ground briefly before the engine came to life. With as much caution as she could muster, she backed out into the street and turned toward the hospital.

For a block or two, the wind left her alone. Then it staggered the car again, whining in the wheel wells, striking the hood and trunk until they vibrated. The street lamps lit dark streaks in the air like handfuls of dust thrown along the leading edge of a gale. They swirled when they hit the car, curled momentarily on the windscreen, danced away.

Fortunately Berenford Memorial was not far. And street lamps were more common in the center of town: they seemed brighter. Nevertheless dust tainted the air in swift plumes and streamers, scattering into turbulence at the edges of the buildings. Scraps of paper twisted like tortured things in the eddies.

Past the bulk of County Hospital, she wheeled into the parking lot between it and Berenford Memorial. From the lot she could not see the front door. But three patrol cars had reached her domain ahead of her. Their lights flashed empty warnings into the night.

Blinking hard at the dust, and at the wind's raw chill, she hugged her coat around her and hastened along the walk toward the front door. She could have used the staff entrance and saved herself thirty yards, but she wanted to enter the building as Roger must have entered it, see the sequence of what he had done.

Around the corner of the building and along its front she hurried. The front steps she took two at a time, nearly running.

Lit by the lights from the small reception lobby, as well as by its own lamps, the outer door seemed to appear in front of her as if it had been swept into existence from some other reality. She was reaching for its handle when she saw the ugly hole torn in the metal where the lock had been. From the hole, cracks spread crookedly through the glass.

Berenford Memorial's entrance had two sets of heavy glass doors, one inside the other. At night the outer door was kept locked. The people who worked here used the staff entrance and their own keys. Visitors after dark had to ring a doorbell which summoned the duty nurse or an orderly; and they were not admitted until they had introduced themselves over the intercom by the door.

Apparently someone had refused to let Roger in.

Sara Clint was the duty nurse: who were the orderlies? For a moment, distracted by Roger's violence, Linden could not remember. Then she did: Avis Cardaman and Harry Gund. Harry would have been useless against an intruder. He was a freckle-faced young man with an ingratiating demeanor and a positive genius for paperwork; but he tended to flinch whenever he heard a loud voice. Avis, however, was a huge and compulsively responsible man whose gentle manner concealed his prodigious strength.
Linden had often suspected that he could have intimidated the paint off the walls, if he had considered it a threat to his patients.

If Roger had taken Joan in spite of Avis—

How many other casualties had he left in his wake?

Snatching a quick breath for courage, she heaved open the outer door, then the inner, and strode into the lobby.

The space was crowded with police officers: Sheriff Lytton and at least six of his deputies. They all looked toward her as she entered.

Behind them, Harry Gund attended the reception desk. His manner seemed at once frightened and defiant, as if he had shamed himself in some way, and now sought to make amends with a display of attention to duty. Near him stood Maxine Dubroff and her husband, Ernie, their arms around each other.

In a rush, Linden scanned the lobby past the shoulders of the officers, but she saw no sign of Sara Clint.

Helplessly she wondered how her patients were reacting to gunshots and turmoil.

Just inside the door, nearly at her feet, Bill Coty sprawled in his life's blood. He still wore his navy-blue Security uniform, with his walkie-talkie and his nightstick attached to his belt. A splash of blood obscured the useless silver of his badge. But a small holster at his belt was empty.

In one slack hand, he held a can of Mace: the only real weapon sanctioned by County Hospital's insurance. Apparently Roger had not given him time to use it.

Strands of his white hair showed through the wreckage of his head. Roger's bullet had smashed in his left temple. The exit wound in the back of his skull was an atrocity of brains and bone. A dark trickle across his cheek underscored the dismay in his sightless eyes.

Instinctively Linden dropped to her knees beside him; reached out as if she believed that the touch of her hands would somehow bring him back to life. But the sheriff stopped her.

“Don't touch him!” Lytton barked. “Forensics hasn't been here yet.”

As if there could be any doubt about the cause of death.

Briefly Linden covered her face as if she could not bear the sight of Bill's lifeless form. Almost at once, however, she dropped her hands; and as she did so her trembling fell away as if one aspect of her ordinary mortality had sloughed from her. The crisis was upon her now: it smelled of copper and ashes. Grimly she rose to her feet to meet it.

Bill had been shot so long ago that most of his blood had already dried. How much time had passed? Half an hour? An hour?

How much of a head start did Roger have?

“Dr. Avery,” growled Barton Lytton when she faced him. “It's about time.”

He was a blunt, fleshy man with a gift for seeming bigger than he actually was. In fact, he stood no taller than Linden herself; yet he appeared to loom over her. No doubt that contributed to his incessant reelection: people thought of him as dominant, effective, despite his real stature. Typically he wore mirrored aviator sunglasses, but now they were shoved into the breast pocket of his khaki shirt opposite his badge. Various heavy objects dragged at his belt—a radio, a cell phone, handcuffs, Mace, a handgun the size of a tinker's anvil, spare clips—making his paunch appear larger than it was.

“I—” Linden began. She wanted to say, I tried to warn you. But the look in his eyes, haunted and raging, closed her throat. They were the eyes of a man in trouble, out of his depth, with no one to blame but himself. Roughly she swallowed some of her anger. “I came as soon as I could.”

“Dr. Avery!” When she spoke, Harry Gund left the reception desk to push his way through the clustered officers. “Thank God you're here. I've done everything I can, but we need you.

“This is real bad, Dr. Avery,” he told her earnestly.

“Harry,” Lytton muttered: a warning.

Harry ignored the sheriff. Ordinarily he was deferential in the face of authority; but now his need to exonerate himself overshadowed his timidity.

“We couldn't stop him.” His voice trembled with the aftereffects of dismay and shock. “We tried—Avis and me—but we couldn't. I didn't let him in. He rang the doorbell, used the intercom. He was smiling, and he sounded just as reasonable as could be. But I remembered your orders”—which he must have heard from Sara—“and didn't let him in.”

“Harry,” Sheriff Lytton rasped again. He reached out a thick hand to silence the orderly.

Linden interrupted the sheriff. “He was here. You weren't. Let him tell it.”

Lytton dropped his hand. His shoulders appeared to slump as if she had made him smaller.

A moment of gratitude flashed in Harry's eyes.

“I tried to stop him,” he repeated. “But he had this gun, this huge gun. He shot the lock.