Stephen Donaldson - The Runes of the Earth

Gracelessly he seated himself as close to his mother as the bed rail permitted. A touch of excitement flushed his cheeks. His respiration quickened. His hands trembled slightly as he undid the restraint on her right wrist.

Flowers cast splotches of colour into Linden’s eyes, deep red and blue, untroubled yellow. A few minutes ago, she had known exactly what kind of flowers they were; now she had no idea. The sky outside the window seemed unattainable, too far away to offer any hope. The sunlight shed no warmth.

Joan stared past or through Roger vacantly. Linden expected her to strike herself, but she did not. Perhaps the fact that her hand was free had not yet penetrated her subterranean awareness.

Roger lifted his palms to Joan’s cheeks, cupped them against her slack flesh. His trembling had become unmistakable. He seemed to quiver with eagerness, avid as a deprived lover. Unsteadily he turned her head until he could gaze straight into the absence of her eyes.

“Mother.” His voice shook. “It’s me. Roger.”

Linden bit down on her lip. All the air in the room seemed to concentrate around the bed, too thick to breathe. In the bonfire where Joan’s captors had destroyed their right hands, she had seen eyes like fangs look out hungrily at Covenant’s impending murder. At the time, she had believed that they held malice. But now she thought that the emotion in them might have been despair; an emptiness which could not be filled.

“Mother.”

Joan blinked several times. Her pupils contracted.

With an effort that seemed to stretch the skin of her forehead, her eyes came into focus on her son.

“Roger?” Her disused voice crawled like a wounded thing between her lips. “Is it you?”

Suddenly stern, he told her, “Of course it’s me. You can see that.”

Involuntarily Linden recoiled a step. She tasted blood, felt a pain in her lip. Roger sounded disdainful, vexed, as though Joan were a servant who had disappointed him.

“Oh, Roger.” Tears spilled from Joan’s eyes. Her free hand fumbled to his shoulder, clutched at his neck. “It’s been so long.” Her face held no expression: its muscles lacked the strength to convey what she felt. “I’ve waited so long. It’s been so hard. Make it stop.”

“Stop complaining.” He scolded her as if she were a child. “It isn’t as bad as all that. I had to wait until I was twenty-one. You know that.”

How-? Linden panted as if she had been struck in the stomach. How-?

How had Roger reached Joan?

How could Joan have known anything?

“I’ve been good,” Joan responded, pleading. “I have.” Her damaged voice seemed to flinch and cower at his feet. “See?”

Dropping her arm from his neck, she flung her fist at her bruised temple. Fresh blood smeared her knuckles as she lowered her arm.

“I’ve been good,” she begged. “Make it stop. I can’t bear it.”

“Nonsense, Mother,” Roger snorted. “Of course you can bear it. That’s what you do.” But then, apparently, he took pity on her, and his manner softened. “It won’t be much longer. I have some things to do. Then I’ll make it stop. We’ll make it stop together.”

Releasing her cheeks, he rose to his feet, turned toward Linden.

As soon as he left the bed, Joan began to scream-a frail, rending sound that seemed to rip from her throat like fabric tearing across jagged glass. As if in sympathy, the pulse monitor emitted a shrill call.

“You see, Dr. Avery?” he remarked through his mother’s cries. “You really have no choice. You have to let her go with me.

“The sooner you release her, the sooner I can free her from all this.”

Over my dead body, Linden told his ambiguous smile and his bland eyes. Over my dead body.

“Outside,” Linden ordered him aloud. “Now.”

She was fortunate that he complied at once. If he had resisted, she might have hit him, trying to strike the certainty from his face.

As soon as she had closed Joan’s door behind her, she wheeled on him. “You knew that would happen.”

Joan’s screaming echoed in the corridor, reflected by the white tile floor, the unadorned walls. Her monitor carried its alarm to the nurses’ station.

He shrugged, untouched by Linden’s anger. “I’m her son. She raised me.”

“That’s no answer,” she retorted.

Before she could go on, a woman’s voice called out, “Dr. Avery? What’s wrong?”

A nurse came hurrying along the hall: Amy Clint. Her young, diligent face was wide with surprise and concern.

Roger Covenant smiled blandly at Amy. “Give her a taste of that blood,” he suggested as though he had the right to say such things. “It’ll quiet her down.”

Amy stopped. She stared in dismay at Linden.

“Ms. Clint”- Linden summoned her authority to counteract Amy’s shock- “this is Roger Covenant. He’s Joan’s son. Seeing him has upset her.”

“She’s never-” For a moment, the nurse fumbled to control her reaction. Then she said, more steadily, “I’ve never heard her scream like that.” Joan’s wailing ached in the air. “What should I do?”

Linden took a deep breath, mustered her outrage. “Do what he says. Let her taste her blood.” To ease Amy’s consternation, she added, “I’ll explain later.

“Now,” she insisted when the nurse hesitated.

“Right away, Doctor.” With distress in her eyes, Amy entered Joan’s room, shut the door.

At once, Linden confronted Roger again. “You didn’t answer my question.”

Still smiling as though his mother’s screams had no effect on him, he held up his hand, asking Linden to wait.

Moments after Amy had entered the room, Joan suddenly fell silent. The abrupt end of her cries throbbed in the hallway like an aftershock.

“You see, Dr. Avery?” replied Roger. “I’m really the only one who can take care of her. No one else is qualified” Before Linden could protest, he added, “I knew what would happen because I’m her son. I know exactly what’s wrong with her. I know how to treat it.

“You can’t justify keeping her now.”

“You’re wrong.” Linden kept her voice down. “I can’t justify releasing her. What you just did is unconscionable.”

“I reached her,” he objected. “That’s more than you can do.”

“Oh, you reached her, all right,” Linden returned. “That’s pretty damn obvious. It’s the results I object to.”

Roger frowned uncertainly. “You think she’s better off the way she is.” He appeared genuinely confused by Linden’s reaction.

“I think-” Linden began, then stopped herself. He was beyond argument. More quietly, she stated, “I think that until you bring me a court order to the contrary, she stays here. End of discussion.

“The front door”- she pointed along the hall- “is that way.”

For an instant, anger seemed to flicker in his dissociated eyes. But then he shrugged, and the glimpse vanished.

“We’ll resolve this later, Dr. Avery,” he said as if he were sure. “There’s just one more thing.

“Can you tell me what happened to my father’s wedding ring?”

Without transition, Linden went cold. In the Land, Covenant’s white gold ring was the symbol and instrument of his power. With it, he had wielded wild magic against the Despiser.

Roger wanted more than a chance to take his mother’s place. He wanted his father’s theurgy as well.

“I understand he always wore it,” he went on, “but it wasn’t found on his body. I’ve asked Megan Roman and Sheriff Lytton, but they don’t know where it is. It’s mine now. I want it.”

Old habit caused her to raise her hand to the irrefusable circle of the ring under her blouse. Roger meant to bear white gold to the Land so that he could tear down the Arch of Time, set Lord Foul free. The Despiser had already renewed his assault on the beauty of the Earth, and an ordeal that had nearly destroyed Linden once before was about to begin again-