Stephen Donaldson - The Wounded Land

Leaving the highway, she took the first side road to one of the abandoned houses on the Farm. There she parked her car and locked it to protect her medical bag and purse.

On foot, she approached Covenant's house. As much as possible, she hid herself among the trees along that side of the Farm. She was gambling that she was not too late, that the people who had taken Joan would not have done anything during the afternoon. From the trees, she hastened stealthily to the wall of the house. There, she found a window which gave her a view of the living room without exposing her to the door.

The lights were on. With all her caution, she looked in on Thomas Covenant.

He slouched in the centre of the sofa with his head bowed and his hands in his pockets, as if he were waiting for something. His bruises had darkened, giving him the visage of a man who had already been beaten. The muscles along his jaw bunched, relaxed, bunched again. He strove to possess himself in patience; but after a moment the tension impelled him to his feet. He began to walk in circles around the sofa and coffee table. His movements were rigid, denying the mortality of his heart.

So that she would not have to watch him, Linden lowered herself to the ground and sat against the wall. Hidden by the darkness, she waited with him.

She did not like what she was doing. It was a violation of his privacy, completely unprofessional. But her ignorance and his stubbornness were intolerable. She had an absolute need to understand what had made her quail when she had faced Joan.

She did not have to wait long. Scant minutes after she had settled herself, abrupt feet approached the house.

The lurching of her heart almost daunted her. But she resisted it. Carefully, she raised her head to the window just as a fist hammered at the door.

Covenant flinched at the sound. Dread knurled his face.

The sight of his reaction stung Linden. He was such a potent individual, seemed to have so many strengths which she lacked. How had he been brought to this?

But an instant later he crushed his fear as if he were stamping on the neck of a viper. Defying his own weakness, he strode toward the door.

It opened before he reached it. A lone man stepped uninvited out of the dark. Linden could see him clearly. He wore burlap wound around him like cerements. Ash had been rubbed unevenly into his hair, smeared thickly over his cheeks. It emphasized the deadness of his eyes, so that he looked like a ghoul in masque.

“Covenant?” Like his mien, his voice was ashen, dead.

Covenant faced the man. He seemed suddenly taller, as if he were elevated by his own hard grasp on life. “Yes.”

“Thomas Covenant?”

The writer nodded impatiently. “What do you want?”

“The hour of judgment is at hand.” The man stared into the room as if he were blind. “The Master calls for your soul. Will you come?”

Covenant's mouth twisted into a snarl. “Your master knows what I can do to him.”

The man did not react. He went on as if his speech had already been arrayed for burial. “The woman will be sacrificed at the rising of the full moon. Expiation must be made for sin. She will pay if you do not. This is the commandment of the Master of life and death. Will you come?”

Sacrificed? Linden gaped. Expiation? A flush of indignation burned her skin. What the hell-?

Covenant's shoulders knotted. His eyes flamed with extreme promises, threats. “I'll come.”

No flicker of consciousness animated the man's grey features. He turned like a marionette and retreated into the night.

For a moment, Covenant stood still. His arms hugged his chest as if to stifle an outcry; his head stretched back in anguish. The bruises marked his face like a bereavement.

But then he moved. With a violence that startled Linden, appalled her, he struck himself across the cheek with his half-hand. Abruptly, he threw himself into the darkness after his summoner.

Linden almost lost her chance to follow. She felt stunned by dismay. The Master-? Sacrificed? Dreads and doubts crawled her skin like vermin. The man in burlap had looked so insentient-soulless more than any animal. Drugs? Or-?

However he may assail -

Was Covenant right? About the old man, about possession? About the purpose-? She's just a way for them to get at me .

Sacrificed?

Oh, dear God! The man in burlap appeared insane enough, lost enough, to be dangerous. And Covenant-? Covenant was capable of anything.

Her guess at what he was doing galvanized her. Fear for him broke through her personal apprehension, sent her hurrying around the corner of the house in pursuit.

His summoner had led him away from the highway, away from the house into the woods. Linden could hear them in the brush; without light, they were unable to move quietly. As her eyes adjusted, she glimpsed them ahead of her, flickering like shadows in and out of the variegated dark. She followed them.

They travelled blindly through the woods, over hills and along valleys. They used no path; Linden had the impression that they were cutting as straight as a plumb line toward their destination. And as they moved, the night seemed to mount around her, growing steadily more hostile as her trepidation increased. The trees and brush became malevolent, as if she were passing into another wood altogether, a place of hazard and cruel intent.

Then a hill lay across their way. Covenant and his summoner ascended, disappeared over the crest in a strange flare of orange light. It picked them out of the dark, then quenched them like an instant of translation. Warned by that brief gleam, Linden climbed slowly. The keening of her nerves seemed loud in the blackness. The last few yards she crossed on her hands and knees, keeping herself within the cover of the underbrush.

As her head crested the hill, she was struck by a blaze of light. Fire invisible a foot away burst in her face as if she had just penetrated the boundary of dreams. For an instant, she was blinded by the light, paralyzed by the silence. The night swallowed all sound, leaving the air empty of life.

Blinking furiously, she peered past the hillcrest.

Beyond her lay a deep barren hollow. Its slopes were devoid of grass, brush, trees, as if the soil had been scoured by acid.

A bonfire burned at the bottom of the hollow. Its flames sprang upward like lust, writhed like madness; but it made no noise. Seeing it, Linden felt that she had been stricken deaf. Impossible that such a fire could blaze in silence.

Near the fire stretched a rough plane of native rock, perhaps ten feet across. A large triangle had been painted on it in red-colour as crimson as fresh blood.

Joan lay on her back within the triangle. She did not move, appeared to be unconscious; only the slow lifting of her chest against her nightgown showed that she was alive.

People clustered around her, twenty or thirty of them. Men, women, children-all dressed in habiliments of burlap; all masked with grey as if they had been wallowing in ashes. They were as gaunt as icons of hunger. They gazed out of eyes as dead as if the minds behind their orbs had been extirpated-eyes which had been dispossessed of every vestige of will or spirit. Even the children stood like puppets and made no sound.

Their faces were turned toward a place on Linden's left.

Toward Thomas Covenant.

He stood halfway down the hillside, confronting the fire across the barrenness of the hollow. His shoulders hunched; his hands were fists at his sides, and his head was thrust combatively forward. His chest heaved as if he were full of denunciations.

Nobody moved, spoke, blinked. The air was intense with silence like concentrated coercion.

Abruptly, Covenant grated through his teeth, “I'm here.” The clench of his throat made each word sound like a self-inflicted wound. “Let her go.”