Stephen Donaldson - Covenant 4 - The Wounded Land

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THE WOUNDED LAND
Stephen R. Donaldson
The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever BOOK FOUR
C 1980
PROLOGUE
ONE: Daughter
WHEN Linden Avery heard the knock at her door, she groaned aloud. She was in a black mood, and did
not want visitors. She wanted a cold shower and privacy-a chance to accustom herself to the
deliberate austerity of her surroundings.
She had spent most of the afternoon of an unnaturally muggy day in the middle of spring moving
herself into this apartment which the Hospital had rented for her, lugging her sparse wardrobe,
her inadequate furniture, and a back-breaking series of cardboard boxes containing textbooks from
her middle-aged sedan up the outside stairs to the second floor of the old wooden house. The house
squatted among its weeds like a crippled toad, spavined by antiquity; and when she had unlocked
her apartment for the first time, she had been greeted by three rooms and a bath with grubby
yellow walls, floorboards covered only by chipped beige paint, an atmosphere of desuetude
bordering on indignity-and by a piece of paper which must have been slipped under the door. Thick
red lines like lipstick or fresh blood marked the paper-a large crude triangle with two words
inside it:
JESUS SAVES
She had glared at the paper for a moment, then had crumpled it in her pocket. She had no use for
offers of salvation. She wanted nothing she did not earn.
But the note, combined with the turgid air, the long exertion of heaving her belongings up the
stairs, and the apartment itself, left her feeling capable of murder. The rooms reminded her of
her parents' house. That was why she hated the apartment. But it was condign, and she chose to
accept it. She both loathed and approved the aptness of her state. Its personal stringency was
appropriate.
She was a doctor newly out of residency, and she had purposely sought a job which would bring her
to a small half-rural, half-stagnant town like this one-a town like the one near which she had
been born and her parents had died. Though she was only thirty, she felt old, unlovely, and
severe. This was just; she had lived an unlovely and severe life. Her father had died when she was
eight; her mother, when she was fifteen. After three empty years in a foster home, she had put
herself through college, then medical school, internship, and residency, specializing in Family
Practice. She had been lonely ever since she could remember, and her isolation had largely become
ingrained. Her two or three love affairs had been like hygienic exercises or experiments in
physiology; they had left her untouched. So now when she looked at herself, she saw severity, and
the consequences of violence.
Hard work and clenched emotions had not hurt the gratuitous womanliness of her body, or dulled the
essential luster of her shoulder-length wheaten hair, or harmed the structural beauty of her face.
Her driven and self-contained life had not changed the way her eyes misted and ran almost without
provocation. But lines had already marked her face, leaving her with a perpetual frown of
concentration above the bridge of her straight, delicate nose, and gullies like the implications
of pain on either side of her mouth-a mouth which had originally been formed for something more
generous than the life which had befallen her. And her voice had become flat, so that it sounded
more like a diagnostic tool, a way of eliciting pertinent data, than a vehicle for communication.
But the way she had lived her life had given her something more than loneliness and a liability to
black moods. It had taught her to believe in her own strength. She was a physician; she had held
life and death in her hands, and had learned how to grasp them effectively. She trusted her
ability to carry burdens. When she heard the knock at her door, she groaned aloud. But then she
straightened her sweat-marked clothes as if she were tugging her emotions into order, and went to
open the door.
She recognized the short, wry man who stood on the landing. He was Julius Berenford, Chief of
Staff of the County Hospital.
He was the man who had hired her to run his Outpatient Clinic and Emergency Room. In a more
metropolitan hospital, the hiring of a Family Practitioner for such a position would have been
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unusual. But the County Hospital served a region composed largely of farmers and hill people. This
town, the county seat, had been calcifying steadily for twenty years. Dr. Berenford needed a
generalist.
The top of his head was level with her eyes, and he was twice her age. The round bulge of his
stomach belied the thinness of his limbs. He gave an impression of dyspeptic affection, as if he
found human behavior both incomprehensible and endearing. When he smiled below his white
moustache, the pouches under his eyes tightened ironically.
"Dr. Avery," he said, wheezing faintly after the exertion of the stairs.
"Dr. Berenford." She wanted to protest the intrusion; so she stepped aside and said tightly, "Come
in."
He entered the apartment, glancing around as he wandered toward a chair. "You've already moved
in," he observed. "Good. I hope you had help getting everything up here."
She took a chair near his, seated herself squarely, as if she were on duty. "No." Who could she
have asked for help?
Dr. Berenford started to expostulate. She stopped him with a gesture of dismissal. "No problem.
I'm used to it."
"Well, you shouldn't be." His gaze on her was complex. "You just finished your residency at a
highly respected hospital, and your work was excellent. The least you should be able to expect in
life is help carrying your furniture upstairs."
His tone was only half humorous; but she understood the seriousness behind it because the question
had come up more than once during their interviews. He had asked repeatedly why someone with her
credentials wanted a job in a poor county hospital. He had not accepted the glib answers she had
prepared for him; eventually, she had been forced to offer him at least an approximation of the
facts. "Both my parents died near a town like this," she had said. "They were hardly middle-aged.
If they'd been under the care of a good Family Practitioner, they would be alive today."
This was both true and false, and it lay at the root of the ambivalence which made her feel old.
If her mother's melanoma had been properly diagnosed in time, it could have been treated
surgically with a ninety per cent chance of success. And if her father's depression had been
observed by anybody with any knowledge or insight, his suicide might have been prevented. But the
reverse was true as well; nothing could have saved her parents. They had died because they were
simply too ineffectual to go on living. Whenever she thought about such things, she seemed to feel
her bones growing more brittle by the hour.
She had come to this town because she wanted to try to help people like her parents. And because
she wanted to prove that she could be effective under such circumstances-that she was not like her
parents. And because she wanted to die.
When she did not speak, Dr. Berenford said, "However, that's neither here nor there." The
humorlessness of her silence appeared to discomfit him. "I'm glad you're here. Is there anything I
can do? Help you get settled?"
Linden was about to refuse his offer, out of habit if not conviction, when she remembered the
piece of paper in her pocket. On an impulse, she dug it out, handed it to him. "This came under
the door. Maybe you ought to tell me what I'm getting into."
He peered at the triangle and the writing, muttered, "Jesus saves," under his breath, then sighed.
"Occupational hazard. I've been going to church faithfully in this town for forty years. But since
I'm a trained professional who earns a decent living, some of our good people-" He grimaced wryly,
"-are always trying to convert me. Ignorance is the only form of innocence they understand." He
shrugged, returned the note to her. "This area has been depressed for a long time. After a while,
depressed people do strange things. They try to turn depression into a virtue-they need something
to make themselves feel less helpless. What they usually do around here is become evangelical. I'm
afraid you're just going to have to put up with people who worry about your soul. Nobody gets much
privacy in a small town."
Linden nodded; but she hardly heard her visitor. She was trapped in a sudden memory of her mother,
weeping with poignant self-pity. She had blamed Linden for her father's death-
With a scowl, she drove back the recollection. Her revulsion was so strong that she might have
consented to having the memories physically cut out of her brain. But Dr. Berenford was watching
her as if her abhorrence showed on her face. To avoid exposing herself, she pulled discipline over
her features like a surgical mask. "What can I do for you, doctor?"
"Well, for one thing," he said, forcing himself to sound genial in spite of her tone, "you can
call me Julius. I'm going to call you Linden, so you might as well."
She acquiesced with a shrug. "Julius."
"Linden." He smiled; but his smile did not soften his discomfort. After a moment, he said
hurriedly, as if he were trying to outrun the difficulty of his purpose, "Actually, I came over
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for two reasons. Of course, I wanted to welcome you to town. But I could have done that later. The
truth is, I want to put you to work."
Work? she thought. The word sparked an involuntary protest. I just got here. I'm tired and angry,
and I don't know how I'm going to stand this apartment. Carefully, she said, "It's Friday. I'm not
supposed to start until Monday."
"This doesn't have anything to do with the Hospital. It should, but it doesn't." His gaze brushed
her face like a touch of need. "It's a personal favor. I'm in over my head. I've spent so many
years getting involved in the lives of my patients that I can't seem to make objective decisions
anymore. Or maybe I'm just out of date -don't have enough medical knowledge. Seems to me that what
I need is a second opinion."
"About what?" she asked, striving to sound noncommittal. But she was groaning inwardly. She
already knew that she would attempt to provide whatever he asked of her. He was appealing to a
part of her that had never learned how to refuse.
He frowned sourly. "Unfortunately, I can't tell you. It's in confidence."
"Oh, come on." She was in no mood for guessing games. "I took the same oath you did."
"I know." He raised his hands as if to ward off her vexation. "I know. But it isn't exactly that
kind of confidence."
She stared at him, momentarily nonplussed. Wasn't he talking about a medical problem? "This sounds
like it's going to be quite a favor."
"Could be. That's up to you." Before she could muster the words to ask him what he was talking
about, Dr. Berenford said abruptly, "Have you ever heard of Thomas Covenant? He writes novels."
She felt him watching her while she groped mentally. But she
had no way of following his line of thought. She had not read a novel since she had finished her
literature requirement in college. She had had so little time. Striving for detachment, she shook
her head.
"He lives around here," the doctor said. "Has a house outside town on an old property called Haven
Farm. You turn right on Main." He gestured vaguely toward the intersection. "Go through the middle
of town, and about two miles later you'll come to it. On the right. He's a leper."
At the word leper, her mind bifurcated. This was the result of her training-dedication which had
made her a physician without resolving her attitude toward herself. She murmured inwardly,
Hansen's disease, and began reviewing information.
Mycobacterium lepra. Leprosy. It progressed by killing nerve tissue, typically in the extremities
and in the cornea of the eye. In most cases, the disease could be arrested by means of a
comprehensive treatment program pivoting around DDS: diamino-diphenyl-sulfone. If not arrested,
the degeneration could produce muscular atrophy and deformation, changes in skin pigmentation,
blindness. It also left the victim subject to a host of secondary afflictions, the most common of
which was infection that destroyed other tissues, leaving the victim with the appearance-and
consequences-of having been eaten alive. Incidence was extremely rare; leprosy was not contagious
in any usual sense. Perhaps the only statistically significant way to contract it was to suffer
prolonged exposure as a child in the tropics under crowded and unsanitary living conditions.
But while one part of her brain unwound its skein of knowledge, another was tangled in questions
and emotions. A leper? Here? Why tell me? She was torn between visceral distaste and empathy. The
disease itself attracted and repelled her because it was incurable-as immedicable as death. She
had to take a deep breath before she could ask, "What do you want me to do about it?"
"Well-" He was studying her as if he thought there were indeed something she could do about it.
"Nothing. That isn't why I brought it up." Abruptly, he got to his feet, began measuring out his
unease on the chipped floorboards. Though he was not heavy, they squeaked vaguely under him. "He
was diagnosed early enough-only lost two fingers. One of our better lab technicians caught it,
right here at County Hospital. He's been stable for more than nine years now. The only reason I
told you is to find out if you're- squeamish. About lepers." He spoke with a twisted expression.
"I used to be. But I've had time to get over it."
He did not give her a chance to reply. He went on as if he were confessing. "I've reached the
point now where I don't think of him as leprosy personified. But I never forget he's a leper." He
was talking about something for which he had not been able to forgive himself. "Part of that's his
fault," he said defensively. "He never forgets, either. He doesn't think of himself as Thomas
Covenant the writer-the man-the human being. He thinks of himself as Thomas Covenant the leper."
When she continued to stare at him flatly, he dropped his gaze. "But that's not the point. The
point is, would it bother you to go see him?"
"No," she said severely; but her severity was for herself rather than for him. I'm a doctor. Sick
people are my business. "But I still don't understand why you want me to go out there."
The pouches under his eyes shook as if he were pleading with her. "I can't tell you."
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"You can't tell me." The quietness of her tone belied the blackness of her mood. "What good do you
think I can possibly do if I don't even know why I'm talking to him?"
"You could get him to tell you." Dr. Berenford's voice sounded like the misery of an ineffectual
old man. "That's what I want. I want him to accept you- tell you what's going on himself. So I
won't have to break any promises."
"Let me get this straight," She made no more effort to conceal her anger. "You want me to go out
there, and ask him outright to tell me his secrets. A total stranger arrives at his door, and
wants to know what's bothering him- for no other reason than because Dr. Berenford would like a
second opinion. I'll be lucky if he doesn't have me arrested for trespassing."
For a moment, the doctor faced her sarcasm and indignation. Then he sighed. "I know. He's like
that-he'd never tell you. He's been locked into himself so long-"The next instant, his voice
became sharp with pain. "But I think he's wrong."
"Then tell me what it is," insisted Linden.
His mouth opened and shut; his hands made supplicating gestures. But then he recovered himself.
"No. That's backward. First
I need to know which one of us is wrong. I owe him that. Mrs. Roman is no help. This is a medical
decision. But I can't make it. I've tried, and I can't."
The simplicity with which he admitted his inadequacy snared her. She was tired, dirty, and bitter,
and her mind searched for an escape. But his need for assistance struck too close to the driving
compulsions of her Me. Her hands were knotted together like certainty. After a moment,, she looked
up at him. His features had sagged as if the muscles were exhausted by the weight of his
mortality. In her flat professional voice, she said, "Give me some excuse I can use to go out
there."
She could hardly bear the sight of his relief. "That I can do," he said with a show of briskness.
Reaching into a jacket pocket, he pulled out a paperback and handed it to her. The lettering
across the drab cover said:
Or I Will Sell My Soul for Guilt
a novel by THOMAS COVENANT
"Ask for his autograph." The older man had regained his sense of irony. "Try to get him talking.
If you can get inside his defenses, something will happen."
Silently, she cursed herself. She knew nothing about novels, had never learned how to talk to
strangers about anything except their symptoms. Anticipations of embarrassment filled her like
shame. But she had been mortifying herself for so long that she had no respect left for the parts
of her which could still feel shame. "After I see him," she said dully, "I'll want to talk to you.
I don't have a phone yet. Where do you live?"
Her acceptance restored his earlier manner; he became wry and solicitous again. He gave her
directions to his house, repeated his offer of help, thanked her for her willingness to involve
herself in Thomas Covenant's affairs. When he left, she felt dimly astonished that he did not
appear to resent the need which had forced him to display his futility in front of her.
And yet the sound of his feet descending the stairs gave her a sense of abandonment, as if she had
been left to carry alone a burden that she would never be able to understand.
Foreboding nagged at her, but she ignored it. She had no acceptable alternatives. She sat where
she was for a moment, glaring around the blind yellow walls, then went to take a shower.
After she had washed away as much of the blackness as she could reach with soap and water, she
donned a dull gray dress that had the effect of minimizing her femininity, then spent a few
minutes checking the contents of her medical bag. They always seemed insufficient-there were so
many things she might conceivably need which she could not carry with her-and now they appeared to
be a particularly improvident arsenal against the unknown. But she knew from experience that she
would have felt naked without her bag. With a sigh of fatigue, she locked the apartment and went
down the stairs to her car.
Driving slowly to give herself time to learn landmarks, she followed Dr. Berenford's directions
and soon found herself moving through the center of town.
The late afternoon sun and the thickness of the air made the buildings look as if they were
sweating. The businesses seemed to lean away from the hot sidewalks, as if they had forgotten the
enthusiasm, even the accessibility, that they needed to survive; and the courthouse, with its dull
white marble and its roof supported by stone giant heads atop ersatz Greek columns, looked
altogether unequal to its responsibilities.
The sidewalks were relatively busy-people were going home from work-but one small group in front
of the courthouse caught Linden's eye. A faded woman with three small children stood on the steps.
She wore a shapeless shift which appeared to have been made from burlap; and the children were
dressed in gunny sacks. Her face was gray and blank, as if she were inured by poverty and
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weariness to the emaciation of her children. All four of them held short wooden sticks bearing
crude signs, "
The signs were marked with red triangles. Inside each triangle was written one word: REPENT.
The woman and her children ignored the passersby. They stood dumbly on the steps as if they were
engaged in a penance which stupefied them. Linden's heart ached uselessly at the sight of their
moral and physical penury. There was nothing she could do for such people.
Three minutes later, she was outside the municipal limits.
There the road began to run through tilled valleys, between
wooded hills. Beyond the town, the unseasonable heat and humidity were kinder to what they
touched; they made the air lambent, so that it lay like immanence across the new crops, up the
tangled weed-arid-grass hillsides, among the budding trees; and her mood lifted at the way the
landscape glowed in the approach of evening. She had spent so much of her life in cities. She
continued to drive slowly; she wanted to savor the faint hope that she had found something she
would be able to enjoy.
After a couple of miles, she came to a wide field on her right, thickly overgrown with milkweed
and wild mustard. Across the field, a quarter of a mile away against a wall of trees, stood a
white frame house. Two or three other houses bordered the field, closer to the highway; but the
white one drew her attention as if it were the only habitable structure in the area.
A dirt road ran into the field. Branches went to the other houses, but the main track led straight
to the white one.
Beside the entrance stood a wooden sign. Despite faded paint and several old splintered holes like
bullet scars, the lettering was still legible: Haven Farm.
Gripping her courage, Linden turned onto the dirt road.
Without warning, the periphery of her gaze caught a flick of ochre. A robed figure stood beside
the sign.
What-?
He stood there as if he had just appeared out of the air. An instant ago, she had seen nothing
except the sign.
Taken by surprise, she instinctively twitched the wheel, trying to evade a hazard she had already
passed. At once, she righted the sedan, stepped on the brakes. Her eyes jumped to the rearview
mirror.
She saw an old man in an ochre robe. He was tall and lean, barefoot, dirty. His long gray beard
and thin hair flared about his head like frenzy.
He took one step into the road toward her, then clutched at his chest convulsively, and collapsed.
She barked a warning, though there was no one to hear it. Moving with a celerity that felt like
slow-motion, she cut the ignition, grabbed for her bag, pushed open the door. Apprehension roiled
in her, fear of death, of failure; but her training controlled it. In a moment, she was at the old
man's side.
He looked strangely out of place in the road, out of time in the world she knew. The robe was his
only garment; it looked as if he had been living in it for years. His features were sharp, made
fierce by destitution or fanaticism. The declining sunlight colored his withered skin like dead
gold.
He was not breathing.
Her discipline made her move. She knelt beside him, felt for his pulse. But within her she wailed.
He bore a sickening resemblance to her father. If her father had lived to become old and mad, he
might have been this stricken, preterite figure.
He had no pulse.
He revolted her. Her father had committed suicide. People who killed themselves deserved to die.
The old man's appearance brought back memories of her own screaming which echoed in her ears as if
it could never be silenced.
But he was dying. Already, his muscles had slackened, relaxing the pain of his seizure. And she
was a doctor.
With the sureness of hard training, self-abnegation which mastered revulsion, her hands snapped
open her bag. She took out her penlight, checked his pupils.
They were equal and reactive.
It was still possible to save him.
Quickly, she adjusted his head, tilted it back to clear his throat. Then she folded her hands
together over his sternum, leaned her weight on her arms, and began to apply CPR.
The rhythm of cardiopulmonary resuscitation was so deeply ingrained in her that she followed it
automatically: fifteen firm heels of her hands to his sternum; then two deep exhalations into his
mouth, blocking his nose as she did so. But his mouth was foul, cankerous, and vile, as if his
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teeth were rotten, or his palate gangrenous. She almost faltered. Instantly, her revulsion became
an acute physical nausea, as if she were tasting the exudation of a boil. But she was a doctor;
this was her work.
Fifteen. Two.
Fifteen. Two.
She did not permit herself to miss a beat.
But fear surged through her nausea. Exhaustion. Failure. CPR was so demanding that no one person
could sustain it alone for more than a few minutes. If he did not come back to life soon-Breathe,
damn you, she muttered along the beats. Fifteen. Two. Damn you. Breathe. There was still no pulse.
Her own breathing became ragged; giddiness welled up in her like a tide of darkness. The air
seemed to resist her lungs. Heat and the approach of sunset dimmed the old man. He had lost all
muscle-tone, all appearance of life.
Breathe!
Abruptly, she stopped her rhythm, snatched at her bag. Her arms trembled; she clenched them still
as she broke open a disposable syringe, a vial of adrenaline, a cardiac needle. Fighting for
steadiness, she filled the syringe, cleared out the air. In spite of her urgency, she took a
moment to swab clean a patch of the man's thin chest with alcohol. Then she slid the needle
delicately past his ribs, injected adrenaline into his heart.
Setting aside the syringe, she risked pounding her fist once against his sternum. But the blow had
no effect.
Cursing, she resumed her CPR.
She needed help. But she could not do anything about that. If she stopped to take him into town,
or to go in search of a phone, he would die. Yet if she exhausted herself alone he would still
die.
Breathe!
He did not breathe. His heart did not beat. His mouth was as fetid as the maw of a corpse. The
whole ordeal was hopeless.
She did not relent.
All the blackness of her life was in her. She had spent too many years teaching herself to be
effective against death; she could not surrender now. She had been too young, weak, and ignorant
to save her father, could not have saved her mother; now that she knew what to do and could do it,
she would never quit, never falsify her life by quitting.
Dark motes began to dance across her vision; the ah- swarmed with moisture and inadequacy. Her
arms felt leaden; her lungs cried out every time she forced breath down the old man's throat. He
lay inert. Tears of rage and need ran hotly down her face. Yet she did not relent.
She was still half conscious when a tremor ran through him, and he took a hoarse gulp of air.
At once, her will snapped. Blood rushed to her head. She did not feel herself fall away to the
side.
When she regained enough self-command to raise her head, her sight was a smear of pain and her
face was slick with sweat. The old man was standing over her. His eyes were on her; the intense
blue of his gaze held her like a hand of compassion. He looked impossibly tall and healthy; his
very posture seemed to deny that he had ever been close to death. Gently, he reached down to her,
drew her to her feet. As he put his arms around her, she slumped against him, unable to resist his
embrace.
"Ah, my daughter, do not fear."
His voice was husky with regret and tenderness.
"You will not fail, however he may assail you. There is also love in the world."
Then he released her, stepped back. His eyes became commandments.
"Be true."
She watched him dumbly as he turned, walked away from her into the field. Milkweed and wild
mustard whipped against his robe for a moment. She could hardly see him through the blurring of
her vision. A musky breeze stirred his hair, made it a nimbus around his head as the sun began to
set. Then he faded into the humidity, and was gone.
She wanted to call out after him, but the memory of his eyes stopped her.
Be true.
Deep in her chest, her heart began to tremble.
TWO: Something Broken
AFTER a moment, the trembling spread to her limbs. The surface of her skin felt fiery, as if the
rays of the sun were concentrated on her. The muscles of her abdomen knotted.
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The old man had vanished. He had put his arms around her as if he had the right, and then he had
vanished.
She feared that her guts were going to rebel.
But then her gaze lurched toward the dirt where the old man had lain. There she saw the used
hypodermic, the sterile wrappings, the empty vial. The dust bore the faint imprint of a body.
A shudder ran through her, and she began to relax.
So he had been real He had only appeared to vanish. Her eyes had tricked her.
She scanned the area for him. He should not be walking around; he needed care, observation, until
his condition stabilized. But she saw no sign of him. Fighting an odd reluctance, she waded out
into the wild mustard after him. But when she reached the place where her eyes had lost him, she
found nothing.
Baffled, she returned to the roadway. She did not like to give him up; but she appeared to have no
choice in the matter. Muttering under her breath, she went to retrieve her bag.
The debris of her treatment she stuffed into one of the plastic specimen sacks she carried. Then
she returned to her car. As she slid into the front seat, she gripped the steering wheel with both
hands to steady herself on its hard actuality.
She did not remember why she had come to Haven Farm until the book on the seat beside her caught
her attention.
Oh, damn!
She felt intensely unready to confront Thomas Covenant.
For a moment, she considered simply abandoning the favor she had promised Dr. Berenford. She
started the engine, began to turn the wheel. But the exigency of the old man's eyes held her. That
blue would not approve the breaking of promises. And she had saved him. She had set a precedent
for herself which was more important than any question of difficulty or mortification. When she
put the sedan into motion, she sent it straight down the dirt road toward the white frame house,
with the dust and the sunset at her back.
The light cast a tinge of red over the house, as if it were in the process of being transformed
into something else. As she parked her car, she had to fight another surge of reluctance. She did
not want to have anything to do with Thomas Covenant-not because he was a leper, but because he
was something unknown and fierce, something so extravagant that even Dr. Berenford was afraid of
him.
But she had already made her commitment. Picking up the book, she left her car and went to the
front door of the house, hoping to be able to finish this task before the light failed.
She spent a moment straightening her hair. Then she knocked.
The house was silent.
Her shoulders throbbed with the consequences of strain. Fatigue and embarrassment made her arms
feel too heavy to lift. She had to grit her teeth to make herself knock again.
Abruptly, she heard the sound of feet. They came stamping through the house toward her. She could
hear anger in them.
The front door was snatched open, and a man confronted her, a lean figure in old jeans and a T-
shirt, a few inches taller than herself. About forty years old. He had an intense face. His mouth
was as strict as a stone tablet; his cheeks were lined with difficulties; his eyes were like
embers, capable of fire. His hair above his forehead was raddled with gray, as if he had been aged
more by his thoughts than by time.
He was exhausted. Almost automatically, she noted the redness of his orbs and eyelids, the pallor
of his skin, the febrile rawness of his movements. He was either ill or under extreme stress.
She opened her mouth to speak, got no further. He registered her presence for a second, then
snapped, "Goddamn it, if I wanted visitors I'd post a sign!" and clapped the door shut in her
face.
She blinked after him momentarily while darkness gathered at her back, and her uncertainty turned
to anger. Then she hit the door so hard that the wood rattled in its frame.
He came back almost at once. His voice hurled acid at her. "Maybe you don't speak English. I-"
She met Ms glare with a mordant smile. "Aren't you supposed to ring a bell, or something?"
That stopped him. His eyes narrowed as he reconsidered her. When he spoke again, his words came
more slowly, as if he were trying to measure the danger she represented.
"If you know that, you don't need any warning."
She nodded. "My name is Linden Avery. I'm a doctor."
"And you're not afraid of lepers."
His sarcasm was as heavy as a bludgeon; but she matched it. "If I were afraid of sick people, I
wouldn't he a doctor,"
His glower expressed his disbelief. But he said curtly, "I don't need a doctor," and started to
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swing the door shut again.
"So actually," she rasped, "you're the one who's afraid."
His face darkened. Enunciating each word as if it were a dagger, he said, "What do you want,
doctor?"
To her dismay, his controlled vehemence made her falter. For the second time in the course of the
sunset, she was held by eyes that were too potent for her. His gaze shamed her. The book-her
excuse for being there-was in her hand; but her hand was behind her back. She could not tell the
lie Dr. Berenford had suggested to her. And she had no other answer. She could see vividly that
Covenant needed help. Yet if he did not ask for it, what recourse did she have?
But then a leap of intuition crossed her mind. Speaking before she could question herself, she
said, "That old man told me to 'Be true.'"
His reaction startled her. Surprise and fear flared in his eyes. His shoulders winced; his jaw
dropped. Then abruptly he had closed the door behind him. He stood before her with his face thrust
hotly forward. "What old man?"
She met his fire squarely. "He was out at the end of your driveway-an old man in an ochre robe. As
soon as I saw him, he went into cardiac arrest." For an instant, a cold hand of doubt touched her
heart. He had recovered too easily. Had he staged the whole situation? Impossible! His heart had
stopped. "I had to work like hell to save him. Then he just walked away."
Covenant's belligerence collapsed. His gaze clung to her as if he were drowning. His hands gaped
in front of him. For the first time, she observed that the last two fingers of his right hand were
missing. He wore a wedding band of white gold on what had once been the middle finger of that
hand. His voice was a scraping of pain in his throat. "He's gone?"
"Yes."
"An old man in an ochre robe?"
"Yes."
"You saved him?" His features were fading into night as the sun dropped below the horizon.
"Yes."
"What did he say?"
"I already told you." Her uncertainty made her impatient. "He said, 'Be true.'"
"He said that to you?"
"Yes!"
Covenant's eyes left her face. "Hellfire." He sagged as if he carried a weight of cruelty on his
back. "Have mercy on me. I can't bear it." Turning, he slumped back to the door, opened it. But
there he stopped.
"Why you?"
Then he had reentered his house, the door was closed, and. Linden, stood alone in the evening as
if she had been bereft.
She did not move until the need to do something, take some kind of action to restore the
familiarity of her world, impelled her to her car. Sitting behind the wheel as if she were
stunned, she tried to think.
Why you?
What kind of question was that? She was a doctor, and the old man had needed help. It was that
simple. What was Covenant talking about?
But Be true was not all the old man had said. He had also said, You will not fail, however he may
assail you.
He? Was that a reference to Covenant? Was the old man trying to warn her of something? Or did it
imply some other kind of connection between him and the writer? What did they have to do with each
other? Or with her?
Nobody could fake cardiac arrest!
She took a harsh grip on her scrambled thoughts. The whole; situation made no sense. All she could
say for certain was that Covenant had recognized her description of the old man. And Covenant's
mental stability was clearly open to question.
Clenching the wheel, she started her car, backed up in order to turn around. She was convinced now
that Covenant's problem was serious; but that conviction only made her more angry at Dr. ;
Berenford's refusal to tell her what the problem was. The dirt road was obscure in the twilight;
she slapped on her headlights as she put the sedan in gear to complete her turn.
A scream like a mouthful of broken glass snatched her to a halt. It pierced the mutter of her
sedan. Slivers of sound cut at her hearing. A woman screaming in agony or madness.
It had come from Covenant's house. ?
In an instant, Linden stood beside the car, waiting for the cry to-be repeated.
She heard nothing. Lights shone from some of the windows; but " no shadows moved. No sounds of
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violence betrayed the night. She I stood poised to race to the house. Her ears searched the air-.
But the dark held its breath. The scream did not come again.
For a long moment, indecision held her. Confront Covenant-demand answers? Or leave? She had met
his hostility. What right did she have-? Every right, if he were torturing some woman. But how
could she be sure? Dr. Berenford had called it a medical problem.
Dr. Berenford-
Spitting curses, she jumped back into her car, stamped down on the accelerator, and sped away in a
rattle of dust and gravel.
Two minutes later, she was back in town. But then she had to slow down so that she could watch for
street signs.
When she arrived at the Chief of Staffs house, all she could see was an outline against the night
sky. Its front frowned as if this, too, were a place where secrets were kept. But she did not
hesitate. Striding up the steps, she pounded on the front door.
That door led to a screened veranda like a neutral zone between the dwelling itself and the
outside world. As she knocked, the porch lights came on. Dr. Berenford opened the inner door,
closed it behind him, then crossed the veranda to admit her.
He smiled a welcome; but his eyes evaded hers as if he had reason to be frightened; and she could
see his pulse beating in the pouches below their sockets.
"Dr. Berenford," she said grimly.
"Please." He made a gesture of appeal. "Julius."
"Dr. Berenford." She was not sure that she wanted this man's friendship. "Who is she?"
His gaze flinched. "She?"
"The woman who screamed."
He seemed unable to lift his eyes to her face. In a tired voice, he murmured, "He didn't tell you
anything."
"No."
Dr. Berenford considered for a moment, then motioned her toward two rocking chairs at one end of
the veranda. "Please sit down. It's cooler out here." His attention seemed to wander. "This heat
wave can't last forever."
"Doctor!" she lashed at him. "He's torturing that woman."
"No, he isn't." Suddenly, the older man was angry. "You get that out of your head right now. He's
doing everything he can for her. Whatever's torturing her, it isn't him."
Linden held his glare, measuring his candor until she felt sure that he was Thomas Covenant's
friend, whether or not he was hers. Then she said flatly, "Tell me."
By degrees, his expression recovered its habitual irony. "Won't you sit down?"
Brusquely, she moved down the porch, seated herself to one of the rockers. At once, he turned off
the lights, and darkness came pouring through the screens. "I think better in the dark." Before
her eyes adjusted, she heard the chair beside her squeak as he sat down.
For a time, the only sounds were the soft protest of his chair and the stridulation of the
crickets. Then he said abruptly, "Some things I'm not going to tell you. Some I can't-some I
won't. But I got you into this. I owe you a few answers."
After that, he spoke like the voice of the night; and she listened in a state of suspension-half
concentrating, as she would have concentrated on a patient describing symptoms, half musing on the
image of the gaunt vivid man who had said with such astonishment and pain, Why you?
"Eleven years ago, Thomas Covenant was a writer with one bestseller, a lovely wife named Joan, and
an infant son, Roger. He hates that novel-calls it inane-but his wife and son he still loves. Or
thinks he does. Personally, I doubt it. He's an intensely loyal man. What he calls love, I call
being loyal to his own pain.
"Eleven years ago, an infection on his right hand turned out to be leprosy, and those two fingers
were amputated. He was sent down to the leprosarium in Louisiana, and Joan divorced him. To
protect Roger from being raised to close proximity to a leper. The way Covenant tells it, her
decision was perfectly reasonable. A mother's natural concern for a child. I think he's
rationalizing. I think she was just afraid. I think the idea of what Hansen's disease could do to
him-not to mention to her and Roger-just terrified her. She ran away."
His tone conveyed a shrug, "But I'm just guessing. The fact is, she divorced him, and he didn't
contest it. After a few months, his illness was arrested, and he came back to Haven Farm. Alone.
That was not a good time for him. All his neighbors moved away. Some people in this fair town
tried to force him to leave. He was to the Hospital a couple times, and the second time he was
half dead-" Dr. Berenford seemed to wince at the memory. "His disease was active again. We sent
him back to the leprosarium.
"When he came home again, everything was different. He seemed to have recovered his sanity. For
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ten years now he's been stable. A little grim, maybe-not exactly what you might call diffident-but
accessible, reasonable, compassionate. Every year he foots the bill for several of our indigent
patients."
The older man sighed. "You know, it's strange. The same people who try to convert me seem to think
he needs saving, too. He's a leper who doesn't go to church, and he's got money. Some of our
evangelicals consider that an insult to the Almighty."
The professional part of Linden absorbed the facts Dr. Berenford gave, and discounted his
subjective reactions. But her musing raised Covenant's visage before her in the darkness.
Gradually, that needy face became more real to her. She saw the lines of loneliness and gall on
his mien. She responded to the strictness of his countenance as if she had recognized a comrade.
After all, she was familiar with bitterness, loss, isolation.
But the doctor's speech also filled her with questions. She wanted to know where Covenant had
learned his stability. What had changed him? Where had he found an answer potent enough to
preserve him against the poverty of his life? And what had happened recently to take it away from
him?
"Since then," the Chief of Staff continued, "he's published seven novels, and that's where you can
really see the difference. Oh, he's mentioned something about three or four other manuscripts, but
I don't know anything about them. The point is, if you didn't know better, you wouldn't be able to
believe his bestseller and the other seven were written by the same man. He's right about the
first one. It's fluff-self-indulgent melodrama. But the others-
"If you had a chance to read Or I Will Sell My Soul for Guilt, you'd find him arguing that
innocence is a wonderful thing except for the fact that it's impotent. Guilt is power. All
effective people are guilty because the use of power is guilt, and only guilty people can be
effective. Effective for good, mind you. Only the damned can be saved."
Linden was squirming. She understood at least one kind of relationship between guilt and
effectiveness. She had committed murder, and had become a doctor because she had committed murder.
She knew that people like herself were driven to power by the need to assoil their guilt. But she
had found nothing-no anodyne or restitution-to verify the claim that the damned could be saved.
Perhaps Covenant had fooled Dr. Berenford: perhaps he was crazy, a madman wearing a clever mask of
stability. Or perhaps he knew something she did not.
Something she needed.
That thought gave her a pang of fear. She was suddenly conscious of the night, the rungs of the
rocker pressing against her back, the crickets. She ached to retreat from the necessity of
confronting Covenant again. Possibilities of harm crowded the darkness. But she needed to
understand her peril. When Dr. Berenford stopped, she bore the silence as long as she could, then,
faintly, repeated her initial question.
"Who is she?"
The doctor sighed. His chair left a few splinters of agitation in the air. But he became
completely still before he said, "His ex-wife. Joan."
Linden flinched. That piece of information gave a world of explanation to Covenant's haggard,
febrile appearance. But it was not enough. "Why did she come back? What's wrong with her?"
The older man began rocking again. "Now we're back to where we were this afternoon. I can't tell
you. I can't tell you why she came back because he told me in confidence. "He's right-" His voice
trailed away, then resumed. "I can't tell you what's wrong with her because I don't know."
She stared at his unseen face. "That's why you got me into this."
"Yes." His reply sounded like a recognition of mortality.
"There are other doctors around. Or you could call in a specialist." Her throat closed suddenly;
she had to swallow heavily in order to say, "Why me?"
"Well, I suppose-" Now his tone conveyed a wry smile. "I could say it's because you're well
trained. But the fact is, I thought of you because you seem to fit. You and Covenant could talk to
each other-if you gave yourselves a chance."
"I see." In the silence, she was groaning, Is it that obvious? After everything I've done to hide
it, make up for it, does it still show? To defend herself, she got to her feet. Old bitterness
made her sound querulous. "I hope you like playing God."
He paused for a long moment before he replied quietly, "If that's what I'm doing-no, I don't. But
I don't look at it that way. I'm just in over my head. So I asked you for help."
Help, Linden snarled inwardly. Jesus Christ! But she did not
speak her indignation aloud. Dr. Berenford had touched her again, placed his finger on the nerves
which compelled her. Because she did not want to utter her weakness, or her anger, or her lack of
choice, she moved past him to the outer door of the veranda. "Goodnight," she said in a flat tone.
"Goodnight, Linden." He did not ask her what she was going to do. Perhaps he understood her. Or
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file:///F|/rah/Stephen%20Donaldson/Donaldson%20Covenant%204%20The%20Wounded%20Land.txtTHEWOUNDEDLANDStephenR.DonaldsonTheChroniclesOfThomasCovenantTheUnbelieverBOOKFOURC1980PROLOGUEONE:DaughterWHENLindenAveryheardtheknockatherdoor,shegroanedaloud.Shewasinablackmood,anddidnotwantvisitors.Shewanteda...

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