The Runes of the Earth: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - Book One Read Online Free PDF Page B

with antibiotics and salves to counteract an incessant infection, but left open to the air. Apparently it calmed Joan in some way.
    Roger stopped just inside the door and stared at his mother. His face betrayed no reaction. Whatever he felt remained closed within him, locked into his heart. Linden had expected surprise, shock, dismay, indignation, perhaps even compassion; but she saw none. The undefined lines of his face gave her no hints.
    Without shifting his gaze, he asked softly, “Who hit her?”
    He didn’t sound angry. Hell, Linden thought, he hardly sounded interested—
    She sighed. “She did it to herself. That’s why she’s restrained.”
    Moving to the side of the bed, she took a couple of cotton balls, moistened them with sterile saline, and gently began to mop Joan’s cheek. One soft stroke at a time, she wiped away the blood upward until she reached the seeping wound. Then she used more cotton balls to dab at the wound itself, trying to clean it without hurting Joan.
    Linden would have cared for her carefully in any case; but her devotion to Thomas Covenant inspired an extra tenderness in her.
    â€œIt started a year ago. Until then we kept her downstairs. She’d been unreactive for so long, we never thought that she might be a danger to herself. But then she began punching at her temple. As hard as she can.”
    Hard enough to wear calluses on her knuckles.
    â€œAt first it wasn’t very often. Once every couple of days, no more. But that didn’t last long. Soon she was doing it several times a day. Then several times an hour. We brought her up here, tied her wrists. That seemed to work for a while. But then she got out of the restraints—”
    â€œGot out?” Roger put in abruptly. “How?”
    For the first time since he had entered the room, he looked at Linden instead of at Joan.
    Avoiding his eyes, Linden gazed out the window. Past the institutional profile of County Hospital next door, she could see a stretch of blue sky, an almost luminous azure, free of fault. Spring offered the county days like this occasionally, days when the air reminded her of diamondraught, and the illimitable sky seemed deep enough to swallow away all the world’s hurts.
    Today it gave her little comfort.
    â€œWe don’t know,” she admitted. “We’ve never been able to figure it out. Usually it happens late at night, when she’s alone. We come in the next morning, find her free. Blood pumping from her temple. Blood on her fist. For a while we had her watched twenty-four hours a day. Then we set up video cameras, recorded everything. As far as we can tell, the restraints just fall off her. Then she hits herself until we make her stop.”
    â€œAnd she still does?” Roger’s manner had intensified.
    Linden turned from the window to face him again. “Not as much as before. I can get you a copy of the tapes if you want. You can watch for yourself. Now it only happens three or four times a night. Occasionally during the day, not often.”
    â€œWhat changed?” he asked.
    Gazing at him, she remembered that his father had done everything in his power to protect both Joan and her. Roger’s stare conveyed the impression that he would not have done the same.
    Her shoulders sagged, and she sighed again. “Mr. Covenant, you have to understand this. She was going to kill herself. One punch at a time, she was beating herself to death. We tried everything we could think of. Even electroshock—which I loathe. During the first six or seven months, we gave her an entire pharmacy of sedatives, tranquilizers, soporifics, stimulants, neural inhibitors, beta blockers, SSRIs, antiseizure drugs—enough medication to comatize a horse. Nothing worked. Nothing even slowed her down. She was killing herself.”
    Apparently something within her required those blows. Linden considered it possible that the Land’s old enemy