The Wounded Land Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 middlefinger of that hand. His voice was a scraping of pain in his throat. “He’s gone?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œAn old man in an ochre robe?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œYou saved him?” His features were fading into night as the sun dropped below the horizon.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhat did he say?”
    â€œI already told you.” Her uncertainty made her impatient. “He said, ‘Be true.’ ”
    â€œHe said that to you?”
    â€œYes!”
    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.
    â€œWhy
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