The Wounded Land by Stephen R. Donaldson Read Free Book Online

she drew near the woman and stretched out a tentative hand, Joan bit at her like a baited cat. Involuntarily Linden recoiled.
    â€œDear God!” she panted. “What’s wrong with her?”
    Joan raised her head, let out a scream like the anguish of the damned.
    Covenant could not speak. Grief contorted his features. He went to Joan’s side. Fumbling over the knot, he untied her left wrist, released her arm. Instantly she clawed at him, straining her whole body to reach him. He evaded her, caught her forearm.
    Linden watched with a silent wail as he let Joan’s nails rake the back of his right hand. Blood welled from the cuts.
    Joan smeared her fingers in his blood. Then her hand jumped to her mouth, and she sucked it eagerly, greedily.
    The taste of blood seemed to restore her self-awareness. Almost immediately, the madness faded from her face. Her eyes softened, turned to tears; her mouth trembled. “Oh, Tom,” she quavered weakly. “I’m so sorry. I can’t—He’s in my mind, and I can’t get him out. He hates you. He makes—makes me—” She was sobbing brokenly. Her lucidity was acutely cruel to her.
    He sat on the bed beside her, put his arms around her. “I know.” His voice ached in the room. “I understand.”
    â€œTom,” she wept. “Tom. Help me.”
    â€œI will.” His tone promised that he would face any ordeal, make any sacrifice, commit any violence. “As soon as he’s ready. I’ll get you free.”
    Slowly her frail limbs relaxed. Her sobs grew quieter. She was exhausted. When he stretched her out on the bed, she closed her eyes, went to sleep with her fingers in her mouth like a child.
    He took a tissue from a box on a table near the bed, pressed it to the back of his hand. Then, tenderly, he pulled Joan’s fingers from her mouth and retied her wrist. Only then did he look at Linden.
    â€œIt doesn’t hurt,” he said. “The backs of my hands have been numb for years.” The torment was gone from his face; it held nothing now except the long weariness of a pain he could not heal.
    Watching his blood soak into the tissue, she knew she should do something to treat that injury. But an essential part of her had failed, proved itself inadequate to Joan; she could not bear to touch him. She had no answer to what she had seen. For a moment, her eyes were helpless with tears. Only the old habit of severity kept her from weeping. Only her need kept her from fleeing into the night. It drove her to say grimly, “Now you’re going to tell me what’s wrong with her.”
    â€œYes,” he murmured. “I suppose I am.”

THREE: Plight
    He guided her back to the living room in silence. His hand on her arm was reluctant, as if he dreaded that mere human contact. When she sat on the sofa, he gestured toward his injury, and left her alone. She was glad to be alone. She was stunned by her failure; she needed time to regain possession of herself.
    What had happened to her? She understood nothing about evil, did not even believe in it as an idea; but she had seen it in Joan’s feral hunger. She was trained to perceive the world in terms of dysfunction and disease, medication and treatment, success or death. Words like good or evil meant nothing to her. But Joan—! Where did such malignant ferocity come from? And how—?
    When Covenant returned, with his right hand wrapped in a white bandage, she stared at him, demanding explanations.
    He stood before her, did not meet her gaze. The slouch of his posture gave him a look of abandonment; the skin at the corners of his eyes crumpled like dismay pinching his flesh. But his mouth had learned the habit of defiance; it was twisted with refusals. After a moment, he muttered, “So you see why I didn’t want you to know about her,” and began to pace.
    â€œNobody knows”—the words came as if he were dredging them