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

out of the privacy of his heart—“except Berenford and Roman. The law doesn’t exactly smile on people who keep other people prisoner—even in her condition. I don’t have any legal rights at all as far as she’s concerned. What I’m supposed to do is turn her over to the authorities. But I’ve been living without the benefit of law so long now I don’t give a damn.”
    â€œBut what’s wrong with her?” Linden could not keep her voice from twitching; she was too tightly clenched to sound steady.
    He sighed. “She needs to hurt me. She’s starving for it—that’s what makes her so violent. It’s the best way she can think of to punish herself.”
    With a wrench, Linden’s analytical instinct began to function again. Paranoiac, she winced to herself. He’s paranoiac. But aloud she insisted, “But why? What’s happened to her?”
    He stopped, looked at her as if he were trying to gauge her capacity for the truth, then went back to his pacing.
    â€œOf course,” he murmured, “that isn’t how Berenford sees it. He thinks it’s a psychiatric problem. The only reason he hasn’t tried to get her away from me is because he understands why I want to take care of her. Or part of it. His wife is a paraplegic, and he would never consider dumping the problem off on anyone else. I haven’t told him about her taste for blood.”
    He was evading her question. She struggled for patience. “Isn’t it a psychiatric problem? Hasn’t Dr. Berenford been able to rule out physical causes? What else could it be?”
    Covenant hesitated, then said distantly, “He doesn’t know what’s going on.”
    â€œYou keep saying that. It’s too convenient.”
    â€œNo,” he retorted, “it’s not convenient. It’s the truth. You don’t have the background to understand it.”
    â€œHow can you be so goddamn sure?” The clench of her self-command made her voice raw. “I’ve spent half my life coping with other people’spain.” She wanted to add, Can’t you get it through your head that I’m a doctor? But her throat locked on those words. She had failed—
    For an instant, his gaze winced as if he were distressed by the idea that she did in fact have the necessary background. But then he shook his head sharply. When he resumed, she could not tell what kind of answer he had decided to give her.
    â€œI wouldn’t know about it myself,” he said, “if her parents hadn’t called me. About a month ago. They don’t have much use for me, but they were frantic. They told me everything they knew.
    â€œI suppose it’s an old story. The only thing that makes it new is the way it hurts. Joan divorced me when we found out I had leprosy. Eleven years ago. Took Roger and went back to her family. She thought she was justified—ah, hell, for years
I
thought she was justified. Kids are more susceptible to leprosy than adults. So she divorced me. For Roger’s sake.
    â€œBut it didn’t work. Deep inside her, she believed she’d betrayed me. It’s hard to forgive yourself for deserting someone you love—someone who needs you. It erodes your self-respect. Like leprosy. It gnaws away at you. Before long, you’re a moral cripple. She stood it for a while. Then she started hunting for cures.”
    His voice, and the information he was giving her, steadied Linden. As he paced, she became conscious of the way he carried himself, the care and specificity of all his movements. He navigated past the coffee table as if it were a danger to him. And repeatedly he scanned himself with his eyes, checking in turn each hand, each arm, his legs, his chest, as if he expected to find that he had injured himself without knowing it.
    She had read about such things. His self-inspection was called VSE—visual surveillance of extremities.