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

shook his head sharply. When he resumed, she could not tell what kind of answer he had decided to give her.
    “I 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.
    “I 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.
    “But 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. Like the care with which he moved, it was part of the discipline he needed to keep his illness arrested. Because of the damage leprosy had done to his nerves, the largest single threat to his health was the possibility that he might bump, burn, scrape, cut, or bruise himself without realizing it. Then infection would set in because the wound was not tended. So he moved with all the caution he could muster. The furniture in his house was arranged to minimize the risk of protruding corners, obstacles, accidents. And he scanned himself regularly, looking for signs of danger.
    Watching him in this objective, professional way helped restore her sense of who she was. Slowly she became better able to listen to his indirect explanation without impatience.
    He had not paused; he was saying, “First she tried psychology. She wanted to believe it was all in her mind—and minds can be fixed, like broken arms. She started going through psychological fads the way some people trade in cars, a new one every year. As if her problem really was mental instead of spiritual.
    “None of it made sense to her parents, but they tried to be tolerant, just did what they could to give Roger a stable home.
    “So they thought she was finally going to be all right when she suddenly gave that up and went churchy. They believed all along that religion was the answer. Well, it’s good enough for most people, but it didn’t give her what she needed. It was too easy. Her disease was progressing all the time. A year ago, she became a fanatic. Took Roger and went to join a commune. One of those places where people learn the ecstasy of humiliation, and the leader preaches love and mass suicide.
    “She must have been so desperate—For most of her life, the only thing she really wanted to believe was that she was perfectly allright. But after all those years of failure, she didn’t have any defenses left. What did she have to lose?”
    Linden was not wholly convinced. She had no more use for God than for conceptions of good and evil. But Covenant’s passion held her. His eyes were wet with violence and grief; his mouth was as sharp as a blade. He believed what he was saying.
    Her expression must have betrayed some of her doubt; his voice took on an echo of Joan’s ferocity. “You don’t have to believe in God to grasp what she was going through. She was suffering from an affliction for which there’s no mortal cure. She couldn’t even