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

arrest the way it rotted her. Maybe she didn’t know what it was she was trying to cure. She was looking for magic, some power that could reach into her and heal—When you’ve tried all the salves in the world and they don’t work, you start thinking about fire. Burn out the pain. She wanted to punish herself, find some kind of abnegation to match her personal rot.”
    His voice broke; but he controlled it instantly. “I know all about it. But she didn’t have any defenses. She opened the door for him, and he saw she was the perfect tool, and he’s been using her—
using
her, when she’s too damaged to even understand what he’s using her for.”
    Using her? Linden did not comprehend. He?
    Slowly Covenant suppressed his anger. “Of course, her parents didn’t know anything about that. How could they? All they knew was that about six weeks ago she woke them up in the middle of the night and started babbling. She was a prophet, she’d had a vision, the Lord had given her a mission. Woe and retribution to the wicked, death to the sick and the unbelieving. The only sense they could make out of it was that she wanted them to take care of Roger. Then she was gone. They haven’t seen her since.
    “After a couple weeks, they called me. I hadn’t seen her—that was the first I’d heard about it. But about two weeks ago she showed up here. Sneaked into my room during the night and tried to tear my face off. If she hadn’t been so weak, she would have succeeded. She must have come all the way on foot.”
    He seemed too exhausted himself to go on pacing. His red-rimmed eyes made him look ill, and his hands trembled. How long had he been without decent sleep or peace? Two weeks? When he sat down on the opposite end of the sofa, Linden turned so that she could continue to study nun. In the back of her mind, she began trying to conceive some way to give him a sedative.
    “Since then,” he sighed, “Berenford and I have been taking care of her. I got him into this because he’s the only doctor I know. He thinks I’m wrong about her, but he’s helping me. Or he was. Until he got you into this.” He was too tired to sound bitter. “I’m trying to reach her any way I can, and he’s giving her drugs that are supposed to clear her mind. Or at least calm her so I can feed her. I leave the lights on in there all the time. Something happens to her when she’s alone in the dark. She goes berserk—I’m afraid she’ll break an arm or something.”
    He fell silent. Apparently he had reached the end of his story— or of his strength. Linden felt that his explanation was incomplete, but she held her questions in abeyance. He needed aid, a relief from strain. Carefully she said, “Maybe she really should be in a hospital. I’m sure Dr. Berenford’s doing what he can. But there are all kinds of diagnostic procedures he can’t use here. If she were in a hospital—”
    “If she were in a hospital”—he swung toward her so roughly that she recoiled—“they’d keep her in a straitjacket, and force-feed her three times a day, and turn her brain into jelly with electroshock, andfill her up with drugs until she couldn’t recognize her own name if God Himself were calling for her, and it wouldn’t do any good! Goddamn it, she was my
wife
!” He brandished his right fist. “I’m still wearing the bloody ring!”
    “Is that what you think doctors do?” She was suddenly livid; her failure made her defensive. “Brutalize sick people?”
    He strove to contain his ire. “Doctors try to cure problems whether they understand them or not. It doesn’t always work. This isn’t something a doctor can cure.”
    “Is that a fact?” She did not want to taunt him; but her own compulsions drove her. “Tell me what good
you’re
doing her.”
    He flinched. Rage and pain struggled in him; but he fought them down. Then he said simply, “She came to me.”
    “She didn’t know what she was doing.”
    “But I do,” His