The Runes of the Earth: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - Book One (7 page)

Sandy sat in an armchair in one corner of the room. Opposite her, Jeremiah knelt on the floor as he usually did when he was not busy, feet splayed out on either side of him, arms across his stomach with both hands folded under them, gently rocking.

And between them—

From the floor up onto an ottoman in the middle of the rug, he had built a mountain of interlocking Legos. Despite the stubbornly rectangular shape of the Legos, and their
uncompromising primary colors, his construct was unmistakably a mountain, ragged ravines cut into its sides and foothills, bluffs bulging. Yet it also resembled a titan kneeling at the edge of the ottoman with its elbows braced on the ottoman's surface and its crown raised defiantly to the sky. A canyon widened between its legs as its calves receded into the floor. The whole structure stood almost to the level of Linden's shoulders.

The mountain or titan faced the sofa; and there Jeremiah had been at work as well. He had adjusted one of the seat cushions so that its corner jutted outward; and out onto the floor from that corner as from a promontory he had devised another castle. However, this one was entirely unlike his towering, airy construct in the entryway. Instead it resembled a wedge like an extension of the cushion's corner—a wedge which had been hollowed out rather than built up for habitation. Its high walls were marked with tiny windows, clever ramparts, and delicate battlements, so lifelike in spite of the materials from which they had been formed that they might have been limned from memory. And at the tip of the wedge stood a sturdy watchtower, nearly half the height of the wedge itself, connected to the main castle by a walled, open courtyard. In the base of the tower, and again in the base of the high keep, he had built entrances like tunnels, guarded by gates that closed like teeth.

“Jeremiah,” Linden gasped involuntarily, “oh, Jeremiah,” while all her fears rebounded through her, and her heart labored in her throat as if she might choke.

She had seen such shapes before. She recognized them, even though they had been constructed of bright plastic, all flat sides and right angles. The resemblance was too exact for confusion. The mountain was Mount Thunder, ancient Gravin Threndor, its bowels full of Wightwarrens and buried evil. And the castle was Revelstone beyond question, Lord's Keep, delved from the gutrock of its mountain promontory by Giants millennia before she had known it during her time with Thomas Covenant.

She had seen them, but Jeremiah had not: never in his life. He had not accompanied her to the Land after Covenant's murder.

Yet somehow he seemed to know such places—

His knowledge alarmed her. During the years that she had been his mother, he had produced hundreds or thousands of constructs; but until now none of them had hinted at the Land in any way.

“Linden?” Sandy asked anxiously. “What's the matter? Is something wrong? I thought you would want to see—”

Although Linden had gasped his name, Jeremiah did not look up at her or react to the sound of her voice. Instead he rocked himself gently, blankly, as he always did when he was not assembling one of his constructs—or tearing it down. He must be finished with this one. Otherwise he would have been difficult to deflect from working on it.

Dear God! she thought in dismay and outrage. He's threatening my son. Lord Foul meant harm to Jeremiah.

Ignoring Sandy for the moment, she moved to kneel in front of Jeremiah. There she put her arms around him as if her mere embrace might ward him from the Despiser's malice.

Passively he accepted her hug without touching her, or turning his head, or focusing his eyes. She only knew that he noticed her on some level—that his nerves felt her presence if his mind did not—because he stopped rocking until she let him go.

Although she had known him for ten years, and had been his adopted mother for eight, he still gave her only the subtlest of indications that he was aware of her existence.

However, she had long ago accepted him as he was. Subtle indications were enough for her. She loved him intensely enough for both of them.

“Linden?” Sandy repeated. “Have I done something wrong?”

Linden closed her eyes, took a deep breath to steady herself. “I'm sorry,” she told Sandy. “I didn't mean to scare you. There's nothing wrong. You haven't done anything. It's just another of those feelings. When I saw all this”—she swallowed convulsively—“I panicked. I can't explain it.”

“I understand.” Sandy's relief was evident. She loved Jeremiah: Linden did not doubt that. “Don't worry about it.” Then she asked, “Is there anything I can do—?”

Linden tried to put aside the shock of seeing Jeremiah's construct, but it clung to her. Seeking reassurance, she opened her eyes and looked into his face.

He gazed past or through her exactly as Joan did, blankly, without any shadow or flicker of cognizance. Yet the effect on Linden was entirely different. He was so much more active than Joan, demonstrated so much more capability, and was at times so much less compliant, that Linden often forgot this one resemblance between them.

She had witnessed his growth since he was five, and had cared for him in every possible way since he was nearly seven, studying each increment of change over the years. She had brushed his teeth and washed his body, wiped his nose, bought him clothes, dressed and undressed him. She had seen him take on size and bulk until he was nearly as tall as she was, and weighed slightly more. She had watched his features shift from the starved and haunted shapelessness of the unregarded five-year-old who had placed his right hand in the bonfire at Lord Foul's command to the lean definition of a teenager. His eyes had the muddy color of erosion runoff. His first few whiskers marked his passive cheeks. Saliva moistened his open mouth. In spite of his blankness, he had the face of a boy on the verge of manhood, waiting for sentience to give it meaning.

When Linden had satisfied herself that the eerie impulse that had inspired him to construct images of Mount Thunder and Revelstone had not caused him any discernible distress, she rose to her feet and turned to Sandy.

Sandy Eastwall was a young woman, perhaps twenty-eight, still living with her
parents and apparently content to do so. After high school she had trained as a practical nurse; but she had taken care of Jeremiah for seven years now, and exhibited no ambition to do anything else. Responsibility for one charge instead of many, and always the same charge, seemed to suit her emotional instincts and warm heart, as well as her natural complacence. Although she dated Sam Diadem's son, she showed no particular impulse to get married. As far as Linden could tell, Sandy was comfortably prepared to tend Jeremiah for the rest of her life.

That unlikely attitude was high on Linden's list of reasons for gratitude.

“If you don't mind,” she asked, answering Sandy's offer to help, “can you stay long enough to get his Legos put away? I have something I need to do.” Then she added, “You can leave the Tinkertoys. I like that castle. And it's not in the way.”

“Sure.” Sandy responded with an uncomplicated smile. “I'll be glad to.

“Come, Jeremiah,” she said to the kneeling boy. “It's time to put your Legos away. Let's get started.”

Crouching to the floor, she took one of the many cartons clustered at the side of the room and set it near Mount Thunder's ankles. Then she detached a piece from the construct and placed it in the carton.

That was all she had to do to trigger Jeremiah's hidden awareness. At once, he left his knees and moved to squat beside the carton. With the same unhesitating meticulousness with which he built his constructs, he began to disassemble Mount Thunder, arranging the Legos in compact rows in their carton as he removed them.

Linden had spent many hours watching him do such things. He never moved quickly, never appeared to feel any hurry or tension—and never paused for thought or doubt. She herself might have needed two or three hours to put away so many Legos—or to put them away with such precision—but he moved so efficiently, using his maimed hand as deftly as the whole one, that his Mount Thunder appeared to melt away before her eyes. He would probably be done in forty-five minutes.

Because she needed to speak to him, hear his name in her mouth, she said, “Thank you, Jeremiah. You're very good with Legos. I like everything you make with them. And I like the way you put them away when it's time.”

Then abruptly she turned and left the room so that Sandy would not see the sudden tears in her eyes, or notice the lump of love and fear in her throat.

While Jeremiah took Mount Thunder apart, and Sandy resumed her knitting, Linden went upstairs to master her alarm.

He's threatening my son.

She had tried to believe that there would be no danger unless the old man in the ochre robe appeared to warn her. But she no longer trusted his absence to mean that anyone was safe.

A
lone in her bedroom, she asked herself for the first time whether she should flee.

She could do that, in spite of her responsibilities. The necessary arrangements would require nothing more than a few phone calls. She could pack and drive away in an hour or two; take Jeremiah out of harm's reach. In fact, she could make her calls when she had driven far enough to avoid any conceivable peril.

Lord Foul was threatening her son.

Roger Covenant had no idea that Jeremiah existed. Nevertheless it could
not
be an accident that Jeremiah had created images of Mount Thunder and Revelstone on the same day that Roger had demanded his mother's release.

And if Linden was wrong? If Roger proved to be as harmless as Barton Lytton claimed? Why, then she could simply bring Jeremiah home again, with no damage done.

Aching to protect her son, she gave serious consideration to the possibilities of flight.

But the prospect shamed her. And she had learned the necessity of courage from the most stringent teachers. Love and beauty could not be preserved by panic or flight.

The ruin of Jeremiah's hand was in some sense her fault; and she did not believe that she could bear to see him hurt again. But he was not the only one who had been maimed that night. And Thomas Covenant himself had died for the same reason: because she had failed to intervene. When she had seen what was happening, she had been appalled by horror, stunned motionless. In dread she had simply watched while Covenant had smiled for Joan; while men and women and children had sacrificed their hands to the Despiser's malice; while the barriers between realities had been torn asunder by blood and pain.

Now she knew that that night's evil could have been prevented. When she had finally broken free of her dismay and charged forward, toward the bonfire, Lord Foul's hold on his victims had been disrupted. If she had acted sooner, that whole night's carnage might have been averted. Even the Land might have been spared—

If she fled now, no one would remain to stand between the Despiser and more victims.

She did not mean to be ruled by her fears again. Not ever. No matter how severely Roger Covenant provoked her.

Here, however, she faced a conundrum which she did not know how to untangle. To flee for Jeremiah's sake? Or to remain for her own, and for Joan's, and for the Land's? Trapped by indecision, she found herself sitting on her bed with her hands over her face and Thomas Covenant's name on her lips, listening as if she were helpless for sounds of danger from downstairs.

There were none. Occasionally the distant murmur of Sandy's voice reached her. At intervals a car drove down the street. Erratic gusts of wind tugging past the eaves of the house suggested a storm brewing. She heard nothing to justify her gathering apprehension.

Sighing, she told herself that in the morning she would make another attempt to enlist Lytton's aid. Or perhaps Megan could sway him. For tonight she would watch over Jeremiah with all her vigilance, and let no harm near him.

By now, he had probably finished with Mount Thunder and begun to separate the pieces of Revelstone. Nothing in his manner had suggested that Gravin Threndor and Lord's Keep held any significance for him. As far as she could tell, his life remained exactly as it had always been, despite the Land's strange intrusion into his lost mind.

This was how he had spent his time for years: he put things together and took them apart. Indeed, he seemed incapable of any relationship except with physical objects which could be connected to each other. No human being impinged on his attention. He did not react to his name. If he was not involved in making one of his constructs, he simply knelt with his feet angled outward beneath him and rocked himself soothingly with his arms across his stomach. He walked only if he were raised to his feet and led by the hand. Even animals found no focus in his muddy gaze.