The Runes of the Earth

crime, was it not? Megan might be able to have Joan’s plight, and Sara’s, taken out of Lytton’s hands.

Swallowing her reluctance, Linden reached for her phone and dialed Megan’s number.

The lawyer picked up almost instantly. “Yes?”

“Megan, it’s Linden.”

“Linden,” Megan cried at once, “where are you?”

Her urgency seemed to knock Linden back in her seat. She heard crises in Megan’s voice; dangers she had not imagined. Quickly she asked, “Megan, what’s wrong?”

“Damn it, Linden!” Megan yelled back. “Listen to me. Where are you? At the hospital?”

“Yes, I-” Linden began, floundering.

“Then go home!” Megan demanded. “Right now! No matter what you’re doing. Listen! I heard what happened. Roger and Joan. Sara Clint. Bill Coty.

“I’ve-” Abruptly she faltered, fell silent. Dead air filled the phone like keening.

“Megan?” Linden urged her friend. “Megan?”

“Oh, Linden.” Without transition, Megan’s voice changed. Now she sounded like she was in tears. “I’ve made a horrible mistake.

“I mentioned Jeremiah to Roger. A few days ago. He was asking questions about you. I told him you have a son.”

Somewhere in the background of herself, Linden started screaming.

Chapter Five: The Cost of Love and Despair

She saw everything with a terrible clarity. The edge of her desk looked sharp enough to draw blood. Across its surface, sheets of paper in confusion whetted each other to the incisiveness of anguish. The clock hanging on the wall above her seemed to jut outward, its hands as stark as cries. In her grasp, the black plastic of the phone’s receiver looked desperate and fatal. Its cord coiled about itself, binding her to Megan’s voice.

She had lost her chance to flee with Jeremiah. It would never come again.

Her friend was saying, “Linden, I am so sorry.”

She was saying, “Go home now. Maybe I’m wrong. Don’t take the chance. Don’t let this become any worse than I’ve already made it. No one else needs you the way he does.”

Linden did not reply. If she had, Megan would not have heard her: she had already dropped the handset. Borne along by screams, she left her office at a run. The skirts of her coat flapped behind her like Furies.

Stop, she tried to tell herself, go back. Assume he has Jeremiah. Get Lytton’s help. Tell him where to look, make him take you with him, with your help he might find Roger in time.

But she did not stop running, or turn. The voice of her own sanity could not reach her. She flung aside the staff door, and the wind caught it: she might have cracked the safety glass. But she did not pause to close it. Instead she raced headlong for her car. The wind battered at her; struck tears from her eyes. The heels of her shoes slapped the sidewalk awkwardly, making her stumble. One of them flipped from her foot. She kicked the other away and ran on.

He is threatening my son!

How far ahead of her was Roger? Half an hour? An hour?

Even half an hour was too much.

As she neared her car, she tugged the keys from her coat pocket. The wind seemed to snatch them out of her fingers: they dropped to the pavement in a buffeted arc through the false illumination from the light poles. Without pausing, she stooped to retrieve them.

She did not need to unlock her car: she seldom locked it. Gusts and turbulence resisted her momentarily, then tumbled away to let her pull open the door, slide into the driver’s seat.

As soon as she had closed the door and shut out the wind, she began to quake. Her hands faltered and shook like scraps of paper enclosed with gusts. She could not fix her fingers to the right key. It fumbled from her grasp as she strove to push it into the ignition. Her heart beat interminably while she struggled with it.

Raging through her teeth, she clutched the keys in her fist and punched the dashboard hard enough to gouge metal into her palm.

If she failed I would need to take her place.

Jeremiah needed her. No one else needs you the way he does.

She thumbed the key into the ignition; cranked the starter. The old engine roared to life like an act of will. Violent as gunfire, she aimed her car out of the parking lot and jammed her foot down on the accelerator.

Roger did not know this town. He did not know where she lived. Even given directions, he would have to drive slowly, peer through the darkness for street signs and house numbers. And Sara Clint-Joan would not resist him, she was already lost. But Sara would do whatever she could to escape him, frustrate him. He could not make an attempt on Jeremiah unless he controlled her somehow.

He could not move quickly. If Linden did not reach her house ahead of him, she might catch him while he was there.

If Sandy had been forewarned

The wind or her tires shrieked through a corner. The car lurched on its springs. Again she punched the dashboard. Damn it, she should have called Sandy from her office; or asked Megan to do it for her. She had been too long away from the Land. She had gotten out of the habit of fighting against Despite.

Three more houses. Two. Then she reached her home.

Tires squalling, her car slammed to the curb. She made no effort to pull into her driveway, or park sanely; did not turn off the engine. Lightning shrieked overhead, a static discharge rubbed to life by the pressure of the wind. It left a glare across her vision as she shoved out of the car and saw the door of her house gaping open to the night.

Jeremiah-!

She seemed to rush forward in sheets and tatters, lifted by wind and slapped at the front of her house. The lawn and the steps were nothing to her. She noticed only the door banging on its hinges and the bullet-torn lock; only the ruined castle which littered the entryway.

Roger had left all of the lights on as if to welcome her home. Of course. How could he have known where to look for Jeremiah? He must have held Sandy at gunpoint While he searched from room to room. Or else he had killed-

Fearing more blood, Linden scanned the Tinker Toys quickly, the living room carpet, the hallway to the kitchen. But she saw nothing to suggest that he had harmed Sandy.

He had another use for her life.

She took the stairs three at a time, surged upward in her fluttering coat and her exposed feet to confirm her worst fears.

Every light blazed. Roger had been into every room, left no part of her home unviolated. The whole upstairs shone as if she were being welcomed to a wake.

He had searched-

Jeremiah’s bed lay empty. Roger Covenant had not touched the racetrack and towers. He had disturbed nothing. He had taken only her son.

There Linden stopped running.

Her terror and fury did not let her go. Instead they seemed to drive her into another mode of being, onto a new plane of existence. Between one heartbeat and the next, she ceased to be the Linden Avery who could panic or be paralysed. In that woman’s place, she became Linden Avery the Chosen, who had transcended Ravers and despair in the name of those she loved.

She knew what Roger would do. And she had already made all of the choices that would be required of her.

Deliberately, sure of herself now, she went to her bedroom to change her clothes. She could not go to meet the Despiser barefoot, clad only in her loose coat and the impersonal blouse and skirt she had worn to