Free The Runes of the Earth: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - Book One by Stephen R. Donaldson

mattered, an alloy apt for wild magic, not any specific piece of the metal?
    What difference could it make whose ring Roger wielded when he took Joan’s place?
    Thomas Covenant probably would have known the answer. Linden did not.
    Was it possible that Lytton was right? Had she misread Roger? By any ordinary measure, this explanation made more sense. Anyone except Linden, anyone at all, would have accepted it without question.
    And she had at least one other reason to believe that she was wrong: a reason she had not yet had time to consider.
    Leaving her anger in her office, she went to the staff lavatory to splash cold water on her face and think.
    With the door locked and her cheeks stinging, Linden Avery contemplated her wet features in the mirror over the sink. She was not a woman who studied her appearance often. When she did so, she was occasionally surprised or bemused by what she saw. This time she was taken aback by the alarm that darkened her gaze. She seemed to have aged in the last few hours.
    In some ways, the past decade had marked her noticeably. Oh, her hair retained most of its wheaten luster, trammeled by grey only at the temples. The structural harmony underlying her features made her look handsome, striking, in spite of the years. She had what men called a good figure, with full breasts, slim hips, and no unnecessary weight—a womanliness which had seemed gratuitous to her until she had met and loved Thomas Covenant. The right light gave the ready dampness in her eyes radiance.
    But her once-delicate nose had become prominent, emphasized by curved lines of erosion at the corners of her mouth. That erosion seemed to drag at her features, so that her smiles often looked effortful. And the knot between her brows never lifted: apparently she frowned even in her sleep, troubled by her dreams.
    Nevertheless if she had examined her face yesterday she might have concluded that she wore her age lightly. Her days with Thomas Covenant, and her years with Jeremiah, had taught her things that she had never known about love and joy.
    Now, however, she saw hints of Joan’s mortality in her troubled scrutiny. Roger’s intrusion had brought back more than her memories of struggle and pain in the Land. He made her think as well of her own parents: of her father, who had killed himself in front of her; and of her mother, whose pleading for release had driven Linden to end the suffering woman’s life. Like Joan, if in her own way, Linden had known too much death, paid too high a price for living.
    If she had been asked to explain why she worked for Berenford Memorial Psychiatric Hospital, instead of practicing some other form of medicine, she would havereplied that she was here because she understood her patients. Their damaged spirits were eloquent to her.
    At the moment, however, she had more immediate concerns. Her dilemma, she thought as she watched water drip from her cheeks and jaw, was that she might be wrong about Roger Covenant. Her time with his father gave her at least one reason to doubt herself.
    She had seen no harbinger.
    Before her first encounter with Thomas Covenant, she had found herself unexpectedly striving to save the life of an ochre-clad old man with thin hair and fetid breath. When at last he had responded to her frantic CPR, he had pronounced like a prophet, You will not fail, however he may assail you. There is also love in the world. Then he had disappeared into the strange sunlight on the fringes of Haven Farm.
    Do not fear, he had commanded her. Be true.
    Less than thirty-six hours later, she had fallen to the summons of the Land. At Covenant’s side, she had been assailed and appalled past bearing. But in the end she had not failed.
    And ten years earlier, Thomas Covenant had met the same prophet himself. Walking into town in a desperate and doomed attempt to affirm his common humanity, he had been accosted by an old man with compulsory eyes and an ochre robe who had asked