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

his background.”
    In fact, Covenant had told Linden a little about Joan’s past; but she did not interrupt Megan to say so. When Joan had divorced Covenant, she had moved back to her hometown to live with her parents. For several years, apparently, she had striven to relieve her shame with conventional forms of exoneration: counseling, psychotherapy. When that approach had left her pain untouched, however, she had turned to religion: religion in more and more extreme forms.
    â€œAccording to him,” Megan began, “he doesn’t remember much of his early life. But I got him to tell me a bit about that commune she joined. I guess that was about a year before she came back here.
    â€œHe says the commune called itself the Community of Retribution. Reading between the lines, they sure sound like a bloody-minded group. They didn’t believe in salvation for people who acknowledged their sins and accepted God’s grace. They thought the world was too far gone for that, too corrupt—” Megan muttered a curse under her breath. “It needed violence, bloodshed, sacrifices. Ritual murder to destroy sin.
    â€œAnyway, that’s how I interpret what he told me. According to him, they spent most of their time praying for revelation. They wanted God to tell them who had to be sacrificed. And how.”
    In protest, Megan demanded, “Where do people like that come from, Linden?”
    Thinking about Lord Foul, Linden replied, “From despair. They’re broken by their own hollowness. It makes them implode.”
    Roger and Joan had studied fanaticism in the same places, from the same sources. But his was of another kind altogether.
    â€œI suppose you’re right,” Megan conceded. “I don’t really understand it.
    â€œThe way he tells it,” she went on, “he didn’t understand it, either. It didn’t touch him. He was just along for the ride. What was he? Shit, nine years old?”
    She swore again, softly.
    â€œThen—?” Linden prompted.
    Her voice heavy, Megan said, “After the better part of a year watching hysterics work themselves into a lather, Joan took Roger back to her parents and left him there. I guess she’d had her revelation. He never saw her again. And I got the impression that his grandparents never talked about her. He knew she was still alive. That’s all.
    â€œI asked him if he had trouble adjusting to a normal life after all that. You know—middle school, ordinary teachers and classmates, clothes, homework, girls. Hell, he’d just spent a year helping the Community of Retribution pick its victims. But he said it was easy.” Sourly Megan concluded, “He said—this is a direct quote—‘I was just passing the time.’ ”
    â€œUntil what?” asked Linden.
    â€œThat’s what I wanted to know. If you believe what he says about himself, the only thing he’s actually done since Joan abandoned him is wait for his twenty-first birthday. So he could inherit his father’s estate. That’s it.
    â€œWhy it matters to him, I have no idea.” Megan’s tone conveyed her bafflement. “Or what he wants to do with it. He has nothing to say on the subject. He doesn’t seem to understand the question.”
    Linden probed at her sore lip with the tip of one finger. It was no accident that she had become Joan’s keeper, caretaker. With every nerve of her body and beat of herheart, she knew how Joan felt. She, too, had been paralyzed by evil; left effectively comatose by the knowledge of her own frailty. Like Joan, she knew what it meant to have her mind erased—
    But somehow Roger had made his mother look at him.
    Still groping for comprehension, Linden said, “I assume he graduated high school. What’s he been doing since then?”
    â€œShit, Linden,” Megan growled. “It’s easier to get him to talk about the commune. But I