Nevertheless Joan's plight tugged at her heart. A sore the size of Linden's palm stigmatized Joan's right temple. A long series of blows had given her a deep bruise which had eventually begun to ooze blood as the skin stretched and cracked, too stiff to heal. Now a dripping red line veined with yellow and white ran down her cheek in spite of everything that could be done to treat it.

When the bruise had first begun to bleed, Linden had covered it with a bandage; but that had made Joan frantic, causing her to thrash against her restraints until she threatened to break her own bones. Now Linden concentrated on trying to reduce the frequency of the blows. On her orders, the wound was allowed to bleed: cleaned several times a day, slathered with antibiotics and salves to counteract an incessant infection, but left open to the air. Apparently it calmed Joan in some way.

Roger stopped just inside the door and stared at his mother. His face betrayed no reaction. Whatever he felt remained closed within him, locked into his heart.

Linden had expected surprise, shock, dismay, indignation, perhaps even compassion; but she saw none. The undefined lines of his face gave her no hints.

Without shifting his gaze, he asked softly, "Who hit her?"

He didn't sound angry. Hell, Linden thought, he hardly sounded interested She sighed. "She did it to herself. That's why she's restrained."

Moving to the side of the bed, she took a couple of cotton balls, moistened them with sterile saline, and gently began to mop Joan's cheek. One soft stroke at a time, she wiped away the blood upward until she reached the seeping wound. Then she used more cotton balls to dab at the wound itself, trying to clean it without hurting Joan.

Linden would have cared for her carefully in any case; but her devotion to Thomas Covenant inspired an extra tenderness in her.

"It started a year ago. Until then we kept her downstairs. She'd been unreactive for so long, we never thought that she might be a danger to herself.

But then she began punching at her temple. As hard as she can."

Hard enough to wear calluses on her knuckles.

"At first it wasn't very often. Once every couple of days, no more. But that didn't last long. Soon she was doing it several times a day. Then several times an hour. We brought her up here, tied her wrists. That seemed to work for a while. But then she got out of the restraints-"

"Got out?" Roger put in abruptly. "How?"

For the first time since he had entered the room, he looked at Linden instead of at Joan.

Avoiding his eyes, Linden gazed out the window. Past the institutional profile of County Hospital next door, she could see a stretch of blue sky, an almost luminous azure, free of fault. Spring offered the county days like this occasionally, days when the air reminded her of diamondraught, and the illimitable sky seemed deep enough to swallow away all the world's hurts.

Today it gave her little comfort.

"We don't know," she admitted. "We've never been able to figure it out. Usually it happens late at night, when she's alone. We come in the next morning, find her free. Blood pumping from her temple. Blood on her fist. For a while we had her watched twenty-four hours a day. Then we set up video cameras, recorded everything. As far as we can tell, the restraints just fall off her. Then she hits herself until we make her stop."

"And she still does?" Roger's manner had intensified.

Linden turned from the window to face him again.

"Not as much as before. I can get you a copy of the tapes if you want. You can watch for yourself. Now it only happens three or four times a night. Occasionally during the day, not often."

"What changed?" he asked.

Gazing at him, she remembered that his father had done everything in his power to protect both Joan and her. Roger's stare conveyed the impression that he would not have done the same.

Her shoulders sagged, and she sighed again. "Mr.

Covenant, you have to understand this. She was going to kill herself. One punch at a time, she was beating herself to death. We tried everything we could think of. Even electroshock-which I loathe. During the first six or seven months, we gave her an entire pharmacy of sedatives, tranquilizers, soporifics, stimulants, neural inhibitors, beta blockers, SSRIs, antiseizure drugs-enough medication to comatize a horse. Nothing worked. Nothing even slowed her down. She was killing herself."

Apparently something within her required those blows. Linden considered it possible that the Land's old enemy had left a delayed compulsion like a posthypnotic suggestion in Joan's shattered mind, commanding her to bring about her own death.

Not for the first time, Linden wondered what Sheriff Lytton had said or done to Joan during the brief time when she had been in his care. When Julius Berenford had driven to Haven Farm after Covenant's murder, he had found Joan there: confused and frightened, with no memory of what had transpired; but able to speak and respond. Wishing to search for Covenant and Linden without interference, Julius had sent Joan to County Hospital with Barton Lytton; and by the time they had reached the hospital Joan's mind was gone. Linden had asked Lytton what he had done, of course, pushed hire for an answer; but he had told her nothing.

In "And she was getting worse," Linden went on. "More frantic. Hysterical. She hit herself more often.

Sometimes she refused to eat, went days without food.

She fought us so hard that it took three orderlies and a nurse to fix an IV. She began to lose alarming amounts of blood"

"What changed?" Roger repeated intently. "What did you do?"

Linden hesitated on the edge of risks which she had not meant to take. Without warning, the air of Joan's room seemed crowded with dangerous possibilities. How much of the truth could she afford to expose to this unformed and foolish young man? But then she tightened her resolve and met his question squarely.

"Three months ago, I gave her back her wedding ring."

Without glancing away from him, Linden reached to the collar of Joan's nightgown and lifted it aside to reveal the delicate silver chain hanging around her neck. From the end of the chain, still hidden by the nightgown, dangled a white gold wedding band. Joan had lost so much weight that she could not have kept a ring on any of her fingers.

Roger's smile hinted at sudden hungers. "I'm impressed, Dr. Avery. That was obviously the right thing to do. But I would not have expected-" He stopped short of saying that he would not have expected such insight from her. "How did you figure it out? What made you think of it?"

Committed now, Linden shrugged. "It just came to me one night.

"I don't know how much you know about the end of your father's life. For the last two weeks before he was killed, he took care of Joan." On Haven Farm. "She had already lost her mind, but she wasn't like this. In some ways, she was much worse. Practically rabid.

The only thing that calmed her was the taste of your father's blood. When he needed to feed her, or clean her, he would let her scratch him until she drew blood.

Sucking it off his skin would bring her back to herself- for a little while:'

Behind Linden's professional detachment, a secret anger made her hope that she might yet shock or frighten Roger Covenant.

"Now she hits herself, Mr. Covenant. She wants the pain for some reason. She needs to hurt herself. I don't know why. As punishment?" For her role in her ex-husband's murder? "It certainly looks like she's punishing herself.

"And she won't tolerate a bandage. Her own bleeding seems to comfort her. Like a kind of restitution-It helps her regain a little balance. I tried to think of some way to sustain that. If restitution calmed her, I wanted her to have more of it.

"Her ring," the symbol of her marriage, "was the only thing I had that I could restore."

At the time, Linden had placed the chain around Joan's neck with acute trepidation. The language of that gesture could so easily have been misinterpreted; taken as a reminder of guilt rather than as a symbol of love and attachment. However, Joan had lapsed into her comparatively pliant trance as soon as the ring had touched her skin.

Since then Linden had often feared that she had made a terrible mistake: that it was precisely the reminder of guilt which calmed Joan: that Joan's catatonia endured because she had been fundamentally defeated by the touch of white gold.

Nevertheless Linden did not remove the ring.

Joan's present trance was all that kept her alive. She could not have survived her battering desperation much longer.

Roger nodded as if Linden's explanation made perfect sense to him. "You did well. Again, I'm impressed."

For the first time since Linden had met him-hardly an hour ago-he seemed satisfied. "I can see why you're reluctant to let anyone else take care of her."

At once, however, he resumed his irrational insistence.

"But you've done all you can. She won't get any better than this unless I help her."

He raised his hand to forestall Linden's protest.

"There are things you don't know about her. About this situation. And I can't explain them. Words won't- " He paused to rephrase his point. "They can't be conveyed in words. The knowledge has to be earned.

And you haven't earned it. Not the way I have.

"Let me show you."

She should stop him, Linden thought stupidly. This had gone on too long. Yet she did nothing to intervene as he approached the bed. He had touched a forgotten vulnerability to paralysis deep within her.

Gracelessly he seated himself as close to his mother as the bed rail permitted. A touch of excitement flushed his cheeks. His respiration quickened. His hands trembled slightly as he undid the restraint on her right wrist.

Flowers cast splotches of color into Linden's eyes, deep red and blue, untroubled yellow. A few minutes ago, she had known exactly what kind of flowers they were; now she had no idea. The sky outside the window seemed unattainable, too far away to offer any hope.

The sunlight shed no warmth.

Joan stared past or through Roger vacantly. Linden expected her to strike herself, but she did not. Perhaps the fact that her hand was free had not yet penetrated her subterranean awareness.

Roger lifted his palms to Joan's cheeks, cupped them against her slack flesh. His trembling had become unmistakable. He seemed to quiver with eagerness, avid as a deprived lover. Unsteadily he turned her head until he could gaze straight into the absence of her eyes.

"Mother." His voice shook. "It's me. Roger."

Linden bit down on her lip. All the air in the room seemed to concentrate around the bed, too thick to breathe. In the bonfire where Joan's captors had destroyed their right hands, she had seen eyes like fangs look out hungrily at Covenant's impending murder. At the time, she had believed that they held malice. But now she thought that the emotion in them might have been despair; an emptiness which could not be filled.

"Mother."

Joan blinked several times. Her pupils contracted.

With an effort that seemed to stretch the skin of her forehead, her eyes came into focus on her son.

"Roger?" Her disused voice crawled like a wounded thing between her lips. "Is it you?"

Suddenly stern, he told her, "Of course it's me. You can see that."

Involuntarily Linden recoiled a step. She tasted blood, felt a pain in her lip. Roger sounded disdainful, vexed, as though Joan were a servant who had disappointed him. "Oh, Roger."

Tears spilled from Joan's eyes. Her free hand fumbled to his shoulder, clutched at his neck. "It's been so long." Her face held no expression: its muscles lacked the strength to convey what she felt. "I've waited so long. It's been so hard. Make it stop."

"Stop complaining." He scolded her as if she were a child. "It isn't as bad as all that. I had to wait until I was twenty-one. You know that."

How-? Linden panted as if she had been struck in the stomach. How-? How had Roger reached Joan?

How could Joan have known anything?

"I've been good," Joan responded, pleading. "I have."

Her damaged voice seemed to flinch and cower at his feet. "See?"

Dropping her arm from his neck, she flung her fist at her bruised temple. Fresh blood smeared her knuckles as she lowered her arm.

"I've been good," she begged. "Make it stop. I can't bear it."

"Nonsense, Mother," Roger snorted. "Of course you can bear it. That's what you do." But then, apparently, he took pity on her, and his manner softened. "It won't be much longer. I have some things to do. Then I'll make it stop. We'll make it stop to gether."

Releasing her cheeks, he rose to his feet, turned toward Linden.

As soon as he left the bed, Joan began to scream-a frail, rending sound that seemed to rip from her throat like fabric tearing across jagged glass. As if in sympathy, the pulse monitor emitted a shrill call.

"You see, Dr. Avery?" he remarked through his mother's cries. "You really have no choice. You have to let her go with me.

"The sooner you release her, the sooner I can free her from all this."

Over my dead body, Linden told his ambiguous smile and his bland eyes. Over my dead body.Gathering Defenses "Outside," Linden ordered him aloud. "Now."

She was fortunate that he complied at once. If he had resisted, she might have hit him, trying to strike the certainty from his face.

As soon as she had closed Joan's door behind her, she wheeled on him. "You knew that would happen."

Joan's screaming echoed in the corridor, reflected by the white tile floor, the un adorned walls. Her monitor carried its alarm to the nurses' station.

He shrugged, untouched by Linden's anger. "I'm her son. She raised me." "That's no answer," she retorted.

Before she could go on, a woman's voice called out, "Dr. Avery? What's wrong?"

A nurse came hurrying along the hall: Amy Clint. Her young, diligent face was wide with surprise and concern.

Roger Covenant smiled blandly at Amy. "Give her a taste of that blood," he sug gested as though he had the right to say such things.

"It'll quiet her down."

Amy stopped. She stared in dismay at Linden.

"Ms. Clint"-Linden summoned her authority to counteract Amy's shock-"this is Roger Covenant. He's Joan's son. Seeing him has upset her."

"She's never-" For a moment, the nurse fumbled to control her reaction. Then she said, more steadily, "I've never heard her scream like that." Joan's wailing ached in the air. "What should I do?"

Linden took a deep breath, mustered her outrage. "Do what he says. Let her taste her blood." To ease Amy's consternation, she added, "I'll explain later.

"Now," she insisted when the nurse hesitated.

"Right away, Doctor." With distress in her eyes, Amy entered Joan's room, shut the door.

At once, Linden confronted Roger again. "You didn't answer my question."

Still smiling as though his mother's screams had no effect on him, he held up his hand, asking Linden to wait.

Moments after Amy had entered the room, Joan suddenly fell silent. The abrupt end of her cries throbbed in the hallway like an aftershock.

"You see, Dr. Avery?" replied Roger. "I'm really the only one who can take care of her. No one else is qualified" Before Linden could protest, he added, "I knew what would happen because I'm her son. I know exactly what's wrong with her. I know how to treat it.