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were no pictures, no ornaments; and the only furniture was a long overstaffed sofa with a coffee table in front of it. They occupied the center of the floor, as if to make the space around them navigable.
    She gave the room a glance, then marched down a short passage to the kitchen. There, too, a table and two straight-backed wooden chairs occupied the center of the space. She went past them, turned to enter another hall. Covenant hurried after her as she by-passed two open doors—the bathroom, his bedroom—to reach the one at the end of the hall.
    It was closed.
    At once, she took hold of the knob.
    He snatched at her wrist. “Listen.” His voice must have held emotion—urgency, anguish, something—but she did not hear it. “This you have to understand. There’s only one way to hurt a man who’s lost everything. Give him back something broken.”
    She gripped the knob with her free hand. He let her go.
    She opened the door, went into the room.
    All the lights were on.
    Joan sat on an iron-frame bed in the middle of the room. Her ankles and wrists were tied with cloth bonds which allowed her to sit up or lie down but did not permit her to bring her hands together. The long cotton nightgown covering her thin limbs had been twisted around her by her distress.
    A white gold wedding ring hung from a silver chain around her neck.
    She did not look at Covenant. Her gaze sprang at Linden, and a mad fury clenched her face. She had rabid eyes, the eyes of a demented lioness. Whimpers moaned in her throat. Her pallid skin stretched tightly over her bones.
    Intuitive revulsion appalled Linden. She could not think. She was not accustomed to such savagery. It violated all her conceptions of illness or harm, paralyzed her responses. This was not ordinary human ineffectuality or pain raised to the level of despair; this was pure ferocity, concentrated and murderous. She had to force herself forward. But when she drew near the woman and stretched out a tentative hand, Joan bit at her like a baited cat. Involuntarily Linden recoiled.
    “Dear God!” she panted. “What’s wrong with her?”
    Joan raised her head, let out a scream like the anguish of the damned.
    Covenant could not speak. Grief contorted his features. He went to Joan’s side. Fumbling over the knot, he untied her left wrist, released her arm. Instantly she clawed at him, straining her whole body to reach him. He evaded her, caught her forearm.
    Linden watched with a silent wail as he let Joan’s nails rake the back of his right hand. Blood welled from the cuts.
    Joan smeared her fingers in his blood. Then her hand jumped to her mouth, and she sucked it eagerly, greedily.
    The taste of blood seemed to restore her self-awareness. Almost immediately, the madness faded from her face. Her eyes softened, turned to tears; her mouth trembled. “Oh, Tom,” she quavered weakly. “I’m so sorry. I can’t—He’s in my mind, and I can’t get him out. He hates you. He makes—makes me—” She was sobbing brokenly. Her lucidity was acutely cruel to her.
    He sat on the bed beside her, put his arms around her. “I know.” His voice ached in the room. “I understand.”
    “Tom,” she wept. “Tom. Help me.”
    “I will.” His tone promised that he would face any ordeal, make any sacrifice, commit any violence. “As soon as he’s ready. I’ll get you free.”
    Slowly her frail limbs relaxed. Her sobs grew quieter. She was exhausted. When he stretched her out on the bed, she closed her eyes, went to sleep with her fingers in her mouth like a child.
    He took a tissue from a box on a table near the bed, pressed it to the back of his hand. Then, tenderly, he pulled Joan’s fingers from her mouth and retied her wrist. Only then did he look at Linden.
    “It doesn’t hurt,” he said. “The backs of my hands have been numb for years.” The torment was gone from his face; it held nothing now except the long weariness of a pain he could not heal.
    Watching his blood