The Heritage of Hastur

"Um, yes, a scorpion-ant is a lower form of life than I care to go to bed with," Danilo said lightly, "but tonight we seem to be in luck." The interior was bare and smelled dusty and unaired, but there was an intact fireplace, a pair of benches to sit on and a heavy shelf built into the wall so they need not sleep on the floor at the mercy of spiders or rodents. Danilo dumped the saddlebags on a bench. "I saw some dead branches in the lee of the stable. The snow won't have soaked them through yet. There may not be enough to keep a fire all night, but we can certainly cook some hot food."

  Regis sighed. "Ill come and help you get them in." He

  . opened the door again on the snow-swept twilight; the world toppled dizzily around him and he clung to the door. "Regis, let me go, you're ill again." **I can manage."

  : "Damn it!" Suddenly Danilo was angry. "Will you stop

  pretending and playing hero with me? How the hell will I

  , manage if you fall down and can't get up again? It's a lot

  , easier to drag a couple of armfuls of dry branches in, than

  try to carry you through the snowl Just stay in here, will

  your

  Pretending. Playing hero. Was that how Danilo saw his attempt to carry his own weight? Regis said stiffly, "I wouldn't want to make things harder for you. Go ahead."

  Danilo started to speak but didn't. He set his chin and

  : Strode, stiff-necked into the snowy darkness. Regis started to

  unload the saddlebags but became so violently dizzy that he

  had to sit down on one of the stone benches, holding on with

  both hands.

  He was a dead weight on Danilo, he thought. Good for nothing but to hold him back. He wondered how Lew was

  ??? faring in the mountains. He'd hoped to draw pursuit away from him, that hadn't worked either. He felt like huddling on ; the bench, giving way to the surges of sickness, but remem-;bered Javanne's advice: move around, fight it. He hauled ;: himself to his feet, got his flint-and-steel and the wisps of dry >- hay they had kept for tinder, and knelt before the fireplace, /clearing away the remnants of the last travelers' fire. How J many years ago was that one built? he wondered. t Wind, and cold slashes of snow blew through the open ''"doorway; Danilo, laden with branches, staggered inside, :, Shoved them near the fireplace, went quickly out again. Regis ..tried to separate the driest branches to lay a fire, but could ; not steady his hands enough to manipulate the small mechan-

  ? alive. He laid the device on the bench and sat with his head : in his hands, feeling completely useless, until Danilo, bent under another load of branches, came hi and kicked the door shut behind him.

  "My father calls that a lazy man's load," he said cheerfully, "carrying too much because you're too lazy to go back ' for another. It ought to keep the cold out awhile. Anyway,

  ? Td rather be cold here than warm in Aldaran's royal suite, damn him." He strode to where Regis had laid the fire, kneel-

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  ing to spark it alight with Regis*s lighter. "Bless the man who invented this gadget. Lucky you have one."

  It had been part of Gabriel's camping-kit that Javanne had given him, along with the small cooking pots they carried. Dani looked at Regis, huddled motionless and shivering on the bench. He said, "Are you very angry with me?" Silently, Regis shook his head.

  Danilo said haltingly, "I don't want to ... to offend you. But I'm your paxman and I have to do what's best for you. Even if it's not always what you want."

  "It's all right, Dani. I was wrong and you were right," Regis said. "I couldn't even light the fire."

  "Well, I don't mind lighting it. Certainly not with that gadget of yours. There's water piped in the corner, there, if the pipes aren't frozen. If they are, we'll have to melt snow. Now, what shall we cook?"

  The last thing Regis cared about at that moment was food, but he forced himself to join in a discussion about whether soup made from dried meat and beans, or crushed-grain porridge, would be better. When it was bubbling over the fire, Danilo came and sat beside him. He said, "Regis, I don't want to make you angry again. But we've got to have this out. You're no better. Do you think I can't see that you can hardly ride?"

  "What do you want me to say to you, Dani? I'm doing the best I can."

  "You're doing more than you can," said Danilo. The light of the blazing fire made him look very young and very troubled. "Do you think I'm blaming you? But you must let me help you more." Suddenly he flared out, "What am I to say to them in Thendara, if the heir to Hastur dies in my hands?" "You're making too much of this," Regis said. "I never beard that anyone died of threshold sickness." Yet Javanne had looked genuinely frightened ... "Maybe not," Danilo said skeptically, "but if you cannot sit your horse, and fall and break your skull, that's fatal, too. Or if you exhaust yourself and take a chill, and die of it. And you are the last Hastur."

  "No I'm not," Regis said, at the end of endurance. "Didn't you hear me tell Lew? I have an heir. Before I ever came on this trip I faced the fact that I might die, so I named one of my sister's sons as my heir. Legally." Danilo sat back on his heels, stunned, wide open, and his thought was as clear as if

  ,;Jie had spoken aloud, For my sake? Regis forcibly stopped

  himself from saying anything more. He could not face the

  , vnaked emotion in Danilo's eyes. This was the time of danger,

  jhe forced intimacy of these evenings, when he must barri-

  ; cade himself continually against revealing what he felt. It

  fvould be all too easy to cling to Danilo for strength, to take

  advantage of Danilo's emotional response to him.

  Danilo was saying angrily, "Even so, I won't have your

  ?-death on my head! The Hasturs need you for yourself, Regis, ,;;Bot just for your blood or your heir!"

  "What do you suggest I do about it?" Regis did not know, ^Jiimself, whether it was an honest question or a sarcastic '"..challenge. : - "We are not pursued. We must rest here till you are well

  again."

  ^ "I don't think I shall ever be well again until I have a ^chance to go to one of the towers and learn to control this."
  ? But that was not the only thing making him ill, he knew. It ,;was the constant need to barrier himself against his feelings, ^against his own unwelcome thoughts and desires. And for

  ?ithat there was no help, he decided. Even in the towers they not make him other than he was. They might teach to conceal it, though, live with it.

  ?L; Danilo laid his hand on Regis' shoulder. "You must let me

  |look after you. It is my duty." He added after a moment,

  ?if*And my pleasure."

  . ;3 By an eifort that literally made his head spin, Regis re-

  |mained motionless under the touch. Rigidly, refusing the

  ;tj>roffered rapport, he said, "Your porridge is burning. If

  L?you*re so eager to do something, attend to what you're sup-

  teposed to be doing. The damned stuif is inedible even when

  ;,;properly cooked."

  ;;. Danilo stiffened as if the words had been a blow. He went

  ? to the fire and took off the boiling concoction. Regis did not

  :look at him or care that he had hurt him. He was beyond

  'thinking about anything, except his own attempt not to think.

  He felt a violent anger with Danilo for forcing this inti-

  mate confrontation on him. Suddenly he recalled the fight

  Danilo had picked in the barracks; a fight which, had it not

  been for Hjalmar's intervention, might have gone far beyond

  a single blow. He wanted to lash out at Danilo now, flay him

  with cruel words. He felt a need to put distance between

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  them, break up this unendurable closeness, keep Dani from looking at him with so much love. If they fought, perhaps Regis would no longer have to be constantly on guard, afraid of doing and saying what he could not even endure to think....

  Danilo came with porridge in a small pannikin. He said tentatively, "I don't think this is burned ..."

  "Oh, stop being so damned attentive*." Regis flung at him. "Eat your supper and let me alone, damn you, just stop hovering over me! What must I do to make you realize I don't want you, I don't need you? Just let me alone!"

  Danilo's face went white. He went and sat on the other bench, his head bent over his own porridge. His back to Regis, he said coldly, "Yours is there when you want it, my lord."

  Regis could see clearly, as if time had slid out of focus, that searing moment in the barracks, when Danilo had flung him off with an insult. It was clear hi Danilo's mind, too: He has done to me, knowing, what I did to him, unknowing.

  By main force Regis held himself back from immediate apology. The smell of the porridge made him feel violently sick. He went to the stone shelf and laid himself down, wrapping himself in his riding-cloak and trying to suppress the racking shudders that shook his whole body. It seemed to him that he could hear Danilo crying, as he had done so often hi the barracks, but Danilo was sitting on the bench, quietly eating his supper. Regis lay looking at the fire, until it began to flare up, flame?hallucination. Not forest fire, not Sharry. Just hallucination again. Psi out of control.

  Still, it seemed that he could see Lew's face, vividly, by firelight. Suppose, Regis thought, when I reached up toward him, drew him down beside me, he had flung me off, slapped me? Suppose he had thought the comfort I offered him a thing too shameful to endure or acknowledge?

  I was only a child. I didn't know what I was doing.

  He wasn't a child. And he knew.

  Unable to endure this train of thought, he let the swaying sickness take him again. It was almost a relief to let the world slide away, go dim and thin out to nothing. Time vanished. He heard Danilo's voice after a time, but the words no longer made sense; they were just vibration, sound without sense or relevance. He knew with the last breath of sanity that his only hope of saving himself now was to cry out, get

  ' up and move around, call out to Danilo, hang on to him as an anchor in this deadly nowhere?

  He could not. He could not surrender to this; he would .rather die ... and he heard some curious remote little voice fo bis mind say Die, then, if it is so important to you. And he

  ?felt something like a giant swing to take him, toss him high, '-further out into nowhere with every swooping breath, seeing stars, atoms, strange vibrations, the very rhythm of the universe?or was it his own brain cells vibrating, madly out of control?

  He'd done this to himself, he knew. He'd let it happen, too ;,,aouch of a coward to face himself. ":,i Call out to Dani, that inner voice said. He'll help you, even

  ?'*tu>w, if you ask him. But you'll have to ask, you've made it

  ? .impossible for him to come to you again unless you call him. j.Call quickly, quickly, while you still can. :! I can't?

  ^ He felt his breathing begin to come in gasps, as if he hung jf'jomewhere in the far spaces which were all he could see l-jww, with every breath coming for an instant back to that isBtruggling, dimming body lying inert on the shelf. Quickly! out now for help or you will die, here and now with ev-ing left undone because of your pride . . . '?%, With the last of his strength Regis fought for enough voice jito shout, call aloud. It came out as the faintest of stifled gHrhispers.

  "Dani ... help me ..."

  Too late, he thought, and felt himself slide off into noth-jingness. He wondered, with desperate regret, if he was dying |... because he could not bear to be honest with himself, with lis friend....

  He swung in darkness, immobile, numb, paralyzed. He felt >anilo, only a dim blue haze through his closed eyes, bending ;"over him, fumbling at his tunic-laces. He could not even feel )anilo's hands except that they were at his throat. He f thought insanely, Is he going to kill me? I-*' Without warning his body convulsed in a spasm of the I most hideous pain he had ever known. He was there again, sCDanilo's face visible through a reddish blood-colored mist, ^ Standing over him, his hand just touching the matrix around j^Regis' neck. Regis said hoarsely, "No. Not again?" and felt fthe bone-cracking spasm return. Danilo dropped the matrix

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  as if it burned him and the hellish pain subsided. Regis lay gasping. It felt as if he had fallen into the fire.

  Danilo gasped, "Forgive me?I thought you were dying! I knew no other way to reach your mind... .** Carefully, without touching it, Danilo covered the matrix again. He dropped down on the stone bed beside Regis, as if his knees were too weak to hold him upright.

  "Regis, Regis, I thought you were dying?"

  Regis whispered, "I thought so too."

  "I told myself, if I let you die because I could not forgive a harsh word, then I was a disgrace to my father and all those who had served Hastur. I am a catalyst telepath, there had to be something I could do to reach you?I shouted and you didn't hear, I slapped and pinched you, I thought you were dead already, but I could feel you calling me...." He was entirely unstrung. Regis whispered, "What was it that you did? I felt you?"

  "I touched the matrix?nothing else seemed to reach you, I was so sure you were dying?" He broke down and sobbed. "I could have killed you! I could have killed you!"

  Regis drew Danilo down beside him, holding him tight in his arms. "Bredu, don't cry," he whispered. "See, I'm not dead." He felt suddenly shy again. Danilo's face, wet with tears, was pressed against his cheek. Regis patted it clumsily. "Don't cry any more."

  "But I hurt you so?I can't bear to hurt you," Danilo said wildly.

  "I don't think anything less would have brought me back," Regis said. "It's my life I owe you this time, bredu." He was still dizzy and aching with the aftermath of what he now knew must have been a convulsion. Later he was to learn that this last-resort heroic treatment, gripping a matrix, was used only at the point of death; when stronger telepaths determined that without it, the sufferer might wander endlessly in the corridors of his own brain, cutting off all outside stimuli, until he died. Danilo had done it by pure instinct. Now Regis remembered what Javanne had said. "I've got to get up and move around or it may come back. But you'll have to help me, Dani, I'm too weak to walk alone."

  Danilo helped him upright. By the last light of the dying fire Regis could see the tears on his face. He kept his arm around Regis, steadying him. "I should never have quarreled with you when you were sick."

  "It was I who picked the quarrel, Dani. Can you forgive me?"

  He was cruel to Dani out of fear, Regis knew, fear of what he was himself. Perhaps Dyan, too, turned to cruelty out of fear and came at last to prefer cruelty to fear?or to shame?at knowing himself too well.

  Laran was terrible. But they bad no choice, only to meet it with honor.

  Danilo said shyly, "I kept your porridge hot for you. Can you try to eat it now?"

  Regis took the hot pottery pannikin, burning his fingers a little on the edges. The thought of food made him feel sick, but obediently he chewed a few mouthfuls and discovered that he was actually very hungry. He ate the hot unsweetened stuff, saying after a time, "Well, it's no worse than what we got in barracks. If you ever find yourself a masterless man, Dani, well get you a job as an army cook."

  "God forbid I should be a masterless man while you live, Regis."

  Regis reached for Danilo's hand, holding it tight. He felt exhausted and aching, but at peace. He finished the porridge and Danilo took the bowl away to rinse it out. Regis lay down on the shelf again. The fire was dying down and it was cold. Danilo came and spread out his own cloak and blanket beside Regis, sat beside him
, pulling off his boots.

  "I wish I knew more about threshold sickness."

  "Be damn glad you don't," Regis said harshly, "it's hell. I hope you never have it."

  "Oh, I had it," Dani said. 'T know now that's what it must have been when I began ... reading minds. There was no one to tell me what it was, and I never had it so seriously. The trouble is, I don't know what to do about it. Or I could help you." He looked at Regis hestitantlyMn the dim light and said, "We're still in rapport a little. Let me try."

  "Do what you want to," Regis said, "I won't drive you away again. Only be careful. Your last experiment was painful."

  "I did find out one thing," Danilo said. "I could see and feel things. There's a kind of ... of energy. Look." He bent over Regis, running his fingertips lightly above his body, not touching him. "I can feel it this way, without touching you, and certain places it's strong, and others I feel it ought to be

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  Marion Zimmer Bradley I don't know how to explain it. Do you feel

  and isn't.

  itr

  Regis remembered the very little the leronis had told him when she tested him, unsuccessfully, for lawn, 'There are certain ... energy centers in the body, which waken with the wakening of laran. Everybody has them, but in a telepath they're stronger and more ... perceptible. If that's true, you should have them, too." He reached out toward Danilo, running his hands over his face, feeling the definite, tangible flow of power. "Yes, it's like an ... an extra pulsebeat here, just above your brow." He had once been shown a drawing of these currents, but at that time he had no reason to believe it applied to him. Now he struggled to remember, sensing it must be important. "There's one at the base of the throat."

  "Yes, I can see it," Danilo said, touching it lightly with a fingertip. The touch was not painful, but Regis felt it like a faint, definite electric shock. Yet once he was fully aware of the pulse, his perceptions cleared and the dizziness which had been with him for weeks now seemed to clear and shift somehow. He felt that he had discovered something very important, but he didn't know what. Danilo went on, trying to trace out the flows of power with his fingertips. *'I don't really have to touch you to feel them. I seem to know?"

  "Probably because you've got them yourself," Regis said. "Matrix work needs training, but it must be possible to learn to control laran, or the techniques couldn't have evolved. Unless you want to believe all those old stories about gods and demigods coming down to teach the Comyn how to use them, and I don't." It was very dark, but he could see Danilo clearly, as if his body were outlined with the pale, pulsing energy flows. Danilo said, "Then maybe we can find out how to keep you from going into that kind of ... of crisis again."

  Regis said, "I seem to be in your hands, Dani. Quite literally. I don't know if I could live through another attack like that one." He knew that the physical shock Danilo had given him by touching his matrix had revived him, but that he was drained, dangerously weak. "You had threshold sickness? And got over it?"