No, this was not Sharra as I had known it. My heart was beating fast from fright, but there was no true smell of burning in the room, the curtains of the enclosures did not smolder or catch into flame where the fire touched them… this was illusion, no more, and I stood, clenching the fist of my good hand, feeling the nails cut into the flesh, feeling the old burning pain in the hand that was not there…phantom pain, as this was no more than a phantom, an image of Sharra—I would have known the real thing, I would feel my whole body and soul tied into that monstrous overshadowing…
The Form of Fire thrust out an arm… a woman’s arm lapped in fire… and Beltran broke, backed away… bolted from the Crystal Chamber. Now that I knew what it was, I stood my ground, watching him go, wondering who had done it. Kadarin, wherever he was, drawing the Sword, evoking the Form of Fire? No. I was sealed to Sharra, body and soul; if Kadarin, who had also been sealed to that unholy thing, had summoned, I too would have been consumed in the flame— I gripped my hand hard on the railing, wondering. The Comyn were milling around, crying out in confusion. Two or three others bolted, too, through their private entrances at the back of the enclosures.
Callina? No Keeper would profane her office that way, using it to terrify. I could have done it—even now I could feel the heat of flame in my useless matrix—but I knew I had not. Beltran, who also was Sharra-sealed? He had been the most frightened of all, for he had seen Caer Donn burning.
The Form of Fire flamed and died and was gone, like a candle blown out by the wind.
Danvan of Hastur, Regent of the Comyn, had stood his ground, but he was white as death, and he was holding the rail before him as he spoke, ritual words almost without significance.
“I declare… Council Session… closed for this year and all matters before it, adjourned until another year shall bring us together…”
One by one, those members who had not already run away went silently out of the Chamber, already shocked and ashamed of their terror. I, who had faced the reality of Sharra, found myself wondering how they would react to the real thing. Yet my own heart was still pounding a little; a fear bred in the bone, a gateway just dimly ajar between worlds to let in that monstrous shadow— I had seen those gates open halfway, and knew that they opened into fire and hell, like the living heart of a volcano.
Then, behind Danvan Hastur, I saw Regis standing very still, his hand just touching his matrix. He did not look at me, he was not looking at anything, but I knew, as clearly as if I had spoken:
Regis! Regis had summoned that image! But why? Why and how!
He lowered his hand. I could see fine beads of sweat around his hairline, but his voice sounded normal. “Will you have my arm, Grandfather?”
The old man snarled, “When I need help I will be dressed in my shroud!” and, throwing his head erect, marched out of the Chamber. Now only Regis and I remained.
I found my voice, bitterly.
“You did that. I don’t know how or why, but you did that! Cousin—can you play with such things as a joke?”
His hand fell away from his matrix, hanging limp at his side as if it hurt him. Maybe it did; I was too agitated to care. At last he said in a strained voice, only a whisper, “It gave us—time. Another year. They cannot—cannot challenge your right to the Alton Domain, or pledge Beltran to Council, for another year. Council has been—closed.” Then he swayed, and caught weakly at the railing where he stood. I pushed him down in a chair.
“Put your head between your knees,” I said roughly, and watched him as he sat there, his head bent, while a little color began to come back into his cheeks. At last he sat upright again.
“I am sorry if the—the image—frightened you,” he said. “It was the only thing I could think of to stop this Council. This farce. I wanted them to see what it was that they had to fear. So many of them don’t know.”
I remembered Lerrys saying, You see Sharra as the bogeyman under every bed…no. He had not said that to me, but to Regis. I looked at him, dazed. I said, “There are supposed to be telepathic dampers in here. I should not be able to read your mind, nor you mine. Zandru’s hells, Regis, what is going on?”
“Maybe the dampers aren’t working,” he said, in a stronger voice, and now he sounded completely rational; only afraid, as he had every right to be. I was afraid myself.
“The image didn’t frighten me,” I said, “except for a moment at first. I have seen the reality of Sharra. What frightens me, now, is the fact that you could do that, with dampers all over the room. I didn’t know you had that much laran, though I knew, of course, that you had some. What sort of laran can do that?” I went to the nearest of the telepathic dampers and twisted dials until it was gone, the unrhythmic waves vanished. Now I could feel Regis’s agitation and fear, full scale, and wished I could not. He said, in a strained voice, “I don’t know how I did it. Truly I don’t. I was standing here behind Grandfather, listening to Beltran talk so calmly, and wishing there was some way to show them what it had been— and then—” he wet his lips with his tongue, and said shakily, “then it was there. The—the Form of Fire.”
“And it scared Beltran right out of the room,” I said. “Do you think he knows that Kadarin has the Sharra matrix?”
“I couldn’t read him. I wasn’t trying, of course. I—” his voice broke again. “I wasn’t trying to do anything. It just— just happened!”
“Something in your laran you don’t know about? We know so little of the Hastur Gift, whatever it was,” I said, trying to calm him. “Hang on to the good part; it scared Beltran out of here. I wish it had scared him all the way back into the Hellers! I’m afraid there’s no such luck!”
I was willing to leave it at that. But as I turned to the doorway, Regis caught at my shoulder.
“But how could I do that? I don’t understand! You—you accused me of playing with it, like a joke! But I didn’t, Lew, I didn’t!”
I had no answer for him. I moved aimlessly around the room, turning out the rest of the dampers. I could feel his fear, mounting almost to panic, rising as the dampers were no longer there to interfere with telepathic contact. I even wondered, angrily, why he should be so afraid. It was I who was bound to Sharra, I who must live night and day with the terror that one day Kadarin would draw the Sword of Sharra and with that gesture summon me back into that terrible gateway between worlds, that corner of hell that I once had opened, which had swept away my hand, my love—my life…
Firmly I clamped down on the growing panic. If I did not stop this now, my own fear and Regie’s could reinforce each other and we would both go into screaming hysterics. I caught at what I could remember of the Arilinn training, managed to steady my breathing, felt the panic subside.
Not so Regis; he was still sitting there, in the chair where I had shoved him, white with dread. I turned around and was surprised to hear my own voice, the steady, detached voice of a matrix mechanic, dispassionate, professionally soothing, as I had not heard it in more years than I liked to think about.
“I’m not a Keeper, Regis, and my own matrix, at the moment, is useless, as you know. I could try to deep-probe you and find out—”
He flinched. I didn’t blame him. The Alton gift is nothing to play games with, and I have known experienced technicians, Tower-trained for many years, refuse to face that fully focused gift of rapport. I can manage it, if I must, but I was not eager. It is not, I suppose, unlike rape, the deliberate overpowering of a mind, the forced submission of another personality, the ultimate invasion. Only the probably nonexistent Gods of Darkover know why such a Gift had been bred into the Alton line, to force rapport on an unwilling other, paralyze resistance. I knew Regis feared it too, and I didn’t blame him. My father had opened my own Gift in that way, when I was a boy—it had been the only way to force the Council to accept me, to show them that I, alien and half Terran, had the Alton Gift—and I had been ill for weeks afterward. I didn’t relish the thought of doing the same thing to Regis.
I said
, “It might be that they could tell you in a Tower; some Keeper, perhaps—” and then I remembered that here in Comyn Castle was a Keeper. I tended to forget; Ashara of the Comyn Tower must be incredibly old now, I had never seen her, nor my father before me… but now Callina was there as her surrogate, and Callina was my kinswoman, and Regis’s too.
“Callina could tell you,” I said, “if she would.”
He nodded, and I felt the panic recede. Talking about it, calmly and detached, as if it were a simple problem in the mechanics of laran, had defused some of the fear.
Yet I too was uneasy. By the time I left the Crystal Chamber, even the halls and corridors were empty; the Comyn Council had scattered and gone their separate ways. Council was over. Nothing remained except the Festival Night ball, tomorrow. On the threshold of the Chamber, we encountered the Syrtis youngster; he almost ignored me, hurrying to Regis.
“I came back to see what had happened to you!” he demanded, and, as Regis smiled at him, I quietly took my leave, feeling I made an unwelcome third. As I went off alone, I identified one of my emotions; was I jealous of what Regis shared with Danilo? No, certainly not.
But I am alone, brotherless, friendless, alone against the Comyn who hate me, and there is none to stand by my side. All my life I had dwelt in my father’s shadow; and now I could not bear the solitude when that was withdrawn. And Marius, who should have stood at my side—Marius too was dead by an assassin’s bullet, and no one in the Comyn except Lerrys had even questioned the assassination. And—I felt myself tensing as I identified another element of my deep grief for Marius. It was relief; relief that I would not have to test him as my father had tested me, that I need not invade him ruthlessly and feel him die beneath that terrible assault on identity. He had died, but not at my hands, nor beneath my laran.
I had known my laran could kill, but I had never killed with it.
I went back to the Alton rooms, thoughtfully. They were home, they had been home much of my life, yet they seemed empty, echoing, desolate. It seemed to me that I could see my father in every empty corner, as his voice still echoed in my mind. Andres, puttering around, supervising the other servants in placing the belongings which had been brought here from the town house, broke off what he was doing as I came in, and hurried to me, demanding to know what had happened to me. I did not know that it showed on my face, whatever it was, but I let him bring me a drink, and sat sipping it, wondering again about what Regis had done in the Crystal Chamber. He had scared Beltran. But, probably, not enough.
I did not think Beltran was eager to plunge the Domains into war. Yet I knew his recklessness, and I did not think we could gamble on that; not when his outraged pride was at stake, the pride of the Aldarans.
I said to Andres, “You hear servants’ gossip; tell me, has Beltran moved into the Aldaran apartments here in Comyn Castle?”
Andres nodded glumly, and I hoped that he would find them filled with vermin and lice; they had stood empty since the Ages of Chaos. It said something about the Comyn that they had never been converted to other uses.
Andres stood over me, grumbling, “You’re not intending to go and pay a call on him there, I hope!”
I wasn’t. There was only one way in the world I would ever come again within striking range of my cousin, and that was if he had me bound and gagged. He had betrayed me before; he would have no further chance. Sunk in the misery of that moment, I confess, to my shame, that for a moment I played with the escape that Dan Lawton, in the Terran Zone, had offered me, to hide there out of reach of Sharra— but that was no answer, and it left Regis and Callina at the mercy of whatever unknown thing was working in the Comyn.
I was not altogether alone. The thought of Callina warmed me; I had pledged to stand beside her. And I had not yet spoken alone with my kinswoman Linnell, except over the grave of my brother. It was the eve of Festival Night, when traditionally, gifts of fruit and flowers are sent to the women of every family, throughout the Domains. Not the meanest household in Thendara would let tomorrow morning pass without at least a few garden flowers or a handful of dried fruits for the women of the household; and I had done nothing about a gift for Linnell. Truly, I had been too long away from Darkover.
There would be flower sellers and fruit vendors doing business in the markets of the Old Town, but as I stepped toward the door, I hesitated, unwilling again to show myself. Damn it, during the time I had lived with Dio, I had almost forgotten my scarred face, my missing hand, and now I was behaving as if I were freshly maimed—Dio! Where was Dio, had I truly heard her voice in the Crystal Chamber? I told myself sternly that it did not matter; whether Dio was here or elsewhere, if she chose not to come to me, she was lost to me. But still I could not make myself go down to ground level of the enormous castle, go out into the Old Town through Beltran’s damnably misnamed Honor Guard.
Some of them would have known me, remembered me…
At last, hating myself for the failure, I told Andres to see about some flowers for Linnell tomorrow. Should I send some to Dio too? I truly did not know the courtesies of the situation. Out there in the Empire, I knew, a separated husband and wife can meet with common courtesy; here on Darkover, it was unthinkable. Well, I was on Darkover now, and if Dio wanted nothing from me, she would probably not want a Festival gift either. With surging bitterness I thought, she has Lerrys to send her fruits and flowers. If Lerrys had been before me, at that moment, I think I would have hit him. But what would that settle? Nothing. After a moment I picked up a cloak, flung it about my shoulders; but when Andres asked where I was going, I had no answer for him.
My feet took me down, and down into courtyards and enclosed gardens, through unfamiliar parts of the castle. At one point I found myself in a court beneath the deserted Aldaran apartments—deserted all my life, till now. Half of me wanted to go in there and face Beltran, demand—demand what? I did not know. Another part of me wanted, cravenly, to walk through the city, take refuge in the Terran Zone, and then— then what? I could not leave Darkover, not while the Sharra matrix was here; I had tried. And tried again. It would mean death, a death neither quick nor easy.
Maybe I would be better dead, even that death, so that I was free in death of Sharra… and again it seemed to me that the Form of Fire raged before my eyes, a thrilling in my blood, cold terror and raging, ravening flame like ichor in my veins—
No; this was real. I tensed, looking up at the hills behind the city.
Somewhere there, strange flames burned, an incredible ninth-level matrix twisted space around itself, a gateway opened, and the fire ran in my veins— There was fire before my eyes, fire all through my brain—
No! I am not sure that I did not scream that furious denial aloud; if I did no one heard me, but I heard the echoes in the courtyard around me, and slowly, slowly, came back to reality. Somewhere out there, Kadarin ran loose, and with him the Sharra matrix, and Thyra whom I had hated, loved, desired and feared… but I would die before they dragged me back into that again. Deliberately, fighting the call in my mind, I raised the stump of my arm and slammed it down, hard, on stone. The pain was incredible; it made me gasp, and tears came to my eyes, but that pain was real; outraged nerves and muscles and bones, not a phantom fire raging in my brain. I set my teeth and turned my back on the hills, and that call, that siren call which throbbed seductively in my mind, and went into the Castle.
Callina. Callina could drive these devils from my mind.
I had not been inside the Aillard wing of Comyn Castle for many years, not since I was a child. A silent servant met me, managed not to blink more than once at the ruin of my face. He showed me into a reception room where, he said, I would find Domna Callina and Linnell with her.
The room was spacious and brilliant, filled with sunshine and silken curtains, green plants and flowers growing in every niche, like an indoor garden. Soft notes of a harp echoed through the room; Linnell was playing the rryl. But as I came in she pushed it aside and ran to me, taking an embrac
e and kiss with the privilege of a foster-sister, drawing back, hesitant, as she touched the stump of an arm.
“It’s all right,” I said. “You can’t hurt me. Don’t worry about it, little sister.” I looked down at her, smiling. She was the only person on this world who had truly welcomed me, I thought; the only one who had had no thought of what my coming would mean. Even Marius had had to think of what it would mean in terms of Domain-right. Even Jeff; he might have had to leave Arilinn and take his place in Council.
“Your poor hand,” she said. “Couldn’t the Terrans do anything for it?”
Even to Linnell I didn’t want to talk about it. “Not much,” I said, “but I have a mechanical hand I wear when I don’t want to be noticed. I’ll wear it when I dance with you on Festival Night, shall I?”
“Only if you want to,” she said seriously. “I don’t care what you look like, Lew. You’re always the same to me.”
I hugged her close, warmed as much by her accepting smile as by the words. I suppose Linnell was a beautiful woman; I have never been able to see her as anything but the little foster-sister with whom I’d raced breakneck over the hills; I’d spanked her for breaking my toys or borrowing them without leave, comforted her when she was crying with toothache. I said, “You were playing the rryl… play for me, won’t you?”
She took up the instrument again and began to play the ballad of Hastur and Cassilda:
The stars were mirrored on the shore,
Dark was the lone immortal moor,
Silent were rocks and trees and stone—
Robardin’s daughter walked alone,
A web of gold between her hands
On shining spindle burning bright…