After making sure everything was within easy reach, Marguerida nodded in satisfaction. “You’d better go, too.”
Suspicion curdled inside Jeram. She had strong laran, but as far as he knew, no single person could act as a circle. Wasn’t it dangerous to work without a monitor? He asked what she proposed to do.
“You’re going to have to trust me on this. And no, I’ve never done it before, but I don’t want to risk anything happening to you.” She fixed him with her tiger-bright gaze. “Now go.”
Jeram walked to the door and stepped through, but he did not close it completely. He left a crack open and paused just outside, where she would not be able to see him. The only sound from the laboratory interior was her breathing, quick and light.
He leaned toward the crack, peering through. Marguerida bent over the vat, as if trying to penetrate its secrets or, by force of will, to transform it into the life-saving serum.
A tracery of lightning crackled on the inside of Jeram’s skull. Marguerida was using her laran.
She was planning something dangerous, or she would not be doing it secretly. Any properly trained monitor would certainly halt the operation right now.
Did she know what she was doing? Did she realize the risk?
Jeram put one hand on the door and then drew back. His own life had been a series of risks, everything from fleeing into the Hellers when the last Federation ship departed, to deciding to trust Silvana and Illona and then Lew, to making his confession to the Council.
The plague had eliminated safe, tested options. Marguerida, with her husband, had saved the Council once, at the Battle of Old North Road. If there was even a remote chance she could succeed now, he had no right to interfere. The risk was hers to take.
Slowly, without taking her eyes off the vat, Marguerida removed her glove. The skin on the back of her hand looked ordinary enough, pale from having been covered for so long. Then she raised her hand and held it over the vat. Jeram discarded all notion of it being ordinary.
Imprinted on her palm, melded to her flesh, something glowed blue and white like a living starstone. That was impossible—how could the psychoactive crystal be inside her hand? And yet, there it was, and with each passing moment, it pulsed more brightly.
Jeram watched, unable to tear his gaze away and yet filled with an ever-increasing sense of dread. He had seen the work of Marguerida’s matrixed hand before, under very different circumstances.
…the Old North Road, the caravan of funeral carriages and men on horseback. Shouts, horses neighing, wheeling. Swords raised…
…a woman with hair like a flame and golden eyes, lifting her hand…her hand a starburst of eye-searing brilliance…
He had thought, in that wild moment before the trees caught fire and men fell screaming to the muddy earth, that she held a miniature sun, a hand-sized nuclear device, far beyond the Federation’s technology.
She did not hold the white-hot sphere, she was it. Even across the room and behind the metal and duraplas door, Jeram felt her power. Through his own laran, he experienced her ability to perceive and manipulate molecules.
Time lost meaning for Jeram, except for the gradual awareness that he was no longer an observer. Unconsciously, his mind slipped into rapport with hers. Although he did not know how, he began sending her mental energy. She took it, spun it together with her own laran, and funneled it through the imprint on her palm.
Brightness surged through their linked minds. Amino acids shifted, aligned, bonded. Patterns emerged, mirroring those in his memory. From his work with Laurinda and the others, Jeram recognized the molecules forming in the center of the vat. Working alone, this single woman had created the same amount of immune serum as had an entire circle of Keepers.
A shimmer swept through the dissolved substrate. At first, Jeram sensed it as a ripple in a still pond. Then the waves shifted. A reverberation emerged, initially subtle, then building in intensity. At last, it filled the entire container of solution. Here and there, proteins vibrated out of harmony, sharp motes of dissonance. He felt her stretch farther and deeper to eliminate impurities and inactive molecules.
Somehow, beyond all possibility, Marguerida was using the matrix and the immense force of her mind to convert the entire vat to immune serum. Jeram feared she would bleed herself dry, but he dared not interrupt her concentration. All he could do was pour out his own energy through her mind, as best he could.
Eventually, the flow of power faltered. The blue-white radiance on Marguerida’s palm dimmed, shifting to lavender, then darkening to blood-red.
Physical awareness returned to Jeram. He was breathing hard and his pulse thundered in his throat. Trembling, he steadied himself against the doorframe. A sound came from within the room, the thud of a falling body.
Heedless of his own exhaustion, Jeram darted into the laboratory. Marguerida lay in a graceless sprawl on the floor. Her skin had turned the color of ashes and she did not seem to be breathing.
38
Domenic stood upon a balcony overlooking the garden courtyard of Comyn Castle and the city beyond. Late afternoon sun slanted across the paving stones, the benches and arbors, the beds of ornamental herbs. The flowers had faded, and the first dry leaves lay in rumpled piles. By tomorrow, the gardeners would have raked them up, only to have even more tumble to the ground. The brief, glorious Darkovan summer was drawing to a close.
He thought how little had been accomplished this season, with the interruption of the trailmen’s fever, and yet how much. The alliances born of dire necessity were already evolving. He was beginning to see a way through the current crisis. Only this morning, he had received word that Jeram’s serum worked. Now the problem was to make enough for everyone, but Domenic felt hopeful that, too, would be solved. Sooner or later, his father would recover…
When Domenic’s thoughts turned to the dilemma of his feelings for Illona and Alanna, however, he could see no solution.
Behind him, a door opened. As if summoned by his thoughts, Illona glided into the room. His heart brightened at the sight of her. They had each been so occupied with their respective tasks this last tenday that he had seen her but little. She looked thinner and more intense.
“Domenic, cario mio, there is no easy way to say this. I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news once again. Something terrible has happened to your mother.”
For a long moment, Domenic could not speak. His heart leaped in his throat. For all his life, Marguerida had been a tower of strength, a steady, constant presence, endlessly resourceful, in turns opinionated and kind, but never ill…
Never ill…
Somehow, he forced his fear into words. “Has—has she contracted trailmen’s fever?”
“No, nothing like that. Please, sit down, and I will explain. You know that Jeram’s serum has proven effective?”
“Yes, he told me so, himself.” Domenic lowered himself to the stone bench and Illona sat beside him.
Was there some unanticipated difficulty, some questionable side effect? Had Mother, in her typical impetuous manner, tried it on herself?
Illona glanced at him, startled. “No, it seems to be safe. The patients we gave it to are recovering. But the Keepers’ circle can make only a small amount of it at a time, and only slowly. You know your mother—”
“She would find some way, not counting the risk to herself. What did she do?”
“Domna Marguerida used her laran—her shadow matrix, that is—to produce a massive amount of serum. Unmonitored, she did the work of an entire circle a thousand times over. Aldones only knows how she generated that much power. It’s possible she reached through the shadow matrix into the Overworld.”
The Overworld… Domenic shivered.
“One thing is certain,” Illona went on. “Her accomplishment was not without cost. Jeram found her, unconscious and not breathing, beside the vat of transformed serum.”
“Is she—Did she—”
Illona took his hands in hers. Her touch, adde
d to their laran bond, calmed him.
She is alive, that is the important thing, but in a strange state, neither sleeping nor awake nor in an ordinary coma. These we could deal with. None of us can reach her mind, not even Domna Istvana.
“What can I do? Where is she?”
“We took her to Mikhail’s chamber, hoping that being near him would bring her ease.” From Illona’s expression, Domenic understood this had made no visible difference. “As for what you can do, that is why I am here, to bring you to her. Sometimes, love finds a way when skill cannot.”
Domenic and Illona hurried down the interior corridor and down a flight of stairs, through the labyrinth of the Castle.
“Does my grandfather know?” Domenic asked, as they crossed the inner courtyard, heading for the Tower.
“He is with her even now.”
“And my brother and sister?”
The news would strike both of them hard, but Yllana would be more deeply affected. She had rallied after Mikhail’s injuries in part because of Marguerida’s steady presence. What would she do now, how would she manage, when Marguerida was stricken? At least, she would have the loving support of Katherine and Hermes.
Domenic was less concerned for his brother. Rory loved both their parents, but he had made a life and home for himself in the City Guards. He had the discipline of his work, and Niall, to sustain him.
“Istvana decided not to send word to them yet,” Illona said, clearly uneasy, “just you and Dom Lewis. They will have to be told soon, but we are still evaluating your mother’s condition. Until we know more about what happened to her and her prospects for recovery, the fewer people who know, the better. We cannot risk premature news generating wild rumors that the serum is tainted.”
“We have to tell them!” Domenic stormed. “We can’t keep something like this secret, not about their own mother!”
Illona flinched and instantly, Domenic regretted his hot words. The decision was not hers to make. Nor was it Istvana’s or Laurinda’s, or even Grandfather Lew’s.
No, it’s mine.
Together, they rushed up the stairs of Comyn Tower. Domenic burst into the chamber where his parents lay, Illona on his heels. He had visited his father a number of times since the duel, although not nearly as often as his mother had. On those occasions, he had been struck with a sense of light and stillness, the faint shimmer of the laran field that preserved Mikhail’s life. Now the room seemed narrow and dark. The air tasted of unshed tears.
Marguerida lay on a second bed, her upper body propped on pillows and wrapped in her favorite knitted shawl, the one with intertwined cable stitches. Lew and Istvana attended her. The Keeper looked grim but resolved; her uncovered starstone shone like a piece of the sun at her throat.
Domenic bent over his mother. Her cheeks had gone pasty pale. No hint of color brightened her lips. The corners of her mouth were drawn down. Her brows tensed, creating an expression of intense concentration or of great pain. Behind her closed lids, her eyes jerked from side to side. Her breathing was irregular, a few shallow pants followed by a pause and a deep inhalation, as if she were gathering herself for battle.
Mother! I’m here—Domenic, your Nico.
Marguerida’s lips parted, as if she would speak, but only a gasp passed them. She opened her eyes, their gold now faded, unseeing, and then closed them again. The fingers of her right hand clenched and straightened. Her left hand, bound with bandages, lay motionless, as if paralyzed.
Mother!
Domenic drew back, dazed. Never in his life had his mother failed to respond when he called. When he was lost in the Overworld, searching for Alanna, she had known. With her mind, she had found him.
In his memory, a maelstrom of blue-white energy buffeted him, uprooted him, swallowed him up. He had seen no way through the storm. The blasts of chaotic laran had shredded away his very sense of self. Hope had faded with every passing moment. He remembered thinking what a fool he’d been, that all was lost.
Then he had heard his mother’s mental voice, clear and resonant as a summoning trumpet. “Come back!” she had called. “Come back to me!”
There was no place on Darkover or beyond, he had thought, that she could not reach, nothing she would not do, to save the ones she loved.
How could he do any less for her?
Something roused at the back of Domenic’s mind, a pressure, a gathering of raw power, a melding of desperation and deep, instinct-driven impulse.
MOTHER, WHERE ARE YOU? ANSWER ME!
“Domenic, stop!” Grandfather Lew’s voice broke through Domenic’s mental summons.
The room snapped back into focus. Domenic tasted shock and adrenaline in the air. Istvana clutched her starstone and wavered on her seat, her face ashen. Gently, Illona took Domenic’s hands and guided him from the bedside to a chair. Tears glimmered on her cheeks.
Lew said, his voice even more hoarse and distorted than usual, “You cannot reach her that way. None of us can. We’ve all tried.”
“I don’t understand,” Domenic said. “She’s just…gone.”
Where can we look for help? We can’t just give up! Domenic cried.
We will not abandon her, Illona thought.
The door opened. Linnea Storn entered and silently joined them. Her hair, soft auburn curls shot with silver, was dressed in a simple style, and she wore the unadorned gray robe of a Tower leronis. Domenic did not know her well; as consort to Regis Hastur, she had always been kind, if distant, to him. Before she left Thendara for Arilinn Tower, he had not known that she was once a Keeper.
Domenic turned back to Istvana. “Exactly what is the matter with my mother?”
Istvana gathered herself. “You know that she used her shadow matrix to transform the serum?”
“Yes, Illona told me. What difference does that make? I assume that Mother used it as one uses a starstone, to amplify her natural psychic energies.”
“That much is true, although Marguerida never needed a starstone because of the embedded matrix. In fact, the shadow matrix is likely responsible for her extreme sensitivity to the matrix screens at Arilinn, which prevented her from working in a circle. It’s quite a powerful device, but it is not the same as a natural starstone. We are not sure…perhaps the matrix provided more raw power than her channels could sustain.”
“Do you mean this is some kind of laran overload? Like threshold sickness?” Domenic said. “We know how to treat that, don’t we?”
Istvana shook her head. “No, not like threshold sickness. That much, we can be sure of. We cannot tell, however, whether generating and controlling so much power burned out the laran centers of her mind. That would be terrible indeed.”
“I don’t care if she keeps her laran or not!” Domenic exclaimed. “I want my mother back, here among us!”
An awkward pause followed. Illona said gently, “If she has lost her laran, and what is wrong with her is psychic, not physical, we may not be able to reach her mind.”
During the discussion, Linnea shook her head minutely. “There may be another cause. Istvana disagrees with me, but the possibility must be explored.”
“With all respect, we’ve been through this before,” Istvana said. “The matter was laid to rest years ago.”
“I know from my own experience that being controlled by laran is a thing not easily erased from the mind,” Lew said.
At Domenic’s bitten-off exclamation, Linnea said, “Marguerida entered this state after she drew unimaginable power through the shadow matrix. I believe the shadow matrix may be more than it seems. For one thing, it did not come to her in the usual way, like an unkeyed starstone. She obtained it in the Overworld, from a Tower erected there by Ashara. It was created and tuned to Ashara’s mental vibration long before it ever came to Marguerida.”
That much was true. Over the years, Marguerida had drawn upon the immense power of the shadow matrix, but she confessed she had never fully understood its nature.
“For that reason,??
? Linnea went on, “and because Ashara had overshadowed Marguerida from the time she was a small child, the embedded matrix may yet retain the resonance of Ashara’s personality.”
A tendril of ice crept down Domenic’s spine. Since childhood, he had heard tales of that ancient leronis, who prolonged her existence by dominating the minds of generations of Keepers. Marguerida had told Domenic a little about that terrible psychic struggle in the Overworld. In her attempt to free herself from the disembodied spirit of the ancient Keeper, she had seized the keystone from the astral Tower of Mirrors, the stone that had preserved the strongest presence of Ashara, the stone that now glimmered in the flesh of Marguerida’s left hand.
“Has Ashara come to life again, through my mother?” Domenic asked.
“Not yet, may all the gods be praised,” Linnea said. “Marguerida has considerable strength of will. She would never permit that monstrous entity to come back into the world, not if she could prevent it. If I am correct, however, the tainted crystal is even now draining her life force, and we have no way to protect her.”
Linnea lifted Marguerida’s left hand and unwrapped the bandages. When he saw the matrix embedded in Marguerida’s palm, Domenic’s courage almost failed him. No longer pale blue-white, the pattern pulsed with the color of freshly spilled blood. It seemed to have taken on a life of its own. He wondered what lurked behind those shifting crimson facets.
Feeling sick, Domenic tore his glance away from the crimson matrix. Whether Linnea was correct or whether the crystalline pattern had turned red for some other reason, one fact remained. Cut off from the animating power of her spirit, Marguerida’s body would in time wither and die. The more time passed, the less chance she had of ever returning.
Where had she gone, that none of them could reach her?