The Alton Gift

  How could he call her back, even as she had called to him?

  Domenic’s strange laran roused. A pattern slowly emerged, like mountains rising through mist. Before, the planet had called to the deepest core of his consciousness. He had heard it as song, as wordless melody, as deep groaning, as the shifting harmonies of a single entity.

  Now his innermost perceptions intensified. He sensed not only the physical manifestations of rock and magma, river and cloud, but their psychic forms as well. Interpenetrating the ordinary world, he saw the Overworld, a realm of infinitely elastic thought, of power, of dreams. His mother—and, for all he knew, the spirit of his father—wandered lost in that limitless realm.

  How to reach her?

  Domenic let the question die away into silence. He would not find the answer in words. Instead, he allowed his psychic focus to expand even more, softening his peripheral senses.

  With eerie, doubled sight, he glanced at the other bed, where his father lay, eyes closed, hands folded on his chest. The laran field preserving his life shimmered slightly, iridescent shades of blue. The ring on Mikhail’s right hand glinted.

  The form of the ring did not waver as Domenic shifted his own vision between physical and psychic. Some objects, then, existed in both planes. They were bridges between one world and another, drawing their power from both.

  The pulsing, blood-red matrix on Marguerida’s palm was another such object. It was linked to her mind, even as the ring was bound to Mikhail’s. Was there a way to use the power of the two devices to bridge the gap between worlds?

  Domenic had been taught at Neskaya that it was dangerous for anyone but a trained Keeper to handle another person’s starstone. The results might be fatal for both individuals. But Mikhail’s ring was no ordinary matrix. Mikhail often wore it openly and uninsulated. Moreover, he had joined all its power to his wife’s shadow matrix at the Battle of Old North Road.

  Domenic’s resolve hardened. Some risks must be taken. He could not believe that Marguerida would ever bring harm to Mikhail, even involuntarily. Domenic had never known two people more compatible. Was he willing, though, to stake his mother’s life on it?

  What if he were wrong?

  What choice did he have? She was dying anyway, and Mikhail would not choose life without her.

  “I don’t know about Ashara or the shadow matrix,” Domenic said, searching for the words, “but I do know one thing. If she were lost, cast adrift, cut off from everything and everyone…there is one person she would find, no matter what barriers stood between them.”

  He strode to his father’s bedside. His hand passed through the laran field with a faint tingling sensation. The ring slipped from Mikhail’s finger, as if it understood Domenic’s purpose, and gave its consent.

  Domenic lifted his mother’s left hand, carefully avoiding contact with her shadow matrix. He placed his father’s ring against the blood-hued pattern on her palm and closed her fingers around it.

  Marguerida had no idea how long she had floated here, in this place of formless mist. Invisible currents swirled around her, unstable composites of wind and sound, voices and air, fragmented memory. How she knew this, she could not tell. She seemed to be shifting in and out of phase with the storm, so that at moments it battered her from the outside, and at others there was no outside, no inside, no herself.

  “Marguerida…”

  Something curled on the gusts, a thread of sound. A man’s voice, calling to her. He cast out her name like a fisherman’s net. The wind snatched the name away.

  Name…she had a name…

  She felt herself condensing, no longer vapor but something infinitesimally more substantial. The voice, dim and blurred, formed words.

  “Marguerida…breathe, damn you! Breathe!”

  Dimly, she felt fingers pinching her nose, a mouth over hers, forcing air into her lungs, the desperate pressure of a mind reaching for hers.

  She knew the pattern and texture of that mind. She had thrust against it with her own. As the tremendous power of the Alton Gift flowed through her, she had felt the man’s natural laran barriers crumble and give way.

  The voice receded into silence. Memory faded. Vision fractured into tiny mirrored bits, spreading on the wind. The sparkling motes sifted downward.

  Gradually, she felt herself separating from the color-bleached firmament. Her feet touched a surface, and she found herself, her body, standing upon the unending, featureless plain of the Overworld.

  A Tower glowered before her, the stones veined like inflamed living flesh. Ashara’s Tower, shining with uncanny mirrored light…

  No, that was destroyed! she raged silently. Mikhail and I brought it down.

  Still the Tower stood, mocking her. Beckoning her. The reflected brilliance intensified, avid…hungering.

  Marguerida’s left hand burned. She looked down to see the matrix embedded in her palm, no longer pale starstone-blue but crimson, like blood, like sunset, like a Keeper’s robe.

  Time, she knew, had no meaning here. Somewhere, two decades ago, a much younger self had battled the mind that had overshadowed her since childhood.

  This is where I obtained the matrix. Did it bring me here for some purpose?

  Purpose…

  As she thought this, distance compressed, so that she stood within the Tower that was crimson and blue-white, facing the spectral figure of Ashara. Strength surged through her, and she sensed that now, as then, she was not alone.

  Ashara glared at her, features distorting, shifting. For a fleeting, sickening moment, Marguerida looked into a mirror.

  “You are mine! Mine! You always have been, and you always will be.” A voice like granite shattering shocked through Marguerida. “I will live again through you!”

  Marguerida’s instinct urged her to resist, to fight, even as she had so long ago. In that first struggle, just as her own strength had failed her, Mikhail had found her. His determination had flowed into her, pulling her free. What was left of Ashara’s spirit had disappeared in the destruction of her astral Tower.

  Wrestling her panic under control and her focus to the present moment, Marguerida forced herself to think.

  If Ashara exists only in the past, then why am I remembering her now? She’s the last thing I want to think about!

  Dimly, as if over an unimaginable distance, Marguerida heard her father’s voice, ”…being controlled by laran is a thing not easily erased from the mind.”

  Marguerida and Lew had each survived the experience of another psychic presence in their minds, powerful and dominating. In their turn, each of them had used the Alton Gift to impose their will upon another.

  …Jeram…the Battle of Old North Road and its aftermath…

  I didn’t know! I didn’t realize…

  There was no help for it. She could do nothing to change the past. She must face the menace within her own mind.

  Ashara cannot harm me now…not unless I give her the power to do so.

  Drawing herself up, Marguerida faced the image of Ashara. The ancient leronis glared back, her eyes burning with ravenous anticipation and triumph. The air shuddered under the accumulated malevolence of centuries. Light melded with heat and crushing psychic energy.

  Marguerida’s nerve almost failed her. Ashara’s will and her lust for domination had not abated during the intervening decades. This time, there would be no Mikhail to stand beside her…

  With an inhuman shriek of triumph, Ashara leaped forward. Marguerida caught a whiff of the aura streaming from her form, a concatenation of rot and laran energy.

  You…do…not…exist! Marguerida cried out with all her strength.

  The words, spoken so bravely, disintegrated under Ashara’s attack. Marguerida knew that her own fear was fueling Ashara’s power, and yet she could not stop herself. The old Keeper was almost upon her, but she could not move…

  No single human agency could defeat the monstrous psychic entity before her. Alone, she had no chance.

  But
together…

  Mikhail! Beloved, help me!

  Pain shot through Marguerida’s left hand. Startled, she looked down. Something lay in her palm, sparkling against the blue-white pattern on her palm.

  Mikhail’s ring!

  She had no time to wonder how it had gotten here. Her only thought was that once she and Mikhail had combined their special laran instruments, her shadow matrix and the ring of Varzil the Good upon his hand.

  Together!

  She gripped the ring. It dug into the matrix in her hand. As the two psychoactive devices made contact, a clamor like the sky breaking open deafened her. For an instant, she sensed another presence rushing through her.

  The world exploded in a glory of light.

  At a deep, cellular level, Marguerida felt the violent clashing of energies around her. The node of desiccated consciousness that had been Ashara thrust back. Twisting, evading.

  Ashara tried to flee, to hide herself in the adamantine lattice of the shadow matrix. But the light was too powerful; it flooded the flesh-embedded crystal, bleaching away all traces of crimson rage.

  A shriek of inhuman despair shocked through the psychic firmament. Marguerida staggered under the blast. With a swift velvety hush like falcon wings, the clamor fell away.

  For a brief moment, Marguerida gazed upon the empty spot where Ashara’s Tower of Mirrors had once stood. Nothing, not even the smallest particle of dust, remained.

  She’s gone…she’s really gone.

  Light died. Distance thinned to void. She was alone in a vast, spinning emptiness.

  39

  Curling in on herself, Marguerida cradled Mikhail’s ring against her heart. Pain beyond words, beyond tears, beyond bearing, filled her.

  It is over. I am free…but I will never see him again.

  Never say the thousand things she wanted to share, never laugh at the way the morning sun turned his hair into spun gold. Never lie in his arms, drinking in the light of his eyes, as if their joy would never end.

  Never again see her children, or hold her grandchildren. Never see her old friends, or that quick hushed nightfall over Thendara that always made her breath catch in her throat with its beauty. Never put right her regrets.

  She thought of Jeram, who had tried to save her, even after what she had done to him after the Battle of Old North Road. What could she say to him if she ever had the chance? Could he understand that she and her father had had no other choice unless they slaughtered the entire defeated Terran force?

  Did that make what they had done right? Lew felt it did not, but he spoke from his own tortured guilt.

  And I, what do I believe?

  Life was rarely so simple as pure right or pure wrong. Every choice carried the possibility of unintended consequences. She had made the best decision she could, perhaps the only right decision, and now there was nothing she could do to change it.

  Ah, what did it matter? Here in this timeless place, she had lost all sensation of her physical body. She had not the least notion of which direction it lay in or how to get there. She could have drifted a minute, an hour, a year. Did she still have a body to which to return?

  If I could only see Mikhail again…just once…

  Yet…for a fleeting moment, as she faced Ashara for the last time, Mikhail had been with her.

  Marguerida’s practical nature reasserted itself. Just listen to me, wallowing in self-pity!

  Nothing was over yet, not while she still had her wits about her. Mikhail’s spirit was somewhere out there in the Overworld. Even if neither of them could return to the physical plane, at least they could be together. Her heart, with its own instinctive wisdom, would guide her now.

  Taking the ring in her right hand, she raised it to the level of her eyes. The crystal glinted with inner fire. On the palm of her other hand, the imprinted pattern of the shadow matrix shone faintly, pallid blue-white. With the final vanquishing of Ashara, all other color had drained away.

  Mikhail’s ring…her shadow matrix. The two were linked, just as their hearts and minds were connected, ever since that strange journey to the past, when Varzil the Good himself had given Mikhail the ring and then married them.

  Varzil had said the marriage ceremony itself created a bond…what was it? Something about the symbolism of the catenas bracelets, locked upon the wrists of the man and woman in the old tradition.

  Symbolic of what deeper truth?

  Locked, joined… as their separate laran talents had become fused together. Before, they had loved each other sweetly, passionately, with intense mutual delight, but always as two separate people. When they had returned to the present time, however, they shared a constant, abiding connection. They might go about their daily lives, sometimes seeing each other only briefly if things got too hectic, but always she could feel his presence in her mind.

  She studied the ring that was the touchstone of her husband’s laran. The great colorless crystal had been keyed to Mikhail’s starstone.

  You are part of him. You must know where he is. Take me to him!

  There was no change in the flickering brilliance within the crystal or the gray monotone that surrounded her. Again, she reached out, aiming her will and concentration at the ring.

  TAKE ME TO HIM!

  Silence answered her, silence and utter stillness.

  Her fingers closed in a fist around the ring. What good was it if it could not bring her to her beloved? Temper and frustration flared up in her. She wanted to hurl the ring as hard and far as she could.

  No, that would not help anything. It wasn’t the ring’s fault it could not fulfill her wish. The ring might have many powers, but it lacked the will to deliberately thwart her. She imagined its sadness at seeing the two people it had united now parted.

  At that, Marguerida smiled. What a fanciful thought!

  She opened her fist and studied the ring, lying on the unmarked palm of her right hand. “If you can’t bring me to him, what can you do? Why do I have you?”

  As she asked the question, Marguerida’s thoughts cleared. Her body became more solid, as did the Overworld. She was on the right track. The overhead light strengthened, and the flat gray terrain firmed up beneath her feet. She felt her arms and legs, torso and head, the supple, articulated strength of her spine, the texture of the flimsy robe that had materialized on her body.

  What did she know about the ring? She knew where it had come from. That Varzil had given it freely to Mikhail. That Mikhail had worn it ever since. That Francisco had coveted it.

  “Quite a troublemaker, aren’t you?” she said to the ring, but lightly, so it would know she did not blame it for Francisco’s treachery.

  Mikhail had used it at the Battle of Old North Road, its power joined to that of her shadow matrix. But that was not its first use.

  Originally, Mikhail had used the ring for healing.

  Healing…

  A shiver tickled Marguerida’s spine, a ghostly hope. Not a sure thing, of course. The ring was not all-powerful. It had not been able to save Regis after his stroke. Yet, if there was any force on Darkover that could restore Mikhail, she held it in her hand.

  But he’s not here! wailed through her mind.

  Think like a Darkovan, she told herself. Since when has distance made any difference in the Overworld?

  The ring itself lacked the power to find him. But together with its counterpart, the shadow matrix that was part of her own flesh…

  The ring had appeared in the Overworld in her left hand, in direct contact with the shadow matrix, yet no harm had come to her. Or, she was sure, to Mikhail. Ordinarily, she insulated her matrixed hand from accidental contact with a silk-lined glove or mitten. Now it occurred to her that in the Overworld such precautions might not be necessary. This was, after all, a realm of thought and energy, where only willpower and imagination mattered.

  The ring and the matrix existed in the ordinary world as well, but they were essentially devices to channel and amplify laran. Carefully, Mar
guerida replaced the ring over the crystalline imprint on her left palm. A shock, like living electricity, shot up her arm. Her nerves tingled. The feeling was not unpleasant, but it was strong. She wondered, but only for an instant, at the vividness of the sensation, here in the Overworld, where she had only an astral body.

  Mikhail’s ring and her own matrix began to glow, moment by moment ever more strongly. Their combined brilliance stung her eyes. Energy that was neither light nor heat streamed out in all directions. The gray of the Overworld paled, almost to white.

  It was, she thought, as if their love, combined, now filled the entire world.

  One love, combined…one love, one heart…

  Of course!

  Joy rose in her. The ring had been unable to bring her to Mikhail because in this place, neither time nor distance had any meaning. He was already with her. Her own fear had created the illusion that they were apart.

  Marguerida turned her sight inward, trying to see Mikhail with her heart instead of her eyes. In memory and longing, he stood before her, his hands clasping hers. She could almost feel that sure touch…

  Eyes blue as the clear sky of Thetis smiled at her…

  Sun glinted on hair the color of new-minted gold…

  No, that was Mikhail as he had been when they first met; he was older now, and silver frosted the gold…

  The lines of his face came into sharper focus, a face neither young nor old, but Mikhail as he would always be to her, the radiant spirit behind those eyes, that smile…

  She willed the form before her to condense into flesh.

  Beloved, be with me now!

  Gradually, Mikhail took form before her, at first a shimmer, like heat rising in the shape of a man. He seemed to be made not of flesh but of glass. His eyes, as colorless as the rest of him, looked right through her.

  As Marguerida watched, a glint of yellow appeared in Mikhail’s flowing hair. His eyes shaded from gray to palest blue. Like her, he wore a white robe, fluttering as if caught in a wind. His feet came to rest on the smooth gray plain. Moments passed as his outline grew sharper. His eyes focused. Yet still he remained insubstantial, transparent.