The Shadow Matrix

  After three days of steady riding, they had come to Elhalyn Castle unannounced. Priscilla Elhalyn had not appeared very perturbed by the intrusion. After all, Mikhail was the grandson of Alanna Elhalyn, who had been the sister of Priscilla's own father, Stefan. A visit from a cousin was always acceptable, her attitude implied. Indeed, in her rather vague and disordered way, she behaved almost as if she had expected them. She was a small woman, with eyes clouded like gray agates, surrounded by her children and few servants, pleasant enough, but hardly the adventure he had been hoping to have.

  Elhalyn Castle itself was a modest pile—not as large or impressive as Ardais—but well-built and strong. One of the servants said it dated back to the Ages of Chaos, when the Compact had finally ended the wars which had plagued the

  planet for so long. Studying the stonework, Mikhail had

  suspected the building was not that old. Still, with the muddle that passed for history from that time, he knew that

  anything was possible. ·

  So much had been lost during those troubled times, so many records, and so much knowledge. Some of the knowledge was better off lost, he knew, for they had used matrices in ways that were unthinkable to his "mind. There had been clingfire, a stuff that adhered to the skin and burned to the bone, which was a terrifying idea. And that was not the worst. Mikhail could hardly imagine it, and was glad for Darkover that those terrible times were far in the past.

  Not that recent times had been uneventful, of course. The Sharra Rebellion had wracked the world shortly after his birth, and the World Wreckers had tried to destroy the entire ecology of Darkover a few years later. But, for nearly the last two decades, things on Darkover had been quiet. There was no real need of the protection of Guardsmen, except that as Elhalyn Regent he had a certain status, and it was customary.

  Elhalyn Castle had been in a shocking state of disrepair, and Mikhail wondered why. The climate of Darkover was unforgiving. The winters were brutal, and all the houses he knew were well-maintained, just to ensure the basic health of the residents during the coldest months of the year. Drafty corridors and doors that creaked on their hinges were a new and rather unpleasant experience. Dyan had some pungent comments to make on the subject, but Mikhail put it down to the well-known eccentricity of the Elhalyns.

  Mikhail had studied Priscilla's five children for any hint of the documented instability of the Elhalyn line, but they had seemed healthy and normal, despite the oddity of their home. They were unused to strangers, and rather shy, but after a day, they seemed to accept the two men well enough. The two girls, the youngest of the children, Miralys and Valenta, stopped hiding behind their mother's skirts, and the boys—Alain, Vincent, and Emun—asked questions about horses, Thendara, the Terranan, and other matters of curiosity. The boys had admired Valient, the sire of his present horse, and Dyan's spirited mare Roslinda, re-

  marked on the clothing they wore, and generally behaved like other youngsters he had known.

  It had been rather tedious, until the night of the séance. He could still remember the cold touch of whatever had spoken and shuddered. He was, in retrospect, very glad that the ghost of Derik—if it had been "he—had extracted his oath never to speak of the incident. Doing so would have cast serious doubts on his own sanity, he was sure.

  But when he made that promise, he had never expected to return to the Elhalyn lands, nor to see Priscilla and her children again. Certainly he had not anticipated becoming Regent for the Elhalyn Domain, with orders from Regis Hastur to find one among the three sons of Priscilla to reclaim the long vacant throne of the kings of Darkover.

  There had been several times since that tumultuous meeting in the Crystal Chamber when Mikhail had wished to refuse the Regency. That choice would have perhaps restored his relationship with his parents, as well as relieving him of an unwanted burden. But his sense of duty was too strong. He could not bring himself to speak the words. If only he had not been trained to rule!

  For that matter, if only his parents were not so stubborn and mistrustful of him, of Lew Alton, and Marguerida. There was no good thinking about it! He had been trained to be a dutiful heir to Regis Hastur, to rule, and then it had all been snatched away from him. All he could do was his best at the task ahead of him, even if it did feel as if he had been shuffled off. Any leronis could have tested the boys, and he knew it. But Regis had insisted that Mikhail do it, and would settle for no one else.

  The longer he thought about it, the more certain Mikhail was that he was missing critical pieces of information. He had not been shuffled off, no matter how he felt about it. He was part of the plan—an unwilling pawn in one of Regis' games. It was infuriating! He felt trapped, both by his loyalties and by his uncle's manipulations. He was not free to pursue his own ambitions, and he resented it more than he had realized until this moment.

  It was all very dispiriting. There was little comfort in the realization that no one, so far as Mikhail knew, was entirely happy with the things that Regis proposed. He felt a brief empathy for his young cousin, Dani Hastur, who should by

  now have been proclaimed heir. All he had managed to get out of anyone was a cryptic remark from Lady Linnea. "Regis is not certain of Dani yet." If Mikhail felt exiled and trapped at the same time, how must Danilo Hastur feel?

  Everything Regis had proposed, even the inclusion of the Aldarans in the Comyn Council, was very logical. But Darkovans, Mikhail knew, were not a very logical people. They were passionate, and when their emotions were in full cry, as it seemed his mother's were at present, they did not listen to anything but their hearts. And, he decided, Regis did not seem to grasp this.

  Mikhail wondered what secrets his uncle was keeping, thinking a little guiltily of his own. He had never spoken of the séance, and he had never revealed his two visits to the Aldaran family. These were small things, and Regis had told him once that half of statecraft was having information and knowing when to use it and when not to.

  Mikhail dismissed his conflicted thoughts with a shrug. All this speculation was giving him a headache. He knew that Regis had changed in some manner, and all he could do was live with it. He could not quite put a name to the difference, but now he thought about it, there was also something almost hasty in his actions, as if he had some secret timetable he must keep to.

  Enough! It was too beautiful a day for such thoughts. He could now see the looming bulk of Elhalyn Castle against the horizon, and was relieved that Priscilla had left the place. Halyn House was the old dower residence ten miles closer to the sea and he only hoped it was in a better state than the moldering castle, which even from a distance looked rundown and depressing.

  But even if it wasn't any better kept, he believed he could put up with it so long as he knew it was not going to be forever, that long before he entered his dotage he would be free of either the Regency or the possibility of taking Regis' place once and for all.

  Odd. Once he had wanted that—had longed for the thankless job that Regis had done so ably for two decades. That was long before he met Marguerida. He let out a soft chuckle that made Charger prick his ears. Mikhail let himself remember the lists he had made as a youngster, of things he intended to do when he took the throne. They

  had been, he suspected, both idealistic and extremely foolish.

  The wind shifted a little, and the smell of the Sea of Dalereuth wafted toward him. It was a sharp scent, full of salt and something he could not put a name to. Marguerida would know, for she had grown up on an oceanic world after she left Darkover at the age of five. Even with the impressions of Thetis he had gotten from her mind over the months, Mikhail had no real sense of what it was like to live beside a rolling ocean, full of odd creatures shaped like stars, or the leaping sea-mammals she called delfins.

  Sometimes, he knew, she longed for Thetis, for its warmth, and Mikhail wondered if she would ever be completely happy on Darkover. He hoped she would, because he could not be happy without her, and if she left, he could not bear it. An
d after her training in the Tower was complete, she would be free to do just that—leave Darkover. It was not a happy thought. If she chose to depart, it would create havoc and likely ruin whatever plans Regis was hatching.

  A strange croak from overhead made him look up, letting go of his morbid thoughts. There was a large bird, some sort .of crow, but a type he had never seen before. It was shining black, with patches of white feathers across the edges of the wings. It looked at him with a suspicious red eye, cried again, and circled above him three times. He flinched a little, for the bird looked dangerous with its large talons and sharp beak.

  Mikhail watched the bird wheeling in the air, enjoying the perfection of its flight. He followed it until it vanished, then urged his horse ahead. It was still several miles to Halyn House, and if he wanted to arrive before dusk, he needed to hurry.

  As he rode, Mikhail experienced a slight frisson of uneasiness that had been lurking in the back of his mind for miles. Then he silently cursed himself for a superstitious fool. That sea crow had been no omen, no portent of doom. He was just out of sorts from being given a task he did not wish for and did not want.

  He began to sing, his voice lifting in a rather naughty ditty he had learned from Marguerida, a student drinking

  song from her days at University. It was quite wicked, and he could hear the Guardsmen chuckling behind him, a cheerful noise that so lightened his heart that he nearly forgot his cares as he rode toward Halyn House.

  2

  It was such a beautiful day, Margaret Alton reflected, that it was a shame it was being ruined by her headache. Sitting on a low bench in the fragrance garden at Arilinn, she tried to use the methods she had learned during her four months in the Tower to alleviate the pain. But although she had mastered the technique, her headache stubbornly refused to stop pounding in her skull.

  She flinched as the intensity of the pain seemed to increase, until it felt as if someone were stabbing stilettos into her brow, just above the eyes. She could feel the pulse of her blood, hot in her veins, and she suddenly realized this was no ordinary headache.

  No, Margaret decided, this was something entirely different from the dreadful sensation she got in her head when she remained too long within the Tower. It had never occurred to her that being near large collections of matrices would be almost impossible for her—even though the sight of a personal starstone made her queasy. And nothing had prepared her for the environment of Arilinn Tower—for the enormous energies confined behind the stone walls. Worse, no one else had realized what the great screens were doing to her until she fell violently ill.

  Her first experience had been a harrowing one, with an episode of threshold sickness almost as terrible as the one she had suffered at Castle Ardais the previous summer. Whenever she looked at the building, and remembered those first days in the student dormitory, she shuddered. She could have died, she knew.

  Fortunately she had not, and the problem had a fairly simple solution. Outside the actual Tower, away from the energies of the matrices, her illness abated. She now lived in a little cottage outside the walls. She loved it, for here

  she was free of the constant chatter of her fellow students, and their hostility as well. It was the first time she had ever lived alone, and the sense of separateness, of privacy, soothed something within her she had not even known was painful. She only, entered the Tower for lessons now. And those were devoted at present not so much to studying her own laran, as to learning various meditative techniques that would permit her to be in the proximity 9f the large number of matrix stones that were housed in Arilinn or any "Tower.

  The Tower was nothing like she had imagined before she came there. Margaret had assumed the place would be a single building, like those she had glimpsed on her two visits to the overworld a few months earlier. Instead, it was a small but bustling community, with the Tower at its center. There were weavers who made robes especially for the inhabitants, farmers growing grain, skilled copyists who worked in the archives, trying to preserve those records of the past which still existed, and many other craftspeople.

  Margaret discovered that the reason it could take a lifetime to learn matrix science was that one could not take in very much at a time. It was not like music or history, where a student could sit down, read a dozen texts, attend several seminars and then lay claim to some expertise. Old Jeff Kerwin had been at it for longer than she had been alive, and he was still learning things.

  There were several houses of the sort she now lived in. They were only a few years old, constructed to house the families of people who had brought their loved ones to Arilinn for healing, an innovation brought about by her Uncle Jeff. Her father, Lew Alton, stayed in another one, during his frequent trips from Thendara to see how Dio's treatment was progressing. He would have stayed there all the time, but Jeff had put a stop to that, saying that Lew's presence was disruptive.

  It was quite true, since Lew tended to become angry or agitated—demanding solutions when no one was quite sure yet what the nature of the problem was. All they knew was that for some reason Dio's cells were disintegrating, despite all attempts to halt the progress of her strange disease.

  Now Diotima Ridenow rested in the center of a room, the walls gleaming with huge crystals, looking like some

  sleeping princess from a fairy tale. Margaret had managed to visit her a few times, but the presence of so many matrix stones in a small space had been impossible to endure for very long. She felt guilty about that and angry at herself, even though she knew it was silly. Margaret was sure, somewhere in her mind, that if she were only strong enough, she could get over her profound aversion to the matrices, and be able to sit with Dio.

  It had driven her wild not to be able to do something for her beloved stepmother. She was, after all, her father's child, and the need to be active, not helpless, was enormous. After several weeks of frustration which interfered with the study of her Gift, she hit upon the idea of using her precious recording equipment as a means of being present.

  Using the two recorders she possessed, her own and Ivor Davidson's, she began to make recordings of all the songs she remembered from her childhood on Thetis, the many she had learned or relearned since returning to Darkover, and anything else that took her fancy. Just the act of singing made her feel less helpless, less frustrated. She was not, she knew, a great singer, just a very thoroughly trained musician. Margaret lacked that quality that distinguished the artist from the amateur, but she did not think it would matter to her stepmother.

  When she had filled up a disk—about twenty-six hours of singing, with occasional stories that seemed to go with the music—she had ventured into the chamber, set up Ivor's player, and started it running. Margaret did not give a damn that she was violating half a dozen Terran rules about technology restrictions on planets like Darkover, or that the equipment actually belonged to the University, and she should have returned it. True, she had not informed the music department that she would not be returning to University in the foreseeable future, and they likely assumed she was diligently continuing the survey of Darkovan music which had brought her to the planet five months earlier. She knew that was hairsplitting. She was fairly certain she would never leave Darkover, and she was not going to transmit her work to her department, to let some other person muck about with it.

  The batteries that ran the device were good for six

  months of continuous use, and she decided that if she had to, she would get her mother's brother, Captain Rafe Scott, to find some means to get her more if she needed them. He worked at Terran HQ in Thendara, and she was fairly certain he could obtain the things even if he could not requisition them. Margaret knew she should be disgusted with herself for even thinking such things, but it was for Dio, and that seemed more important than anything else.

  So the glittering chamber was filled with song, from dawn till dawn. Margaret did not know if it did any good, if Dio could even hear her voice, her song, but it made her feel better, kno
wing that her stepmother was not entirely cut off from human contact.

  Sometimes, after spending the day with Dio, Lew would come to Margaret, looking strained but calm. He told her several times that the songs were wonderful, that even if it was not helping Dio, it made him feel good to hear her voice. And others, technicians and students at Arilinn, who usually held themselves aloof from her, had sought her out to say they found themselves listening to the music, stopping in to sit with Diotima's comatose body, when they entered the chamber to monitor the woman. It was the warmest contact she had with those in the Tower, and the only one free of suspicion or resentment.

  She had come expecting to find an environment like that at University, and instead discovered that Arilinn was a hotbed of competition. Those with high levels of laran tended to lord it over those with less, including Regis' two daughters, who had come to begin training at the same time she had. Several of the women had the ambition to become Keepers, which was understandable, since there were not many things which women could do on Darkover other than marry or become Renunciates, if they wanted authority of any sort. A few of the men nourished the same goal, even though male Keepers were still a rarity.