The young Comyn flying the ship had looked with reverence at Elorie when the name of Arilinn was spoken. It seemed that they all knew about the tremendous experiment at Arilinn, which might keep Darkover and the Domains out of the hands of the Terran Empire.
But it would fail. They were racing through the night to stop it before it started; but if they didn’t do it at all, it would be default, and default would have the same weight as failure, which was why they were trying this desperate experiment with a half-trained Keeper. Either way, it meant the end of the Darkover they knew.
If only I had never come back to Darkover!
“Don’t, Jeff,” she said softly. “It’s not fair to blame yourself.”
But he did. If he had not come back, they might have found someone else to take the vacant place at Arilinn. And Auster, without Jeff to antagonize him, would perhaps have discovered the truth about the Terran spy. But now they were all bound to abide by the success or failure of this experiment; and if it failed—and it would fail—then they were all pledged, on the word of Hastur, to offer no more resistance to Terran industrialization, Terran trade, the Terran culture, the Terran way.
Without Kerwin to lend them this false confidence, the Terran’s spying would have yielded only minor information.
Elorie’s hand felt cold as ice in his. Without asking, Kerwin wrapped his fur-lined cloak around her, remembering against his will one of Johnny Eller’s stories. He could shelter Elorie against physical cold in his Darkovan cloak; but now that he knew he had no more right to his Terran citizenship than to Arilinn, where could he take her?
She pointed through the window of the plane. “Arilinn,” she said, “and there is the Tower.” Then she drew a deep breath of consternation and despair; for, faintly around the Tower, he could see a bluish, flickering iridescence.
“We’re too late,” she whispered. “They’ve already started!”
* * *
Chapter Seventeen: The Conscience of a Keeper
« ^ »
Kerwin felt as if he were sleepwalking as they hurried across the airfield, Elorie moving dreamlike at his side. They had failed, then, and it was too late. He caught at her, saying, “It’s too late! Accept it!” But she kept moving, and he would not let her go alone. They passed through the sparkling Veil, and Kerwin caught his breath at the impact of the tremendous, charged force that seemed to suffuse the entire Tower, radiating from that high room where the circle had formed. Incomplete, yes, but still holding incredible power. It beat in Kerwin like an extra heartbeat, and he felt Elorie, at his side, trembling.
Was this dangerous for her, now?
Swept on, dominated by her will and that mysterious force, Kerwin climbed the Tower. He stood outside the matrix chamber, sensing what lay within.
Auster’s barrier was no more than a wall of mist to him. His body remained outside the room, but he was inside, too, and with senses beyond his physical eyes he touched them all: Taniquel, in the monitor’s seat, Rannirl firmly holding the technician’s visualization; Kennard bent over the maps; Corus in his own, Kerwin’s place; and holding them together, on frail spiderweb strands, an unfamiliar touch, like pain…
She was slight and frail, not yet out of childhood, yet she wore the robe of a Keeper, crimson, not the ceremonial robe but the loose hooded robe they all wore within the matrix chamber, her robe crimson, so that no one would touch her even by accident when she was carrying the load of the energons. She had dark hair like spun black glass, still braided like a child’s along her face, and a small, triangular, plain face, pale and thin and trembling with effort.
She sensed his touch and looked puzzled, yet somehow she knew it was not intrusion, that he belonged here. Quickly Kerwin made the rounds of the circle again, Rannirl, Corus, Taniquel, Neyrissa, Kennard—Auster…
Auster. He sensed something, from outside the circle as he was, like a sticky, palpable black cord, extending outside the barrier; the line that chained them, kept the matrix circle from closing their ring of power. The bond, the psychic bond between the twin-born, that bound Auster’s twin without his knowledge to the fringes of the circle…
Spy! Terran, spy! Auster had sensed his presence, turned viciously in his direction… though his body, immobile in the rapport, did not move… but the tension rippled the calm of the circle, came near to breaking.
“Spy and Terran. But not I, my brother!” Kerwin moved into the circle, fell into full rapport and projected into Auster’s mind the full memory of that room where Cleindori, Arnad, Cassilde had been murdered, Cassilde struck down still bearing Auster’s sister, who was never born…
Auster screamed noiselessly in anguish. But as the barrier around the circle dropped, Kerwin caught it up in his own telepathic touch; flashed round the circle in a swift round, locking himself into it; and with one swift, deliberate thrust, cut through the black cord… (sizzling, scorching, a bond severed) and broke the bond forever.
(Miles away, a swart little man who called himself Ragan collapsed with a scream of agony, to lie senseless for hours, and wake with no knowledge of what had happened. Days later, they found him and took him to Neskaya, where, in the Tower, the psychic wound was healed and Auster was ready, again, to greet his unknown twin; but that came later.)
Auster’s mind was reeling; Kerwin supported him with a strong telepathic touch, dropping into deep rapport.
Bring me into the circle!
There was a brief moment of dizzy timelessness as he fell into the old rapport. A facet of the crystal, a bodiless speck floating in a ring of light… then he was one of them.
Far down beneath the surface of the world lie those strange substances, those atoms, molecules, ions known as minerals. His touch had searched them out, through the crystal structure in the matrix screen; now, atom by atom and molecule by molecule, he had sifted them from impurities so that they lay pure and molten in their rocky beds, and now the welded ring of power was to lift them, through psychokinesis, molding the circle into a great Hand that would bring them in streams to the place prepared for them.
They were poised, waiting, as the frail spiderweb touch of the child-Keeper faltered, trying to grasp them. Kerwin, deeply in rapport with Taniquel, felt the monitor’s despair as she felt the girl’s wavering touch.
No! It will kill her!
And then, as the welded circle faltered, ready to dissolve, Kerwin felt again a familiar, secure, beloved touch.
Elorie! No! You cannot!
I am a Keeper, and responsible only to my own conscience. What matters? my ritual status, an old taboo that lost its meaning generations ago? Or my power to wield the energons, my skill as Keeper? Two women died so that I could be free to do this work I was born and trained to do. Cleindori proved it, even before she left Arilinn, she would have freed the Keepers from laws she had found to be pious frauds, meaningless and superstitious lies! They would not hear her; they drove her out to die! Now, with the Terrans waiting for us to fail, will you sacrifice the success of Arilinn for an old taboo? If you will, let Arilinn be broken, and let Darkover fall to the Terrans; but the blame is upon you, not me, my brothers and my sisters!
Then, with infinite gentleness (a steadying arm slipped around childish shoulders, a faltering and spilling cup held firmly in place), Elorie slid into the rapport, gently displacing the spiderweb-threads of the child-Keeper’s touch with her own strong linkage, so gently that there was neither shock nor hurt.
Little sister, this weight is too strong for you…
And the rapport locked suddenly into a closed ring within the crystal screen; the power flared, flowed… Kerwin was no longer a single person, he was not human at all, he was one with the circle, part of a tremendous, glowing, burning river of molten metal that surged upward, impelled by great throbbing power; it burst, spilled, flamed, engulfed them…
Slowly, slowly, it cooled and hardened and lay inert again, awaiting the touch of those who had need of it, awaiting the tools and hands that would shape
it into tools, energy, power, the life of a world.
One by one, the circle loosened and dissolved. Kerwin felt himself drop from the circle. Taniquel raised eyes, blazing with love and triumph, to welcome him back. Kennard, Rannirl, Corus, Neyrissa, they were all round him; Auster, deep shock in his cat’s eyes, but burnt clean of hatred, came to welcome him with a quick, hard embrace, a brother’s touch.
The little girl, the Keeper from Neskaya, lay fallen in a heap; she had physically fallen from the Keeper’s seat to the floor, and Taniquel was bending over her, hands to her temples. The child looked boneless, exhausted, fainting. Taniquel said, troubled, “Rannirl, come and carry her…”
Elorie! Kerwin’s heart sucked and turned over. He leaped over the chairs to throw open the door of the room. He had no memory of how he had gotten into the room, but Elorie had not managed, however it was, to follow him. Her mind had come into the matrix ring… but her body lay outside the shielded room, unguarded.
She was lying on the floor in the hall, sprawled there white and lifeless at his feet. Kerwin dropped to his knees at her side, all his triumph, all his exaltation, melting into hatred and curses, as he laid his hand to her unmoving breast.
Elorie, Elorie! Driven by the conscience of a Keeper, she had returned to save the Tower… but had she paid with her life? She had gone unprepared, unguarded, into a tremendous matrix operation. He knew how this work drained vitality, exhausting her nearly to the point of death; and even when she was carefully guarded and isolated, this work taxed her to the breaking point! Even guarding her vitality and nervous forces with chastity and sacrosanct isolation, she could hardly endure it! No, she had not lost her powers… but was this the price she must pay for daring to use them now?
I have killed her!
Despairing, he knelt beside her, hardly knowing it when Neyrissa moved him aside.
Kennard shook him roughly.
“Jeff! Jeff, she’s not dead, not yet, there’s a chance! But you’ve got to let the monitors get to her, let us see how bad it is!”
“Damn you, don’t touch her! Haven’t you devils done enough—”
“He’s hysterical,” Kennard said briefly. “Get him loose, Rannirl.” Kerwin felt Rannirl’s strong arms holding him, restraining him; he fought to reach Elorie, and Rannirl said compassionately, “I’m sorry, bredu. You have to let us—damn it, brother, hold still or I’ll have to knock you senseless!”
He felt Elorie taken by force from his arms, cried out with his rage and despair… then slowly, sensing their warm touch on his mind, he subsided. Elorie wasn’t dead. They were only trying to help. He subsided, standing quiet between Rannirl and Auster, seeing with half an eye that Rannirl’s mouth was bleeding and that there was a scratch on Auster’s face.
“I know,” Auster said in a low voice, “but easy, foster-brother, they’ll do everything that can be done. Tani and Neyrissa are with her now.” He raised his eyes. “I failed. I failed, bredu. I would have broken, if you hadn’t been here. I never had any right to be here at all, I’m Terran, outsider, you have more right here than I…”
Unexpectedly, to Kerwin’s horror, Auster dropped to his knees. His voice was just audible.
“All that I said of you was true of myself, vai dom; I must have known it, hating myself and pretending it was you I hated. All I deserve at the hands of the Comyn is death. There is a life between us, Damon Aillard; claim it as you will.” He bowed his head and waited there, broken, resigned to death.
And suddenly Jeff was furious.
“Get up, you damned fool,” he said, roughly hauling Auster to his feet. “All it means is that some of you half-wits—” and he looked around at all of them, “are going to have to change some of your stupid notions about the Comyn, that’s all. So Auster was born of a Terran father—so what? He has the Ridenow Gift—because he was brought up believing he had it! I went through all kinds of hell in my training… because all of you believed that with my Terran blood I’d find it difficult, and made me believe it! Yes, laran is inherited, but it’s not nearly to the extent you believed. It means that Cleindori was right; matrix mechanics is just a science anyone can learn, and there’s no need to surround it with all kinds of ritual and taboo! A Keeper doesn’t need to be a virgin…” He broke off.
Elorie believed it. And her belief could kill her!
And yet… she knew, she had been part of his link, with Cleindori; this was why Cleindori had given him the matrix, although his child’s mind had almost broken under the burden: so that one day another Keeper could read what Cleindori had discovered, and deliver to Arilinn the message they would not hear from her, read the mind and heart and conscience of the martyred Keeper, who had died to free other young women from the prison the Arilinn Tower would build around their minds and their hearts.
“But we’ve won,” Rannirl said, and Jeff knew they had all followed his thought.
“A period of grace,” said Kennard somberly. “Not a final victory!”
And Jeff knew Kennard was right. This experiment might have succeeded, and the Pan-Darkovan Syndicate was now bound in honor to be guided by the will of Hastur in accepting Terran ways. But there had been a failure, too.
Kennard put it into words.
“The Tower circles can never be brought back as they were in the old days. Life can only go forward, not back. It’s even better to ask help from the Terrans—in our own way and on our own terms—than to let all this weight rest on the shoulders of a few gifted men and women. Better that the people of Darkover should learn to share the effort with one another, Comyn and Commoner, and even with the people of Terra.” He sighed.
“I deserted them,” he said. “If I had fought all the way beside them—things might have gone differently. But this was what they were working for; Cleindori and Cassilde, Jeff and Lewis, Arnad, old Damon —all of us. To make an even exchange; Darkover to share the matrix powers with Terra, for those few things where they could be safely used, and Terra to give such things as she had. But as equals; not the Terran masters and the Darkovan suppliants. A fair exchange between equal worlds; each world with its own pride, and its own power. And I let you be sent to Terra,” he added, looking straight at Jeff, “because I felt you a threat to my own sons. Can you forgive me, Damon Aillard?”
Jeff said, “I’ll never get used to that name. I don’t want it, Kennard. I wasn’t brought up to it. I don’t even believe in your kind of government, or inherited power of that kind. If your sons do, they’re welcome to it; you’ve brought them up to take those kinds of responsibility. Just—” He grinned. “Use what influence you have to see that I’m not deported, day after tomorrow.”
Kennard said gently, “There is no such person as Jeff Kerwin, Junior. They cannot possibly deport the grandson of Valdir Alton to Terra. Whatever he chooses to call himself.”
There was a feather-light touch on Jeff’s arm. He looked down into the pale, childish face of the child-Keeper; and remembered her name, Callina of Neskaya.
She whispered, “Elorie—she is conscious; she wants you.”
Jeff said gravely, “Thank you, vai leronis,” and watched the child blushing. What Elorie had done had freed this girl, too; but she did not know it yet.
They had taken Elorie into the nearest room and laid her on a couch there; pale, white, strengthless, she stretched her hands to Jeff. He reached for her, not caring that the rest of the circle had crowded into the room behind him. He knew, when he touched her, how deep the shock had been, going unguarded, unprepared into the matrix circle; in days to come, Keepers would learn ways to guard themselves against the energy drains of massive work like this; without the tremendous dedication of lifelong ritual chastity, but with strong safeguards nevertheless. Elorie had indeed been injured; she had come closer to death than any of them would ever want to remember, and many suns would rise and set over Arilinn before her old merry laughter would be heard again in the Tower; but her glowing eyes blazed out in love and triumph.
&nb
sp; “We’ve won,” she whispered, “and we’re here!”
And Kerwin, holding her in his arms, knew that they had won indeed. The days that were coming, for Darkover and the Comyn, would change them all; both worlds would struggle with the changes that the years would bring. But a world that remains always the same can only die. They had fought to keep Darkover as it was; but what they had won was only the victory of determining what changes would come, and how quickly.
He had found what he loved, indeed; and he had destroyed it, for the world he loved would never be the same, and he had been the instrument of change. But in destroying it, he had saved it from ultimate and final destruction.
His brothers and sisters were all around him. Taniquel, so white and worn that he realized how ruthlessly she had spent herself to bring Elorie back to herself. Auster, with the mold of his life broken, but with a new strength from which it could be forged anew. Kennard, his kinsman, and all the others…
“Now, now,” said the sensible voice of Mesyr, calm and level. “What’s the sense of standing here like this, when your night’s work is done, and well done? Downstairs, all of you, for some breakfast… yes, you too, Jeff, let Elorie get some rest.” With brisk hands she drew up the covers beneath Elorie’s chin and made shooing gestures at all of them.
Jeff met Elorie’s eyes again, and, weak as she was, she began to laugh; and then they all joined in, so that the corridors and stairways of the Tower rang with shared mirth. Some things, at least, never changed at all.
Life in Arilinn, for now, was back to normal.
They were home again. And this time they would stay.
—«»—«»—«»—
* * *
To Keep The Oath
A Renunciate short story
« ^
The red light lingered on the hills; two of the four small moons were in the sky, green Idriel near to setting, and the tiny crescent of Mormallor, ivory-pale, near the zenith. The night would be dark. Kindra n’ha Mhari did not, at first, see anything strange about the little town. She was too grateful to have reached it before sunset—shelter against the rainswept chill of a Darkovan night, a bed to sleep in after four days of traveling, a cup of wine before she slept.