“All too real, I fear,” Damon said, and knew his face was grim. “I met them, crossing the darkening lands, and only too late did I realize that I could have made them visible with my starstone.” His hand sought the leather pouch about his throat. “They slaughtered my men. Eduin said you saved them, that almost alone you cut your way out of the ambush. How—?” Damon felt suddenly awkward.
Dom Esteban lifted the long, squarish swordsman’s hand from the bed and looked at it, as if puzzled. “I hardly know,” he said slowly, looking at his hand and moving the fingers back and forth, turning it to look at the palm, and then back again. “I must have heard the other sword in the air—” He hesitated and an odd note of wonder crept into his voice as he spoke again. “But I didn’t. Not till I had my sword out and up to guard.” He blinked, puzzled. “It’s like that sometimes. It’s happened before. You suddenly turn, and block, and there’s an attack coming that you’d never have seen unless you’d found yourself guarding it.” He laughed again, raucously. “Merciful Avarra! Listen to the old man bragging.” Suddenly the fingers knotted into fists. The arm trembled with anger. “Boast? Why not? What else can a cripple do?”
From the greatest swordsman in the Domains to a helpless invalid—horrible! And yet, Damon thought reluctantly, there was an element of justice in it. Dom Esteban had never been tolerant of the slightest physical weakness in anyone else. It had been in proving his courage to his father, climbing the heights he feared, that Coryn had fallen to his death…
“Zandru’s hells,” the old man said after a moment. “The way my joints have stiffened, these last three winters, the bone-aches would have done it in another year or so, anyway. Better to have one last terrific fight.”
“It won’t be forgotten in a hurry,” Damon said, and turned quickly away so the old man would not see the pity in his eyes. “Zandru’s hells, how we could use your sword now against the accursed cat-men!”
The old man laughed mirthlessly. “My sword? That’s easy—take it and welcome,” he said with a bitter grimace meant to be a grin. “Afraid you’ll have to use it yourself, though. I can’t go along and help.”
Damon caught the unspoken contempt—There’s no sword ever forged could make a swordsman of you—but at the moment he felt no anger. Dom Esteban’s only remaining weapon was his tongue. Anyway, Damon had never prided himself on his skill at arms.
Ellemir was returning with a tray of solid food for her father; she set it down beside the bed and began cutting up the meat. Dom Esteban said, “Just what are your plans, Damon? You’re not planning to go up against the cat-men?”
He said quietly, “I see no alternative, Father-in-law.”
“It will take an army to wipe them out, Damon.”
“Time enough for that next year,” Damon said. “Just now our first problem is to get Callista out of their hands, and for that we have no time to raise an army. What’s more, if we came up against them with an army, their first move would be to kill her. Time presses. Now that we know where she is—”
Dom Esteban stared, forgetting to chew a mouthful of meat and gravy. He swallowed, choked a little, gestured to Ellemir for a drink, and said, “You know. Just how did you manage that?”
“The Terranan,” said Damon quietly. “No, I don’t know how it happened either. I never knew any of the strangers had anything like our laran. But he has it, and he is in contact with Callista.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Esteban said. “I met some of them in Thendara when they negotiated to build the Trade City. They are more like us. I heard a story that Terra and Darkover are of common stock, far back in history. They rarely leave their city, though. How did this one come here?”
“I will send for him and you can hear it from his own lips,” said Ellemir. She beckoned a servant and gave the message, and after a little while Andrew Carr came into the Great Hall. Damon, watching the Earthman bowing to Dom Esteban, thought that at least these people were no savages.
Prompted by Damon, Carr gave a brief account of how he had come into contact with Callista. Esteban looked grave and thoughtful.
“I cannot say that I approve of this,” he said, “For a Keeper to make such close contact with a stranger from outside her own caste is unheard-of, and scandalous. In the old days of the Domains, wars were fought on Darkover for less than this. But times change, whether we like the changes or not, and perhaps as things stand now it is more important to save her from the cat-men than from the disgrace of such a rapport.”
“Disgrace?” Andrew Carr said, flushing deeply. “I mean her no harm or dishonor, sir. I wish her nothing but the best, and I have offered to risk my life to set her free.”
“Why?” Esteban asked curtly. “She can be nothing to you, man; a Keeper is pledged a virgin.”
Damon hoped Carr would have sense enough not to say anything about his own emotional attachment to Callista; but not trusting Andrew to hold his tongue, he said, “Dom Esteban, he has already risked his life to make contact with her; for a man of his age, untrained, to work through a starstone is no light matter.” He scowled at Andrew, trying to convey “Shut up, let well enough alone.”
In any case, Dom Esteban, whether from pain or worry, did not pursue the topic, but turned to Damon. “You know, then, where Callista is?”
“We have reason to believe she is in the caves of Corresanti,” Damon said, “and Andrew can lead us to her.”
Dom Esteban snorted. “There’s a lot of countryside between here and Corresanti, and all of it chock full of cat-men, and blasted villages,” he said. “It lies half a day’s ride into the darkening lands.”
“That can’t be helped,” Damon said. “You managed to get through them, which proves it can be done. At least they cannot come on us veiled by invisibility, while I have my starstone.”
Esteban thought about that; nodded slowly. “I had forgotten you were Tower-trained,” he said. “What about the Earthman? Will he come with you?”
Andrew said, “I’m going. I seem to be the only link to Callista. Besides, I swore to her that I would rescue her.”
Damon shook his head. “No, Andrew. No, my friend. Just because you are the only link with Callista, we dare not risk you. If you were killed, even accidentally, we might never make our way to her, or recover only her dead body, too late. You stay at Armida, and maintain contact with me, through the starstone.”
Stubbornly, Carr shook his head. “Look, I’m going,” he said. “I’m a lot bigger and tougher than you think. I’ve knocked around on half a dozen worlds. I can take care of myself, Damon. Hell, man, I’d make two of you!”
Damon sighed, and thought, Maybe he can; he got here through the blizzard. I couldn’t have done that well if I were lost on a strange world. “Possibly you’re right,” he said. “How good are you with a sword?”
Damon saw the faint surprise and hesitation in the Earth-man’s face. “I don’t know. My people don’t use them except for sport. I could learn, though. I learn fast.”
Damon raised his eyebrows. “It’s not that easy,” he said. His people use swords only for sport? How do they defend themselves, then? Knives, like the Dry-Towners, or fists? If so, they may be stronger than we are. Or have the Terrans gone beyond the Compact, and banned all weapons that can kill at all?
He said, “Eduin,” and the big Guardsman, lounging near the door, sprang to attention. “Vai dom?”
“Step over to the armory, and get a couple of practice swords.”
After a moment Eduin returned, bearing two of the wood-and-leather weapons used for training in swordsmanship. Damon took one in his hand, extended the other to Carr. The Earthman looked curiously at the long blunt stick of springy wood, with braided leather covering the edge and tip, then experimentally gripped it in his palm. Damon, frowning at the unpracticed grip, asked bluntly, “Have you ever touched a sword before in your life?”
“A little fencing for sport. I’m no champion.”
I can well believe that, Damon thoug
ht, slipping on the leather headpiece. He looked at Carr over his right shoulder through the grillwork that protected his face: the practice swords bent easily enough that there was not much danger of damaging a bone or an internal organ, but eyes and teeth were more vulnerable. Carr faced him straight on. Chest exposed, Damon thought, and he handles the thing as if he were poking the fire.
Andrew stepped forward; Damon lifted his sword only slightly, brushing the weapon aside. As the big man went off balance, the leather tip caught Carr in the chest. Then Damon relaxed, lowering the tip to the floor. He slowly shook his head. He said, “You see, my friend? And I’m no swordsman. I wouldn’t last half a dozen strokes against anyone even halfway competent; Dom Esteban, or Eduin here, would have had the sword out of my hand before I got it up.”
“I’m sure I could learn,” Carr protested stubbornly.
“Not in time,” Damon said. “Believe me. Andrew, I began to train with these swords before I was eight years old. Most lads begin at least a year before that. You’re strong—I can see that. You’re even fairly fast on your feet. But we couldn’t even teach you enough, in a week, to keep you from getting killed. And we haven’t got a week. We haven’t even got a day. Forget it, Andrew. You’ve got something more important to do than carrying a sword.”
“And do you think you’re going to lead a party of swordsmen against the cat-people?” Dom Esteban asked sardonically. “Eduin here could do to you what you did to the Earthman, in seconds.”
Damon looked around at the man lying motionless. Esteban had motioned the tray of food away, and was watching them fixedly, his eyes bright with something like anger. He said, “Show some sense, Damon. I kept you in the Guards because the men like you and you’re a good organizer and administrator. But this is a job for a master swordsman. Are you so blind to facts that you think you could go up against swordsmen who could cut down the whole castle Guard here at Armida and steal Callista right out of her bed? Am I marrying my daughter to a fool?”
Ellemir said in a rage, “Father, how dare you! You cannot talk like that to Damon!”
Damon motioned to her to be quiet. He faced the older man straightforwardly, and said, “I know that, kinsman. I probably know more about my own deficiencies than you do. Just the same, no man can do more than his best, and this is my right. I am now Callista’s closest kinsman, except for Domenic, and he is not yet seventeen.”
Esteban smiled grimly. He said, “Well, my son, I admire your spirit; I wish you had the skill to go with it.” He raised his fists and beat them against the pillow, in a fit of fury. “Zandru’s hells! Here I lie, broken-down and useless as Durraman’s donkey, and all my skill and all my knowledge—” The fit subsided at last and he said, his voice weaker than before, “If I had time to teach you, you’re not so hopeless—but there’s no time, no time. You say with your starstone you can throw off their accursed illusion of invisibility?”
Damon nodded. Eduin came forward to the bedside and knelt there. He said, “Lord Istvan. I owe the Lord Damon a life. Let me go with them to Corresanti.”
Damon said, deeply moved, “You’re wounded, man. And you’ve been through one battle.”
“All the same,” Eduin protested, “you have said my skill with a sword is greater than your own. Let me go to guard you, Lord Damon; your task is to bear the starstone.”
“Merciful Avarra,” Dom Esteban said almost under his breath, “that is the answer!”
“I will gladly have your company and your sword, if you are able,” Damon said, laying his hand on Eduin’s shoulder. In his sensitized state he was overwhelmingly aware of the man’s outpouring of loyalty and gratitude, and he felt almost abashed by it. “But you owe your service to the Lord Esteban; it is for him to give you leave to go with me.”
Both men turned to Esteban, who lay motionless; his eyes were closed and his brow knitted as if deep in thought. For a moment Damon wondered if they had exhausted the wounded man too much, but he could feel that beneath the closed eyes there was some very active thinking going on. Esteban’s eyes suddenly flew open.
“Just how good are you with that starstone, Damon?” he asked. “I know you have laran, you spent years in the Tower, but didn’t Leonie kick you out again? If it was for incompetence, this won’t work, but—”
“It wasn’t for incompetence,” Damon said quietly. “Leonie did not complain of my skill, only that I was too sensitive, and my health, she felt, would suffer.”
“Look me in the eye. Is that truth or vanity, Damon?”
There were times, Damon thought, when he positively detested the brutal old man. He met Esteban’s eyes without flinching and said, “As I remember, you have enough laran to find out for yourself.”
Esteban’s lips nicked in that mirthless grin again. He said, “From somewhere, you’ve gotten courage enough to stand up to me, kinsman, and that’s a good sign. As a lad you were afraid of me. Is it only because I’ll never move out of this bed again that you’ve got courage to confront me now?” He returned Damon’s gaze for an instant—a harsh touch like a firm grip—and then said tersely, “My apology for doubting you, kinsman, but this is too important to spare anyone’s feelings, even my own. Do you think I like confronting the fact that someone else will rescue my favorite daughter? Just the same. You are skilled with a starstone. Have you ever heard the story of Regis the Fifth? The Hasturs were kings in those days; it was before the crown passed into the Elhalyn line.”
Damon frowned, searching in memory of old legends. “He lost a leg in the battle of Dammerung Pass—?”
“No,” said Dom Esteban, “he lost a leg by treachery, when he was set on in his bed by assassins; so that he could not fight in a duel and would forfeit a good half of the Hastur lands. Yet he sent his brother Rafael to the battle, and Rafael, who was a monkish man with little knowledge of swordplay, nevertheless fought in single combat with seven men and killed them all. To this day Castle Hastur stands in Hastur hands at the edge of the mountains. And this he could do because, as Regis lay in his bed not yet able to rise and hobble about on crutches, he made contact through his brother’s starstone with his sword, and the monkish Rafael bore the sword of Regis into the fight, wielding it with all of Regis’ skill.”
“A fairy tale,” said Damon, but he felt a strange prickle go up and down his spine.
Dom Esteban moved his head as much as he could for the sandbags and said vehemently, “By the honor of the Alton Domain, Damon, it is no fairy tale. The skill was known in the old times, but in these days few of the Comyn have the strength or the wish to dare so much. In these days the starstones are left mostly to women. Yet, if I thought you had the skills of our fathers with such a stone—”
With a slow prickle of wonder, Damon realized what Dom Esteban was suggesting. He said, “But—”
“Are you afraid? Do you think you could stand the touch of the Alton Gift?” Dom Esteban demanded. “If it enabled you to fight your way through the cat-men with my own skill?”
Damon shut his eyes. He said honestly, “I’d have to think about it. It wouldn’t be easy.”
Yet—might it be Callista’s one chance?
Dom Esteban was the only living man to cut his way out of a cat-man ambush. He himself had run like a rabbit from them, leaving his men to die. He had to be sure about this. He knew it was the kind of decision no one else could make for him. For a moment no one else in the room existed but Esteban and himself.
He stepped close to the bed and looked down at the prostrate man. “If I refuse, kinsman, it is not because I am afraid, but because I doubt your power to do this, sick and wounded as you are. I knew not that you had the Alton Gift, bred true.”
“Oh, yes, I have it,” said Esteban, staring up with a fearful intensity, “but in such days as I am living in, I always believed, I needed no gift other than my own strength and skill with weapons. Where do you suppose Callista got it in such measure that she was chosen from all the girls of the Domains to be Keeper? The Alton Gift i
s the ability to force rapport, and I had some training in my own youth. Try me, if you will.”
Ellemir came and slid her hand into Damon’s. She said, “Father, you can’t do this dreadful thing.”
“Dreadful? Why, my girl?”
“It’s against the strongest law of the Comyn: that no man may dominate another’s mind and soul.”
“Who said anything about his mind and soul?” asked the old man, his gray bushy eyebrows crawling up like giant caterpillars to his hairline. “It’s his sword-arm and reflexes I’m interested in dominating, and I can do it. And I’ll do it by his free will and consent, or not at all.” He began to reach out, winced, and lay still between the sandbags. “It’s your choice, Damon.”
Andrew looked pale and worried; Damon himself felt much the same way, and Ellemir’s hand, tucked in his, was trembling. He said slowly, “If it’s Callista’s best chance, I’d agree to more than that. If you are strong enough, Lord Esteban.”
“If my damned useless legs would only move, I’ve fought with worse wounds than this,” Dom Esteban said, “Take the practice sword. Eduin, you take the other.”
Damon slipped on the basketwork headpiece, turned his right side to Eduin. The Guardsman saluted, standing very casually, legs apart, sword-tip resting on the ground. Damon felt a sharp spasm of fear.
Not that Eduin could hurt me much with these wooden swords, not that I care so much for a few bumps and bruises. But all my life that damnable old man has been baiting me about my lack of skill. To make a fool of myself before Ellemir … to let him humiliate me once again.…
Esteban said in a strange, faraway voice, “Your starstone is insulated, Damon. Uncover it.”
Damon fumbled with the leather pouch, drew it off, letting the warm heaviness of the matrix jewel rest against the base of his throat. He gave the pouch to Ellemir to hold, and the quick brush of her warm fingers against his was a reassurance.
Esteban said, “Stand back, Ellemir. And you too, Terranan. By the door, and see that no servants come in here. They can’t do much harm with the practice foils, but even so—”