Exile's Song

  Javanne Hastur seethed, but for once she held her tongue. She contented herself with glaring at Jeff and Lew and Margaret. After a moment, her face cleared, and Margaret was certain she was plotting at something again. Her dislike of her aunt increased, and she had to force herself to think of something else, just to keep her mind from boiling over with rage.

  The dessert was finally brought in, a thick red pudding in clear glass bowls, and a tense silence settled around the table. Margaret hated this energy simmering just below the boiling point, for she could sense Javanne’s feelings, and Gabriel’s as well, though not their thoughts. They were angry and, she decided, dangerous. The sweet pudding tasted like acid in her mouth, and she pushed the bowl away unfinished.

  Margaret leaned back and reflected that the two sides of Darkover were arrayed around the table. Javanne, her eldest son, and her absent husband stood for the past, but she was not sure that she represented the future. She felt trapped again by forces she could not control. The chill, the desire to withdraw from all human contact, grew in her, and she could almost feel the remnants of Ashara setting claws into her mind. Despair began to grip her throat, and she fought back the tears that rose in her eyes.

  She glanced at her father and saw that he was very tired. Margaret knew it was not just from the long ride from Thendara, but from the years of his exile. She had never thought of her father as brave, had never seen him as anything but her troubled Old Man, but now she realized that he was many things she had never imagined he could be.

  But the effects of a very long and tiring day made themselves felt in her body. Margaret found she could barely keep her eyes open, and that her legs ached from the wild ride. She shivered, not with cold, but with fatigue, and decided she could not stand another minute with her family. Without a word, she stood up and left the dining room.

  Halfway up the long stairs, Margaret realized she was not alone. She turned, expecting to see her father, or perhaps Mikhail, and found to her surprise that Donal was trailing behind her. He looked very serious and determined.

  “What is it, Donal?”

  “Grandmother told me to go to bed.”

  “Well, come along, then. Does your nurse know you came downstairs?”

  “Naw. She fell asleep in her chair right away. She’s not very clever.” He tucked one rather grimy hand into Margaret’s and grinned again.

  “You know, I always thought my nurses were not very clever as well.”

  “Did you?” His grin faded. “I don’t care what Grandmother says, or Gabe, because everyone knows how silly he is, but I am going to learn to read and write and do everything.”

  “That’s a fine ambition, Donal, but not tonight. You have had a very long day, and so have I.”

  “Will I get tired fast when I am old, like you?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered dully. No one had ever called her old before, but just then, she felt it. Between getting soaked in the storm and the return of her father, she had had enough excitement to last for years. She took the little boy to the door of the nursery, then turned toward her own room, her feet all but dragging along the floorboards.

  22

  Margaret got dressed for bed, glad that Rafaella was sound asleep, because she did not want to answer any questions. She climbed under the covers, then tucked her knees up and watched the fire flickering in the hearth. The movement of the flames was mildly hypnotic, and she found herself slipping into a light trance and shook herself out of it.

  In spite of her exhaustion, she was too keyed up to go to sleep immediately. Margaret thought about her father’s arrival, and how she had not been surprised, and smiled a little. What had Aunt Javanne called him? Storm-crow? She wondered about Diotima, and how ill she was. She longed to see her! It was a rather new feeling, for she had not wanted anyone except Ivor Davidson for so many years, she had nearly forgotten how it felt. Now, she wanted to see Dio, but she also found that she wanted to see more of Mikhail, and wished he were some other man, some more ordinary man, who could be her friend without provoking his parents.

  But most of all, she thought about Lew Alton, the one who had sat through the difficult dinner, managing to keep the kettle at a simmer without letting it boil over more than once or twice. All the boiling had been on Javanne’s side, not on his. She had never respected her father as a diplomat before, but now she realized that he had skills she barely even imagined. Tomorrow, she decided, she would get him alone and have a very long talk. And she would not let him get away until her questions were answered! Satisfied with this plan, she leaned back into the pillows and slipped away into slumber.

  Moonlight half-woke her, and for a moment she did not know where she was. She had been dreaming about her rooms on University, and she had been looking for something. Then she heard a noise in the hall, and thought it was one of the servants, and began to close her eyes.

  A fluttering scream brought her upright, muzzy with dreaminess, and she saw a white figure rising at the foot of the bed. It wavered and wobbled in the moonlight, and the terrible noise was repeated. In the thin light of the moon the specter was insubstantial and threatening at the same time. Her heart thudded in her chest, and she wondered vaguely if Armida had any ghosts.

  Then Margaret heard a little giggle, and realized that there was no ghost at the foot of her bed, but only one of the Alar children trying to scare her. She was angry now, furious at being awakened and frightened. “Get out! Get out of here now!” Her voice vibrated in her tense throat and she knew she had done more than speak with force. It was an echo of that voice which had threatened Istvana with death at Ardais, and she shuddered.

  The small form turned at her words and went back to the door. It moved slowly, clumsily, an almost machine-like movement, and she felt a flutter of alarm along her overtaxed nerves.

  “She didn’t scream,” said a voice outside the room, which she recognized as young Damon Alar’s. He sounded very disappointed. “I knew you couldn’t scare Cousin Marguerida!” A thumping sound followed. “Ouch! Why did you knock me down, Donal?” She heard footfalls in the hall, moving away from her room. “Hi, you silly donkey, where are you going? Come back here!”

  The words increased her sense of wrongness, and Margaret pushed the covers aside and went into the hall. It was dim with only the light of a couple of small lamps on the walls, and for a moment she did not see anything to worry about.

  Then Damon, in his nightclothes, stood up from a deep shadow, rubbing one arm. He gaped at her, then looked toward the stairs. “What did you say to him, cousin? He pushed me down—I never knew Donal was so strong—and ran out of here as if all the devils were chasing him.” The sound of the big door at the front of the house shutting echoed in the stillness.

  “I told him to get out,” Margaret answered, confused. “He startled me out of sleep, and I snapped at him.” She bent down and picked up a discarded sheet. “Playing ghosts! Aren’t you a little old for that kind of thing, Damon? It wasn’t funny.”

  “It would have been, if you had screamed, like you were supposed to.” Damon squirmed uncomfortably as he spoke. “But why has he gone outside? He was weird—like he didn’t know me.”

  From the near end of the hall behind them, there was the sound of steps. Margaret and Damon turned at the sound, and Jeff, in a dressing gown, came out of the shadows. “What’s going on? Can’t an old man get a good night’s sleep?”

  “I’m very sorry, Uncle Jeff,” Margaret said. “’Donal decided it would be fun to play spook in my room, and I told him to get out. He did, but he went outside. I don’t know why.”

  “Out? You mean, out of the house!”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you do—use command voice on the boy?” Jeff did not sound very alarmed, which eased Margaret’s fears a little.

  “The what?”

  “The command voice.” Jeff looked at her, took in her confusion, and shook his head. “It is part of the Alton Gift, Marguerida. It puts a compulsi
on on the listener to do as they are told.”

  She felt appalled. “You mean that I can make people do things they don’t want to, just by commanding them? That’s obscene!” She could hear, in her mind, the voice of Ashara Alton, telling her not to let anyone close and to forget, and she wanted to scream. “I just said ‘Get out of here.’ How could that be a compulsion?”

  “Chiya, you have the full Alton Gift, and you don’t know how not to use it. I don’t blame you, since you were startled out of sleep. It was very naughty of you and your brother, Damon. You both knew better than to startle people. I’d better go after the boy before he walks into the lake or something worse.” Jeff started for the stairs and paused. “Now do you see why you must come to Arilinn and get some training? What if you had told him to drop dead?” I know she can’t help it, but if anything happens to Donal, Ariel will come unhinged. It isn’t her fault, but damn Lew for not sending the girl home years ago! I’m not even sure that Tower training will help now.

  Margaret was dismayed, then furious. She had never asked for the Alton Gift, and at that moment she would gladly have traded it for a sweet cake if she could have. The anger boiled in her chest. No one, not Istvana nor Liriel nor Jeff had ever said a word about voices. That was inexcusable! It was all very well for them to say they had asked her to go to a Tower, but they had failed miserably to tell her things she needed to know. Like her father!

  All her ancient furies, her old hurts, rose up within her throat. She had the ability to force her will on anyone, to hear their thoughts or command them to jump in the lake, and all anyone could think of was a way to make sure her capacities were not lost to the family. Darkover needed more than schools and literacy, she decided. The whole planet needed to get some common sense! Genetic engineers could produce teeth that never rotted, and arteries that never clogged, but she doubted anyone had ever discovered a way to breed for good common sense.

  Margaret followed Jeff down the stairs, her bare feet cold on the treads. Just as the old man reached the door, it opened. The moonlight shone on the figure of a man holding something across its arms. It was so like Ariel holding the injured body of Domenic that Margaret almost screamed. Then the burden wiggled, and she felt relieved that Donal was all right.

  Lew Alton shifted the child clumsily. “I saw the boy outside, and when I reached him, he did not seem to know me. When I touched his shoulder, he went limp, and I realized he was entranced. I’ve never seen a child so deep in trance.” He sounded puzzled and tired.

  “Marguerida used the command voice on him when he startled her from sleep, Lew,” Jeff answered.

  “What did you say, Marja?”

  “I told him to get out. That’s all.” How could those few words have had such an effect? She shifted from foot to foot as the chill of the night swept in through the open door.

  “Hell! Close the door, Jeff, before we all take a chill. I think you sent him out of his body, daughter.”

  “Out of his body?”

  “Into the overworld.” Lew spoke very quietly, and Margaret felt her heart go chill.

  The overworld! It was remarkable how a single word had the power to turn her knees to jelly and make the little remaining heat in her body vanish. She liked Donal, and the idea of the bright little boy all alone in that terrible place was almost more than she could bear. She knew the overworld frightened her, but until that moment she had not known the extent of her fear. Istvana had tried to explain that the realm of the overworld was not terrible, just a different place, but Margaret had not really believed her. She never wanted to return to it, and it was one reason that entering a Tower made her squirm. Istvana had told her that it was a normal part of the work of those in the Towers, to move about the overworld from time to time.

  “Let’s get Donal someplace warm. It is not cold, for the time of year, but he could take a chill, and then we would really be in the soup,” Jeff said sensibly. He sounded calm, but Margaret could tell he was worried, and she shivered all over. “Damon, you go back to bed right now.”

  “But my brother . . .”

  “Donal will be taken care of. You cannot help, and you will be very much in the way. Now, off with you!”

  Damon looked at the faces of the adults and started up the stairs reluctantly. Margaret wished she could follow him, could retreat to her room and listen to Rafaella’s comforting snores. But this was her mess, and she had to clean it up. It seemed a fitting climax to what, she decided, was the worst day of her life.

  Nonsense! Lew’s voice was brisk in her mind. You don’t know what worst is, chiya.

  Stop trying to cheer me up!

  All right. Now, let’s get this limb of Zandru into the living room before he gets deathly ill. And don’t think it is only your fault, Marja. I spent much of my life thinking that I was the author of the ills of the world, and all that got me was some extremely bad hangovers, and a lot of self-pity. Dio tried to tell me not to be so hard on myself, but I never listened. And I don’t suppose you will either.

  The tartness of her father’s thoughts was bracing. Margaret could sense his tension, his own feeling of responsibility for things over which he had no control. There was sorrow, too, in him, and much of it was about her and how he had distanced himself from her when she was younger. She felt even more ashamed for thinking about herself, for feeling sorry for herself at all. She wasn’t important. Donal was important, and Dio, and her father.

  Do stop being a complete ninny, Marja! This is no time to take a vow of selflessness! Liriel’s wry thought startled her, and she turned and watched the technician descending the stairs. The woman wore only a nightgown of pale linen, but there was nothing self-conscious about her cousin. Instead, she looked moderately annoyed at being awakened after a long and demanding day, and also ready to deal with anything. What a woman! She liked and respected Istvana, but Liriel was steady in a way that the Keeper of Neskaya never seemed. Margaret guessed Jeff must have called her without waking the rest of the house, and decided that telepathy had a few advantages she had not thought of. She still didn’t like it, but she could see now that it was extremely useful.

  Just as Liriel reached the bottom of the long staircase, Mikhail appeared at the top of it. His light-colored hair was tousled, and he blinked down at them, then began to come down the stairs. “I heard voices. What’s the matter?”

  Margaret felt herself relax at the sight of her cousin Mikhail. Once again she felt very glad to see him, and less uncertain of herself. It was almost as if his presence gave her a confidence she lacked otherwise, and while she knew this was unlikely, she still enjoyed the feeling. And, she admitted to herself, she was more than just glad to have Mikhail present.

  At the same time, her pleasure in the presence of Mikhail made her uneasy. The years of Ashara’s mental dominance had taken a toll she was only beginning to understand. It was almost a reflex to keep herself apart from other people, and she found she had to struggle to overcome it.

  Jeff explained what had happened while Liriel came and took Donal’s limp body from Lew. They moved into the great living room, and put the child on the couch closest to the fireplace. Liriel wrapped the boy in a throw that hung on the back of the couch, and settled him into a comfortable position. Lew stirred the fading embers of the fire into life, Jeff added wood to it, and Mikhail lit the lampions. They were efficient and calm, as if this was an ordinary occurrence, not something terrible or frightening.

  She knew that their outward appearance hid deep concern. She had sent Donal into the overworld with a few ill-chosen words, never suspecting she could do such a thing, and it was not a trivial matter. How would they get him back? Margaret wondered what she could do. She was still half tempted to withdraw, since she lacked the training to be of any help.

  “No, Marja. You sent Donal out of his body, and you must be the one to call him back,” her father said. Poor child. If I had sent her here instead of letting her go off to University, all of this might have been avoided
. Or if I had brought her home . . . ah, well. It is too late for that now. We just have to do the best we can.

  “I have to call him back? How?”

  “We have to get to the overworld, find Donal, and bring him home,” Liriel answered, as if she were suggesting a picnic by the lake. “I understand your reluctance, Marguerida. But the Tower of Mirrors is gone, and there is now nothing in the overworld to fear. It is a good thing you have a personal relationship with the boy—that will make it simpler.”

  “Easy for you to say, Liriel.”

  “Uncle Lew, can you still work as a technician?”

  “I am pretty rusty, but I think I can manage.” His scarred face softened. “I have not forgotten my years at Arilinn—it was a happy time for me.”

  “Good. I will monitor, then, and you and Jeff can make sure Marguerida does not blunder.”

  “Don’t leave me out, sister,” Mikhail said quietly. “I have not had your extensive training, but I did my time at Arilinn, and I am able.”

  “I know you are, Mik, but . . .”

  “I know it isn’t quite proper for me, outside a Tower, but I think Marguerida and I are good enough friends that I can be useful.” She can depend on me, and she already does, though I don’t know if she knows it yet. It’s a damn shame I am the wrong son, but nothing can be done about that. We are friends, and whatever happens, we will always have that much. I just wish it could be more.

  Friends? Margaret felt a kind of relief at his words and his thoughts. Some of her fear began to dissipate. But the chill within her, the fear of intimacy, still plagued her. It was one thing for them to exchange a few verbal ripostes, to tease one another, and to make pungent comments about other people. That was something they could have done without telepathy, given a little privacy. It was quite another to enter into the sort of closeness she had experienced with Istvana Ridenow during her first foray into the overworld. Although she knew that the Keeper had been very discreet, Margaret was aware that there was almost nothing about her that Istvana did not know, after the battle with Ashara.