When she finally found the single stone that did not show her face in its facets, she was astonished and more frightened than she believed possible. A countenance gleamed on its surface, a small, moon-round face with eyes like empty wells. Except for the eyes, there was nothing remarkable or even frightening about the face, but Margaret still wanted to scream with fear. She tried to drag her eyes away from the face, from the reddish hair around it, from the little mouth that grinned at her. There was nothing in that smile of warmth or humanity. She stretched small hands toward Margaret, old hands like claws.
“Now I have you! Now I will live again!”
“Live again? What are you?”
“I am Ashara, and I anticipated your coming. You cannot destroy me. I will return, and I will regain my power!” The hunger in these words seemed to eat her very bones, and the empty gray eyes grew larger and larger.
“Let me go!”
Margaret dragged herself away from the grasp, away from the eyes like dark mirrors which tried to trap her, and felt the claws leave her arms. Her own image in the rest of the stones shrank. The thing called Ashara became less distinct, less present, as she leaned backward in her attempt to escape. The secret was in the stones, and in the eyes! If only she could think of something to do! She was panting now, and cold sweat dripped down her sides. She drew her gaze aside, and looked out across the plain at the other Towers in the distance. Time slowed, almost stopped. She did not move, and she could feel someone hovering beside her, guarding her, and pouring strength into her.
Then, slowly, reluctantly, Margaret looked once more at the mirrored Tower, and saw herself many times, pale and shaking. The small woman stared back at her from a single mirror upon the face of the building, gray eyes ravenous, and hands clawing as if she, too, were trapped in the myriad reflections. Margaret moved with her hands to defend herself, and found the right one held firmly in a ghostly grasp. With agonizing slowness she lifted her left hand and extended it toward the mirrors. She leaned forward toward the shining Tower.
She leaned into emptiness and stretched until she felt her fingers close around the single stone which showed the Ashara-thing so clearly. Margaret pressed her palm over the face, digging her ghostly fingers into the empty eyes, her thumb into the unholy mouth. She felt resistance, but no feel of flesh or bone. There was a sound, a pale scream, as her fingers closed firmly around the single stone, squeezing. She could feel nothing in her hand, and yet Margaret knew she was holding onto something, and that she must not let go.
Now what? She couldn’t just hold onto the stone forever. She was so tired. Margaret felt her own semi-visible fingers start to slacken, and she sensed a purr of triumph from beneath her palm. Her own face, pale and sweating, reflected all around her, seemed to mock her.
She summoned her strength, commanded it to return to her, and began to pull on the stone. It resisted and she knew she could not pull it out alone. She was all alone, and she would be eaten by this terrible thing as, she suddenly realized, others had been consumed before her. Despair ate at her, sapping her energy. The stone screamed in her hand.
Then, from beyond the edges of that place, Margaret felt a burst of power. It felt odd, alien, not like the presence of Istvana at all. There was something very male about it. It hardened her muscles, warmed her hands and icy limbs.
“Pull, damn you! Pull!” She did not recognize the voice, but it was not Istvana.
She tugged at the stone in her hand, and felt it yield just a little. The screaming sound in her mind increased as she drew the stone from the walls of the Tower of mirrors. She was terrified she would lose her grip, and determined not to. It was like dragging something through a heavy liquid, something so heavy it was like a whole mountain.
NO! NO!
Pain! Anguish shot into her palm, up her arm, and into her breast. Her heart ached, and she wanted to let go. It was like a cold knife in the palm of her hand, and in her heart as well. Her mouth rounded in a scream that seemed to shake the mirrored structure and the misty plain beneath it. Then the stone in her hand pulled free with a great burst of energy, and she nearly fell backward.
“Stop! Stop! I am As . . . As . . . har . . . ah!”
She staggered back, and suddenly she was away from the mirrored place, on the platform where she had emerged, clutching the stone in one hand while the other was grasped tightly in a ghostly embrace. She felt weak and exhausted, but she dared not let go of either the stone or the hand.
“You do not exist!” The words streamed from her bitten lips like a great wind, as the stone burned coldly against her flesh. She was filled with despair and terror, panting and trembling. She squeezed the stone between her fingers with all her remaining strength. It seemed to resist forever, but after an eternity, it began to yield and shattered. There was a rush of sound and light then, and the rest of the shining Tower shot up into the void, exploding in a whiteness that blinded her for a moment. And far away, somewhere Margaret could not name, another Tower rocked on its foundations.
Margaret fell away from the destruction of that strange Tower, plummeting down, held firmly by only a ghost of a hand. “Good girl!” roared the unfamiliar male voice in her mind, and then that, too, was gone.
She was in Lady Marilla’s sitting room again, soaked with sweat, tears dribbling down her cheeks, and shaking in every muscle of her weary body. Istvana Ridenow slumped across from her, hardly seeming to breathe, her silver hair plastered against her brow.
The door opened, and Lady Marilla rushed in, her eyes wide and her breast rising and falling rapidly. She bent over the leronis carefully, not touching her. “I never should have let her do this!” She glared at Margaret for a second, then softened.
Margaret wanted to shrink away from the look, but she was so tired she could barely move, let alone protest her own innocence. Her brain felt bruised, and her thoughts were swirling. In spite of this, she found she had a hundred questions, if only she could have formed them in her dry mouth. They probably won’t answer them anyhow. And who was that man in my mind?
Not tonight, chiya. Be patient a little while longer.
“Never should have let me do what, Mari?” Istvana’s voice was thready, but steady for all that. “Get me something to eat!”
Lady Marilla looked from one to the other, shook her head, and shouted, “Julian—wake the cook! At once!”
The leronis brushed the hair off her wide brow and took several long, staggering breaths. “By the gods, I pity anyone who was in the overworld this night.”
“What happened?” Margaret asked weakly.
“You broke the mirror, chiya, you broke the mirror.” Istvana and Marilla were looking at her, disbelief and exhaustion written on their faces. Why?
She looked down at her hands and found they were the same familiar ones she had known all her life. Her right palm still bore the cuts where she had driven her nails in, but the left was smooth, as if something had burned away the wounds. She held it up to the fire for a better look, and saw, riven into her flesh, the outline of a many-faceted stone.
14
Margaret never remembered getting to bed, though she tried. All she could recapture were a few fragments—strong male arms lifting her up, though whose she never knew, and voices speaking, lots of voices, none of them identifiable. All she knew was profound exhaustion, and the feeling of a hangover without the drunk before.
She slipped in and out of normal consciousness, into a sleepless state that was unlike anything she had ever experienced. When she was “awake,” there was physical pain, as if every cell in her body were rebelling against something. She could have endured that, but for the terror. She was afraid of something, and she couldn’t stop it, or name it either.
The other state was almost worse, for while the pain was diminished, the fear was even greater, and she struggled to remain awake, in order not to drown in terror. She almost welcomed the pain of her body, because she could focus on it and make the fear a little less.
br /> Time became meaningless, and nothing except fear and torment remained. There were a few moments of lucidity, when her mind seemed clear, and the fears receded. During these, she knew she was having fevers and chills, that she was once more in the grip of the threshold illness, and that the people around her were trying to help. She tried to cooperate, but the foul brews they put down her throat came back up, and she could feel the despair around her, the fears which fed her own. She knew she was having more seizures, and that these alarmed everyone. She couldn’t manage to tell anyone that these were actually small blessings, because in the fits there was no fear or pain—only emptiness. Her body seemed to rest, to relax after the violence, and she almost welcomed them.
When she was in the near waking state, everything hurt, and she kept trying to burrow into the soaking pillows to escape her terrors. Sometimes she knew she was in the Rose bedroom, in Ardais Castle, on Darkover, but at other times she was sure she was back on Thetis, or even on her cot at the orphanage. And wherever she imagined she was, Margaret still felt the presence of her terror, and the being which had created it.
The gentle touch of hands was an agony, and the nearness of several women was more threatening than comforting. She attempted to remember that none of these females was the small woman with the hollow eyes who had almost destroyed her, and she nearly succeeded. Slowly she realized that it was not all of the women who felt threatening but only the one called Istvana, the leronis. There was something about her which reminded Margaret of the other, the Ashara, though she knew this was foolish.
In the rare moments of coherence, when her mind seemed almost clear, she was certain she was going to die, like Ivor. It was a tempting prospect, to escape the suffering of her body, but part of her rejected it angrily. I haven’t gone through all this to die! I won’t. Damn that Ashara-thing!
The anger was cleansing, almost refreshing, though it left her even more exhausted. And the fevers followed it, which she noted in a remote way, as if they were some form of peculiar music which demanded her attention. If she could just stop getting furious, the fevers would leave her, she was certain.
But there seemed to be a great deal to be enraged about, as if she had postponed all the anger of her life until now. Occasionally she heard the thoughts of the leronis agreeing with that, which was both comforting and frightening. She didn’t want anyone in her mind—not ever again! Margaret shouted at her when this happened, though she was never sure if she spoke from her aching throat or from her aching mind.
Sometimes she listed all those she was angry at, because it seemed to keep the fear away. There was her father, and on him she brooded. She thought of several things she was going to tell him if she ever saw him again—none of them either nice or respectful. But, oddly, she discovered she was not as mad at Lew Alton as she was at others—at Thyra, at the silver-eyed man whose name she did not know, at that Dyan Ardais who had delivered her to her tormentor, Ashara, and, most of all, at Ivor, for dying and leaving her. She hated being angry at Ivor, even though she knew he was beyond being injured by her fury, but she couldn’t seem to help herself.
It was impossible to keep the rage going, and when it left her, Margaret was terrified again. It was an endless cycle, one she could not seem to break. She was sure, despite Istvana’s reassuring voice telling her otherwise, that the Ashara-thing was going to return and trap her again. She resisted sleep with all her will, for sleep meant dreams, and she did not wish to dream. What logic remained in her troubled mind told her that she had destroyed the being in the Tower of Mirrors, but the rest of her did not agree. How could one destroy something that only existed in that other place, the overworld? She was too sick to believe anything except the worst.
Even sound, her trusted ally, became a foe, for the slightest noise made her whimper. The whisper of the rain against the windows, a pleasant sound she liked, reminded her of the voice of Ashara in her mind. The hushed voices of Istvana or Rafaella in the room sent her wild with terror, until they finally gave up trying to talk quietly, and just spoke in normal tones. That helped, oddly enough.
“Please, Marguerida, please, try to rest.”
“Don’t let her get me!”
“There is nothing to fear.”
“She is going to come back and hurt me again.”
“No, no, chiya, she is gone, gone forever!”
“I don’t believe you. Oh, make it stop hurting.”
“You are hurting yourself with your fear. Try to rest. Try to sleep.”
“If I sleep, she will get me.”
There were a number of such exchanges. During her infrequent calm periods, Margaret knew that old Beltrana and Istvana were correct. But she could not seem to stem the flood of terror that rolled through her whenever she started to relax even the smallest bit. It almost seemed to her that it was some last trick, some final attempt of the Ashara-being, that if she could not control Margaret, she would kill her.
Isty—what is happening? I have seen a few bouts of threshold illness, but never anything like this.
Neither have I, Mari. I am not sure what is happening, but I feel that whatever it is, it is a normal thing.
Normal? She hasn’t slept in three days. She has had seizures that would have killed another person. I know you are an empath, but surely this cannot be normal!
Yes, I know. But this is an incredible situation—she’s an adult going through what a youngster does. We just don’t know what that does to the body.
She’s dehydrated and raving! There was a strong sense of outrage in these words, and Margaret, despite her pain, agreed silently that it was outrageous. She found herself starting to warm toward Lady Marilla, then remembered that she must keep herself apart, that people died if she let them near her. That thought threw her into fresh terror, and she struggled to banish it. She let herself go back to listening, even though she felt mildly guilty, like a sneak. How can you talk about normal. Really, Isty! Sometimes you can be utterly maddening. Isn’t there something we can do?
She’s terrified—and I cannot blame her. I only saw Ashara through her eyes, and it scared me silly. And she has been walking around with that presence in her mind for twenty years! Can you imagine what it would be like to be a little girl of five or six, and be overshadowed by the will of a dead leronis? If we could just break the cycle of terror, I think she would start to recover.
Well, none of the things we have given her stay down long enough to do a bit of good! And I don’t think her poor body can take much more of this. She has lost a great deal of weight, and she wasn’t heavy to begin with.
I know we must do something, but I just do not know what. Still, there is something. . . . Her channels were interfered with when she was so young! We have always theorized that during threshold sickness, the channels were somehow impressed in the mind. My best guess is that what we are seeing is the creation of new channels, ones that have not existed before. It is something to do with those peculiar marks on her hand.
New channels? That is impossible, and you know it!
Nothing is impossible! I would never have believed that the spirit of a long-dead Keeper could reach through the centuries to bend the will of one of her line, but that is exactly what happened. Mari—you are exhausted. And you are no help to me when you are half out of your mind. Send Rafaella to me, and go and rest.
But she cannot monitor! I’d ask Mikhail—he’s the only one in the house who has had that training, but it wouldn’t be proper!
This is hardly the time to be worrying about scandal, dear friend. Send Rafaella. I have noticed that Marguerida is quieter when she is present, and I think that she trusts her as she cannot trust us. They have ridden the trail together, and that makes a bond nearly as strong as that we learn in the Towers.
Margaret heard their “discussion,” and wished she had the strength to tell them that she very much wanted Rafaella nearby. Her cracked lips were too swollen to form intelligible words, and her throat hurt.
She felt her aching body, and noticed that her mind was clear for the moment, neither angry nor fearful, and she savored it.
There was something else, if she could just get her brain to remember what it was. It was something concerning her baggage. She felt a damp cloth against her face, and the moisture on her mouth was wonderful. It didn’t hurt nearly as much as she expected. She felt her eyelids being washed ever so tenderly, and actually managed to get her eyes open.
The light was painful, and she almost shut her eyes again immediately. Only the sight of Rafaella’s face made her keep them open, for it was exhausted, and there were deep lines between the brows. She didn’t want Rafaella to worry!
“I am going to put some salve on your lips now, chiya, and it may hurt a little. But it will help the cuts heal and reduce the swellings. I will try not to hurt you, really.”
“Fine.” It hurt to get that word out, but Margaret was beyond caring. If just one part of her could be less painful, she would be glad. She winced as Rafaella spread something across her lips with a cautious fingertip, and almost immediately her lips felt better. “Wha’ is?”
“Well, to be absolutely honest, it is something we use on horses, for swellings and bruises, only I mixed up a slightly different kind.”
“Good. Put all over?”
“It’s got numbweed in it, so I am not sure. Don’t lick your lips, or your tongue will go to sleep.”
Numbweed. Margaret’s weary brain fastened on the word, and she remembered that she had been trying to think of something in her baggage. “Medkit,” she slurred suddenly.
“What?”
She had licked her lips in her thirst, and her tongue was suddenly gone, as if it had vanished out of her mouth. Margaret strained to get the words out. “In pack. Medkit. Patch.” She sounded like a drunk in her own ears, but apparently Rafaella understood, because the guide left her side and vanished from view.