Heritage and Exile (104 page)

My cousin from Terra. I supposed that was another idea of Callina's. Well, it explained the faint unfamiliarity with which she spoke Darkovan. Kathie said gently, “I wasn't taught dancing, Linnell.”

“You weren't? What did you study, then? Lew, don't they dance on Terra?”

“Dancing,” I said dryly, “is an integral part of all human cultures. It is a group activity passed down from the group movements of birds and anthropoids, and also a social channeling of mating behavior among all higher primates, including man. Among such quasi-human cultures as those of the
chieri
it becomes an ecstatic behavior pattern akin to drunkenness. Yes, they dance on Terra, on Megaera, Samarra, Alpha Ten, Vainwal, and in fact from one end of the Galaxy to the other. For further information, lectures on anthropology are given in the city; I'm not in the mood.” I turned to Kathie in what I hoped was proper cousinly fashion. “Suppose we do it instead.”

I added to Kathie as we danced, “Certainly you wouldn't know that dancing is a major study with children here; Linnell and I both learned as soon as we could walk. I had only basic instruction—after that I went to training in the martial arts—but Linnell has been studying ever since.” I glanced affectionately back at Linnell, who was dancing with Regis Hastur. “I went to a dance or two on Vainwal. Are our dances so different?”

But as I talked I was studying the Terran woman carefully. Kathie had guts and brains, I realized. It took them to come here after the shock she had had, and play the part tacitly assigned to her. And Kathie had another rare quality; she seemed unaware that the arm circling her waist was unlike any other arm and hand. That's not common; even Linnell had given it a quick, furtive stare. Well, Kathie worked in hospitals, she had probably seen worse things.

With seeming irrelevance, Kathie said, “And Linnell is your cousin, your kinswoman—?”

“My foster-sister; she was brought up in my father's home. We're not blood kin, except insofar as all Comyn have common ancestry.”

“She's very—well, it's as if she were
really
my twin sister; I feel as if I'd always known her, I loved her the moment I saw her. But I'm afraid of Callina. It's not that she's been unkind to me—no one could have been kinder—but she seems so remote, somehow, not quite human!”

“She's a Keeper,” I said, “they are taught not to show emotions, that's all.” But I wondered if that were all it was.

“Please—” Kathie touched my arm, “let's not dance; on Vainwal I'm a good enough dancer, but here I feel like a stumbling elephant!”

“You probably weren't taught as intensively.” To me that was the strangest thing about Terra; the casualness with which they regarded this one talent which distinguishes man from the four-footed kind. There is a saying on Darkover;
only men laugh, only men dance, only men weep.
Women who could not dance—how could they have true beauty?

I started to return Kathie to the corner where the young women waited; and as I turned, I saw Callina enter the ballroom. And for me, the music stopped.

I have seen the black night of interstellar space flecked with a hundred million stars. Callina looked like that, in a filmy web like a scrap torn out of that sky, her dark hair netted with pale constellations. I heard drawn breaths, gasps of shock everywhere.

“How beautiful she is,” breathed Kathie, “but what does the costume represent? I've never seen one like it. . . .”

“I've no idea,” I said, but I lied. The tale was told in the
Ballad of Hastur and Cassilda,
the most ancient legend of the Comyn; Camilla, slain by the shadow-sword in the place of her bright sister, so that she passed away into the realms of darkness under the shadow of Avarra, Dark Lady of birth and death . . . I had no idea why a woman on the eve of her bridal, even in the case of so unappealing a marriage as this, should choose to come in such a dress. I wondered what would happen when Beltran of Aldaran caught the significance of that? A more direct insult would be hard to devise, unless she had come in the dress of the public hangman!

I excused myself quickly from Kathie and went in the direction of Callina. I agreed that this marriage was a sickening farce, but she had no right to embarrass her family like this. But Merryl reached her first, and I caught the tail end of his lecture.

“A pretty piece of spite—embarrass us all before our guests, when Beltran has made so generous a gesture—”

“He may keep his generosity as far as I am concerned,” Callina said. “Brother, I will not look or act a lie. This dress pleases me; it is perfectly suited to the way I have been treated all my life by Comyn!” Her laugh was musical and bitter. “Beltran would endure more insult than this, for
laran
-right in Comyn Council! Wait and see!”

“Do you think I am going to dance with you while you are wearing that—” his voice failed him; he was crimson with wrath. Callina said, “As for that, you may please yourself. I am willing to behave in a civilized manner. If you are not, it is your loss.” She turned to me and said, almost a command, “Lord Alton will dance with me.” She held out her arms, and I moved into them; but this boldness was unlike her, and put me ill at ease. Callina was a Keeper; always, in public, she had been timid, self-effacing, overwhelmingly shy and modest. This new Callina, drawing all eyes with a shocking costume, startled me. And what would Linnell think?

“I'm sorry about Linnell,” said Callina, “but the dress pleases my mood. And—it is becoming, is it not?”

It was, but the coquetry with which she glanced up at me, shocked and startled me; it was as if a painted statue had come to life and begun flirting with me. Well, she had asked me. “You're too damned beautiful,” I said, hoarsely, then drew her into a recess and crushed my mouth down on hers, hard and savagely. “Callina, Callina, you're not going through this crazy farce of a marriage, are you?”

For a moment she was passive, startled, then went rigid, bending back and pushing me frantically away, “No! Don't!”

I let my arms drop and stood looking at her, slow fury heating my face. “That's not the way you acted last night—nor just now! What is it that you want anyhow, Callina?”

She bent her head. She said bitterly, as if from a long way off, “Does it matter what I want? Who has ever asked me? I am only a pawn in the game, to be moved about as they choose!”

I took her hand in mine, and she did not pull it away. I said urgently, “Callina, you
don't
have to do this! Beltran is disarmed, no longer a threat—”

“Would you have me forsworn?”

“Forsworn or dead rather than married to him,” I said, rage building in me. “You don't know what he is!”

She said, “I have given my word. I—” she looked up at me and suddenly her face crumpled into weeping. “Can't you spare me this?”

“Did you ever think that there are things you might have spared me?” I demanded. “So be it, Callina; I wish Beltran joy of his bride!” I turned my back on her, disregarding her stifled cry, and strode away.

I don't know where I thought I was going. Anywhere, out of there. A telepath is never at ease in crowds, and I have trouble coping with them. I know that a path cleared for me through the dancers; then, quite unexpectedly, a voice said, “Lew!” and I stopped cold, staring down at Dio.

She was wearing a soft green gown, trimmed with white; her hair waved softly around her face, and she had done nothing to disguise the golden-brown freckles that covered her cheeks. She looked rosy and healthy, not the white, wasted, hysterical woman I had last seen in the hospital on Vainwal. She waited a minute, then said, as she had said the first time we came face to face, “Aren't you going to ask me to dance,
Dom
Lewis?”

I blinked at her. I must have looked a great gawk, staring with my mouth open.

“I didn't know you were in Thendara!”

“Why shouldn't I be?” she retorted. “Do you think I am an invalid? Where else would I be, at Council season? Yet you have not even paid me a courtesy call, nor sent flowers on the morning of Festival! Are you so angry because I failed you?”

A dancing couple reeled within a half-step of us, and a strange woman said irritably, “Must you block the dancing floor? If you are not dancing, at least get out of the way of those who are!”

I took Dio's elbow, not too gently, and steered her out on the sidelines. “I am sorry—I did not know you wanted flowers from me. I did not know you were in Thendara.” Suddenly all my bitterness overflowed. “I do not yet know the courtesies of dealing with a wife who abandoned me!”

“
I
abandoned—” she broke off and stared at me. She said, evidently trying to steady her voice. “I abandoned
you?
I thought you divorced me because I could not give you a healthy son—”

“Who told you that?” I demanded, grasping her shoulders until she winced; I loosened my grip, but went on urgently, “I went back to the hospital! They told me you had left, with your brothers—”

Gradually the color left her face, till the freckles stood out dark against her white skin. She said, “Lerrys bundled me onto the ship before I could walk. . . . He had to carry me. He told me that as the Head of a Domain, you could not marry a woman who could not give you an Heir—”

“Zandru send him scorpion whips!” I swore. “He came to me, just after I came here—he threatened to kill me—said you had been through enough—Dio, I swear I thought it was what you wanted—”

Her eyes were beginning to overflow and I saw her bite her lip; Dio could never bear to cry where anyone could see her. She put out a hand to me, then drew it back and said, “I come here to Festival—hoping to see you—and I find you in Callina's arms!” She turned her back on me, and started to move away; I held her back with a hand on her shoulder.

“Lerrys has made enough mischief,” I said. “We'll have this out with him, and we'll do it now! Is he here, that damned mischief-maker?”

“How dare you speak that way of my brother?” Dio demanded inconsistently. “He was doing what he thought was best for me! At that point I was hysterical, I never wanted to see you again—”

“And I was complying with your wishes,” I said, drawing a deep breath. “Dio, what's the use of all this? It's done. I did what I thought you wanted—”

“And I come here to find you and see if it was what
you
wanted,” Dio flung at me, “and I find you already consoling yourself with that damned frozen stick of a Keeper! I hope she strikes you with lightning when you touch her—you deserve it!”

“Don't talk that way about Callina—” I said sharply.

“She is sworn Keeper; what does she want with my husband?”

“You made it very clear that I was
not
your husband—”

“Then why was it I who was served with notice of a divorce? What a fool I will look—” Again she looked as if she were going to cry. I put my arm around her, trying to comfort her, but she pulled herself angrily away. “If that's what you want, you are welcome to it! You and Callina—”

I said, “Don't be a fool, Dio! Callina will be handfasted to Beltran within the hour! I couldn't stop her—”

“I've no doubt you tried,” Dio retorted. “I saw you!”

I sighed. Dio was determined to make a scene. I still thought we should settle this in private, but I was on guard, too. She had made me feel like a fool, not the other way around; and she had had every right to leave me after the suffering I had put her through; but I did not want to be reminded again of the tragedy, I was still too raw about it. “Dio, this is neither the time nor the place—”

“Can you think of a better?” She was furious; I didn't blame her. If Lerrys had been there, I think I would have killed him. So she had not left me, after all, of her own free will. Yet, as I looked at her angry face, I realized that there was no way to go back where we had left off.

Others were looking at us curiously. I was not surprised; I, at least, must have been broadcasting my emotions—which were largely confusion—all through the ballroom. I said, “We had better dance,” and touched her arm. It was not a couple-dance and I was grateful; I did not want quite that much intimacy, not now, not here, not with all that lay between us. I moved into the outer ring of men, and Dio let Linnell move to her side and draw her into the circle. Strange, I thought, that Linnell, my closest kinswoman, did not know of our brief marriage nor the disastrous way in which it had ended. It was not, after all, the sort of story to tell a young woman on the verge of her own marriage. I saw how she looked at Derik as she pulled him into the set. Then the music began and I gave myself up to it, as the figure of the dance swept Dio toward me, with a formal bow, and away again. At last, as the dance ended, we faced one another again and bowed. I saw Derik slide his arm through Linnell's, and was left with Dio again.

I said formally, “May I bring you some refreshment?”

Her eyes glinted tears. “Must you be so formal? Is this nothing but a game to you?”

I shook my head, tucked my hand under her arm and led her toward the buffet. Her head hardly came up to my shoulder. I had forgotten what a little thing she was; I always remembered her as being taller. Perhaps it was the way she carried herself, proud and independent, perhaps it was only that on Vainwal, like many women, she had worn high-heeled shoes, and here she had reverted to the low soft sandals that women wore in the Domains. The pale green of her gown made her hair shine reddish gold.

Our separation need not be final. Dio as Lady Alton, and we could live at Armida
. . . and for a moment I was overcome with a flood of homesickness for the hills of my home, the long shadows at twilight, the way the sun lowered over the line of tall trees behind the Great House . . . I could have this still, I could have it with Dio. . . .