Heritage and Exile (33 page)

Marjorie came up to us; I could tell that she shared Thyra's humiliation, but she made no protest. I turned and slipped my arm around her waist, which would have proclaimed us acknowledged lovers in the valley. Thyra sent me a sardonic smile of amusement beneath her meekly dropped lashes, but all she said was, “We are all at your orders, Dom Lewis.”

“I've no wish to give orders, cousin,” I said, “but your guardian would have small cause to love me if I disregarded the simplest rules of safety in your training!”

“Leave him alone, Thyra,” Marjorie flared. “He knows what he's doing! Lew, show her your hand!” She seized the palm, turned it over, showing the white ridged scars. “He has learned to follow rules, and learned it with pain! Do you want to learn like that?”

Thyra flinched visibly, averting her eyes from the scar as if it sickened her. I would not have thought her squeamish. She said, visibly shaken, “I had never thought . . . I did not know. I'll do what you say, Lew. Forgive me.”

“Nothing to forgive, kinswoman,” I said, laying my free hand on her wrist. “Learn caution to match your skill and you will be a strong
leronis
some day.” She smiled at the word which, taken literally, meant
sorceress
.

“Matrix technician, if you like. Some day, perhaps, there will be new words for new skills. In the towers we are too busy mastering skills to worry about words for them, Thyra. Call it what you like.”

Thin fog was beginning to move down from the peaks behind the castle. Marjorie shivered in her light dress and Thyra said, “We'd better go in, it will be dark soon.” With one bleak look at the darkened city below, she walked quickly toward the castle. Marjorie and I walked with our arms laced, Rafe tagging close to us.

“Why do we need the kind of control we practiced with the flowers, Lew?”

“Well, if someone in the circle gets so involved in what he's doing that he forgets to breathe, the monitor outside has to start him breathing again without hurting him. A well-trained empath can stop bleeding even from an artery, or heal wounds.” I touched the scar. “This would have been worse, except that the Keeper of the circle worked with it, to heal the worst damage.” Janna Lindir had been Keeper at Arilinn for two of my three years. At seventeen, I had been in love with her. I had never touched her, never so much as kissed her fingertips. Of course.

I looked at Marjorie.
No. No, I have never loved before, never. . . . The other women I have known have been nothing. . . .

She looked at me and whispered, half laughing. “Have you loved so many?”

“Never like this. I swear it—”

Unexpectedly she threw her arms around me, pressed herself close. “I love you,” she whispered quickly, pulled away and ran ahead of me along the path into the hall.

Thyra smiled knowingly at me as we came in, but I didn't care. You had to learn to take that kind of thing for granted. She swung around toward the window, looking into the gathering darkness and mist. We were still close enough that I followed her thoughts.
Kadarin, where was he, how did he fare on his mission?
I began to draw them together again, Marjorie's delicate touch. Rafe alert and quick like some small frisking animal, Thyra with the strange sense of a dark beast prowling.

Kadarin
. The interlinked circle formed itself and I discovered to my surprise, and momentary dismay, that Thyra was at the center, weaving us about her mind. But she seemed to work with a sure, deft touch, so I let her keep that place. Suddenly I
saw
Kadarin, and heard his voice speaking in the middle of a phrase;

“. . . refuse me then, Lady Storn?”

We could even see the room where he was standing, a high-arched old hall with the blue glass windows of almost unbelievable antiquity. Directly before his eyes was a tall old woman, proudly erect, with gray eyes and dazzling white hair. She sounded deeply troubled.

“Refuse you,
dom
? I have no authority to give or refuse. The Sharra matrix was given into the keeping of the forge-folk after the siege of Storn. It had been taken from them without authority, generations ago, and now it is safe in their keeping, not mine. It is theirs to give.”

Kadarin's deep exasperation could be felt by all of us—
stubborn, superstitious old beldame!
—as he said, “It is Kermiac of Aldaran who bids me remind you that you took Sharra's matrix from Aldaran without leave—”

“I do not recognize his right.”

“Desideria,” he said, “let's not quarrel or quibble. Kermiac sent me to bring the Sharra matrix back to Aldaran; Aldaran is liege-lord to Storn and there's an end to it.”

“Kermiac does not know what I know, sir. The Sharra matrix is well where it is; let it lie there. There are no Keepers today powerful enough to handle it. I myself called it up only with the aid of a hundred of the forge-folk, and it would be ill done of me to deprive them of their goddess. I beg you say to Kermiac that by my best judgment, which he trusted always, it should stay where it is.”

“I am sick of this superstitious talk of goddesses and talismans, lady. A matrix is a machine, no more.”

“Is it? So I thought when I was a maiden,” the old woman said. “I knew more of the art of a matrix at fifteen, sir, than you know now, and I know how old you really are.” I felt the man flinch from her sharp, steady gaze. “I know
this
matrix, you do not. Be advised by me. You could not handle it. Nor could Kermiac. Nor could I, at my age. Let it lie, man! Don't wake it! If you do not like the talk of goddesses, call it a force basically beyond human control in these days, and evil.”

Kadarin paced the floor and I paced with him, sharing a restlessness so strong it was pain. “Lady, a matrix can be no more good or evil in itself than the mind of the man who wields it. Do you think me evil, then?”

She waved that away with an impatient gesture. “I think you honest, but you will not believe there are some powers so strong, so far from ordinary human purpose, that they warp all things to evil. Or to evil in ordinary human terms, at least. And what would you know of that? Let it be, Kadarin.”

“I cannot. There is no other force strong enough for my purposes, and these are honest. I have safeguarded all, and I have a circle ready to my hand.”

“You do not mean to use it alone, then, or with the Darriell woman?”

“
That
foolhardy I am not. I tell you, I have safeguarded all. I have won a Comyn telepath to aid me. He is cautious and skilled,” Kadarin said persuasively, “and trained at Arilinn.”

“Arilinn,” said Desideria at last. “I know how they were trained at Arilinn. I did not believe that knowledge still survived. That should be safe, then. Promise me, Kadarin, to place it in his hands and leave all things to his judgment, and I will give you the matrix.”

“I promise you,” Kadarin said. We were so deeply in rapport that it seemed it was I myself, Lew Alton, who bowed before the old Keeper, feeling her gray eyes search
my
very soul rather than his.

It is in the memory of that moment that I will swear, even after all the nightmare that came later, that Kadarin was honest, that he meant no evil. . . .

Desideria said, “Be it so, then, I will entrust it to you.” Again the sharp gray eyes met his. “But I tell you, Robert Kadarin, or whatever you call yourself now,
beware
! If you have any flaw, it will expose it brutally; if you seek only power, it will turn your purposes to such ruin as you cannot even guess; and if you kindle its fires recklessly, they will turn on you, and consume you and all you love! I
know,
Kadarin! I have stood in Sharra's flame and though I emerged unburnt, I was not unscarred. I have long put aside my power, I am old, but this much I can still say—
beware
!”

And suddenly the identity swirled and dissolved. Thyra sighed, the circle dropped like strands of cobweb and we stood, staring at one another dazed, in the darkening hallway. Thyra was white with exhaustion and I felt Marjorie's hands trembling on mine.

“Enough,” I said firmly, knowing that until it was certain who was to take the centerpolar place, until we knew which of us was Keeper, it was my responsibility to safeguard them all. I motioned to the others to separate, draw apart physically, to break the last clinging strands of rapport. I let Marjorie's hands go with regret. “Enough. We all need rest and food. You must learn never to overtax your physical strength.” I spoke deliberately, in a firm, didactic manner, to minimize any emotional contact or concern. “Selfdiscipline is just as important as talent, and far more important than skill.”

But I was not nearly as detached as I sounded, and I suspected they knew it.

 

Three days later, at dinner in the great lighted hall, I spoke of my original mission to Kermiac. Beltran, I knew, felt that I had wholly turned my back on Comyn. It was true that I no longer felt bound to my father's will. He had lied to me, used me ruthlessly. Kadarin had spoken of Compact as just another Comyn plot to disarm Darkover, to keep the Council's rule intact. Now I wondered how my elderly kinsman felt about it. He had ruled many years in the mountains, with the Terrans ever at hand. It was reasonable he should see everything differently from the Comyn lords. I had heard their side; I had never been given opportunity to know the other view.

When I spoke to him of Hastur's disquiet about the violations of Compact and told him I had been sent to find out the truth, he nodded and frowned, thinking deeply. At last he said, “Danvan Hastur and I have crossed words over this before. I doubt we will ever really agree. I have a good bit of respect for that man: down there between the Dry Towns and the Terrans he has no bed of roses, and all things considered he's managed well. But his choices aren't mine, and fortunately I'm not oath-bound to abide by them. Myself, I believe the Compact has outlived its usefulness, if it ever had any, which I'm no longer sure of.”

I had known he felt this way, yet I felt shocked. From childhood I had been taught to think of Compact as the first ethical code of civilized men.

“Stop and think,” he said. “Do you realize that we are a part of a great galactic civilization? The days when any single planet could live in isolation are over forever. Swords and shields belong to that day and must be abandoned with it. Do you realize what an anachronism we are?”

“No, I don't realize that, sir. I don't know that much about any world but this one.”

“And not too much even about this one, it seems. Let me ask you this, Lew, when did you learn the use of weapons?”

“At seven or eight, more or less.” I had always been proud that I need fear no swordsman in the Domains—or out of them.

“I, too,” said the old man. “And when I came to rule in my father's high seat, I took it for granted that I would have bodyguards following me everywhere but my marriage-bed! Halfway through my life I realized I was living inside a dead past, gone for centuries. I sent my bodyguards home to their farms, except for a few old men who had no other skills and no livelihood. I let
them
walk around looking important, more for their own usefulness than mine, and yet I sit here, untroubled and free in my own house, my rule unquestioned.”

I felt horrified. “At the mercy of any malcontent—”

He shrugged. “I am here, alive and well. By and large, those who give allegiance to Aldaran
want
me here. If they did not, I would persuade them peacefully or step aside and let them try to rule better. Do you honestly believe Hastur keeps authority over the Domains only because he has a bigger and better bodyguard than his rivals?”

“Of course not. I never heard him seriously challenged.”

“So. My people too are content with my rule, I need no private army to enforce it.”

“But still . . . some malcontent, some madman—”

“Some slip on a broken stair, some lightning-bolt, some misstep by a frightened or half-broken horse, some blunder by my cook with a deadly mushroom for a wholesome one . . . Lew, every man alive is divided from death by that narrow a line. That's as true at your age as mine. If I put down rebellion with armed men, does it prove me the better man, or only the man who can pay the better swordsmen or build the bigger weapons? The long reign of Compact has meant only that every man is expected to settle his affairs with his sword instead of his brains or the rightness of his cause.”

“Just the same, it has kept peace in the Domains for generations.”

“Flummery!”
the old man said rudely. “You have peace in the Domains because, by and large, most of you down there are content to obey Comyn law and no longer put every little matter to the sword. Your celebrated Castle Guard is a police force keeping drunks off the streets! I'm not insulting it, I think that's what it should be. When did
you
last draw your sword in earnest, son?”

I had to stop and think. “Four years ago bandits in the Kilghard hills broke into Armida, stealing horses. We chased them back across the hills and hanged a few of them.”

“When did you last fight a duel?”

“Why, never.”

“And you last drew your sword against common horse-thieves. No rebellions, wars, invasions from nonhumans?”

“Not in my time.” I began to see what he was driving at.

“Then,” he said, “why risk law-abiding men, good men and loyal, against horse-thieves, bandits, rabble who have no right to the protection given men of honor? Why not develop really effective protection against the lawless and let your sons learn something more useful than the arts of the sword? I am a peaceful man and Beltran will, I think, have no reason to force himself on my people by armed force. The law in the Hellers states that no man given to breach of the peace may own any weapon, even a sword, and there are laws about how long a pocketknife he may carry. As for the men who keep my laws, they are welcome to any weapon they can get. An honest man is less threat to our world with a Terran's nerve-blaster than a lawless one with my cook's paring knife or a stonemason's hammer. I don't believe in matching good honest men against rogues, both armed with the same weapons. When I left off fairy tales I left off believing that an honest man must always be a better swordsman than a horse-thief or a bandit. The Compact, which allows unlimited handweapons and training in their use to good men and criminals alike, has simply meant that honest men must struggle day and night to make themselves stronger than brutes.”