Rediscovery (39 page)

But Kadarin’s scorn was for Zeb’s belief, not for Zeb himself. And that made

Elizabeth think about something she had been wondering about since the beginning of this trip. And interestingly, although she did not make any attempt to get Kadarin’s attention, he seemed to be aware of her thought, and reined in his horse to come alongside hers.

“Yes,
domna?”
he said. “You have a question?”

She smiled shyly. “More of a curiosity, if you don’t mind. I wondered why you

were always so deferential to Zeb—or, for that matter, to me. Ryan Evans has a much higher rank in the Terran Service, and you show him just bare politeness.”

Kadarin seemed startled; he reflected silently for a moment, then replied to her mind-to-mind, rather than vocally. And he seemed amused.
Thank you for bringing that
to my attention; I must be careful of that. It is, I think, a purely automatic reaction on
my part. Zeb is very like one of the Comyn, the mighty Hastur-kin. Does red hair signify
nothing of caste with your people?

She was a little surprised at that; the Service was completely “color-blind,” and it had never occurred to her that something like a physical attribute could denote rank.

Indeed, it does not,
she told him.
The only rank among us is one of a person’s earned
status within the Service. In fact, Captain Gibbons is the highest in rank of all of us.

Kadarin nodded, slowly.
So it is something like
—
oh, the Thendara City Guards. I
had wondered at that, I could not see what it was that made you all defer to such a
funny little old man. So Zeb is not highly regarded among you?

She smiled.
Only by virtue of being a trustworthy man; so far as real rank goes,
he’s one of the lowest. Even David and I outrank him by quite a bit.

Kadarin nodded.
And what of Ryan Evans?

Ysaye outranks him; he is about the same as David, and I am slightly lower in
rank.

He raised an eyebrow.
Strange. I must consider this.

He urged his horse forward again, back to ride knee-to-knee with Zeb Scott.

“Well, friend,” he said to Scott, “you may not believe in ghosts, but you would do well to believe in what we call the Ghost Wind. The winds at this season bear the
kireseth
pollen—and whether you call it drug, as some do, or poison, as the
cristoforos
think, it does not matter. It is very dangerous, even to you
Terranan.”

Was it Elizabeth’s imagination, or had he cast an odd and significant look back at her?

Zeb looked fascinated. “Ghost Wind?
Kireseth?
Kadarin, you can’t just leave it at that. Is it a drug, or a poison? Is it deadly, or not?”

Kadarin pursed his lips thoughtfully. “That would depend on definitions,” he said.

“It
is
used in the Towers, only not as the pure resin, but rather as a distillation of one fraction. In that form, it is a liqueur, called
kirian,
and it is a useful drug to diminish resistance against telepathy. The pure pollen and all other fractions of the pollen are banned here. The Towers think that some of the side effects are entirely too dangerous, and although I do not entirely agree with them, I tend to think that it is not for the unwary. Under the influence of the pollen and the other distillations, men can go mad, so the Towers say—and certainly, these things have the effect of making the beasts lose their minds. Only
kirian
seems to be safe, because all that it does is to diminish resistance to telepathic contact. In those with no telepathy, it only makes them sleepy.”

Zeb looked skeptical. “Telepathy?” he said. “I don’t know —I mean, I’m just an

ordinary guy, but I’ve never seen anything to make me believe telepathy is even

possible.” He grinned ruefully back at David and Elizabeth. “Sorry, folks, I know you two are supposed to be really high-powered mind-readers, but there it is. Before I believed in it, I’d have to see some really solid evidence.”

Kadarin shrugged, and said, “Stay out in the Ghost Wind, then, and I guarantee

your skepticism will end. Felicia will be pleased.”

Zeb nodded, and Elizabeth had the sinking feeling that Kadarin had been taunting him with this—or goading him, perhaps, into something he would not have thought of on his own. “So—maybe I’ll do just that!”

“On your head be it, I take no responsibility.” Kadarin then grinned wickedly.

“There are other side effects, and those may not please you as much. You may find yourself sharing pleasure with a catman or a
cralmac,
or even a sheep!”

When David and Zeb laughed, he shook his head. “Oh, laugh if you will,” he said,

“I am older than I look, and I have seen many strange things in these hills.”

And now he refused to meet Elizabeth’s eyes, as if he knew something that he did not want her to know.

“I just might risk it anyway,” Zeb said. “Hey, I’m a spaceman, and I’ve been

known to wake up next to quite a few strange things after a night on the town!”

Now Kadarin laughed aloud, an edged laughter that made Elizabeth very uneasy.

“Perhaps, but I wonder what you will have to say afterward if you dare? And I wonder what you will think when you find you hear voices in your head. But I think we must at least have the courtesy to get the Lornes to shelter.”

David protested. “Wait a minute, here—Elizabeth has always been more of a

telepath than I have, and frankly, I wish I were as good as she is. I’d kind of like to get downwind of something that would give me a little more in that department than I’ve got already. Liz, what do you think? Couldn’t you use something that would give you a telepathic boost?”

Something about the sweet, resinous scent in the air disturbed Elizabeth deeply, but before she could reply, Kadarin did so for her.

“I think this would be a mistake, a grave one,” he said. “Elizabeth, it is no secret that you are with child—”

“I won’t risk my baby to some strange drug,” she said firmly, and turned a

pleading face toward David. “And I don’t want to be alone, if this stuff makes the local wildlife act in strange ways.”

“Bravo!” Kadarin laughed again, and it seemed to her that while part of him

approved, part of him was mocking her for some reason. “Zeb, you can, if you wish, make the experiment, but I must tell you that
I
do not recommend it. You must do this on your own responsibility.”

“Oh, but now you’ve challenged me, and I never refuse a challenge,” Scott

replied. As Elizabeth had feared, he had responded to Kadarin’s dare without thinking of anything but that he’d been given a challenge. “But where can we find shelter for the others against your Ghost Wind?”

Kadarin looked at the horizon, his brow creased with thought. “On your map, the

one you made with pictures from the air, there is a ruined building. The roof was taken off, by the owner, I think, so that he did not have to pay taxes upon it. If you set up the tents there, and stay inside the walls and your tents, Elizabeth would be safe from the pollen. And if you wish to experience the Ghost Wind, you can simply stand outside the walls. If you change your mind, the tents will still be there to shelter you.”

Elizabeth sniffed again; the wind was definitely stronger, and so was the resinous scent in the air. “If that’s the best we can do for shelter, we had better get into it pretty quickly,” she said. “And Zeb—I really don’t think you should do this.”

He laughed, and it seemed to her that some of the wildness in Kadarin’s laughter had crept into his. “Oh, no, fair lady,” he mocked. “It would hardly be the
manly
thing to resist a challenge like this!”

She couldn’t find any sensible answer for that, and doubted that he would listen to one, anyway. She concentrated on urging her horse after Kadarin’s, off the road and onto a barely visible track. Several times during the next hour, she wondered how on earth he was finding his way—meanwhile the scent kept getting stronger, and she began to feel just a little lightheaded. She sighed with relief as they topped a rise, and she saw the walls of the ruined manor.

“Here is where we leave you, then,” Kadarin said. “Zeb and I will go up there.”

He pointed off to their right, deeper into the hills.

“There is a meadow there where I think I recall the
kireseth
flowers often bloom.

That is probably the source of this Ghost Wind, or one source at any rate.” He grinned, and turned his horse’s head on the designated path, as Zeb Scott followed his lead.

“Go straight to the source, hmm?” Zeb said, his eyes glowing with anticipation.

“I wish you wouldn’t—” Elizabeth said once more, but they waved farewell to her

and continued on the new path.

“We will come back for you,” Kadarin called over his shoulder. “Or at least—I

will,” he added teasingly.

Then they disappeared over the crest of a hill, leaving Elizabeth and David on

their original path. David shrugged as Elizabeth looked at him with reproach.

“He’s his own man, Liz,” David said. “We’ll be all right.”

She sighed. “I suppose you’re right—”

“And this gives us a real chance to be alone,” he added mischievously. “That

might be half the reason they went off like that!”

“I don’t think that little-boy I-dare-you nonsense had anything to do with us,” she replied sourly. “But you’re right; it does give us a chance to be alone. I suppose I shouldn’t complain.”

They continued following the path that led to the ruined manor, and Elizabeth

noticed that the weather was warming more and more by the minute. Already the horses were hock-deep in melting snow and mud, and leaves and even flowers were unfolding all around them. They were having too much trouble controlling their horses, who were becoming quite restive and inclined to fight the bit, to exchange any more conversation.

But even though Elizabeth was fighting her horse every step of the way—it was

showing a lot of interest in David’s mare, and it was a
gelding!
—she caught glimpses of birds and normally-shy animals—rabbits of some sort, she thought—cavorting about as if they were drunk.

So Kadarin had been right about this pollen! She only hoped they could reach

shelter before it affected her and David, too.

The horse kept fighting her, and there was no doubt that, gelded or not, the beast had only one thing on his mind, and it had nothing to do with reaching shelter. So she really didn’t pay any attention to their goal until she actually turned the recalcitrant beast in through what was left of the gate.

Then she looked up—and inside the ruined walls, she saw a cluster of tents.

What?

Who would camp here, so far from Caer Donn, trying to hide their camp in a

deserted building?

Who else—except a lawbreaker, an outlaw?

Sudden fear overtook her, as she realized that she had seen these tents before, in her dreams of last night. And terrible things had followed that first glimpse of tents. She tried to wheel her horse, crying out to David in terror, “David! Let’s get out of here fast!”

David reined in his horse, his eyes wide—but before they could do anything, wild and barbaric figures appeared from every direction, surrounding them and seizing their bridles. Elizabeth was stunned; like a frightened animal, she huddled in on herself, hardly able to think.

They were human, but not like any humans Elizabeth had ever seen before;

roughly and poorly clad, bearded, hair straggling and unwashed.

Exactly, she thought dazedly, as you would imagine a bandit would look.

As one of them, marginally better dressed than the others, forced her horse’s head down, he cried out something in a language she could not understand. She suddenly wondered if Kadarin had set this up. He had certainly seemed amused.

But why would he do this? And how could he have predicted that this “Ghost

Wind” thing would have come up? There would have been no reason otherwise for them to come anywhere near this manor. Leading them into an ambush would destroy his

standing with the Terrans—perhaps he didn’t care. Perhaps he had intended something like this all along. They could be worth a fortune in ransom to—to just about anyone.

Yet until that moment, she had not thought that Kadarin ever meant her any worse harm than a bit of teasing. And she had never had one of her intuitions about someone be so completely wrong before.

The man who had seized her bridle was repeating something in a sharply

interrogative tone in which she heard the word
Comyn
repeated several times. That was the only word she recognized; the one that meant the ruling caste of Darkover. Other than that, she didn’t recognize anything he said; he simply wasn’t speaking any of the Darkovan languages she knew.

But David answered the man in the same language, so David obviously

understood. “Liz, they seem to think we’re some kin of Aldaran—and he’s not a big fan of Kermiac, apparently. They want to know what we’re doing here, without an escort.”

“What?” she said, baffled and confused. Had Kadarin known nothing about these

people? Was this just a monstrous, horrible accident?

David replied, shortly. The man gabbled something else; David listened to him,

frowning. “I told him we were only guests of Lord Aldaran. So now he’s accusing us of being kin to Lorill Hastur, and spies for the Hasturs.”

At the sound of Lorill’s name, the man holding her bridle grimaced furiously, and repeated “Hastur,” shaking his fist. Elizabeth shrank away from him, for he was a tall man, with clothing a little cleaner and less ragged than the others, and with the fierce and wild look of a hawk. He looked as if he could do a great deal of damage with that huge knife at his side, and what was worse, he looked as if he might enjoy doing it, too.

“Oh, God, David—he doesn’t seem to like that, either!” Fear seized her heart and made it beat faster. “Tell him—tell him we don’t know any Hasturs! Tell him we just wanted shelter from the wind! Try and get him to let us go!”