Sharra's Exile (32 page)

imposing, overshadowing… and now she bore Marjorie’s face. Marjorie, competent and unafraid in the midst of the rising illusion-flames of Sharra, and then—then crumpling, screaming in agony as the flames struck inward—my hand burning like a torch beneath the matrix—

Callina reached out one hand, lightly touched my forehead, where Jeff had stitched the sword cut.

Under her touch the fire went out. I found that I was kneeling at her feet, my head bent under the weight of it.

She said “But would he dare? Surely no sane man—”

I said, hearing the bitterness in my own voice, “I’m not sure he’s a man—and I’m even less sure he is sane.”

“But what could he hope to accomplish, unless he is simply mad for destruction?” she asked. “Surely he would not risk the woman—Thyra, you called her?—She was his—” she hesitated, and I shook my head. I had never understood the relationship between Kadarin and Thyra. It was not the ordinary relationship of lovers, but something at once less and more. I bent my head; I too had been glamored by the dark, glowing beauty of Thyra, so like and so unlike Marjorie. I had chosen. And Marjorie had been destroyed…I turned on her in rage. She said softly, “I know, Lew. I know.”

“You know! Thank the Gods you
don’t
know—” I flung at her, in a blind fury. What could she know of that, that raging fire, that fury, ravening between the worlds—

But under her steady eyes my rage dissolved. Yes, she did know. On that dreadful day when I had turned on Kadarin with the desperation of a man who knows himself already condemned to death,

smashed the gate between the worlds and closed away Sharra from this world, I had thrust forth with my last strength and brought Marjorie and myself
between
the world-gates. The Terrans called it teleportation. I had brought us both to the matrix chamber in Arilinn, both of us terribly wounded, Marjorie dying. Callina had fought to save her; Marjorie had died in her arms. I bent my head, haunted again by that memory burned into my brain; Callina, holding Marjorie in her arms, the moment of peace that had descended in that last minute over her face. Yes, she knew.

I said, trying to think about it calmly without going into the horror again, “I don’t think, if he was sane, he would risk Thyra; but I’m not sure he understands the danger, and if the matrix has them both in its grip— I don’t know if he would have any choice.” I knew how the matrix could control a worker, how it had seized control even from our carefully balanced circle, going forth to do its ravening work of destruction.

“It—wants to destroy,” I said unsteadily. “I think it was made in the Ages of Chaos, to burst forth from control, to kill as much as it could, burn, destroy…I don’t think anyone alive now knows how to control it.” For years, I knew, the Sharra matrix had lain harmlessly on the altars of the forge-folk, a talisman invoking their fire Goddess, to light their altars. To bring fire to their forges and fires, and the Goddess within, content with her worshippers and their fires, had not been roused into this world—

And I had loosed it on Darkover; I, a complacent puppet in Kadarin’s hands. And he had used my own rage, my own lust, my own inner fires…

This was superstitious nonsense. I drew a deep breath and said, “In the Ages of Chaos there were many such weapons, and somewhere there must be defenses, or the memory of defenses against them.

Maybe, then, Ashara would know.” But would she care, if she had withdrawn so far from the world?

Callina picked up the unspoken question and said, “I do not know. I—I am afraid of Ashara—” I could see her shaking. She said, “You think I am here, safe, isolated—out of the troubles in the Council and the Comyn—Merryl hates me, Lew, he will do anything to keep me from having power in Comyn

Council. And now there is this alliance with Aldaran—you do know Beltran is bringing an army to the very gates of Thendara, and if at the last, they refuse him this alliance—do you suppose
he
knows about Sharra, or will use it as a weapon?”

I didn’t know. Beltran was my kinsman; there had been a time when I had trusted him, even as I had trusted and liked Kadarin. But Sharra had seized on him, too, and I still felt that was why he had this lust for power… and he, too, would have been alerted to its presence.

I said, “They
can’t
marry you off to Beltran, just like that! You are Head of a Domain and Keeper—”

“So I thought,” she said dispassionately. “But if I were not Head of a Domain, he would not want me—

I do not think it is me he wants. If he simply wanted to marry into the Comyn, there are other women as close to the center of power; Derik’s sister Alanna was widowed last year. As for my being Keeper—I do not think the Council wants a Keeper in power there, either. And if I marry—” she shrugged.

“There’s the end of that.”

I remembered the old stories that a Keeper maintains her power only through her chastity. It’s drivel, of course, superstitious rubbish, but like all superstitions, it has a core of truth.
Laran
, in a Comyn telepath, is carried in the same channels as the sexual forces of the body. The main side effect, for men, is that prolonged or heavy work in the matrixes temporarily closes off the channels to sex, and the man undergoes a prolonged period of impotence. It’s the first thing a man, working in the Towers, has to get used to, and some people never learn to handle it. I suppose for many people it would seem a high price to pay.

A woman has no such physical safeguard. While a woman is working at the center of a circle, holding the tremendous forces of the amplified linked matrixes, she must keep the physical channels clear for that work, or she can burn up like a torch. A three-second backflow, when I was seventeen years old, had burned a scar in my hand that had never really healed, the size of a silver coin. And the Keeper is at the very center of those flows. While she is working at the center of the screens, a Keeper remains chaste for excellent and practical reasons which have nothing to do with morality. It’s a heavy burden; few women want to live with it, more than a year or two. In the old days, Keepers were vowed to hold their office lifelong, were revered and treated almost as Goddesses, living apart from anything human.

In this day and age, a Keeper is simply required to retain her chastity while she is actively working as a Keeper, after which she may lay down her post, conduct her life as she pleases, marry and have children if she wishes. I had always assumed that Callina would elect to do this; she was, after all, the female Head of the Domain, and her oldest daughter would hold the Domain of Aillard.

She followed my thoughts and shook her head. She said wryly, “I have never had any wish to marry, nor met any man who would tempt me to leave the Tower. Why should I bear a double burden? Janna of Arilinn—she was your Keeper, was she not?—left her post and bore two sons, then fostered them away, and came back to her work. But I have served my Domain well; I have sisters, Linnell will soon be married, even Merryl, I suppose, will some day find a woman who will have him. There is no

need…” but she sighed, almost in despair. “I might marry if there was another who could take my place

— but not Beltran. Merciful Avarra, not Beltran!”

“He’s not a monster, Callina,” I said. “He’s very like me, as a matter of fact.”

She turned on me with wild anger, and her voice caught in her throat. “So you’d have me marry him too? A man who would bring an army against Thendara, and blackmail my kinsmen into giving him the most powerful woman in the Council for his own purposes? Damn you! Do you think I am a
thing
, a horse to be sold in the market, a shawl to be bartered for?” She stopped, bit her lip against a sob, and I stared at her; she had seemed so cold, remote, dispassionate, more like a mechanical doll than a woman; and now she was all afire with passion, like a struck harp still vibrating. For the first time I knew it; Callina was a woman, and she was beautiful. She had never seemed real to me, before this; she had only been a Keeper, distant, untouchable. Now I saw the woman, trapped and frantic behind that barricade, reaching out— reaching out to me.

She dropped her face into her hands and wept. She said, through her tears, “They have put it to me that if I do not marry Beltran it will plunge the Domains into war!”

I could not stop myself; I reached out, drew her into my arms.

“You shall
not
marry Beltran,” I said, raging. “I will kill him first, kinswoman!” And then, as I held her against me I knew what had happened to us both. It was not as kinswoman that I had vowed to shelter and protect her. It went deeper than that; it went back to the time when she had been the only woman in the Comyn who understood my rebellion against my father, to the time when she had fought to save Marjorie’s life and had shared my agony and despair. She was Tower-trained, she was a memory of the one good time in my entire life, she was home and Arilinn and a time when I had been happy and real and felt my life worthy; a time when I had not been damned.

I held her, trembling with fright, against me; clumsily, I touched her wet eyes. There was something else, some deeper, more terrible fear behind her.

I murmured, “Can’t Ashara protect you? She is Keeper of the Comyn. Surely she would not let you be taken from her like this.”

We were deeply in rapport now; I felt her rage, her dread, her outraged pride. Now there was terror. She whispered, her voice only a thread, as if she feared that she would be heard, “Oh, Lew, you don’t know

—I am afraid of Ashara, so afraid… I would rather marry Beltran, I would even marry him to be free of her…” and her voice broke and strangled. She clung to me in terror and despair, and I held her close.

“Don’t be afraid,” I whispered, and felt the shaking tenderness I had thought I would never know again.

Burned and ravaged as I was, scarred, mutilated, too deeply haunted by despair to lift my one

remaining hand to save myself—still, I felt I would fight to the death, fight like a trapped animal, to save Callina from that fate.

… still there was something between us. I dared not kiss her; was it only that she was still Keeper and the old taboo held me? But I held her head against my breast, stroking her dark hair, and I knew I was no longer rootless, alone, without kin or friends. Now there was some reason behind my desperate holding on. Now there was Callina, and I promised myself, with every scrap of will remaining to me, that for her sake I would fight to the end.

CHAPTER SEVEN

There’s only one good thing about Council season,” said Regis sleepily, “I get to see you now and then.”

Danilo, barefoot and half-dressed at the window, grinned back at him. “Come now, is that the spirit in which to face the final day of Council?”

Regis groaned and sat up. “I suppose you had to remind me. Shall I send for breakfast?”

Danilo shook his head, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “I can’t stay; Lord Dyan asked me to dine with him last night, he even said I could bring you if I wished; but I told him I’d be engaged elsewhere.” He smiled at his friend. “So he said breakfast would do. I suppose, too, that I’ll have to wear Council robes.” He made a wry face. “Without disrespect to our worthy forefathers, did you ever see any robes as ugly as full Council ceremonial dress? I am sure the cut and fashion have not changed since the days of Stephen the Fourth!”

Regis chuckled, swinging his feet out of bed. “Longer than that, surely—I am certain they were designed by Zandru’s great-grandmother.”

“And she made him wear them as punishment when he was more wicked than usual,” laughed Danilo.

“Or do you suppose they were designed by
cristoforos
, so that while we sit at Council we will be doing suitable penance for our sins?”

“Sitting in Council is penance enough,” said Regis glumly.

“And the Ardais colors—gray and black, how dismal! Do you suppose that is why Dyan is so morose—

the result of wearing black and silver in Council for so many years? If I were no more than your paxman, at least I could wear blue and silver!”

“We shall have to design you a special robe for your divided loyalties,” said Regis, mock-serious.

“Patchwork of black and blue. Suitable enough, I suppose, for anyone who comes under Dyan’s

influence—like my ribs when he was my arms-master!” After all these years, Regis could make a joke of it. But Danilo frowned.

“He spoke again of my marriage, a day or two ago. It seems his
nedestro
son is three years old, and looks healthy, and likely to live to grow up; he wants me to foster the boy, he said. He has neither time nor inclination to bring him up himself—and to do this I must have a household and wife. He said that he understood why I was reluctant—”

“He should, after all,” said Regis dryly.

“Nevertheless, he said it was my duty, and he would take care to find me a wife who would not trouble me too much.”

“Grandfather speaks in the same vein—”

“I think,” Danilo said, “that I shall take one who will find herself a devoted Lady-companion; and after I have given her a child or two to raise, she will not weep if I absent myself from her bed and fireside.

Then we should both be content.”

Regis pulled on tunic and breeches, slid his feet into indoor boots. “I must breakfast with Grandfather; time enough to haul myself into ceremonials later. There seems little sense in attending Council—most of the speeches I will hear today I could say over from memory!”

Danilo sighed. “There are times when I think Lord Dyan— and some others I could mention—would

rather see the Ages of Chaos come again than wake up to realities! Regis! Does your grandsire really think the Terrans will go away if we pretend they are not there?”

“I don’t know what my grandfather thinks, but I know what he will say if I do not breakfast with him,”

Regis said, fastening his tunic-laces. “And now that I think of it, Council may not be so predictable as all that—it seems we are to have seven Domains again, after all. Did you know Beltran has brought and quartered an army above Thendara?”