The Alton Gift (23 page)

As he went deeper into rapport with Silvana, searching out the patterns of her body as well as of her mind, Lew felt as if he were seeing double. He recognized the resonant vibration from her starstone but also the brilliance of her
laran
. She was not only using her starstone as any trained
leronis
would do, she
herself
concentrated and focused the mental energy. Only one lineage in all Darkover had ever possessed that ability.

She was Hastur, the living matrix, graced with the full Gift of her Domain.

Lew was so surprised that he almost dropped out of the linkage. Until Regis had used the Hastur Gift in the struggle against Sharra, it was thought to be extinct. Regis was gone, and with him this rare and precious talent. His only son, Dani Hastur, certainly did not have it.

This Keeper, hiding here in an obscure Tower, disguising her heritage, might very well be the lost daughter of Regis Hastur. With her strength of
laran
and unmistakable natural ability as a Keeper, she must be Linnea's child as well. Lew had heard of such a daughter, born soon after the World Wreckers withdrew. She had been called by another name, he could not remember what. He had been off-world during the years following the World Wreckers. Since there had been no trace of her when he returned from exile, he assumed that she had perished. He had never had the heart to ask Regis about her.

Why had she remained hidden all these years, using another name? And who was he, with his own dark secrets, to judge a Keeper's motives?

During the few moments Lew was distracted, Silvana drew upon II-lona's mental energies, weaving them together with her own to buffer the worst of the unstable
laran
. Lew caught the image of wrapping the man in a soft, thick blanket. Volcanic, the man's psychic power battered against the restraints. Silvana's aura turned incandescent in response.

Acting on instinct alone, Lew plunged into rapport with the
leroni
His powers were not what they had once been, but he was still Alton and Comyn, trained at Arilinn. With a Keeper's sure touch, Silvana reached for him, blending his mind into the unity, attuning their linked energies.

Through the lens of the Keeper's mind, Lew's mental vision deepened. He no longer saw the stranger as a pattern of
laran
channels and nodes but as a maelstrom, images and emotions as vivid as if he himself had experienced them…

… Lew felt the rough-woven cloth of the man's Darkovan disguise, the ice-edged breeze and dappled shade of the trees overhead, the occasional call of a rain-bird. Adrenaline sharpened his vision. He was seeing and feeling everything this stranger had. Behind him, one of the heavy flyers took off from the encampment where the other techs had set up their equipment…

… Along the Old North Road, the funeral train came into view, riders and wagons hung with draperies, black trimmed with blue and silver. They moved with cumbersome grace. Beside him, one of the younger men shifted,
Come on, closer
…

… Through the stranger's memories, Lew understood the battle plan. At the right distance, at the right moment, they would attack. Their cudgels would bring down the horses, their arrows take out the Guardsmen, and their knives do the rest. If all went according to plan, no one would ever know the ambush was not by a dissident group of natives…

… The first unit burst from the trees, running hard, swinging their sticks. The Guardsmen, expert riders, drew together, slashing back with swords and spears. The horses pranced, churning dust. At the rear of the train, men spilled from the carriages, swords drawn…

… "Go!" His team leader barked out the command. He surged forward with the rest of his unit, racing toward the knot of riders. The man beside him had already drawn his blaster…

Lord of Light defend us
! Silvana's anguished cry interrupted the flow of images.
A Compact-forbidden weapon
!

Trapped in the stranger's nightmare memory, Lew caught flashes of blaster fire, a rearing horse, confusion and explosions, and the reek of death…

…
They must have been better prepared than we anticipated
. The thought etched itself in his brain. And yet… how could swords and horsemanship stand against
blasters'
? …

… He lay in a pool of half-frozen, stinking red mud, and heard the moans of the man next to him…

…
A face
…
a man's face, framed with hair that was red and silver, a mouth twisted by an ugly scar, bending over him
…
and a woman's, much younger but hard with purpose, with the same red hair and a tiger's golden eyes
…

Rupturing the mental linkage, Lew reeled away in horror. Shock ripped through the circle as its unity fractured. His heart convulsed within his chest. Crushing pressure shot through his physical body as well.

The face
… he cried out silently, II
was mine
, mine!
May all the gods forgive me
!

Lew's pulse beat fast and brittle, a desperate patter. His lungs ached for breath. His hands clutched his chest.

"
Dom
Lewis, what is the matter?" Silvana rushed to his side. He felt her touch on his forehead and another over his breastbone. Relief, cool and silver-white, swept through him. The pain lifted. Air flowed into his lungs.

"Illona, help me get him to the bed," Silvana said. "Then you must monitor him."

The two women lifted Lew to the bed, silently coordinating their strength to handle his weight. Illona focused her healing psychic energy with the quiet competence of one who would soon advance to Keeper, answerable to no man but only to her own conscience. Lew hardly noticed when Silvana left the room.

Illona continued to monitor Lew until she was certain the episode of angina had passed. In a short time Lew felt well enough to get up. The pain in his chest seemed to have completely resolved.

Lew sat up, tested the steadiness of his legs, and walked over to the bed where the Terran stranger lay, sleeping off the exhaustion of his convulsions. From sharing the man's memories of the Battle of Old North Road, Lew knew his name, Jeram. Jeram's skin was roughened by weather and recent illness, but he had strong bones, eyes bracketed by lines of vigilance, a complex, mobile mouth.

Silvana came back just as Lew was preparing to return to the monastery. As before, she treated him with the professional detachment of her rank. Nothing in her bearing suggested that she was aware of his discovery of her identity. Why she disguised her lineage was, after all, her private affair.

"Thank you for your assistance,
Dom
Lewis," Silvana said. "Illona tells me that you have made a good recovery. Do not overexert yourself, for these episodes of transient chest pain can indicate a more serious heart ailment, one that is beyond our skill to remedy."

"
Vai leronis
," Lew said, using the honorific address, "I also thank you. May I—I would like to impose on your hospitality and request an audience with Jeram."

"Why?"

"
Domna
, you know that I used the Alton Gift to suppress this man's memories. I do not deny it. For that deed, I must answer to the gods themselves. But the gods are not here. Jeram is, and there are amends to be made."

And forgiveness asked and granted
, she added mentally,
for both your sakes
.

Silvana tilted her head to one side, considering. "This is my Tower, and whatever happens here is my responsibility. If both of you agree to such a meeting, then I will permit it. But until the two of you reach a reconciliation, I must insist upon being present. Is that acceptable to you?"

Lew bowed his head. A sense of unexpected gratitude, mingled with terror, filled him. After all, he had prayed for guidance. He had not expected the answer to come in this particular form. Perhaps that was just as well, he thought as he met her gaze and nodded his agreement. Trapped by his own guilt, he would never have imagined such a meeting.

"Yes, I accept."

Lew arrived early at Silvana's sitting room, a pleasant chamber decorated with a distinctly feminine touch. A small fire cast ribbons of light over a mantle carved with ladies dancing with Midsummer garlands. The furnishings, low table, chairs and sideboard of silver-gray wood, made Lew feel as if he had entered an enchanted forest. Any moment now, a
chieri
might step forward.

Lew took the seat that Silvana indicated, one of a pair of chairs that had clearly been brought in for this meeting, sturdier than the rest, more suitable for a man's frame. Leaving the place facing it empty, Silvana took her own seat.

A knock sounded on the outer door. Lew tensed and gripped the wooden armrest. Silvana raised her voice in greeting, the latch lifted, and Jeram entered.

He was no longer the pale, convulsion-ridden man Lew had first seen, but shadows still haunted his russet-brown eyes, his jaw and compressed lips. He moved like a sword fighter except for the slight hunching of one shoulder and the bend in the elbow as if reaching for a weapon holstered at his belt. Refusing to meet Lew's gaze, he lowered himself into the second chair.

He does not want to be here, facing me. This meeting is as difficult for him as it is for me.

"I don't remember everything that happened the other day," Jeram began without preamble. He spoke
casta
surprisingly well, his off-world accent tempered by a mountain-style lilt. "I was pretty disoriented. It's not every day you meet the boogeyman from your nightmares. Until that moment, I had no idea you were real."

"I am flesh and blood, even as you are," Lew said.

Jeram kept his gaze on his hands. "Silvana says you did something that stirred up this
laran
thing in my mind. She says you can help me."

Even without telepathic contact, Lew heard the desperate courage behind the other man's words.

We are brothers in this, having endured the imposition of another's mil upon our own.

He would make no excuses. He forced himself to meet Jeram's tortured gaze, to open his mouth, to form the words.

"My name is Lewis-Kennard Alton. I am, as you may surmise, a telepath, and I possess the Gift of my family, that of forced rapport. I used this Gift upon you and the other Terran survivors of the Battle of Old North Road to tamper with your memories."

How did he find out my part in the ambush
? Jeram had not the skill to barricade his thoughts. He scowled at Silvana.

"She told me nothing," Lew hastened to say. "When we first met, you went into threshold crisis. Do you remember?"

Now Jeram looked directly at Lew. "You walked into the room and all hell broke loose—" Jeram lifted one hand to his forehead—"here."

"You recognized me," Lew said. "Then I used my
laran
to help Silvana and Illona pull you through the crisis. In the process, I—I'm not sure how to explain this so you can understand—I shared your memories of the Old North Road ambush. I saw the battle through your eyes."

"So now you know who I am." Jeram's eyes went bleak.

"And you know who I am and what I have done."

"I know there is a hole in my memory, but I don't know why." The muscles of Jeram's jaw stood out in stark relief as he bit off each word. "What, exactly, am I not supposed to remember?"

Lew closed his eyes. "That question would be better answered if I

removed the block to your memories. Then you would understand for yourself."

"You think I'm crazy enough to let you into my head again?" Jeram shot back.

"No, I can understand why not," Lew said, gesturing with his one good hand. "I will tell you, then. The fighting ended when my daughter and son-in-law, who is Regent of the Comyn, used their
laran
—their mental powers—to overwhelm your military forces."

Jeram looked incredulous. "This—this
laran
mind stuff stood up to blasters?"

You were not at Caer Donn. You did not see the real reason the Compact was made law-
—
not to control your Terran technology but for the far more terrible weapons we can produce with our own minds. Weapons capable of bringing down a stars hip, turning a city into flaming ruins, opening a gate between dimensions, or perhaps even worse
.

The moment stretched on. Silvana sat immobile, her expression inhumanly calm, unreadable except for the faintest whitening of her already pale skin. Even the fire seemed to pause, expectant.

Slowly, Jeram's eyes widened in understanding. Lew could not tell if the Terran had glimpsed the image of fire raining from the sky or whether the moment of silence answered his question. Jeram's unguarded thought shimmered in the air:
If what Lord Alton says is true, the Feds would stop at nothing to get their hands on a weapon like that, one that could be carried in a man's head! Undetectable, unstoppable
…

"We could not allow any of you return with that knowledge," Lew said. "The Comyn had expended a great deal of effort in persuading the Terran Federation that our matrix sciences—that is, the use of
laran
—was not worth investigating."

Jeram's expression darkened. "I understand why."

"You do?"

"I…"Jeram hesitated, his gaze wavering, his face momentarily taut. "I know something about the nastier side of warfare."

"As long as we had nothing you wanted, especially nothing with a military application, we hoped to remain safely overlooked," Lew continued, caught up in the need to tell the whole story. "With the Senate in disorder and the Federation on the brink of civil war, we were de-

termined to keep Darkover neutral. As it happened, we were right. The Federation withdrew, and we stayed out of your war."

"So you did it to protect Darkover, without considering the cost." Jeram looked thoughtful rather than angry.

Lew said, "I do not mean that I was justified, only that the cause seemed good at the time. I cannot excuse what I did to you. I wish I had the power to undo it, but as I have not, I can only ask your forgiveness. Under the honor code of the Comyn, the one wronged may demand restitution of the offender. What would you have of me? What can I do to make amends to you?"

You're asking
me? Jeram's startled thought rang in the air.

"Before you answer, Jeram, consider this." Silvana spoke quietly, yet with absolute command. "When you went into crisis for the second time, you very nearly died. Lew gave freely of his
laran
strength, heedless of any risk to himself."

"How could I have done anything else?" Lew wanted no credit, no thanks.

"You really…"Jeram's brows drew together, and a look of uncertainty passed over his face. "You really
believe
it, don't you? That you did a terrible thing?"

Heat rose to Lew's cheeks. The scars on forehead and upper lip, where Kadarin's rings had slashed him, burned. Somehow, he stopped himself from burying his face in his one good hand.

"I have done you injury," Lew said. "How else can I say it? I do not know how to repair the harm. That is why it is for you to say."

No one moved. Tension thickened the air. One of the small logs in the fireplace broke apart with a hush and a fall of ashes. Silvana turned her gaze from Lew to Jeram, her gray eyes almost luminous with intensity.

As the moment lengthened, Lew's heart sank. Surely, if Jeram were willing to accept his confession, if there were any possibility of amends or forgiveness, Jeram would have responded by now.

Father Conn was wrong. There is no hope. Not for me.

Even as the words passed through Lew's mind, they shed much of their former power. He had done everything he could to clear his conscience. He could not demand forgiveness from Jeram or anyone else.

Neither had he any right to judge. His only power was to let the matter rest.

In that moment, Lew felt a glimmering of compassion for the tormented man he had been. Perhaps the forgiveness he needed most must come from himself.

"All this is beside the point." Abruptly, Jeram got to his feet. "What's a few minutes of memory, anyway? You've found out who I am. Just arrest me and get it over with."

"Arrest you?" Silvana said.

"Turn me in," Jeram explained. "Report me to your law enforcement, to this Comyn Council of yours."

Lew stared, caught off-guard by Jeram's outburst. He had interpreted the Terran's silence as a rebuff. He had not considered the possibility that Jeram might have guilty secrets of his own.

Silvana drew herself up, slender and strong as tempered steel. "As Keeper of Nevarsin Tower, I am answerable to no man, certainly not a pack of Lowland
Hali'iym
. The Council has not yet grown so mighty that it can issue commands within the walls of my Tower. Nor will it, while I still draw breath."

Jeram was an off-worlder, Lew reminded himself, and could not appreciate the magnitude of his offense in questioning the decisions of a Keeper.

"I don't understand." Jeram turned to Lew. "You people have the strangest mixed-up priorities! All you can talk about is how you wiped out a few minutes of my memory! What about what
I did
—attempted murder?"

Murder
? Jeram was a soldier following the commands of his superiors. The men responsible for the ambush were dead or gone, recalled in ignominious haste. In any comparable Darkovan skirmish, the defeated troops would have been allowed to return home in honor.

"I cannot speak for the Council, any more than you can for the entire Federation," Lew said. "I speak only for myself and what lies between us."

"
Dom
Lewis is not the keeper of your conscience in this matter," Silvana pointed out, "and neither am I. If you have unresolved business with the Council, you must bring it before them. Lew has asked for my help in addressing his own concerns with you. Will you hear him and

allow him to discharge his burden of guilt? Or will you turn away, clinging to your bitterness?"

"I'm not…"
bitter
.

"Then
what are you
, Jeremiah Reed?" Silvana's words, resonant with all the authority of a Keeper, shivered through the air.

Brown eyes widened. "I don't know anymore."

"If you would find out," Silvana suggested, "you might begin by finding out what was done to you. I realize this requires an act of trust in permitting Lew to enter your mind again."

"Then what? I'll still have this
laran
business going on," Jeram said.

The resentment in the other man's voice startled Lew.
Laran
. The foundation on which the Comyn, and hence the Seven Domains, stood.
And this
Terranan
would throw his away
?

"I cannot remove your
laran,"
Silvana told Jeram, "not without risking permanent damage to your brain. You will have to make your peace with your talent and learn to master it."

"I was trained at a Tower," Lew told Jeram, "and I would be grateful for the chance to pass that knowledge on to you. It was my action that woke your talent, and it is therefore my responsibility to teach you how to use it wisely."

"I don't seem to have any choice." Jeram sounded reluctant but resigned. "It's said there's nothing so terrible as a devil in the dark. All right, then. Let's get this one into the sunlight."

Throughout the autumn, Jeram studied with Illona and the other teachers in the Tower. As he mastered his
laran
, he seemed to resent it less. He slowly integrated into the Tower community, although his strongest friendship was with Lew.

By steps, Lew guided Jeram through the restraints that had been set on his memories of Old North Road. The process was slow, both to protect Jeram's fragile mental balance and to give him time to master his new abilities. Silvana attended their early sessions, gradually shifting from participant to observer.

They sat together on many long nights, when their discussions ranged as widely as the far Hellers. Often they talked as they strolled along the streets of Nevarsin. Winter was fast approaching, and even

on sunny days, ice edged the wind and brought a ruddy hue to the faces of both men. All too soon, snowstorms would keep everyone indoors except for the most needful tasks. Lew and Jeram took advantage of every opportunity to stretch their legs in the open air, to explore the old cobbled streets and narrow winding lanes shadowed by ancient gray stone houses, to stop at a tavern or forge or bootmaker's shop.

"I don't understand why you fight with swords when you're capable of so much more," Jeram said on one such occasion, when they had spent an hour examining a display of beautifully forged knives and daggers.

"
Laran
weapons, you mean?" Lew asked.

"Yes, exactly!"

"We went down that road during the Ages of Chaos and very nearly destroyed ourselves," Lew said with a trace of grimness. "Only the Compact saved us, that and the fact that when you are linked telepath-ically, you feel your enemy's pain as your own."