The Alton Gift (44 page)

Jeram sent word to Domenic and then returned to Comyn Tower to ask Laurinda to reconvene the circle. She received him in the kitchen, of all places. When he entered, she was kneading bread on a floury work table, rhythmically folding and pushing the elastic dough. With her hair tied back under a gaily striped kerchief, her sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and her forehead glistening with sweat, she looked like a peasant wife, not the Keeper of Dalereuth Tower.

"Oh, it's you," she said. "Sit down, but don't talk to me until I've got this settled."

Laurinda smoothed the dough into a huge earthenware bowl, scraped the table surface clean, rinsed her hands, and sat down facing him. "There. I feel almost human again. I take it from your expression and the jubilation you're practically shouting mentally, you have good news."

"The serum worked better than we hoped!" he told her. "How soon can we have more?"

"That depends," she said heavily, wiping her face with her kerchief, "on how much you need."

An icy trickle shot down Jeram's spine. "We need enough to treat everyone who's sick. I thought that was understood." He gave her Darius-Mikhail's current figures. "We'll also need to begin a prophylactic program, beginning with health care workers. Of course," he went on, trying to sound encouraging, "distribution will take time. We won't need it all at once."

Laurinda shook her head. "Your heart is good, but you do not understand what you are asking. A circle of Keepers, the most powerful minds on Darkover, took an entire session to produce what we gave you."

"Which was enough for a dozen patients," Jeram said.

"That is all we can do at any one time.
Laran
work is exhausting on both physical and psychic levels. It will take us days to regain enough strength to do the work." Her expression gentled. "We will make more serum for you, do not fear."

"Just not at once, or any greater quantity?"

Laurinda's gaze flickered, and in that brief instant, Jeram caught her own frustration. No wonder she'd been punching the bread dough.

We've come so close! There must be another way, something else we can do!

"You are all Keepers," Jeram said desperately. "Could you not each head up a circle, so that we have four—or five, if Illona can do the work—groups working on it? What about asking the other Towers to help?"

"Even if that were possible, the work would take far longer, so there would be no advantage in dividing our forces," Laurinda said. "As it is, there are not enough circle workers in Thendara, perhaps in all the Domains, to do what you ask. Once, perhaps, but now we are few and scattered."

Jeram gulped, remembering how appalled Lew and then Silvana had been by his desire to rid himself of his own
laran
.

"What are we to do then?" he cried. "Let people die, when we know how to save them?"

"I am more sorry than I can say," Laurinda said, "but we can help no one if we burn ourselves out."

Jeram had once caught the edge of a blaster beam. Sick and shaken, he had been confined to a rejuvenation tank while skin and nerve and muscle healed. Now he felt as if he had been shot full in the belly. Numbly, he walked from Comyn Tower, across the courtyard, through the Castle gates and toward the city beyond. Someone called out to him, but he had not the will or voice to respond.

Until now, he had thought the worst thing would be to accomplish nothing, to watch the people he loved and the planet he called home die, helpless to save them. But this was far, far worse.

Some will live, and some will die. Who will decide?

The Council? Would the Comyn seize the tiny supply of serum for themselves? No, he could not believe that. He knew Lew and Domenic and Danilo—yes, and Marguerida—too well to believe they would act in such a selfish way.

Me? Will I be the one to deal out life or death?

He walked along the streets, through swirls of activity. Even the fear of the plague could not keep everyone inside. Life must be lived, and Darkover's summer was all too brief. In a market square, half the stalls stood empty, but others were laden with food and leather goods, finely worked knives, harnesses, beaded scarves, and ribbons. A musician sang while another strummed a guitar and a little girl danced. Down an alley, two ragged boys played with hoops and sticks. Through it all, Jeram moved like a ghost.

His feet carried him to the entrance of the Terran Base. I'
m the one with the training. It's up to me to find another way. There must be something else
...

In the laboratory, his crew rushed to meet him. They looked edgy and exhausted, worn thin with worry and relentless work. Their faces fell when they saw his expression.

"What's the matter?" Ethan asked.

"What more can go wrong?" said someone else.

"At the maximum rate the Keepers' circle can produce the serum, it will be only a trickle," Jeram said. "We'll make more, of course, but it will be too little, too late."

Ethan looked away, chewing on his lower lip. "My cousin, Geremy, is sick. We won't have the serum in time for him, will we?"

"I don't know-—" Jeram bit off the words. There were a few more doses left from the batch the circle had made. They'd used three from the dozen the Keepers had made. That left nine doses. He could eke the serum out to ten if he dared to dilute it. If he took one dose for Ethan's cousin, would it be stealing? Who would die then, who might have lived?

How will we decide?

"Jeram, I'd like to speak with you."

Lost in his own tortured thoughts, Jeram had not seen Marguerida

enter the laboratory. A quality like steel energized her. Ethan and the others stepped back to let her pass. She moved briskly between the tables of equipment.

"I have an idea, a way around the production problem," she said, "but we'll have to clear the lab. I can't take any chances."

Her plan sounded mysterious and somewhat sinister to Jeram, but that could be his own bone-deep weariness speaking. Marguerida's last idea, he reminded himself, had been a good one. Within short order, she tactfully but firmly ejected everyone but the two of them. She managed to give the rest of the team important tasks elsewhere, so there were no grumbles.

"I'll need a work space with absolute privacy," she said briskly, "a sample—either the original serum or the one the circle made—and the protein substrate solution. As much of it as you've got."

Surely she'd gone mad, Jeram thought. The team had indeed prepared quantities of the amino acid building blocks ready to be turned into serum. The circle of Keepers had worked with a soupy mixture, the ingredients dissolved in a sterile solution. Jeram loaded the storage vat on a cart, wheeled it into the laboratory, and assembled the rest of the supplies Marguerida asked for, including a small sample of Ulm's immune serum. At her direction, he placed a chair between the vat and the work table.

After making sure everything was within easy reach, Marguerida nodded in satisfaction. "You'd better go, too."

Suspicion curdled inside Jeram. She had strong
laran
, but as far as he knew, no single person could act as a circle. Wasn't it dangerous to work without a monitor? He asked what she proposed to do.

"You're going to have to trust me on this. And no, I've never done it before, but I don't want to risk anything happening to you." She fixed him with her tiger-bright gaze. "Now go."

Jeram walked to the door and stepped through, but he did not close it completely. He left a crack open and paused just outside, where she would not be able to see him. The only sound from the laboratory interior was her breathing, quick and light.

He leaned toward the crack, peering through. Marguerida bent over the vat, as if trying to penetrate its secrets or, by force of will, to transform it into the life-saving serum.

A
tracery of lightning crackled on the inside of Jeram's skull. Mar-guerida was using her
laran
.

She was planning something dangerous, or she would not be doing it secretly. Any properly trained monitor would certainly halt the operation right now.

Did she know what she was doing? Did she realize the risk?

Jeram put one hand on the door and then drew back. His own life had been a series of risks, everything from fleeing into the Hellers when the last Federation ship departed, to deciding to trust Silvana and Illona and then Lew, to making his confession to the Council.

The plague had eliminated safe, tested options. Marguerida, with her husband, had saved the Council once, at the Battle of Old North Road. If there was even a remote chance she could succeed now, he had no right to interfere. The risk was hers to take.

Slowly, without taking her eyes off the vat, Marguerida removed her glove. The skin on the back of her hand looked ordinary enough, pale from having been covered for so long. Then she raised her hand and held it over the vat. Jeram discarded all notion of it being
ordinary
.

Imprinted on her palm, melded to her flesh, something glowed blue and white like a living starstone. That was impossible—how could the psychoactive crystal be
inside
her hand? And yet, there it was, and with each passing moment, it pulsed more brightly.

Jeram watched, unable to tear his gaze away and yet filled with an ever-increasing sense of dread. He had seen the work of Marguerida's matrixed hand before, under very different circumstances.

…
the Old North Road, the caravan of funeral carriages and men on horseback. Shouts, horses neighing, wheeling. Swords raised
…

…
a woman with hair like aflame and golden eyes, lifting her hand.
. .
her hand a starburst of eye-searing brilliance
…

He had thought, in that wild moment before the trees caught fire and men fell screaming to the muddy earth, that she held a miniature sun, a hand-sized nuclear device, far beyond the Federation's technology.

She did not hold the white-hot sphere, she
was
it. Even across the room and behind the metal and duraplas door, Jeram felt her power. Through his own
laran
, he experienced her ability to perceive and manipulate molecules.

Time lost meaning for Jeram, except for the gradual awareness that

he was no longer an observer. Unconsciously, his mind slipped into rapport with hers. Although he did not know how, he began sending her mental energy. She took it, spun it together with her own
laran
, and funneled it through the imprint on her palm.

Brightness surged through their linked minds. Amino acids shifted, aligned, bonded. Patterns emerged, mirroring those in his memory. From his work with Laurinda and the others, Jeram recognized the molecules forming in the center of the vat. Working alone, this single woman had created the same amount of immune serum as had an entire circle of Keepers.

A shimmer swept through the dissolved substrate. At first, Jeram sensed it as a ripple in a still pond. Then the waves
shifted
. A reverberation emerged, initially subtle, then building in intensity. At last, it filled the entire container of solution. Here and there, proteins vibrated out of harmony, sharp motes of dissonance. He felt her stretch farther and deeper to eliminate impurities and inactive molecules.

Somehow, beyond all possibility, Marguerida was using the matrix and the immense force of her mind to convert the entire vat to immune serum. Jeram feared she would bleed herself dry, but he dared not interrupt her concentration. All he could do was pour out his own energy through her mind, as best he could.

Eventually, the flow of power faltered. The blue-white radiance on Marguerida's palm dimmed, shifting to lavender, then darkening to blood-red.

Physical awareness returned to Jeram. He was breathing hard and his pulse thundered in his throat. Trembling, he steadied himself against the doorframe. A sound came from within the room, the thud of a falling body.

Heedless of his own exhaustion, Jeram darted into the laboratory. Marguerida lay in a graceless sprawl on the floor. Her skin had turned the color of ashes and she did not seem to be breathing.

Domenic stood upon a balcony overlooking the garden courtyard of Comyn Castle and the city beyond. Late afternoon sun slanted across the paving stones, the benches and arbors, the beds of ornamental herbs. The flowers had faded, and the first dry leaves lay in rumpled piles. By tomorrow, the gardeners would have raked them up, only to have even more tumble to the ground. The brief, glorious Darkovan summer was drawing to a close.

He thought how little had been accomplished this season, with the interruption of the trailmen's fever, and yet how much. The alliances born of dire necessity were already evolving. He was beginning to see a way through the current crisis. Only this morning, he had received word that Jeram's serum worked. Now the problem was to make enough for everyone, but Domenic felt hopeful that, too, would be solved. Sooner or later, his father would recover…

When Domenic's thoughts turned to the dilemma of his feelings for Illona and Alanna, however, he could see no solution.

Behind him, a door opened. As if summoned by his thoughts, Illona glided into the room. His heart brightened at the sight of her. They had each been so occupied with their respective tasks this last

tenday that he had seen her but little. She looked thinner and more intense.

"Domenic,
carlo mio
, there is no easy way to say this. I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news once again. Something terrible has happened to your mother."

For a long moment, Domenic could not speak. His heart leaped in his throat. For all his life, Marguerida had been a tower of strength, a steady, constant presence, endlessly resourceful, in turns opinionated and kind, but never ill…

Never ill
…

Somehow, he forced his fear into words. "Has—has she contracted trailmen's fever?"

"No, nothing like that. Please, sit down, and I will explain. You know that Jeram's serum has proven effective?"

"Yes, he told me so, himself." Domenic lowered himself to the stone bench and Illona sat beside him.

Was there some unanticipated difficulty, some questionable side effect? Had Mother, in her typical impetuous manner, tried it on herself?

Illona glanced at him, startled. "No, it seems to be safe. The patients we gave it to are recovering. But the Keepers' circle can make only a small amount of it at a time, and only slowly. You know your mother—"

"She would find some way, not counting the risk to herself. What did she do?"

"
Domna
Marguerida used her
laran
—her shadow matrix, that is—to produce a massive amount of serum. Unmonitored, she did the work of an entire circle a thousand times over. Aldones only knows how she generated that much power. It's possible she reached through the shadow matrix into the Overworld."

The Overworld
… Domenic shivered.

"One thing is certain," Illona went on. "Her accomplishment was not without cost. Jeram found her, unconscious and not breathing, beside the vat of transformed serum."

"Is she—Did she—"

Illona took his hands in hers. Her touch, added to their
laran
bond, calmed him.

She is alive, that is the important thing, but in a strange state, neither sleeping

nor awake nor in an ordinary coma. These we could deal with. None of us can reach her mind, not even
Domna
Istvana
.

"What can I do? Where is she?"

"We took her to Mikhail's chamber, hoping that being near him would bring her ease." From Illona's expression, Domenic understood this had made no visible difference. "As for what you can do, that is why I am here, to bring you to her. Sometimes, love finds a way when skill cannot."

Domenic and Illona hurried down the interior corridor and down a flight of stairs, through the labyrinth of the Castle.

"Does my grandfather know?" Domenic asked, as they crossed the inner courtyard, heading for the Tower.

"He is with her even now."

"And my brother and sister?"

The news would strike both of them hard, but Yllana would be more deeply affected. She had rallied after Mikhail's injuries in part because of Marguerida's steady presence. What would she do now, how would she manage, when Marguerida was stricken? At least, she would have the loving support of Katherine and Hermes.

Domenic was less concerned for his brother. Rory loved both their parents, but he had made a life and home for himself in the City Guards. He had the discipline of his work, and Niall, to sustain him.

"Istvana decided not to send word to them yet," Illona said, clearly uneasy, "just you and
Dom
Lewis. They will have to be told soon, but we are still evaluating your mother's condition. Until we know more about what happened to her and her prospects for recovery, the fewer people who know, the better. We cannot risk premature news generating wild rumors that the serum is tainted."

"We have to tell them!" Domenic stormed. "We can't keep something like this secret, not about their own mother!"

Illona flinched and instantly, Domenic regretted his hot words. The decision was not hers to make. Nor was it Istvana's or Laurinda's, or even Grandfather Lew's.

No, it's mine.

Together, they rushed up the stairs of Comyn Tower. Domenic burst into the chamber where his parents lay, Illona on his heels. He had visited his father a number of times since the duel, although not

nearly as often as his mother had. On those occasions, he had been struck with a sense of light and stillness, the faint shimmer of the
laran
field that preserved Mikhail's life. Now the room seemed narrow and dark. The air tasted of unshed tears.

Marguerida lay on a second bed, her upper body propped on pillows and wrapped in her favorite knitted shawl, the one with intertwined cable stitches. Lew and Istvana attended her. The Keeper looked grim but resolved; her uncovered starstone shone like a piece of the sun at her throat.

Domenic bent over his mother. Her cheeks had gone pasty pale. No hint of color brightened her lips. The corners of her mouth were drawn down. Her brows tensed, creating an expression of intense concentration or of great pain. Behind her closed lids, her eyes jerked from side to side. Her breathing was irregular, a few shallow pants followed by a pause and a deep inhalation, as if she were gathering herself for battle.

Mother! I'm here
—
Domenic, jour Nico
.

Marguerida's lips parted, as if she would speak, but only a gasp passed them. She opened her eyes, their gold now faded, unseeing, and then closed them again. The fingers of her right hand clenched and straightened. Her left hand, bound with bandages, lay motionless, as if paralyzed.

Mother!

Domenic drew back, dazed. Never in his life had his mother failed to respond when he called. When he was lost in the Overworld, searching for Alanna, she had known. With her mind, she had found him.

In his memory, a maelstrom of blue-white energy buffeted him, uprooted him, swallowed him up. He had seen no way through the storm. The blasts of chaotic
laran
had shredded away his very sense of self. Hope had faded with every passing moment. He remembered thinking what a fool he'd been, that all was lost.

Then he had heard his mother's mental voice, clear and resonant as a summoning trumpet. "
Come back
!" she had called. "
Come back to me
!"

There was no place on Darkover or beyond
, he had thought,
that she could not reach, nothing she would not do, to save the ones she loved
.

How could he do any less for her?

Something roused at the back of Domenic's mind, a pressure, a

gathering of raw power, a melding of desperation and deep, instinct-driven impulse.

MOTHER, WHERE ARE YOU? ANSWER ME!

"Domenic, stop!" Grandfather Lew's voice broke through Domenic's mental summons.

The room snapped back into focus. Domenic tasted shock and adrenaline in the air. Istvana clutched her starstone and wavered on her seat, her face ashen. Gently, Illona took Domenic's hands and guided him from the bedside to a chair. Tears glimmered on her cheeks.

Lew said, his voice even more hoarse and distorted than usual, "You cannot reach her that way. None of us can. We've all tried."

"I don't understand," Domenic said. "She's just… gone."

Where can we look for help? We can't just give up
! Domenic cried.

We will not abandon her
, Illona thought.

The door opened. Linnea Storn entered and silently joined them. Her hair, soft auburn curls shot with silver, was dressed in a simple style, and she wore the unadorned gray robe of a Tower
leronis
. Domenic did not know her well; as consort to Regis Hastur, she had always been kind, if distant, to him. Before she left Thendara for Ar-ilinn Tower, he had not known that she was once a Keeper.

Domenic turned back to Istvana. "Exactly what is the matter with my mother?"

Istvana gathered herself. "You know that she used her shadow matrix to transform the serum?"

"Yes, Illona told me. What difference does that make? I assume that Mother used it as one uses a starstone, to amplify her natural psychic energies."

"That much is true, although Marguerida never needed a starstone because of the embedded matrix. In fact, the shadow matrix is likely responsible for her extreme sensitivity to the matrix screens at Arilinn, which prevented her from working in a circle. It's quite a powerful device, but it is not the same as a natural starstone. We are not sure… perhaps the matrix provided more raw power than her channels could sustain."

"Do you mean this is some kind of
laran
overload? Like threshold sickness?" Domenic said. "We know how to treat that, don't we?"

Istvana shook her head. "No,
not like
threshold sickness. That much,

we can be sure of. We cannot tell, however, whether generating and controlling so much power burned out the
laran
centers of her mind. That would be terrible indeed."

"I don't care if she keeps her
laran
or not!" Domenic exclaimed. "I want my mother back, here among us!"

An awkward pause followed. Illona said gently, "If she has lost her
laran
, and what is wrong with her is psychic, not physical, we may not be able to reach her mind."

During the discussion, Linnea shook her head minutely. "There may be another cause. Istvana disagrees with me, but the possibility must be explored."

"With all respect, we've been through this before," Istvana said. "The matter was laid to rest years ago."

"I know from my own experience that being controlled by
laran
is a thing not easily erased from the mind," Lew said.

At Domenic's bitten-off exclamation, Linnea said, "Marguerida entered this state after she drew unimaginable power through the shadow matrix. I believe the shadow matrix may be more than it seems. For one thing, it did not come to her in the usual way, like an unkeyed starstone. She obtained it in the Overwork!, from a Tower erected there by Ashara. It was created and tuned to Ashara's mental vibration long before it ever came to Marguerida."

That much was true. Over the years, Marguerida had drawn upon the immense power of the shadow matrix, but she confessed she had never fully understood its nature.

"For that reason," Linnea went on, "and because Ashara had overshadowed Marguerida from the time she was a small child, the embedded matrix may yet retain the resonance of Ashara's personality."

A tendril of ice crept down Domenic's spine. Since childhood, he had heard tales of that ancient
leronis
, who prolonged her existence by dominating the minds of generations of Keepers. Marguerida had told Domenic a little about that terrible psychic struggle in the Overworld. In her attempt to free herself from the disembodied spirit of the ancient Keeper, she had seized the keystone from the astral Tower of Mirrors, the stone that had preserved the strongest presence of Ashara, the stone that now glimmered in the flesh of Marguerida's left hand.

"Has Ashara come to life again, through my mother?" Domenic asked.

"Not yet, may all the gods be praised," Linnea said. "Marguerida has considerable strength of will. She would never permit that monstrous entity to come back into the world, not if she could prevent it. If I am correct, however, the tainted crystal is even now draining her life force, and we have no way to protect her."

Linnea lifted Marguerida's left hand and unwrapped the bandages. When he saw the matrix embedded in Marguerida's palm, Domenic's courage almost failed him. No longer pale blue-white, the pattern pulsed with the color of freshly spilled blood. It seemed to have taken on a life of its own. He wondered what lurked behind those shifting crimson facets.

Feeling sick, Domenic tore his glance away from the crimson matrix. Whether Linnea was correct or whether the crystalline pattern had turned red for some other reason, one fact remained. Cut off from the animating power of her spirit, Marguerida's body would in time wither and die. The more time passed, the less chance she had of ever returning.