The Forbidden Circle (71 page)

Damon’s hand clutched his own matrix as if for reassurance. “If he is carrying a modified matrix the relay screens in Arilinn and the other Towers will show it.”

“Fine,” Andrew said again. “How far is Arilinn from here? A tenday’s ride, or more?”

“It is simpler than that,” Callista told him. “There are relay screens here in the Old Tower of Comyn Castle. In time past, so they say, technicians could teleport themselves between Towers by use of the great screens. It isn’t done much anymore. But there are also monitor screens, attuned to those in the other Towers. Any mechanic can link into those and trace any licensed matrix on Darkover.” She hesitated. “I cannot . . . I have given back my oath.”

Damon was impatient with this technicality. Such a loss to the Towers, such a loss to Callista, but whatever Keeper or mechanic was now in charge of the Old Tower,
she
would observe the prohibition, and there was nothing to be done.

“Who keeps the Old Tower, Callista? I cannot believe that the Mother Ashara would receive us on such an errand.”

“No one within living memory has seen Ashara outside the Tower,” Callista said. “I think she could no longer leave it if she would, she is so old. I myself have never seen her, except in the screens, nor, I think, has even Leonie. But when last I heard, Margwenn Elhalyn was her under-Keeper; she will tell you what you want to know.”

“Margwenn was psi monitor at Arilinn when I was Third there,” Damon said. “She went from us to Hali; I did not know she had come here.” Technicians, mechanics, monitors were moved from Tower to Tower, as the need was greatest. If Margwenn Elhalyn was not precisely an old friend, at least she knew who he was and it saved lengthy explanations about what he wanted.

He had never been inside the Old Tower of Comyn Castle. Margwenn admitted him to the matrix chamber, a place of ancient screens and lattices, machinery whose very existence had been forgotten since the Ages of Chaos. Damon, his errand forgotten for a moment, stared at it in avid curiosity. Why had all this technology, the ancient science of Darkover, been allowed to sink into obscurity? Even at Arilinn he had not learned to use all these things. True, there were too few technicians and mechanics even to staff the relays which provided communications and generated essential energy for certain technologies, but even if matrix workers were no longer willing, in these self-indulgent days, to give up their lives and live guarded behind walls, surely
some
of these things could be done outside!

Strange heretical thoughts to be thinking in the very center of the ancient science. When their forefathers forbade that very thing, they must have had their reasons!

Margwenn Elhalyn was a slim fair-haired woman of unguessable age, though Damon thought she was a little older than he was himself. She had the cold with- drawnness, the almost hieratic decorum, of all Keepers. “The Mother Ashara cannot see you, her mind sojourns elsewhere much of the time in these days. How may I serve you, Damon?”

Damon hesitated, unwilling to explain his errand and charge Dezi, without proof, of what he suspected. Margwenn had not attended the Council, though she had every right to do so. Many technicians were not interested in politics. Damon had once felt that way himself, that his work was above such base considerations. Now he was not so sure.

Finally he said, “Some confusion has arisen about the whereabouts of certain matrices in the hands of the Alton clan, legitimately issued, but their fate uncertain. Are you familiar with Dezi Leynier, who was admitted to Arilinn for something under a year, some time ago?”

“Dezi?” she said without interest. “Some bastard of Lord Alton’s, wasn’t he? Yes, I remember. He was dismissed because he could not keep discipline, I heard.” She went to the monitor screen, standing motionless before the glassy surface. After a little time lights began to wink, deep inside it, and Damon, watching her face without attempting to follow her in thought, knew she was linked into the relay to Arilinn. Finally she said, “Evidently he has given up his matrix. It is in the hands of a Keeper, not inactivated, but at a very low level.”

In the hands of a Keeper.
Damon, who had himself lowered its level and put it into a locked and sealed box, metal-bound and tamperproof, understood that perfectly well.

Hands of a Keeper.
But any competent technician could do a Keeper’s work. Why should it be surrounded with taboo, ritual, superstitious reverence? Concealing his thoughts from Margwenn, he said, “Now can you check what has become of the matrix of Domenic Lanart?”

“I will try,” she said, “but I thought he was dead. His matrix would have died with him, probably.”

“I had thought so too,” Damon said, “but it was not found on his body. Is it possible that it is also in the hands of a Keeper?”

Margwenn shrugged. “That seems unlikely, although I suppose, knowing Domenic unlikely to use
laran
, she might have reclaimed it and modified it to another’s use, or to her own. Although most Keepers prefer to begin with a blank crystal. Where was he tested? Not at Arilinn, surely.”

“Neskaya, I think.”

Margwenn raised her eyebrows as she went to the screen. It took no telepathic subtlety to follow her thought:
At Neskaya they are likely to do anything.
At last Margwenn turned and said, “Your guess is right, it is in the hands of a Keeper, though it is not in Neskaya. It must have been modified and given to another. It did not die with Domenic, but is fully operative.”

And there it was, Damon thought, his heart sinking. A small thing for positive proof of a cold-blooded, fiendish murder.

Not premeditated. There was that small comfort. No one alive could have foreseen that Cathal would strike Domenic unconscious as they practiced. But a sudden temptation . . . and Domenic’s matrix survived him, to point unerringly to the one person who could have taken it from his body without himself being killed by it.

Gods above, what a waste! Had
Dom
Esteban been able to overcome his pride, admit to the somewhat shameful circumstances of Dezi’s begetting, had he been willing to acknowledge this gifted youngster, Dezi would never have come to this.

Damon thought, with wrenching empathy that the temptation must have been sudden, and irresistible. For a trained telepath being without a matrix was like being deaf, blind, mutilated, and the sight of the unconscious Domenic had spurred him on to murder. Murder of the one brother who had championed his right to be called brother, who had been his patron and friend.

“Damon, what ails you?” Margwenn was staring at him in amazement. “Are you ill, kinsman?”

He made some civil excuse, thanked her for her help, and went away. She would know soon enough. Zandru’s hells, there would be no way to hide this! All the Comyn would soon know, and everyone in Thendara! What scandal for the Altons!

Back in their rooms, his drawn face told Ellemir the truth at once. “It’s true, then. Merciful Avarra, what will this do to our father? He loved Dezi. Domenic loved him too.”

“I wish I could spare him the knowledge,” Damon said wretchedly. “You know why I cannot, Elli.”

Callista said, “When Father knows the truth, there will be another murder, that is sure!”

“He loves the boy, he spared him before,” Andrew protested. Callista pressed her lips tightly together.

“True. But when I was a little girl Father had a favorite hound. He had reared it by hand from a puppy and it slept on his bed at night, and lay at his feet in the Great Hall. When it grew to be an old dog, however, it became vicious. It took to killing animals in the yards, and once it bit Dorian and drew blood. The
coridom
said it must be destroyed, but he knew how Father loved the old dog, and offered to have it quietly made away with. But Father said, ‘No, this is my affair.’ He went out into the stables, called the brute to him, and when it came he broke its neck with his own hands.” She was silent, thinking of how her Father had cried afterward, the only time she ever saw him weep, except when Coryn died.

But he did not ever shrink from doing what he must.

Damon knew she was right. He might have preferred to spare his father-in-law, but Esteban Lanart was Lord Alton, with wardship, even to life and death, over every man, woman, and child in the Alton Domains. He had never dealt out justice unfairly, but he had never failed to deal it out.

“Come,” he said to Andrew, “we must lay it before him.” But when Callista rose to follow them, he shook his head.

“
Breda
, this is an affair for men.”

She turned pale with anger. “You dare speak so to me, Damon? Domenic was my brother, so is Dezi. I am an Alton!”

“And I,” said Ellemir, “and my child is next heir after Valdir!”

As they turned to the door, Damon found a snatch of song running in his head, incongruous, with a sweet, mournful memory. After a moment he identified it as the song Callista had begun to sing, and had been rebuked:

Ellemir had spoken more truly than she knew: It was ill-luck for a sister to sing that song in a brother’s hearing. But, looking at the women, Damon thought that like the sister in the old ballad, who had condemned the brotherslayer to outlawry, they would not shrink from the sentence.

It was only a few steps into another part of the suite, but to Damon it seemed a long journey, across a gulf of misery, before they stood before
Dom
Esteban, who looked at them in bewilderment.

“What means this? Why are you all so solemn? Callista, what is wrong with you,
chiya
? Elli, have you been crying?”

“Father,” said Callista, white as death, “where is Valdir? And is Dezi near?”

“They are together, I hope. I know you have a grudge against him, Damon,” he said, “but after all, the lad has right on his side. I should have done years ago what I propose to do now. He is not old enough to be regent of the Domain, of course, or Valdir’s guardian, the idea is preposterous, but once acknowledged he will see reason. And then he will be such a brother to Valdir as he was to my poor Domenic.”

“Father,” Ellemir said in a low voice, “that is what we fear.”

He turned to her in anger. “I thought you, at least, would show a sister’s forebearance, Ellemir!” Then he met the eyes of Damon and Andrew, fixed steadily on him. He looked from one to the other and back again, in growing distress and annoyance.

“How dare you!” Then, impatiently, he reached out for contact, read directly from them what they knew. Damon felt the knowledge sink into the old man’s mind in one great surge of pain. It was like death, a blinding moment of physical agony. He felt the old man’s last thought:
My heart, my heart is surely breaking. I thought that was only an idle word, but I feel it there
, before he slipped into merciful unconsciousness. Andrew, moving swiftly, caught the limp body in his arms as he pitched out of his wheeled chair.

Too shocked to think clearly, he laid him on his bed. Damon was still paralyzed with the, backlash of the Alton lord’s pain.

“I think he’s dead,” Andrew said, shocked, but Callista came and felt his pulse, laid her ear briefly against his chest. “No, the heart still beats. Quickly, Ellemir! Run and fetch Ferrika, she is nearest, but one of you men must go down to the Guard Hall and search for Master Nicol.”

She waited beside her father, remembering that Ferrika had warned her about his weakening heart. When the woman came, she confirmed Callista’s fear.

“Something has gone wrong in the heart, Callista.” In her sympathy she forgot the formal “my lady,” remembering that they had played together as children. “He has had too many shocks to endure.” She brought stimulant drugs and when Master Nicol came, between them they managed to get a dose into him.

“It’s touch and go,” the hospital officer warned. “He might die at any moment, or linger like this till Midsummer. Has he had a shock? With respect, Lord Damon, he should have been guarded from the slightest stress or bad news.”

Damon felt like demanding how do you guard a telepath against evil news. But Master Nicol was doing his best, and he would have had no more answer than Damon himself.

“We will do what we can, Lord Damon, but for now . . . it is fortunate he had already chosen you regent.”

It was like a flood of ice water. He was regent of Alton, with wardship and sovereignty over the Domain, till Valdir was declared a man.

Regent. With power of life and death.

No, he thought, flinching with revulsion. It was too much. He did not want it.

But looking down at the stricken old man, he knew that duty lay on him. Confronted with proof of Dezi’s treachery, the Alton lord would have acted unflinchingly to protect the children, young boy and unborn babe, who were the next heirs to. Alton. As Damon must act. . . .

When Dezi came back with Valdir, he found them all waiting for him.

“Valdir,” said Ellemir gently, “our father lies very ill. Go and find Ferrika and ask news of him.” To their great relief, the child ran off at once, and Dezi stood waiting, defiant.

“So now you have your will, Damon. You are regent of Alton. Or are you? I wonder.”

Damon found his voice. “I am warned. Dezi. You cannot serve me as you served Domenic. As regent of Alton I demand that you give up to me the matrix you stole from Domenic’s body.”

He saw comprehension sweep over Dezi’s face. Then, to Damon’s horror, he laughed. Damon thought he had never heard a sound so shocking as that laughter.

“Come and take it, you Ridenow half-man,” he taunted. “You will not find it so easy this time! You could not take me that way now, even with your Nest about you!” Damon flinched at the ancient obscenity, for the women’s sake. “Come, I called your challenge in Council, let us have it here and now! Which of us is to be regent of Alton? Have you that much strength? Half monk, half eunuch, they call you!”