The Shadow Matrix (64 page)

record of him in present day Darkover, nor of this Margarethe of Windhaven. He had

never even heard of Windhaven, but suspected it might be somewhere in the Hellers.

Amalie had said something about that Mikhal—that he had died in the dungeons of

Storn. Still, he wished he knew the story of that man and

that woman, if only to prevent himself from making too many mistakes.

Then he felt another tug at his heart, the link that had formed in the Tower. Varzil, if it

was indeed he, was urging him along. They must get going. Mikhail knew that there

was not a great deal of time left, though he could not guess how or why. He had to

accept it as real, on faith. It was hard to do, wearing away at his feeble confidence, to

go forward on a feeling alone.

Mik, we can't just leave him with any memory of us! It is dangerous for us, and for

him, too. It wouldn't be fair! If he goes to some inn
—
are there inns now?
—
and gets

tipsy and starts saying that he met us, the tale will get out, and people will begin to

look for us. That, I think, is the last thing we need.

Yes, you are right. Go ahead
—
tell him to forget this meeting!

Me! You're right, of course. Damn the Voice, the Alton Gift, and Varzil along with it!

Marguerida closed her golden eyes for a moment, and Mikhail could feel the distaste in

her for what she was about to do. Then she looked at Robard, took a sharp breath and

said, "You will forget everything after you set out today. We are not here, and you

never met us! You will go to your destination and remember only an uneventful ride

beside the lake."

Robard MacDenis did not move. Then his face went slack, his eyes glazed, and he

seemed to look right through them. He clucked to his horse, gave the ancient animal a

gentle kick, and rode past them as if they did not exist.

Mikhail and Marguerida waited until the sound of horse and rider was lost in the mist.

The expression on her face made him want to hug her, hold her, tell her she would

never have to interfere again. He knew that using the Voice made her feel defiled and

filthy, and there was nothing he could do about it. She had done no harm, but he knew

that it made no difference to her.

He dared not attempt to comfort her either, for she was seething with rage, barely

controlling her feelings. He knew her Well enough to be sure she would snap and snarl

at him if he tried. Mikhail sighed. She would have to work it out herself, but he pitied

her for the pain she was suffering.

He reined his roan forward, and they continued through the mist, moving steadily

toward a goal he could not see, but only feel.

Mikhail urged his horse onward, and Marguerida copied his movements. The eerie

silence grew as they rode, and neither of them had the energy to break it. It was a

terrible feeling, an oppression from the earth itself, and all he could hope was that it

would be better somewhere ahead.

26

It was close to midday when Mikhail finally turned his horse away from the shores of

the Lake and headed north, following a thread of energy like a magnet that ran from

his heart and drew him along. It was not as powerful as the calling had been, but he

had a sense of urgency all the same.

Marguerida had barely spoken since their encounter with Robard MacDenis. He could

not tell if she was too angry or simply too exhausted. By his own reckoning, they had

been riding for nearly six hours, three of them racing from Hali, without a real rest.

They rode through a tract of land which was less devastated than that around the

Tower. There were things growing, some familiar plants and trees, and here and there a

bird gave call. A small animal darted across the trail before them. All he saw was a

flash of brown fur and dark eyes, gone before he could even think of catching it.

Mikhail had a great sense of relief. He had begun to believe the entire countryside was

barren. The sight of the familiar plants— pale green shoots of wild millet and the blue

flowers of flax—was immensely reassuring.

Mikhail could sense Marguerida's mood begin to lighten. There was a light breeze,

smelling of damp earth and growing things, and the sun was warm on their backs. He

could see some clouds coming in from the north, and knew it would probably rain by

nightfall. They must find food and shelter by then. His belly had given up complaining,

and although he was hungry, it was not uppermost in his mind. All he could really

think about was reaching the destination he was sure awaited them.

"Do you have any idea where we are going, or are you just following your nose, Mik?"

"I have a sense where we are headed, Marguerida, but no more than that."

"Good. I hope that wherever it is, there is something to eat. Is it far?"

"I have no idea, and can't guess. Look, I am really sorry that you had to ..."

"Don't apologize, Mik. It had to be done, and even

though I hated it, I am glad that at least I have sufficient

training now to control the command voice. If this had

happened before I went to Neskaya, I could just as easily

have killed both Amalie and that nice old man. Or left

them witless. It just reminds me of how I was overshadowed. That bothers me most."

?

"I don't follow you."

"Don't you see that what the voice of command does, in a sense, is overshadow the

other person temporarily. I mean, that is essentially what I did to little Donal last

summer; I overshadowed his mind and sent him off to the over-world. There are,

according to Istvana, several ways to cause overshadowing, but the Voice is the fastest,

simplest, and most efficient." She fell silent for a minute. "The worst part, for me, is

that it gets easier every time I do it. I can see how it could become so easy that I might

be tempted to do it whether I needed to or not. Which, I suspect, is precisely what

happened to
her.
She got accustomed to having her will obeyed, and then . . . addicted,

perhaps? At least, when I was meddling with Amalie's mind back there, I sensed that

when Ashara was still at Hali, she just ordered everyone around, without any sense of

whether it was right or wrong. She lost something ... I don't know what. And I almost

think I need to know what, so I won't follow in her footsteps inadvertently."

"She was the first female Keeper, as far as we know, Marguerida. And, I think, she was

the one who instituted the practice of Keepers remaining celibate. Maybe what she lost

was any chance to be a woman, to love and have children."

"Oh, please!" Her voice was a little shrill, irritated and brusque. "You sound like

Ariel!" Margaret quieted, thinking. "I will give her this—her timing was

extraordinary," she added. She gave a sudden bark of laughter, very like Lew Alton's,

but it lacked any real humor. "You could be

right, though, that the struggle to become a Keeper made her ruthless. Why do you

suspect . . .?"

"Leonie Hastur, who was the last virginal Keeper at Arilinn, was, by all accounts I

have heard, a very sad woman. There is a memoir at Armida, that Damon Ridenow

wrote in his old age, that I read some of once. It is painful reading, because he felt a lot

of guilt for doing what he did, and most of it was for how much Leonie, whom he

adored, was damaged by the way we did things back then."

"I never knew he wrote anything except the journal I read while I was at Arilinn. That

did not have much in it that was personal. Uncle Jeff let me have a look at it, and I

found it interesting, but not very lively. I never guessed there was anything more. Jeff

never mentioned it."

"No, he wouldn't. The text at Arilinn is public stuff, because it deals with Damon's

discoveries about the nature of matrices—though I would give a lot to see what he

would have made of yours, dearest. The memoir we have at Armida is quite different. I

don't know why he wrote it, or for whom, other than himself. I found it quite by

accident, in the library, stuck between a stud book from Kennard Alton's time and a

Terran geography book that I suppose Andrew Carr left there. It had no printing on the

spine or anything, just a plain volume of pages, with Damon's cramped hand in it. I

read it, or most of it, and then I showed it to Liriel. She has it in her lair at Armida,

with the rest of her treasures. When we return, ask her about it." As he spoke these

words, Mikhail felt chilled. What if they never got back?

Mikhail knew she was thinking the same thing, but she only asked, "What did he say

about Leonie Hastur?"

"Let me think. He felt that she was denied the opportunity to be all that she could have

been, that she never had a choice about being anything except a
leronis,
because she

started so very young. Even today we still have a tendency to think of
laran
first and

people second, you know."

"All too well, Mik, all too well." There was a bitterness in her words that did not

escape him. "I encountered it at Arilinn and I hated it. Sometimes it was as if the only

thing that "mattered about me was that I had the Alton Gift—as if nothing I had done

or might do was important except that one thing. It made me feel like a footstool!"

In spite of the seriousness of her tone, he found himself laughing. He saw her frown,

then joined in. "You are a very poor footstool, Marguerida. Why did you choose that

particular piece of furniture?"

She thought for a moment. "Why, because a footstool has feet, but it does not walk, I

suppose. It just remains in its place and lets people
use
it! It never tosses off someone

with muddy boots, or smelly feet. And because it is an object, which is how I felt most

of the mercifully brief time I was there. I was an object of curiosity and envy, and

never, never was I a person with my own ideas or ambitions. That is probably

overstating it by a lot, but that is how I felt."

"Hobbled?"

"Absolutely! My choices seemed limited to either remaining in a Tower for the rest of

my life, or marrying and devoting my life to my offspring, in order to preserve the

Alton Gift and whatever else I might have lurking in my genes. I started feeling I

wasn't really human any longer, but just a vehicle for conveying
laran."

"And at Neskaya?"

"Istvana is a very subversive woman." Marguerida caught his look of surprise.

"Odd choice of words."

"I cannot think of any better description. She does not expect everyone to do exactly

what she tells them, and she had some ideas of her own that would probably shock the

people at Arilinn. I don't really have enough data to say more than that. I just know that

Neskaya and Arilinn are worlds apart."

"Can you give me an example." He was fascinated, and glad for something other to

concentrate on than the persistent worry at the back of his mind. *

"Istvana encourages innovation and discussion. Can you imagine Camilla MacRoss

asking her charges to talk to her about their studies?"

"No, I can't."

"There were a lot of discussions, like the ones I had when I was at University, about all

sorts of things. There was one, I remember, that went on for three consecutive nights,

between me, Caitlin Leynier, and Baird Beltran, about the ethics of telepathy. We never

came to any conclu-

sions, but we really thrashed out the problem. One night Beltran took the position that

any form of mental exchange was a violation—he likes to tackle really extreme ideas

— of privacy, even if both persons agreed to communicate! And it gave me a lot to

think about, since the Alton Gift has a strong element of coercion in it."

"How could he defend that?" Mikhail was curious, but a little stunned. What sort of

Tower was Istvana running up there, anyhow? He realized that, until he encountered

Emelda, he had just assumed that the ethics of
laran
were quite simple and

straightforward. He felt more than a little chagrined by his own innocence and naiveté.

"By arguing that no one knows his own mind well enough to give informed consent to

telepathy. He said that there is always a degree of coercion, either hidden or revealed,

in it. And what was the most interesting element of the exchange was that part of it was

spoken, but much, of it was not. Caitlin and I agreed he had really made us examine all

our ideas about
laran."

Mikhail had a momentary stab of jealousy. He had never met the man, but he was

envious that Baird had had this intriguing discussion with Marguerida, and that he had

not. It did not matter, did it? They were together now, and that was what was

important. So why did he feel so forlorn?

"I am sorry I missed it."

"I am too, because as we were talking, I kept thinking how nice it would be if you were

there. Sometimes I get so frustrated by how close-minded so many Darkovans seem to

be. And reactionary," she added darkly.

"We've had thousands of years to learn about
laran,
but we are still a little afraid of it,