The Sword of Aldones (12 page)

I, too, must be careful; I exposed Callina to a terrible danger.

I turned around to see old Andres scowling at me; a squat, ugly Terran, fierce and surly; but I knew him too well to be deceived by his fierce looks.

I never knew how a Terran ex-spaceman had won his way into my father’s confidence, but Andres Ramirez had been part of our home since I could remember.

He’d taught me to ride, made toys for Marius, spanked us when we punched each other’s heads or raced at too breakneck a pace, and told us endless lying tales which gave no hint about his true history. I never knew whether he could not return to Terra, or whether he would not; but twenty years dropped from my age as he growled, “What are you standing there sulking about?”

“Not sulking, damn you! Thinking!”

The old fellow snorted. “Young Ridenow is waiting to see you. You keep fine company these days!”

In the other room Lerrys stood waiting for me, tense, seemingly uneasy; his attitude made my nerves jump, but with a curt semblance of politeness, I motioned him to a seat. “If you came as Dyan’s proxy, tell him not to bother.

The fight’s off. Hastur said so.”

down. “Well, no. As a matter of fact, I had a Lerrys proposition for you. Has it occurred to you, now that your father’s gone, you and I and Dyan are the strength of the Comyn?”

“You keep good company,” I said dryly.

“Let’s do without the insults. There’s no reason we should fight among ourselves, there’s enough for us all. You’re half Terran; I suppose you have some Terran common sense. You know how the Terran Empire will handle this, don’t you? They’ll deal with anyone who’s in a position to give orders. Why shouldn’t you, and I, and Dyan, make the terms for Darkover?”

“Treason,” I said slowly. “You’re speaking as if the Comyn were already out of the way.”

“It’s bound to fall apart in a generation or two,” Lerrys said quietly. “Your father, and Hastur, have been holding it together by pure force of personality for the last dozen years. You’ve seen Derik. Do you think he can take Hastur’s place?”

I didn’t. “Nevertheless,” I said, “I am Comyn, and I’m vowed to stand behind Derik while he lives.”

“And hold off disaster one more generation, at any cost?” Lerrys asked. “Isn’t it better to make some arrangement now, rather than waiting for the big smash, and letting things lapse into anarchy for years before we can get them squared away again?”

He leaned his chin on his hands, regarding me intently. “The Terrans can do a lot for Darkover and so can you. Listen to me, Lew. Every man has his price. I saw the way you looked at Callina today. I wouldn’t touch that she-devil’s fingers, let alone take her to bed, but I suppose it’s a matter of taste. I thought for a while it was Dio you wanted. But you’d fit perfectly well into our plans. You’d be better than Beltran. You’re educated on Terra, but you look Darkovan. You’re Comyn—one of the old aristocracy. The people would accept you.

You could rule the planet!”

“Under the Terrans?”

“Someone will. And if you don’t—well, you’re unpopular because of the Sharra rebellion. And you’re Comyn. The

Terranan make a habit of disposing of hereditary monarchies, unless they collaborate. Terra wouldn’t care whether you lived or died.”

Lerrys was probably right. In these days of toppling empires, no man is overburdened with loyalties. The Comyn would come crashing down eventually; why shouldn’t I salvage something from the ruins?

Lerrys said, “Then you’ll consider it?”

I didn’t answer. A sudden intuition made me look up, and see that he had gone gray-white, his narrow fine features pinched and pale. That bothered me. The Ridenow are super-sensitives. In the distant past of the Comyn, when Darkover dealt with nonhumans, the Ridenow Gift had been bred into their family and they were used to detect strange presences, or give warning of unhealthy psychic or telepathic atmospheres.

He said with a strange intensity, “There are worse things than Terra, Lew.

Better to make Darkover a Terran colony, even, than to face Sharra, or anything like that, from our own people.”

“Erlik defend us from either!”

“The choice might be up to you, in the end.”

“Hell, Lerrys, I’m not that important!”

“You may not know it,” he said, “but you may be the key to everything.”

Suddenly it seemed I was looking, not at one man, but at two. My brother’s friend, intent on trying to get me to come over to their faction—and some deeper thing, using Lerrys for its own purpose. I was seriously debating whether I ought to turn on a damper, before he could work some mental trick on me. But I didn’t move fast enough.

A flood of pure malevolence suddenly surged out of him. I jumped up, and with a terrible effort, managed to shut it out of my consciousness. Then I leaped at Lerrys, gripped him with one hand and angrily thrust my mind against his.

It wasn’t Lerrys!

I met perfect, locked defense—and Lerrys alone could never have barred me from his mind. I was using a force harder than I had used on Dyan—and the Ridenow are especially vulnerable to telepathic assault. And while it did not touch whatever was using Lerrys, it tortured him. He writhed a moment, slumped; suddenly, frenzied into convulsions by the thing that held him, he twisted in frantic resistance. With the strength of a maniac or a berserker, he flung off my one-handed grip. And from somewhere, he found strength, too, to slam down a final defense against the assault I was using on him. Gritting my teeth in despair, I let my telepathic touch break loose. If that possessing mind should suddenly withdraw, leaving Lerrys to stand the assault alone, Lerrys would be dead or raving mad before I could get out.

Lerrys lay still, sobbing in air, for a moment Then he sprang upright. I tensed for a renewed attack, but instead he said, quite unexpectedly, “Don’t look so startled! Does it surprise you to know you’re important to Darkover? Think over what I said, Lew. Your brother was a man of sense, you must have some of it too.

I imagine you’ll decide I’m right.” Smiling in a friendly way, he held out his hand. Almost numbed, I touched his fingers, wary against some further trick.

His mind was blank, innocent of any guile, the alien gone. tie didn’t even know what he had done.

“What’s the matter? You look a bit off color,” he said. “I’d put on a damper, if I were you, and get some rest. You still need it, I’d say; that blow on the head was nothing to laugh at.” He bowed and went out, and I sank on a couch, wondering if the blow had, indeed, damaged my reason. Must I be alert to attack from everyone? Or was I stark raving mad?”

A battle like that is never easy, and I was shaking in every nerve. Andres, coming through the curtains, stopped and stared in consternation.

“Get me a drink.”

He started his routine protest about drinking on an empty stomach; looked at me again, stopped in mid-grumble and went. More than once I’ve suspected him of being more telepathic than he’ll admit. When he came back it was no Darkovan cordial, but the strong Terran liquor that is sold contraband in Thendara.

I could not close my hand on the glass; to my tremendous shame, I had to lean back and let Andres hold it to my mouth. I hated the fiery stuff; but after I had swallowed a little my head cleared and I could sit up and take the glass without shaking.

“And stop trying to baby me!” I yelled at Andres, who was hovering around as if he thought I’d explode into fragments: But his familiar grumbling had a soothing effect; he’d grumbled just like this when I’d taken a tumble off my pony and broken a couple of ribs on the way down.

Just the same, I waved away his various suggestions of food and bed, and went out.

The sky was murky with traces of a storm; I could see rain squalls coming down across Nevarsin. Bad weather for the Terrans, with their dependence on planes and rockets and the shifty upper atmosphere. Our mountain-bred beasts could endure storms, blizzards, and rain. Why would a sensible people put their trust in a tricky element like the air?

I crossed the courtyard, standing at the edge of the steep embankment where the cliff fell away; a thousand feet below me, the city of Thendara lay sprawled. I leaned on the low stone wall. If one wished to attack the Terrans, one need only choose a stormy night of rain or sleet, so that their planes and rockets were laid up, to meet them on equal terms.

Behind that, the ridge of the mountains were a darker line against the dark sky, and far away, on the high slopes, I saw a gleam of fire. Some hunter’s fire, perhaps; yet the glimmer reminded me that somewhere, a strange white smoke spiraled up through fires that were not ordinary flame, and an incredible tenth-level matrix twisted space around itself.

When once a man has stood at the fires of Sharra, the strange flames call to him, play on his nerves as a heavy hand sweeps harpstrings. But I knew that unless I stilled their harpings I would break completely; so I fought against the maddening live warmth that pulsed somewhere in me, reminding me of things I loathed and feared with all my heart—yet in some strange, shameful way, longed for; loved; desired.

Where could I go to still that harping?

Only-to Callina.

The Aillard rooms were spacious and brilliant; shimmering walls diffused delicate colors over Callina, who knelt on the floor, playing with a little striped beast from the rainforests. It leaped on her shoulder, purring, and flickering two-toed claws in and out of her silk sleeves.

Linnell was seated near her, a harp laid flat across her knees, and Regis standing beside Linnell; but they all sensed my presence at once. Linnell put the harp aside and Callina rose hastily, putting the kitten-thing on the floor and pulling at her skirts; but I went to her and took her in my arms. She would never know how precious she had made herself to me by that glimpse of a self less guarded, less aloof. I held her a moment, then the old frustration slipped back, thrusting like an unsheathed sword between us. Careful.

She evaded me by speaking of Linnell. “Poor child, I’m afraid she and Derik have quarreled. She loves him—”

“It’s who you love that interests me!” I interrupted.

She said, “I am Keeper—and comynara!”

“Comynara!” I suppose I sounded as bitter as I felt. “The Comyn would write your death warrant as soon as your marriage, if it would serve any cause!”

“If it would serve any cause, I would write my own,” she said steadily. My arms strained about her.

“Are you going to let them sell you?” I flung the words at her like a curse.

“What do we owe the Comyn? They’ve played hell with our lives since we were born!”

“Lew, I don’t think you understand. I was mad, to let you think we could ever belong to each other. We can’t. Not ever.” Her hands went out, blindly, to push me away. “I can marry Beltran—and still keep my power to aid you, and the Comyn—because—because only because I do not love him. Do you understand?”

I did. I let her go and stood back, looking at her in consternation. Matrix work, for a man, has its frustrating aspects. But I had never stopped to think—more accurately I had never cared a damn—what particular refinements of.

hellish-ness it might have for a woman. But before I could break out with the outrage I felt, she turned to Regis.

“Ashara has sent for us. Are you coming?”

“Not now,” he said. Regis had changed, in only a few hours; he seemed older, hardened somehow. He smiled in the old easy way, but I was not wholly comfortable in his presence. It hurt to realize that Regis was keeping himself barriered from me, but in a way it was a relief.

A servant folded Callina in a wrap like a gray shadow. As we went out, and down the staircase, Linnell stood between the panels of curtain, watching us, smiling. The colored lights, spilling over her pale dress, made her a rainbow statuette in a golden aureole; suddenly, for an-instant, vague unrest crystallized and fell together into one of those flashes of prevision which touch a telepath in moments of stress.

Linnell was doomed!

“Lew, what’s the matter?”

I blinked. Already the certainty, that sick instant when my mind had slid off the time-track, was fading. The confusion, the sense of tragedy, remained. When I looked up again, the curtains had dropped shut and Linnell was gone; Outside, a thin fine rain was falling. The lights had faded in the old city, dark in the lee of the cliff below; but further out, in the Terran Zone, a neon glare of wet orange and red and green streaked the night sky with garish colors.

I looked over the low wall.

“I would like to be down there tonight,” I said wearily. “Or anywhere away from this hell’s castle.”

“Even in the Terran Zone?”

“Even in the Terran Zone.”

“Why aren’t you, then? No one keeps you here, if that is where you would rather be.”

I turned to Callina. Her cobweb cloak spun out winglike on the wind; her hair blew, like a fine spray, about her face. I turned my back on the distant lights and pulled her close. A moment she held herself away from me, then suddenly she clung wildly, her lips frantic under mine, her arms gripping me with desperate dread. When we pulled apart, she was shaking like a young leaf.

“What now, Lew? What now?”

I gestured violently at the glare of neon. “The Terran Zone. Confront the Comyn with an accomplished fact, and let them find themselves another pawn to play with.”

Slowly, the spark faded in her eyes. Turning her back on the city, she pointed at the distant ridge of the mountains, and again the illusion came; thin white smoke, strange fire.

“Sharra’s fires burn there, still, Lew. You are no freer than I.”

I put my arm around her, returning by slow degrees to sane acceptance. The rain was icy cold on our faces; we turned and went silently toward the dark mass of the tower.

The wind, broken in its sweep by the angles of the castle, flung little spits and slashes of rain at us. We passed through walled courts and pillared passages, and finally stopped before a dark arch. Callina drew me forward, and a shaft began to rise.

Ashara’s Tower—so the story goes—was built for the first Keeper when Thendara was no more than a row of mud huts huddled under Nevarsin peak. It belongs to the strange days before our world writhed in earthquakes and cast off her four spinning moons. The smell of centuries hung between the musty walls with the shadows that slipped past, flitting into darkness. We rose and rose. At last the shaft halted and we stood before a carven door of glass. Not a curtain or panel of light. A door.