The Sword of Aldones (16 page)

“No. I don’t like him either,” said Regis quietly at my side. “And I don’t like the atmosphere of this room—or this night.” He paused. “I went to grandfather today, and demanded form.”

I gripped his hand, without a word. Every Comyn comes to that, soon or late.

“Things are different,” he said slowly. “Maybe I’m different. I know what the Hastur Gift is, and why it’s recessive in so many generations. I wish it was as recessive in me as in grandfather.”

I didn’t have to answer. He would heal. But now that new strength, that added dimension—whatever it was—was a raw wound in his brain.

He said, You remember about the Hastur and Alton Gifts? How tight can you barrier your mind? Hell could break loose, you know.”

“In a crowd like this, my barriers aren’t worth too much,” I said. I knew what he meant, though. The Hastur and Alton Gifts were mutually antagonistic, the two like poles of a magnet which cannot be made to touch. I didn’t know what the Hastur Gift was; but from time immemorial in the Comyn, Hastur and Alton could work together only with infinite precaution—even in the matrix screens. Regis, a latent Hastur, his Gift dormant, I could join in rapport; could even force it on him undesired. A developed Hastur, which he had suddenly become, could knock my mind from his with the fury of lightning. Regis and I could read each other’s minds if we wanted to—ordinary telepathy isn’t affected— but we could probably never link in rapport again.

Reluctantly I found myself wondering. I had forced contact on Regis,; had he taken this step to protect himself from another such attempt? Didn’t he trust me?

But before I could ask him, the dome lights were switched off. Immediately the room was flooded with streaming, silvery moonlight; there was a soft “A—ah!”

from the thronged guests as, through the clearing dome, the four moons, blazing now in full conjunction, lighted the floor like daylight. Suddenly, I felt a light touch, and looked down to see Dio Ridenow standing beside me.

Her dress—a molded tabard of some stuff that gleamed, green and blue and silver, in the shifting moonlight—was so breathtakingly fitted to her body that it might as well have been sprayed on; and her fair hair, the color of the moonlight, rippled like water with the glint of jewels. She tossed her head, with a little silvery chiming of tiny bells.

“Well? Am I beautiful enough for you?”

I tried to sidestep the provocative tone, the green witch-fire in her saucy eyes. “I must say it is an improvement over your riding breeches,” I said dryly.

She giggled and tucked her hand through my arm; a hard, light little hand.

“Dance with me, Lew? A secain?” Without waiting for my answer, she tapped the rhythm-pattern on the light-panel, and after a moment the steady, characteristic beat of the secain throbbed into the invisible music.

The secain is no formal promenade. Last year Dio and I had outraged the dowagers and the dandies, even on the pleasure-world of Vainwal, by dancing it there. I didn’t want to dance it here. The floor was almost cleared now; most of the Thendara women are too prim for this wild and ancient mountain dance.

Still, I owed Dio something.

For a Darkovan girl, Dio was not a particularly expert dancer. But she was warm and vibrant; she smiled teasingly up at me, and, resenting that smile which took so much for granted, I whirled her till another girl would have screamed for mercy. But as she came upright she laughed at me; as always, she was scornful of my strength. She was like spring-steel tempered to my touch.

In the last figure of the dance I caught her tighter than the pattern of the dance demanded. This we had come to know well, this sense of being in key, body and mind, a closer touch than any physical intimacy. The beat of the secain throbbed in my blood, and as the music pulsed and pounded to climax, my senses pounded and pulsed, and as the final explosive drum-and-cymbal chord quivered and rang, I kissed her—hard.

The silence was anticlimax. Dio slid from my arms, and under the softening music we passed out under the open sky.

“I’ve been wondering—” teasingly, Dio lowered her voice, “when Hastur told you about your child—did you wonder about me?”

I frowned, displeased. That came too close for comfort. She laughed, but the laugh was sharp and mirthless.

“Thanks. I wasn’t, if that helps any. Lew—do you really want that girl Callina?”

This I would not discuss with Dio.

“Why? Do you care?”

“Not much.” But it didn’t sound convincing. “But I think you’re a fool. After all, she’s not a woman—”

Now I was really shocked. this was not like Dio. I said, angrily, “As much as yourself!”

“That’s almost funny, coming from you!”

I threatened, “Dio, if you make a scene, I will find it a pleasure to break your neck.”

“I know you will!” She was laughing again, but this tune it was high and hysterical. “That’s what I love about you! Your solution for all problems! Kill someone! Break a neck or two! But one thing I know, for sure; Callina’s finished, and Ashara’s going to lose her pawn!”

“What the devil are you talking about?”

She was still laughing that wildly hysterical laughter, “You’ll see! It could have been you, you know, you could have saved them all that trouble! You and your crazy scruples! You cheated yourself, and especially /Callina! Or, should I say, you played Ashara’s game—”

I caught her wrist with the trick hold I’d used on Regis and wrenched her abruptly round. My fingers crushed on her wrist till she writhed, “You brute, you’re breaking my arm! Damn it, Lew, you’re not funny, you’re hurting me!”

“You ought to be hurt,” I said savagely. “You ought to be beaten! What are they going to do to Callina? Tell me, or I swear, Dio, I’ve never used the Gift on a woman before, but I’ll tear it out of you if I have to!”

“You couldn’t!” We were facing each other now in a blaze of fury that obliterated everything outside. “Remember?”

“Damn you!” The truth made me savage. Dio alone of all people was completely and perfectly protected against my Gift, forever—because of what had been between us on Vainwal. It had to be that way.

There are things no telepath, no man, can control. That-touching—in intimacy, is one of them. And Dio was one of the hypersensitive Ridenow. To safeguard her sanity, I had given her certain defenses against me. I could never take more from her, telepathically, than she wanted to give. More was impossible. I could remove that barrier—if I wanted to kill her. No other way.

I swore, impotently. Suddenly Dio flung her arms around my neck, eyes burning at me like green flames. “You blind fool,” she choked, “you can’t see what’s before your very eyes, and you’ll go blundering in again and spoil it all! Can’t you trust me?”

She was very close, and the contact was dizzying. Realizing, what she was doing, I thrust her suddenly and roughly away. “That won’t get you anywhere.”

Her face hardened. “Very well. There is a rumor current— and believed—that only a virgin may hold Callina’s particular powers. There is, shall I say, a certain faction which holds to the belief that we would all be better off if Callina were— let’s say—made suddenly powerless. And since your conduct is above reproach, there is one way to remedy the situation—”

I stared at her, dimly beginning to realize what she meant. But that was horrible! And was there any man on Darkover who would dare— “Dio, if this is your idea of a filthy joke—”

“A joke, but it’s on Ashara,” she said. Suddenly she grew quiet and deadly serious. “Lew, trust me. I can’t explain, but you’ve got to keep out of it.

Callina isn’t what you think, not at all. She isn’t—”

I brought my hand back and slapped her, hard. The blow sent her reeling. “You’ve had that coming for a year,” I grated.

Suddenly Regis was close beside me; in an instant he had caught the overflowing of my thought, and his face paled. “Callina!”

Dio stood holding her cheek where I had slapped her, staring open-mouthed; but she threw herself forward on me now. “Wait,” she begged, “Wait, you don’t understand—”

I thrust her aside, swearing. Regis kept pace with me. Finally he breathed, “But who would dare? A Keeper, remember—actually to lay hands on her?”

I stopped. “Dyan,” I said at last, quietly. “What did she say, in council? No man lives to maul me three times. If that were the first—”

We were in light surface contact. Abruptly I stopped him; he looked at me grimly and the touch of his mind fell from mine as clasped hands loosen.

“I thought so,” I said. “When we touch, all the strength drains out of us both.

They’ve smuggled some trap-matrix in there, eighth or ninth level, the kind that picks up vital energy—” My jaw fell. “Sharra!”

“Lew, are we feeding that damned thing?”

“We’ll hope not,” I said!“Can you touch Callina?”

I felt Regis, almost instinctively, grope for contact again; quickly, I barricaded myself. “Don’t ever do that!” I commanded. The fumbling touch was raw agony; yet endure it I must, danger or no, at least once more. “Regis, when I say the word, link with me—for about a thousandth of a second. But whatever you do, don’t freeze into rapport with me! If you do, we’ll both burn out. Remember, you’re Hastur and I’m Alton!”

He swallowed, convulsively. “You’d better do the linking. I can’t control it yet.”

For the barest instant, then, we contacted, in a scanning that sifted the whole diameter of the crowd. It was not a hundredth of a second, but even that flung us apart in a shock of blinding pain. A full tenth of a second would have burned out every spark of vital energy in our bodies. To whoever controlled the hidden matrix, it must have flamed like a starship on a radar screen.

But I knew what I wanted. Somewhere in the castle, a trap-matrix—not Sharra this time—was focused, with obscene intensity, on the weakest link in the Comyn: Derik Elhalyn.

And I had thought him only drunk!

The thick, inarticulate speech; the irritable confusion of brain, the fumbling limbs— all symptoms of a mind under an unmonitored matrix. And whoever set it, had a mind both perverted and sadistic—that this complex revenge on Callina should be carried out by Linnell’s lover!

I reached for Callina, but only emptiness greeted my seeking mind. It is a horrifying thing to feel only an empty place in the fluid mechanism of space, where once there was a living mind. Could even death blank her away so completely?

Regis turned a strained, heartbroken face to me.

“Lew, if he’s touched her—”

“Easy. Derik doesn’t know, he never will know what he’s doing, you know. Listen; I need your help. I’m going straight into Derik’s mind and try to lift the matrix trap.” For the first time in my life I was grateful for the Alton Gift, which could force rapport—and which could go into a matrix without the half-dozen monitors and dampers an ordinary matrix mech would need. “Those things are plain hell, Regis. Now, when I get it lifted, you try to break it up.

But don’t you touch me—or Derik—or you’ll kill all three of us.”

It was a desperate chance. No sane person will go into a mind controlled by a trap-matrix; it is walking into a blind alley which may be filled with monsters ready to spring. And I would have to drop all my barriers, and trust the untried strength of a newly-Zaran Hastur who could kill me with a random touch.

Every instinct screamed no; but I reached out and focused on Derik.

And knew, at once, I had touched that thing before; when I tried to probe Lerrys.

Derik, like a man who feels the sting of a knife through an incomplete anesthetic, twisted to escape; but this time I held fast, grimly-forcing- my focused strength as a wedge between mind and the trick matrix that held it in submission.

Behind me, as a man may look at mirrored light he dares not face, I sensed Regis; he had seized on that alien force, and he was tearing it to bits; destroying each strand of force as I lifted that telepathic web, thread by thread, out of the nerves of Derik’s brain.

But now it was being forced on me, too. As a man at a screen may watch two starships battle, so the holder of this unholy matrix was watching the three-way duel, perhaps ready with a new weapon. Necessity and the need for haste made me careless how I tortured Derik; but I knew, too, if Derik were himself, he would thank me for this.

As I forced down barrier after barrier, something fought me, a grotesque parody of the real Derik; but I won. I felt it flicker, vanish like a trace of smoke, burnt away. The compulsion was gone, the trap-matrix destroyed—and Derik, at least, was clean!

I withdrew;

Regis leaned against a pillar, his face dead white. I asked, “Could you tell who was controlling it?”

“Not a trace. When the matrix shattered, I felt Callina, but then—” Regis frowned, “she blanked again, and all I felt was Ashara! Why Ashara?”

I didn’t know. But if Ashara were aroused and aware, at least she would protect Callina.

We had given ourselves away, Regis and I; we had lost vital strength; but for the moment, perhaps, we were safe. My main worry now was for Regis. I was mature, trained in the use of these powers, and I knew the limits of my own endurance. He didn’t. Unless he learned caution, the next step would be nerve depletion and collapse.

I tried to warn him, but he shrugged it off. “Don’t worry about me. Who’s that with Linnell?”

I turned to see if he meant Kathie or the man in harlequin costume who had so disturbed me. Beside them was another masked figure, a man in a cowled robe which hid his face and body completely. But something about him reminded me, suddenly and horribly, of the hell in Derik’s mind. Another victim—or the controller? I had to fight myself to keep from running across the room and pitching him bodily away from Linnell.

I went toward them, slowly. Linnell asked, “Lew, where have you been?”

“Outside, watching the eclipse,” I said briefly.

Linnell glanced up at me, timidly, troubled.

“What is it, chiya?” The childish pet name still came easily.

“Lew, who is Kathie, really? When I’m near her, I feel terribly strange. It’s not just because she looks so like me, it’s as if she were me. And then I feel—I don’t know—as if I had to come close to her, touch her, embrace her.