The Sword of Aldones (23 page)

The rising sun touched his hair-, snow white.

He disappeared through the arched door.

And I saw Dio Ridenow walking from the Keeper’s Tower, slowly, dazed, like a woman in a dream. Now’ when it was over—but I had no thoughts for Dio, for Callina had risen, and drew me to my feet.

And for the first time without fear, I took Callina in my arms, crushing my mouth to hers.

And all desire died as I looked into the cold eyes of Ashara.

I should have known, all along.

Only a moment and it was Callina again, clinging to me, crying; but I had seen, and I knew. My arm fell and I stared in horror as she turned away, desolately.

“Sharra,” I heard her whisper, “Sharra. Then it was no use, no use for me, and I cannot live.”

“Not by treachery, Ashara!” Dio faced the sorceress, steadily, “Not by damning another as you doomed Callina! You failed, because Lew was too human, and because Callina was not human enough! You failed, you failed!”

Stricken, madness rocking my brain, I came to where the frail figure cowered before Dio. Callina, Ashara—I could not tell. They blended; were one. Reason swam away; I took Callina blindly in my arms and the form and the face shifted and changed and were now Callina and now Ashara and now Callina again; then a look of peace and my arms were empty, and a whisper faded and died and was still.

“Dio!” I sobbed the name and went to her arms like a hurt child, “Dio, Dio, have I gone mad?”

There were tears on Dio’s face. “I tried so many times to tell you. Ashara was not real, had not been real for generations. Didn’t you wonder why her Tower room seemed so immense? It was not in the Tower at all, the blue door was a matrix, a—a gateway to somewhere else. She was only a—a thought-form by now.

She lived in the matrix, and whenever she left it, to take place in Comyn Council,-she went in the body of one of the Keepers. Her power was so immense, and they were so frail, that for many generations she effaced them altogether; she only seemed ageless. She was born an Alton, Lew; she set her focus not in the minds, but in the living bodies of the Keepers. But her power was fading.

Now she could not project her own form upon their bodies; she could only control their minds. And even that power was waning now. She would have done anything for a new source of power.”

Dio gasped, then pulled herself together a little.

“I was to be Keeper—I could sense it, a little, how horrible it was, what she wanted. I begged Lerrys to take me away to Vainwal. Why do you think I threw myself at you? I came to love you, but at first, I only wanted to be unfit for her!” Even her hands burned on mine.

“So it was Callina. But—sometimes Ashara had to withdraw, or Callina would have burnt out. Then Callina was normal, or else she was in trance. When I knew that Regis would have to use the Sword, I—went to the Tower, and smashed one of the crystals. That trapped Ashara for a little while. I had been trained a little, when they thought I was to be the Keeper, and I knew what to do, but I couldn’t do it in my own body, because—” Again her cheeks flooded with color. “Callina, at least, was a virgin. Callina was in trance, and the Terrans had drugged her.

So I went to Regis, and he used his Gift, and—and switched me into Callina’s body. It was I who linked with you and Regis.”

“No,” I gasped, “No, it was Callina, Callina-“

Dio pressed herself to me, her arms around my neck. “No, my darling, no, Callina could not have linked in’ focus with you. She had not enough independent mind left. Lew, remember—you had never touched my mind, you gave me a barrier against you. And I knew that when it broke, we’d all be too overloaded to know whether I was Callina, or Dio, or someone else. And after that, the barriers were up again. But—darling—see?”

Suddenly she reached for me and went into complete rapport again. The familiar solace, sweetness, the cool and delicate warmth. “Callina!” I breathed.

No. This is the part of me you never knew .

Even now the rapport was too intimate to hold for long.

“In the old days. Lew—before you left Darkover—Callina was a lovely girl, sweet and generous and brave. You know that. She risked her life for you. But Lew, the real

Callina died when Ashara took her. Days ago. She was already only a shell of herself, but oh, Lew, the bravery, the wonderful bravery of that poor, poor girl!” Dio,was sobbing like a child. “Lew, she loved you. She refused rapport with you—before Ashara—because she knew it would have given Ashara a foothold in your brain and body, too. With her last spark of will, she saved you from that-and it was the last thing she ever did. It was her death—her real death.

You thought Ashara disappeared? No; she had only overshadowed Callina. You thought Callina acted strangely on Festival Night? No. She was only—”

“Don’t, don’t tell me any more!” I begged.

“Only one thing more.” She touched the still?discolored bruise on her cheek.

“Why do you think I didn’t try to stop Dyan—warn Callina against Derik? Lew, it was a desperate chance, but if they’d succeeded, it would have played into our hands. If a man—any man—had taken Callina, even in rape, so soon after Ashara had taken over her body, it would have caused enough disruption to drive Ashara out. It might have killed Callina, but there was a bare chance that it would have freed her, instead. Ashara would have had to withdraw, not for a few minutes, but permanently.”

“Don’t!” I implored, sick with horror.

“I tried to save Callina myself—” Dio broke off. “Oh, Lew, didn’t it mean anything that Callina came to you that night, and slept in your arms? Callina was in trance, and I—I knew Ashara could drive me out of her body any minute, but I knew you wanted Callina, and I hoped—”

“Oh, Dio!” In spite of my horror, I began weakly to laugh; the first step of the long healing. “Dio, my darling love, don’t you ever look in a mirror? By the time you reached my rooms, it was you again—in your own body! And Callina would have known I could not—” Suddenly, violently, I caught her to me, kissing the flaxen hair and the wet face. “Darling, darling, I’m going to have to explain a lot of things to you about matrices and the men who work with them!”

Crying and laughing at once, she raised her eyes. “But if it was me, me myself—then—Lew, you love,me?”

Over her head my eyes blurred. Callina!

Her gray-green eyes, shorn forever of mischief, met mine tenderly. “I’m not Callina any more,” she said gravely, “but I’m not Ashara either. I think you’re cured, Lew. If not, I too am damned.”

I kissed her, and it was” an exorcism for the past and an oath for the future.

But I shut my eyes to the rising sun over her shoulder, knowing that forever I would walk with doubt, and face the sun with troubled eyes.

Abruptly the dawn was shattered with a burst of noise; Rafe and Regis ran into the courtyard.

“Lew,” Rafe shouted harshly. “Come quickly! They’ve found Marja, alive!”

I let Dio go. Regis said, breathlessly, “Dyan had her under the matrix, and it blanked her like death; so he hid her the one place on Darkover where we would never look! When the matrix smashed, she went into shock, but there’s a bare chance—”

Rafe grabbed my arm. “We’ve got a rocket-car.”

We all crowded in, Rafe driving. The jets roared and we jerked back wildly as it screamed through a long curve and rammed back along the roadway not meant for these Terran inventions, horses and people fleeing in panic as we raced through the streets of Thendara.

Regis shouted, “When she collapsed, they called the Medical service at the HQ, and Lawton—”

Lawton, I thought, must be raving crazy by now, with first Thyra, then Kadarin, then Callina—Callina? and me disappearing. But I could not worry about him now.

We roared into the Terran Zone. The streets were wider here, and the jets screamed as we slammed around corners still lighted with the neons of the night.

We swept, in a wild slipstream of noise, into open country, and only minutes later we shrilled to a bone-shaking stop.

The sign read: The Reade Orphange For The Children Of Spacemen.

Rafe banged on the door and a tall woman, prim-faced, in Terran garments, looked out at us. Rafe demanded, “Where is Marguerhia Kadarin?”

“Captain Scott? How did you know? Your niece is very ill; we were going to send for her guardian. Where is he?”

“You can’t,” I cut in. “He’s dead. The child’s in shock. I’m a matrix tech, lady; let me in.”

Her eyes narrowed with suspicion and dislike at my crumpled Terran clothing, put on days œgo to ride to the rhu fead; bloodstained; my unshaven face, my mutilated arm. “I’m afraid I must say—no visitors.”

Another female voice interrupted. “Miss Tabor, can you keep the hallway quiet?

Remember we have a very sick child—” She broke off, looking at the four of us.

Only Rafe was presentable. “Who are these people?”

“I’m Marja’s father,” I begged. “Believe me, every second we stand here, we’re losing what little chance—” Suddenly, with almost a prayer of thanks, I remembered the Terran cert card I had stuck into the pocket of this suit; the day I came to Darkover. I dived into the pocket. “Here. This will identify me.”

She barely glanced at the plastic chip. “Come along,” she said, and led me along the hallway. “We had to take her out of the dormitory. The other girls were frightened.”

The room was small and clean and full of sunlight. Marja was lying in a high-sided crib, and Dr. Forth, from the Terran HQ, raised his head as I walked in.

“You? Did you say you know about this sort of thing?”

“I hope so,” I said tonelessly and bent over her. My heart stopped. It was like looking at a dead child, one who has slept and slept and died sleeping. She lay slack on one side, her small hands limp and open, her mouth loose, breathing shallow and just audible. A single vein beat blue in her temple.

I frowned, making a tentative effort to touch her mind.

No use. She was deep in trance; her mind was simply not in her body at all, and now even her body was failing.

No man can work among matrices without knowing all about shock-trance and how to cure it—if a cure is still possible. “Have you tried—” I named off a list of common restoratives, even though I knew that a child so young might not respond to treatment at all. It was almost unheard-of for a child to have any telepath ability. I had never heard of a precedent for this.

And if it were to be much longer, she might better not return at all, for she would be too changed.

The sun had crept high and was burning through the glass. I straightened finally, -sweat dripping down my face, and said wearily, “Where are Regis and Dio—the boy and girl who came with me? Get them.”

They came in, softly, and stopped, appalled, looking down at the limp Marja. I said, despairingly, “It’s a last resort. We were in rapport with a matrix almost identical to Sharra.” When Sharra smashed, and the Gate was shut, everyone sealed to Sharra was flung into that world—except me. I had been held to this world by a power stronger still. There was a chance we could still reach Marja with a triple touch. Her body was here, and that was a powerful tie. I had fathered that body, and that was another. But she could not force her way back alone.

“Regis. Can you hold me if I go out after her?”

His eyes held momentary dread, but he did not hesitate. Dio stretched a hand to both of us and for the last time that threefold consciousness locked between us; an extension of myself which went outward, farther and farther, through spaceless, timeless distance.

Shadows flickered, cold and malign. Then something stirred there and fluttered, something twitched drowsily away from my touch; something dreaming, happy, unwilling to wake—.

Swiftly, with a harsh roughness that made Dio sob aloud, I smashed the fourfold rapport and caught Marja in my arms, with the feverish relief after deathly despair.

“Marja!” I heard my own voice, husky, broken, “Marja, precious, wake up!”

She stirred in my arms. Then her lashes fluttered and she smiled, sleepy and sweet, up at me.

“Chi’ z’voyin qui?” she murmured drowsily.

I don’t know what I said. I don’t know what I did. I suppose I behaved like any man half crazy with relief. I know I hugged her till she whimpered; then I sat down, cradling her in my lap.

She pouted, “Why is ev’body looking at me?” And, as I tried to speak through my choked throat, she complained pettishly, “I’m hungry!”

In sudden, weak reaction, I realized I hadn’t eaten for two days. I felt an almost insane relief at the chance to end this whole thing on a note, of the most ridiculous anticlimax.

“I’m hungry too, chiya” I said weakly. “Let’s all go and find you something to eat.”

“And that,” said Dio, lifting Marja easily by her little nightgown, “is the first sensible thing you’ve said since you came back to Darkover. Let’s all go and eat. Matron, will you find this child some clothes?”

Two hours later, washed and fed and clothed, we made a respectable group around Lawton’s desk in the HQ. He waved a spaceform at me.

“This just came over the relay,” he said, and read it aloud. “Abandon leads on Darkover. Katherine Marshall discovered on Samarra, slight amnesia, unharmed.

Haig Marshall.”

“Allowing for the time lags in the relay,” he said grimly, “she turned up on Samarra about half an hour after I talked to her here. Times, I’m tempted to throw up this job and turn spacehand.” He looked at Regis’ white hair; at Dio; at Marja, sitting in my lap. “You owe me an explanation, Lew Alton.”

I looked back, gravely. I liked Dan Lawton. Like myself, he was a child to two worlds; but he, too, had chosen his path, and it was not mine. “Perhaps I owe you that,” I said, “but it is a debt I fear that you will never collect.”

He shrugged, tossing the spacegram form into a basket. “So I’ll always have something coming. We’ve got to talk, anyway. Darkover’s years of grace are over.”

I nodded in slow agreement. The Comyn had won against Sharra, but it had lost, too.

“I got word from GHQ; I’m to start setting up a provisional government here, under Hastur—the Regent, not the kid. Hastur’s sound, and honest, and the people trust him.”