A World Divided (23 page)

“You may call me Narad-zinie,” said the
chieri
, “which is my name among your people. My own would be strange to your ears and overlong.” From a chest it took silver cups, plainly but beautifully worked, and poured drink into them. It offered a cup to each. Larry tasted; it was delicious, but very strong wine. He hesitated a moment, then his weariness and thirst overcame him; he drank it up anyhow. Almost at once the sense of complete exhaustion left him and he watched alertly as the
chieri
moved the kettle aside from the brazier.

“Porridge is slim food alone for footsore travelers,” it said. “I will make you some cakes as well. No more wine until you have eaten, though! Meanwhile—” It gestured at the fountain, and Larry, suddenly abashed at his dirty and torn clothes, went to wash and douse his head under the fountain. Kennard followed suit.

When Larry came back, something like pancakes were baking on a flat griddle over the brazier. They smelled so good that his mouth watered. The
chieri
brought them food on flat, beautifully carved wooden trays, and there were also bowls of porridge, the flat pancakes which had a yeasty, puffy texture, bowls of hot milk, honey and what tasted like cheese. The flavors were oddly pungent, but the boys were far too hungry to care; they demolished everything in sight, and the
chieri
brought them second helpings of pancakes and honey. Replete at last, they leaned back and surveyed the room, and Larry’s first words were oddly irrelevant.

“The trailmen might evolve something like this instead of what you fear, Kennard.”

The
chieri
answered for Kennard. “The trailfolk, in the far-back times, were our kinfolk, but then we left the trees and built fire, they feared it and our ways moved apart. They are our younger brother, to grow more slowly in wisdom. But perhaps it is time, indeed, for what this child of two worlds has done.”

Larry stared up at the alien’s strange beautiful face. “You—know all this?”

“The Comyn powers are
chieri
powers, little brother,” the
chieri
said. It stretched out its long body on the green turf. “I suppose you have no patience with long tales, so I will say only this, Kennard—the
chieri
lived on Darkover long before you Terrans came, to drive us into the deep and deeper woods.”

Kennard said, “But I am not Terran,” and Larry felt his amazed anger. “Larry is the Terran!”

The
chieri
smiled. “I forgot,” he said gently, “that to your people, the passing of a lifetime is as a sleep and a sleep to our folk. Children of Terra are you both. I was here, a youngling of my people, when the first ship from Terra arrived, a lost ship and broken, and your people were forced to remain here. The time came when they forgot their origins; but the name they gave to this world—Darkover—indeed reflects their speech and their customs.”

It was a strange tale he told, and Kennard and Larry, lying at ease and almost in disbelief, listened while the
chieri
told his tale.

The Terran ship had been one of the first early starships to cross space. Their crew, some hundred men and women, had been forced to remain, and after dozens of generations—which had seemed like only a little while to the
chieri
-folk—they had spread over most of the planet.

“There is a tale you spoke of,” the
chieri
said, “of the lord of Carthon—one of your people, Kennard—who met with a woman of my folk Kierestelli; and she loved him, and bore him a son, and therewith she died, but the blood had mixed. And this son, Hastur, loved a maiden of your people, Cassilda, and from this admixture in their seven sons came the Seven Domains in which you take such pride.”

Interbreeding to produce these new telepathic powers in greater intensity had led to seven pure strains of telepathy, each with its own Domain, or family; and each with its own kind of
laran
, or psi power.

“The Hasturs. The Aillard. The Ridenow. The Elhalyn. The Altons—your clan, young Kennard. And the Aldaran.”

“The Aldaran,” said Kennard with a trace of bitterness, “were exiled from the Comyn—and they sold our world to the Terrans!”

The
chieri
’s beautiful face was strange. “You mean, when the Terrans came again, for the second time, the Aldaran first welcomed their long-forgotten brothers to their own people who had forgotten their ancestry,” he said. “Perhaps among the Aldarans, their Terran heritage was never forgotten. But as for you, little son of Darkover and of Terra”—and he looked at Larry with great gentleness—“you are weary; you should sleep. Yet I know very well why you are in haste. Even now—” his face became distant “—Valdir Alton answers for your fate to these new Terrans who have also forgotten that these men of Darkover are their brothers. As, indeed, all folk are brothers, though there are many, many times when they forget it. And because you are both of my people, I will help you—though I would love to speak more to you. For I am old, and of a dying race. Our women bear no more children, and one day the
cheiri
will be only a memory, living on only in the blood of those, their conquerers.” He sighed. “Beautiful were our forests in those days. Yet time and change come to all men and all worlds, and you are right to speak with reverence of Kierestelli and to call Cassilda blessed, who first mingled blood with blood and thus assured that the
chieri
would survive in blood if never in memory. But I am old—I talk too much. I should act instead.”

He got to his feet. With those strange gray eyes—eyes like the eyes of Lorill Hastur, Larry realized—he enspelled them both, until nothing but those gray eyes remained; space whirled away and reeled—

Bright hot light struck their eyes. Yellow light. They were standing on a brilliantly tiled floor in a brightly glassed-in room overlooking the spaceport of Darkover, and before them, in attitudes of defiance, stood Valdir Alton, Commander Reade—and Larry’s father.

They had slept. They were rested and fed and re-clothed, Kennard this time in some spare garments of Larry’s, and once again they sat before Valdir Alton and Wade Montray and Commander Reade, finishing the tale of their adventures.

Valdir said at last, his face very grave, “I have heard of the
chieri
-folk; but I did not know that any of them still lived, even in the deep woods. And what you tell me of our mixed heritage is strange—and troubling,” he added honestly, his eyes meeting those of Wade Montray with a confused newness in them. “Yet the old
chieri
spoke only a truth I already knew. Time and change come to all worlds, even to ours. And if our sons could cross the mountains together in harmony—and neither alone could have lived, but both needed the other’s ways—then perhaps our worlds are the same.”

“Father,” said Kennard gravely, “I decided something on the way back. Don’t be angry; it’s something I must do. I will do it with your consent now, or without your consent when I come of age. But I am going to take ship for Terra, and learn all that they can teach me there, in their schools. And after me, there will be others.”

Valdir Alton looked troubled; but finally he nodded.

“You are a man, free to choose,” he said, “and perhaps the choice is wise. Time only will tell. And you, Lerrys,” he added, for Larry had raised his head to speak.

“I want to learn your languages and your history, sir. It’s foolish to live here without learning them—not only for me, but for all Terrans who come here.”

Valdir nodded again, gravely. “Then you shall do it as a son in my house,” he said. “You and my son are
bredin
; our house is yours.”

“Ah, some day,” Reade said, “a school will be established for sons of both worlds to learn about the other.” He looked wryly at the boys and said, “I appoint you both Special Consultants on the Bureau of Terran-Darkovan Liaison. Hurry up and finish that interplanetary education of yours, boys.”

“One more thing,” Valdir said. “I think we need to learn from Terra about such things as forest fires, and what to do about bandits and banshees. And then, to use the knowledge in our own way.” He looked straight at Wade Montray and said, “Forgive me for intruding, but I am Alton. I think you should tell you son, now, why the
chieri
could call them both his kindred.”

Wade Montray stood before his son. “You’ve grown,” he said. “You’re a man.” Then he wet his lips.

“Larry, you were born on Darkover,” he said, “of a woman of the high Darkovan caste of the Aldaran, who forsook her people for me, and returned with me to Terra. For years I would not bring you back. I didn’t want you torn apart between two worlds, as I had been. I tried to keep you away from Darkover, but the call was too strong for you. As the call had been too strong for me.” His face worked. “So you’ll be torn between two alien worlds—as I was—”

“But,” Larry said quietly, and he stretched a hand to his father, “Darkovans are not alien. Once they were Earthmen. And Earthmen are akin to Darkovans, even those who have not the
chieri
blood in their veins. The call is not of alien worlds—but of blood brothers, who want to understand one another again. It won’t be easy. But”—his eyes sought out Kennard’s—“it’s a beginning.”

Wade Montray nodded, slowly and painfully, and Valdir Alton suddenly did a thing unprecedented for a Darkovan aristocrat. Awkwardly, the gesture unpracticed, he held out his hand to Wade Montray, and the two men shook hands, while Commander Reade beamed.

They had, indeed, made a beginning. Trouble would come—as all change brings trouble in its wake. But it was a beginning, and, as with the bringing of fire to the trailmen, the benefits would outweigh the risks.

The first step had been taken.

Larry and Kennard would take the next.

After them, thousands.

The brother worlds were once again reconciled.

The stranger who comes home
dos not make himself at home
but makes home strange.

 

Leonie Hastur was dead.

The ancient
leronis
, sorceress of the Comyn, Keeper of Arilinn, telepath, trained with all the powers of the matrix sciences of Darkover, died as she had lived, alone, sequestered high in the Tower of Arilinn.

Not even her priestess-novice-apprentice, Janine Leynier of Storn, knew the hour when death came quietly into the Tower and took her away into one of the other worlds she had learned to walk as skillfully as within her own enclosed garden.

She died alone; and she died unmourned. For, although Leonie was feared, revered, worshipped almost as a Goddess throughout all the Domains of Darkover, she was not loved.

Once she had been greatly loved. There had been a time when Leonie Hastur had been a young woman, beautiful and chaste as a distant moon, and poets had written of her glory, comparing her to the exquisitely shining face of Liriel, the great violet moon of Darkover; or to a Goddess come down to live among men. She had been adored by those who lived under her rule at Arilinn Tower. Once, despite the austerity of the vows under which she lived (which would have made it blasphemy unspeakable for any man to touch her fingertips) Leonie had been loved. But that had been long ago.

And now, as the years had passed over her head, leaving her more and more alone, further from humanity, she was loved less; and feared and hated more. The old Regent Lorill Hastur, her twin brother (for Leonie had been born into the royal house of the Hasturs of Hastur, and if she had not chosen the Tower, she would have stood higher than any Queen in the land), was long dead. A nephew she had seen but a few times stood behind the throne of Stefan Hastur-Elhalyn and was the real power in the Domains. But to him Leonie was a whisper, an old tale and a shadow.

And now she was dead and lay, as the custom was, in an unmarked grave within the walls of Arilinn, where no human being save those of Comyn blood might ever come; in death no more secluded than in life. And there were few left alive to weep.

One of the few who wept was Damon Ridenow, who had married years ago into the Domain of Alton, and briefly been Warden of that Domain for the young Heir of Alton, Valdir of Armida.
¹
When Valdir had come of age and taken a wife, Damon and all his household, which was large, had removed to the estate of Mariposa Lake, which lay in the pleasant upland country in the foothills of the Kilghard Hills. When Leonie was young, and Damon was young, and he a mechanic in the Tower of Arilinn, he had loved Leonie; loved her chastely, with never a touch or a kiss or any thought of breaking the vows that bound her. But he had loved her, nonetheless, with a passion that had given form and color to all his life afterward; and when he heard of her death, he went apart to his own study and there he shed the tears he would not shed before his wife or his wife’s sister, who had once been Leonie’s novice-Keeper at Arilinn, or before any of his household. But if they knew of his grief—and in a household of Comyn telepaths such things could not well be hidden—no one would speak of it; not even his grown sons and daughters asked why their father grieved in secret. Leonie, to them, of course, was only a legend with a name.