A World Divided (61 page)

Cleindori lowered her head. “As you will, if you all think it best. You will go to Neskaya, then, Cassie? What of you, Arnad?”

“I’m tempted to go with you to Terra,” the red-haired man in green and gold said defiantly, “but if you’re going under Jeff’s protection, it wouldn’t be wise; I suppose he’ll have to call you his wife?”

Cleindori shrugged. “What do I care what it says on the Terran records? They live in computers and believe that because their record says a thing it is true; what do I care?”

“I’ll go now, to make the arrangements,” Jeff said, “but are you all safe here? I’m not sure ...”

Arnad said, with an arrogant gesture, dropping his hand to his sword, “I have this; I’ll protect them!”

Time seemed to spin out and drag endlessly when he had gone. Cassilde put the twins to bed behind a curtained alcove; Arnad paced the floor restlessly, his hand straying now and then to his sword hilt. The child Damon knelt forgotten on the rug, motionless, waiting, filled with the apprehension of the adults around him. At last Cleindori said, “Jeff should be back by now—”

“Hush,” Cassilde said urgently. “Did you hear—quiet; there is someone in the street?”

“I heard nothing,” Cleindori said impatiently. “But I am afraid of what has happened to Jeff! Help me, Arnad.”

She drew the matrix from her breast and laid it on the table. The child tiptoed closer, staring in fascination. His mother had made him look into it so often, lately; she didn’t know why, and Arnad said he was too young, that it could hurt him, but he knew that for some reason his mother wanted him able to handle and touch the matrix that no one else, not even his father, could ever touch, or any of his foster-fathers.

He moved closer, now, to the center of the glowing circle, reflected on the faces bending over the matrix; some slight sound distracted him; he turned to look, in growing terror, at the turning handle of the door. ...

He shrieked and Arnad turned a moment too late; the door burst open and the room was full of hooded and masked forms; a deadly, thrown knife took him in the back and he fell with a gurgling cry. He heard Cassilde scream aloud and saw her fall. Cleindori bent and snatched up Arnad’s knife, fighting and struggling with one of the masked men. The child ran, shrieking, struggling, pounding at the dark forms with small fists; biting, kicking, clawing like a small, enraged wild animal. Scratching and kicking, he ran right up the back of one of the men, sobbing wild threats.

“You let my mother alone—! Let her go, fight like a man, you coward—”

Cleindori shrieked and burst away from the man who held her. She caught up Damon to her breast, holding him tight, and he felt her terror like a physical agony reflected in a great blue glow like the glow of the matrix....
There was one instant of blinding, blazing rapport, and the child knew, in agony, exactly what they had done, knew every instant of Cleindori’s life, as her whole life flashed before her eyes....

The rough hands seized him; he was flung through the air and struck his head, hard, on the stone flooring. Pain exploded in him and he lay still, hearing a voice crying out as he went down into darkness:

Unbelievable, unbearable agony thrust a knife into his heart; then, mercifully, the rapport burned out, and the room went dark, and the world vanished into darkness....

 

There was a pounding at the door. The child who lay unconscious on the floor stirred and moaned, probing, wondering if it was his foster-father, but felt only strangeness, seeing only darkness and strange men bursting again into the room.
They came back to kill me!
Memory flooded over him like a trapped rabbit and he clutched his small fingers over his mouth, squirming painfully under the table and cowering there. The pounding on the door increased; it broke open, and the terrified child, cowering under the table, heard heavy boots on the floor and felt shock in the minds of the men who stood holding a lamp high and looking at the carnage in the room.

“Avarra be merciful,” a man’s voice muttered,“we were too late, after all. Those murdering fanatics!”

“I told you we should have appealed directly to Lord Hastur before this, Cadet Ardais,” said another voice, vaguely familiar to the child under the table, but he was afraid to move or cry out. “I was afraid it would come to this! Naotalba twist my feet, but I never guessed it would be murder!” A fist struck the table in impotent wrath.

“I should have known,” the first voice said, a harsh, somehow musical voice, “when we heard that old Lord Damon was dead, and Dom Ann’dra, and the rest. A fire, they said ... I wonder whose hand set that fire?” Before the despairing wrath in that voice the concealed child cowered, clasped his fingers harder over his mouth to stifle his cries.

“Lord Arnad,” the voice said, “and the lady Cassilde, and she so heavy with child that you would think even one of those murdering fanatics would have had pity on her! And—” his voice fell—“my kinswoman Cleindori. Well, I knew she was under sentence of death, even from Arilinn; but I had hoped the Hasturs would protect her.” A long, deep sigh. The child heard him moving around, heard the curtain drawn from the alcove. “In Zandru’s name—children!”

“But where’s the Terran?” one of the men asked. “Dragged away alive for torture, most likely. Those must be Cassilde’s children by Arnad; look, one of them has red hair. At least those fanatic bastards had decency enough not to harm the poor brats.”

“Most likely, they didn’t see them,” retorted the first man. “And if they find out they left them alive—well, you know what will happen as well as I do, Lord Dyan.”

“You’re right—the more shame to us all,” said the man he had called Lord Dyan, frowning. “Gods! If we could only reach Kennard! But he isn’t even in the city, is he?”

“No, he went to appeal to Hali,” the first man said, and there was a long silence. Finally Lord Dyan said, “Kennard has a town house here in Thendara. If the Lady Caitlin is there—would she shelter them until Kennard returns and can appeal to Hastur on their behalf? You’re Kennard’s sworn man; you know the Lady Caitlin better than I do, Andres.”

“I wouldn’t ask any favors of the Lady Caitlin, Lord Dyan,” Andres said slowly. “She grows more bitter as the years go by and she is more certain of her barrenness; she knows well that Kennard must one day put her aside and father sons somewhere, and any child we asked her to shelter for Kennard’s sake—well, she would certainly think them bastards of Kennard’s fathering, and lift no one of her fingers to protect them. Besides, if assassins broke into Kennard’s town house, they might well slaughter the Lady Caitlin too—”

“Which would be no grief to Kennard, I think,” said Lord Dyan, but Andres drew a breath of horror.

“Still, as Kennard’s sworn man, Lord Dyan, I am pledged to safeguard her too; he may not love his wife, but he honors her as he must by law; and I dare not endanger her by the presence of these children. No, by your leave, Lord Dyan, I will take them to the Terrans and find shelter for them there. Then, when the memory of these riots has died down, Kennard can appeal to Hastur for amnesty for them. ...”

“Quick,” said Lord Dyan. “Someone’s coming. Bring the children and keep them quiet. Here, wrap the little one in this blanket—there, now, little copper-hair, keep still.” Damon crept to the edge of the table, hiding in shadow, and saw the two men, one in Terran clothing, the other in the green-and-black uniform of the City Guard, wrapping his playmates in blankets and carrying them away. The room went dark around him. ...

Then there was a terrible cry of anguish and Jeff Kerwin stood in the room. He was swaying on his feet; his clothes were torn and cut, his face covered in blood. The child hiding under the table felt something break inside him, some terrible pain, he wanted to scream and scream, but he could only gasp, he thrust aside the tablecloth, staggered out into the room, and heard Kerwin’s cry of dismay as he was caught up into his foster-father’s strong arms.

 

He was wrapped warmly in a blanket; snow was falling on his face. He was wet through and in pain, and he could feel the pain of his foster-father’s broken nose. He tried to speak and he could not make his voice obey him. After a long time of cold and jolting pain he was in a warm room and gentle hands were spooning warm milk into his mouth. He opened his eyes and whimpered, looking into his foster-father’s face.

“There, there, little one,” said the woman who was feeding him. “Another spoonful, now, just a little one, there’s my brave fellow—I don’t think it’s a skull fracture, Jeff; there’s no bleeding within the skull; I monitored him. He’s just bruised and battered, those lunatics must have thought him dead! Murdering devils, to try and kill a child of five!”

“They killed my little ones, and dragged their bodies away somewhere, probably flung them in the river,” said his foster-father, and his eyes were terrible. “They’d have killed this one too, Magda, only they must have thought he was dead already. They killed Cassilde, and her unborn babe with her ... fiends, fiends!”

The woman asked gently, “Did you see your mother die, Damon?” But although he knew she was speaking to him, he could not speak; he struggled to speak, in terror, but not a single word would come through the fear and dread. It felt as if a tight fist was holding his throat.

“Frightened out of his wits, I shouldn’t wonder, if he saw them all die,” Kerwin said bitterly. “God knows if he’ll ever have all his wits again! He hasn’t spoken a word, and he wet and soiled himself, big boy that he is, when I found him. My children dead, and Cleindori’s son an idiot, and this is the harvest we reap for seven years’ work!”

“It may not be as bad as that,” the woman Magda said gently. “What will you do now, Jeff?”

“God knows. I wanted to keep away from the Terran authorities until we could make our own terms—Kennard and Andres and young Montray and I. You know what we were working for—to carry on what Damon and the rest had started.”

“I know.” The woman cradled him in her lap. “Little Damon here is all that’s left of it; Cleindori’s mother and I were
bredini
, sworn sister, when we were girls ... and now they are all gone. Why should I stay here?” Her eyes were bitter. “I know you tried, Jeff. I tried, too, to help Cleindori, but she wouldn’t come to me. But she had agreed to go offworld—”

“And it was just a day too late,” Kerwin said bitterly. “If only I had persuaded her a single day sooner!”

“There is no use in regretting,” Magda said. “I would keep the child myself; but I could be transferred away from Darkover at any moment, and he is too young to travel on the Big Ships, even if drugged—”

“I’ll take him to the Spacemen’s Orphanage,” Kerwin said. “I owe that to Cleindori, at least. And when I can manage to find Kennard—I think Andres is in the city, somewhere, I’ll look for him and find out from him where Kennard has gone—then, perhaps, something can be done for him. But he will be safe with the Terrans.”

The woman nodded, gently smoothed down Damon’s aching head, drawing him against her for a final caress. Her hand tangled in the chain about his neck and she gave a cry of consternation.

“The matrix! Cleindori’s matrix! Why didn’t it die when she died, Jeff?”

“I don’t know,” Kerwin said. “But it was still alive. And though the boy didn’t speak, he knew enough to grab for it. My guess is that she had let him play with it, touch it; it had keyed roughly into his consciousness and if he felt her die, through the matrix—well, it would account for the kid’s state,” he said bitterly. “It’s safe enough where it is, round the neck of an idiot child. They won’t be able to get it away without killing him. But they’ll be kind to him. Maybe they can teach him something, sooner or later.”

And then he was cold again, and he was held in his foster-father’s arms, each step jolting his broken ribs, as he was carried through heavy rain and blowing sleet through the streets of Thendara. ...

And then he was gone, he was nowhere, nothing....

 

He was standing, white and shaken, tears on his face, in his room in the hotel in Thendara, still shaking with a child’s terror. Elorie was staring up at him. She was crying, too. Jeff struggled to speak, but his voice would not obey him. Of course not, he could not speak a word ...
he would never speak again. . . .

“Jeff,” Elorie said quickly. “You are here. Jeff—Jeff, come up to present time!
Come up to present time!
That was twenty-five years ago!”

Jeff put a hand to his throat. His voice was thick, but he could speak. “So that was it,” he whispered. “I saw them all killed. Murdered. And—and I am not Jeff Kerwin. My name is Damon, and Kerwin was not my father; he was my father’s friend. He befriended their child ... but I am not Jeff Kerwin.
I’m not a Terran at all
!”

“No,” Elorie said in a whisper. “Your father was Kennard’s elder brother! By right you, not Kennard, are Heir to Alton—
and Kennard knows it!
You could displace Kennard’s half-caste sons. Was that why he didn’t speak up for you, at the last? He loves you. But he loves the sons of his second wife, his Terran wife, more than anything in the world. More than Arilinn. More, I think, than his own honor. ...”

Jeff gave a short, hard laugh. “I’m a bastard,” he said, “and the son of a renegade Keeper. I doubt if they’d want me as Heir to Alton, or anything else. Kennard can stop worrying. If he ever did.”

“And then the final complication in this farrago of mistaken identity,” Elorie said. “Cassilde’s children were taken to the Spacemen’s Orphanage—I know Kennard’s man, Andres. But Lord Dyan—he is my half-brother, Jeff. I didn’t know he knew Auster at all. But he must have known, and that is why he insisted on getting Auster from the orphanage; he must have thought he was Cassilde’s child by Arnad Ridenow, because of his red hair.”