Sharra's Exile (20 page)

Sharra?”

Lerrys Ridenow came down to the center of the dais. I had not seen him since shortly after my marriage to Dio; but he had not changed: slender, elegant, dressed now in Darkovan clothing, the green and gold of the Ridenow Domain, but exhibiting the same foppish grace as he had had in the clothing he had worn on the pleasure world.

He said, “Are you going to raise the bogey of Sharra again? We all know the link was broken and the matrix controlled again. The Sharra matrix is no trouble to anyone now—or rather,” he said, raising his head and cocking it a little to one side with a calculating glance at me, “it may be very grave trouble to Lew Alton, but he asked, after all, for his trouble.”

How could he have known that? Dio must have told him! How could she… how could she have

betrayed to him what was so personal to me? And what else had she told him, what else had she
betrayed? I had trusted her implicitly
— My hand clenched and I bit back a rising surge of nausea. I did not want to believe that Dio could have betrayed me this way.

But next to me, Marius rose to his feet. I was startled, almost turned to him to remind him sharply that he had no voice here—then I remembered. He was one of the official claimants for the Alton Domain; they could no longer refuse to acknowledge his existence.

He said, and his voice was only a shred of sound. “That’s not true,
Dom
Lerrys. The matrix is—is active again. Lord Regis, tell that what you saw… in my father’s house, not three days ago.”

“It’s true,” Regis said, and he was very pale. “The Sharra matrix is alive again. But I did not know, at that time, that Lew Alton had returned to Darkover. I think he must have brought it back with him.”

I had had no choice, but there was no way I could tell them that. While Regis spoke, I listened, transfixed with horror. I clutched at Marius’s sleeve and said, “Rafe. He is in Thendara—”

But I hardly heard Marius’s reply.

Rafe was in Thendara.

That meant Kadarin and Thyra were—somewhere.

And so was the Sharra matrix.

And so—all the Gods of Darkover be merciful—so was I.

CHAPTER THREE

Even as he told the story of what he had seen in Kennard’s house the night Marius had come in panic to summon him, Regis watched Lew, thinking that he would hardly have known the older man, who had been like a brother in his childhood. Lew looked, he formed the thought without volition, like something hung up in a field to scare the birds! Not so much the gauntness, though he was thin enough, and looked worn, nor even the dreadful scars. No, it was something in the eyes, something haunted and terrible.

In six years, has he found no peace?

Surely it was only that Lew was travel-worn, still suffering with the shock of his father’s sudden death.

Regis knew that when he could stop to think, he too would mourn the kindly and genial man who had been foster-father and friend, who had trained him in swordplay and given him the only family and home he had ever known. But this was no time for mourning. Tersely, he completed the tale.

“… and when I tried to look within my own matrix, it was as it had been in the Hellers, during that time when Sharra was freed and Lew was—enslaved. I saw nothing but the Form of Fire.”

From his place among the Altons, the big red-headed man who had come from Arilinn, and who was one of Lew’s kinsmen—Regis had only heard his name briefly and did not remember it—said, “I find this disturbing, Lord Regis. For look, my own matrix is free of any taint.” With the big fingers which looked better suited to the hilt of a sword—or to a blacksmith’s hammer—he deftly untwisted the silk about the cord at his neck; briefly, Regis saw a glow of pallid blue before the man covered it again.

“And mine,” said Callina quietly but without moving. Regis assumed that, as a Keeper, she would know the condition of her matrix without touching it. Sometimes he wished he had chosen to remain in a Tower, to be trained in the skills of using all of his latent
laran
, whatever it was. Usually, when this wish came upon Regis, it was when he saw a trained technician working with a matrix. It had not been strong enough to hold him in a Tower against the other claims of clan and caste, and he supposed that for a true mechanic or technician, that call must supersede other claims and needs.

Callina said quietly to Lew, “What of yours?”

He shrugged, and to Regis it seemed like the last hopeless movement of a man so defeated that there was no longer strength in him to fight this ultimate shame and despair. He wanted to cry out to Callina,
Can’t you see what you are doing to him
? At last Lew said tonelessly, “I have never been—free of it.”

But the others in the Crystal Chamber were growing restless. Already the quality of the light had altered, as the Bloody Sun beyond the windows sank toward the horizon and was lost in the evening mists; now the light was cold, chill and austere. At last someone, some minor noble somewhere within the Ardais Domain, called out, “What has this to do with the Council?”

Callina said in her sombre voice, “Pray to all the Gods you never find out how much this can have to do with us,
comynari
. There is nothing that can be done here, but we must investigate this—” She looked at Lew’s kinsman from Arilinn and said, “Jeff, are there any other technicians here?”

He shook his head. “Not unless the mother Ashara can supply some.” He turned back to the Hasturs and addressed himself to Regis’s grandfather.

“
Vai Dom
, will you dismiss the Council for a few days, until we can look into this and find out why there has been this—this outbreak of a force we thought safely controlled.”

Hastur frowned, and Derik said shrilly, “It is too late to stop this alliance, Lord Hastur, and anyway I don’t think Beltran has anything to do with the Sharra people—not now. I think he’s had his lesson about that! Don’t you think so, Marius?”

Regis saw Lew start and stare in dismay at Marius, and wondered if Lew had not known about the ties between his brother and Rafe Scott—ties that probably meant with the Aldarans too. Well, they were Marius’s kinsmen, his mother’s people.
We made a great mistake
, he thought drearily,
we should have
kept Marius allied to us in bonds of friendship, kin-ties. We cast him out; where could he turn, save to
the Terrans, or Aldarans, or both? And now it seems we must deal with him as Heir to Alton
. It seemed fairly obvious that Lew was in no shape to take upon himself the rulership of the Alton Domain, even if the Council could be brought to accept him there.

There was once a
laran
which could foretell the future
, Regis thought,
and it was among the Hasturs.

Would that I had some of that gift
!

He had missed what Marius had said, but his grandfather looked distressed. Then he said, “There can be no question of alliance with Aldaran until we know something of this—” he hesitated and Regis saw the old man’s lip curl in fastidious distaste—“this—reappearance of Sharra.”

“But that’s what I am trying to tell you,” said Derik in exasperation. “We have sent the message to Beltran, and he will be here on Festival Night!” And, as he read the anger and dismay in old Hastur’s face, Derik added, defensive, petulant, like a small boy who has been caught at some mischief, “Well, I am Lord of Elhalyn! It was my right—wasn’t it?”

Danvan Hastur took the cup of warmed spiced wine that his body-servant had set in his hand, and propped his feet up on a carven footstool. Around him the servants were moving quietly, lighting lamps. Night had fallen; the same night after which he had had no choice but to dismiss the Council.

“I should send a message to see how Lew does,” Regis said, “or go and greet him. Kennard was my friend and foster-father; Lew and I were
bredin
.”

Hastur said with asperity, “You could surely find yourself a less dangerous friend in these days. That alliance won’t do you any good.”

Regis said angrily, “I don’t choose my friends for their political expediency, sir!”

Hastur shrugged that away. “You’re still young enough for the luxury of friendships. I remained convinced that Kennard was a good friend—perhaps for too long.” As Regis stirred, he said, “No, wait.

I need you here. I have sent for Gabriel and Javanne. The question before us is this: what are we going to do about Derik?” As Regis looked blank he said impatiently, “Surely you don’t still think we can have him crowned! The boy’s not much better than a halfwit!”

Regis shrugged. “I don’t see what choice you have, Grandfather. It’s worse than if he were a halfwit; then everyone would agree that he can’t be crowned. The trouble is that Derik has nine-tenths of his wits, and he’s missing only the most important tenth.” He smiled, but knew there was no mirth in the joke.

But Danvan Hastur did not smile, he said, “In some lesser walk of life—even as the ordinary Head of a Domain—it wouldn’t be so important; he’s going to marry Linnell Lindir-Aillard, and she’s no fool.

Derik loves her, he’s grown up with the knowledge that the Aillard women are the Heads of Council in their own right, and he would let himself be guided by her. I remember when my father married off one of the less stable Ardais to an Aillard woman; Lady Rohana was the real head of that clan well into Dyan’s time. But—to wear the crown of the Hasturs of Elhalyn—” he shook his head slowly, “and in the days that are coming now? No, I can’t risk it.”

“I don’t know that you have the power to risk it or not risk it, sir,” Regis pointed out. “If you had faced the fact, years ago, that Derik would never be fit for his crown, perhaps when he was twelve or fifteen, and instead had him put under Guardianship and had him set aside—who is the next Heir to Elhalyn?”

Danvan Hastur scowled, lines running down sharply from his jaw to his chin. “I can’t believe you are
that
naïve, Regis.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Grandfather.”

Danvan Hastur sighed and said heavily, as if he were explaining a thing to a child with the use of colored pictures, “Your mother, Regis, was King Stephen’s sister. His only sister.” Just in case Regis might have missed the implications of
that
, he added baldly, “You are nearest to the crown—even before the sons of Derik’s sisters. The oldest of those sons is three years old. There is also an infant at the breast.”

“Aldones! Lord of Light!” Regis muttered, and the imprecation was nevertheless a prayer. Words he had said, joking, to Danilo years before, came back to him now. “
If you love me, Dani, don’t wish a
crown upon me
!”

“If I had had him set aside,” his grandfather said, “who would have believed that I was not simply trying to consolidate power in my own hands? Not that it would have been such a bad thing, in these days—but it would have lost me the popular support that I needed to keep order in a crownless realm. I delayed, hoping it would become clear to everyone that Derik was really unfit.”

“And now,” said Regis, “everyone will think that you are trying to depose Derik the first time he makes a decision contrary to yours.”

“The trouble is,” his grandfather said, and he sounded despondent, “this proposed alliance with Aldaran might not be such a bad idea, if we could be absolutely certain that the Aldarans are once and for all out of the Terran camp. What happened during that Sharra business seemed to have broken off the

closeness between Terrans and Aldaran. If we could get the Aldarans firmly on our side—” he

considered for a moment.

“Grandfather, do you honestly think that the Terrans are going to pack up their spaceport and go away?”

The old man shook his head. “I want us to turn our backs on them completely. I think my father made a very great mistake when he allowed Kennard to be educated on Terra, and I think I compounded that mistake when I recognized Lew for Council. No, of course the Terran Empire won’t go away. But the Terrans might have respected us, if we hadn’t kept looking over the wall. We should never have let the Ridenow go offworld. We should have said to the Terrans, ‘Build your spaceport if you must, but in return for that, let us alone. Leave us with our own way of life, and go about your business without involving us.’”

Regis shook his head. “It wouldn’t have worked. You can’t ignore a fact, and the Terran Empire is a fact. It’s
there
. Sooner or later it’s going to affect us one way or the other, no matter how strictly we try to pretend it doesn’t exist. And you can’t ignore the fact that we are Terran colonists, or that we were once—”

“What we were once doesn’t matter,” Danvan Hastur said. “Chickens can’t go back into eggs.”

“The very point I’m trying to make, sir. We were cut off from our roots, and we found a way of life which meant we accepted ourselves as belonging to this world, compelled to live within its restrictions.

That worked while we were still isolated, but once we had come back into contact with a—” he

stopped, and considered—“with an empire which spans the stars, and takes world-hopping for granted, we can’t pretend to continue as we were.”

“I don’t see why not,” Hastur said. “The Terrans have nothing that we want.”

“Nothing
you
want, perhaps, sir.” Regis made a point of not staring markedly at the silver coffee service on his grandfather’s table, but the old man saw his look anyhow and said, “I am willing to do without any Terran luxuries, if it will encourage the rest of our people to do likewise.”

“Once again, sir, won’t work. We had to turn to the Terrans during the last epidemic of Trailmen’s fever. There’s some evidence the climate’s changing, too, and we need some technological help there.

People will die if they don’t see an alternative, but if we let them die when Terran medicine can help them, are we anything but tyrants? Sir, one thing no one can control is
knowledge
. We can use it or misuse it— like
laran
,” he added grimly, remembering that his own laran had brought him such unendurable self-knowledge that, at one time, he would willingly have had it burned forever from his brain. “But we can’t pretend it’s never happened, or that it’s our destiny to stay on this one world as if it was all there would ever be in the universe.”