Sharra's Exile (42 page)

unannounced.

Lew’s face darkened; but Rafe said “Cousin—” in such a pleading way that Lew gave him an uneasy smile. He said, “Come in, Rafe. None of this is your fault; you’re a victim too.”

“It’s taken me all this time to get up courage enough to tell you this,” said Rafe, “but you have to know.

Something the Legate said this morning meant that I didn’t dare wait any longer. I want you to come with me, Lew. There’s something you must see.”

“Can’t you tell me what it is?” Lew asked.

Rafe hesitated and said, “I would rather say this to you alone—” with an uneasy glance at Regis.

Lew’s voice was brusque. “Whatever you have to say; I’ve no secrets from Regis.”

Regis thought,
I don’t deserve such confidence
. But he slammed his mind shut, wanting no more of the telepathic leakage he suddenly seemed unable to shut out of his mind.

“There was no woman here to take charge,” said Rafe. “I went to your foster-sister. She agreed to take charge of her.”

“Of whom, in God’s name?” Lew demanded, then his mind quickly leaped to conclusions.

“This alleged child who’s been gossiped about in the Guards?”

Rafe nodded and led the way. It was not Linnell, however, who faced them, but Callina.

“I knew,” she said in a low voice. “Ashara told me… there are not many female children in the

Domains who might be trained as I have been trained, and I think—I think Ashara wants her…” and she stopped, her words choking off. She gestured to an inner room. “She is there… she was afraid in a strange place and I made her sleep…”

In a small cot, a little girl, five or six years old, lay sleeping. Her hair was copper-red, freshly minted; scattered across her face, which was triangular, scattered with pale gold freckles. She murmured drowsily, still fast asleep.

Regis felt it run through Lew, like a powerful electric shock.

I have seen her before… a dream, a vision, a precognitive dream… she is mine! Not my father’s, not my
dead brother’s, mine… my blood knows…

Regis felt his amazement and recognition. He said in a low voice, “Yes; it is like that.” When first he had looked upon the face of his newborn
nedestro
son there had been a moment of recognition, absolute knowledge,
this is my own son, born of my own seed
… there had never been any question in his mind; he had not needed the monitoring to tell him this was his own true child.

“But who was her mother?” Lew asked. “Oh, there were a few women in my life, but why did she

never tell me?” He broke off as the little girl opened her eyes…

Golden eyes; amber; a strange color, a color he had never seen before, never but once— Regis heard the hoarse gasping cry Lew could not keep back.

“No!” he cried. “It can’t be! Marjorie died… she died… died, and our child with her— Merciful

Evanda, am I going mad?”

Rafe’s eyes, so like the eyes Lew remembered, turned compassionately on them both. “Not Marjorie, Lew. This is Thyra’s child. Thyra was her mother.”

“But—but no, it can’t be,” Lew said, gasping, “I never— never once touched her—I would not have touched that hellcat’s fingertips—”

“I’m not quite sure what happened,” Rafe said. “I was very young, and Thyra—didn’t tell me

everything. But there was a time, at Aldaran, when you were drugged… and not aware of what you were doing…”

Lew buried his face in his hand, and Regis, unable to shut out anything, felt the full, terrifying flow of his thoughts.

Ah Gods, merciful Evanda, I thought that was all a dream… burning, burning with rage and lust…

Marjorie in my arms, but turning, in the mad way dreams do, to Thyra even as I kissed her
—
Kadarin
had done this to me… and I remember Thyra weeping in my dream, crying as she had not done even
when her father died…It was not her choice either, Thyra was Kadarin’s pawn too
…

“She was born a few seasons after Caer Donn burned,” Rafe said. “Something happened to Thyra when this child was born; I think she went mad for a little while…I do not remember; I was very young, and I had been ill for a long time after the—the burning. I thought, of course, that it was Kadarin’s child, he and Thyra had been together so long…”

And Regis followed Rafe’s thoughts too, a frightening picture of a woman maddened to raving, turning on the child she had not wanted to bear, conceived by a shameful trick…with a man drugged and

unaware. A child who had had to be removed to safety from time to time—

The little girl was awake now, sitting up, looking at them all curiously with those wide, improbable amber eyes. She looked at Rafe and smiled, evidently recognizing him. Then she looked at Lew, and Regis could feel it, like a blow, her shock at the sight of the ragged, ugly scars. Lew was scowling.

Well, I don’t blame him
—
to find out, that way, that he had been drugged, used
… Regis had seen Thyra only once or twice, and that briefly, but he had somehow, even then, sensed the tension of anger and desire between Thyra and Lew.
And they had been together, sealed to Sharra
…

The little girl sat up, tense as a small scared animal. Regis could feel again Lew’s shock at the sudden, frightening resemblance to Marjorie.

Then Lew said, his rough voice muted, “Don’t be scared,
chiya
. I’m not a pretty sight, but believe me, I don’t eat little girls.”

The little girl smiled. Her small face was charming, pointed in a small triangle. A tooth had come out of the middle of her smile.

“They said you were my father.”

“Oh, God, I suppose so,” Lew said.
Suppose so. I know I am, damn it
. He was wide open now, and Regis could not shut out his thoughts. Lew sat down uneasily on the edge of the cot. “What do they call you,
chiy’lla
?”

“Marja,” she said shyly. “I mean—
Marguerida
. Marguerida Kadarin.” She lisped the name in the soft mountain dialect.
Marjorie’s name
! “But I just be Marja.” She knelt upright, facing him. “What happen to your other hand?”

Regis had seen enough of Javanne’s children—and his own—to know how direct they were; but Lew

was disconcerted by her straightforwardness. He blinked and said, “It was hurt and they had to cut it off.”

Her amber eyes were enormous. Regis could feel her thinking this over. “I’m sorry—” and then she said, trying the word out on her tongue, “Father.” She reached up and patted his scarred cheek with her small hand. Lew swallowed hard and caught her against him, his head bent; but Regis could feel that he was shaken, close to tears, and again could not shut out Lew’s thoughts.

I saw this child once, even before Marjorie and I were lovers, saw her in a vision, and thought it meant
that Marjorie would bear my child, that all would be well with us
—
I foresaw; but I did not foresee that
Marjorie would have been dead for years before ever this daughter of mine and I should meet
…

“Where were you brought up, Marja?”

“In a big house with lots of other little boys and girls,” she said, “
They’re
orphans, but I’m something else. It’s a bad word that Matron says I must never,
never
say, but I’ll whisper it to you.”

“Don’t,” Lew said. He could guess; Regis remembered that there were still those who had called him bastard, even after he was acknowledged Heir to Alton. He had her snuggled on his lap now, in the curve of his arm.

If I had known, I would have come back
—
come back sooner. Somehow, somehow I would have
managed to make amends to Thyra for what I did not remember doing
…

Before Regis’s questioning look, Lew raised his head. He said doggedly, “I was drugged with

aphrosone. It’s vicious stuff; you live a normal life—but you forget from minute to minute what is happening, remember nothing but symbolic dreams…I’ve heard that if you tell a psychiatrist what you remember of the dreams under the drug, he will be able to help you remember what really happened. I didn’t want to know—” and his voice stuck in his throat.

That must have been after they escaped from Aldaran
, Regis thought;
Marjorie and Lew escaped
together, and Kadarin dragged them back, and drugged him, forcing him to serve as the pole of power
for Sharra… No wonder he did not want to remember
.

“It doesn’t matter,” Lew said, reading Regis’s thoughts, and his arm went around the child, so fiercely that she whimpered in protest. “She’s mine anyhow.”

He looks ugly but he’s nice, I’m glad he’s my father
…

They all stared at her in astonishment; she had reached out and touched their minds. Regis thought,
but
children never have the Gift
—

“Thyra was half
chieri
, they said,” Lew said quietly. “Obviously, Marja
does
have it. It’s not common, though it’s not unknown. Your Gift waked early, didn’t it, Rafe—nine or ten?”

Rafe nodded. He said “I remember our—foster-father Lord Aldaran—telling us about our mother. She was daughter to one of the forest-folk. And Thyra—” he hesitated, not wanting to say it.

“Go ahead,” said Lew, “whatever it is.”

“You did not know… Thyra. She was… like the
chieri. Emmasca;
no one was sure whether she was boy or girl. I can remember her like that, when I was very small, but only a little. Then Kadarin came—

and very soon after, she began to wear women’s clothing and think of herself as a woman… that was when we began to call her Thyra; before that, she had another name… you did not know that she was as old as Beltran, that she was past her twentieth year when Marjorie was born.”

Lew shook his head, shocked. Regis picked up the thought,
I believed she was three or four years older
than Marjorie, no more
… and a welter of images, resentment and desire, Thyra playing her harp, looking up at Lew in passionate wrath, Thyra’s face suddenly, dreamlike, melting into Marjorie’s

… Marjorie, saying gently; “You were a little in love with Thyra, weren’t you, Lew?”

Lew set the child down. “I’ll have to find a nurse for her; there’s no woman in my apartments to look after her.” He stooped down and kissed the small rosy cheek. “Stay here with my kinswoman Linnell, little daughter.”

She caught at his hand and asked shakily, “Am I going to live with you now?”

“You are,” Lew said firmly, and gestured to Rafe and Regis to leave the room with him. Regis said, with a note of warning, “They are going to use her to depose you…”

“I’m damned sure they’ll try,” Lew said grimly, “A nice, peaceful puppet, pliant in Hastur hands—no, I don’t mean
you
, Regis, but the old man, and Dyan, and that precious kinsman of mine, Gabriel—the Council never did trust the male adult Altons too much, did they? So they exile me to Armida, or to a Tower, and bring this youngster up in the way they think she should go.” His face looked strained and he clenched his good hand so tightly that Regis was glad he was not the object of Lew’s wrath.

“Let them try,” he said, and his hand twitched as if he had it around the neck of some one, “Just let them try, damn them! She’s mine—and if they think they can take her away from me again, they are welcome to try!”

Regis and Rafe exchanged glances of mingled relief and dismay. Regis had hoped that something, somehow, would awaken Lew out of his deadly apathy, make him care for some one and something

again. Now it seemed as if something had done just that. Well, they had raised the wind—but there might be hell to pay before this was over!

CHAPTER TEN

Lew Alton’s narrative

The day was darkening toward twilight. Looking out over the city, I could see the streets beginning to fill with the laughing, masked, flower-tossing crowds of Festival Night. I would be expected to appear for the Alton Domain at the great ball in the Comyn Castle; it was simply part of being what I was, and although they had not made any overt move to depose me from my place as Head of the Domain, I

intended to give them no chance to say I was neglecting any part of my duty. Now, among other things, I must somehow arrange proper care for Marja. Andres would guard her with his life, if he knew she were mine, but a child that age needed a woman to look after her, to dress her and bathe her and make sure she had proper playthings and companionship. Regis offered to place her in Javanne’s care; his sister had twin daughters who were about her age. I thanked him but refused; Javanne Hastur has never liked me, and Javanne’s husband, Gabriel Lanart-Hastur, was one of the main contenders for the Domain. The last thing I wanted was to place this child in his keeping.

I thought regretfully of Dio. I had been too quick to dissolve our marriage. She had wanted my child, and even though our son had died, perhaps she would have allowed this one to fill the place left vacant… but no; that would be asking too much, that she should love another woman’s child as her own. When I thought of her, the old suffering and resentment surfaced. In any case, if she were here, I could consult her about the proper way to raise a girl child— I wondered how Callina would feel about it. And then I remembered that Callina had sworn to marry Beltran.

Over my dead body
, I vowed silently, left Marja in Andres’s care (he said that he knew a decent woman, the wife of one of my father’s paxmen, who would come to care for her, if I took her home to Armida) and went to seek out Callina.

She looked weary and harried.

“The girl’s awake,” she said. “She was hysterical when she wakened; I had to give her a sedative. She’s calmed down a little, but of course she doesn’t speak the language, and she’s frightened in a strange place. Lew, what are we going to do now?”

“I won’t know till I see her. Where is she?”

So much had happened in the intervening hours that I had all but forgotten Ashara’s plan, the woman who had been brought through the Screen. She had been moved to a spacious room in the Aillard

apartments; when we came in she was lying across the bed, her face buried in the covers, and she looked as if she had been crying; but it was a tearless and defiant face she raised to me. She was still Linnell’s double; even more so, having been decently dressed in clothing I supposed—correctly—to be some of Linnell’s own.