Sharra's Exile (43 page)

“Please tell me the truth,” she said steadily, as I came in. “Am I mad and locked up somewhere?” She spoke one of the dialects I knew perfectly well… of course; I had talked with her at length, that night on Vainwal when my son had been born, and died. And even as this crossed my mind I saw the memory reflected in her face.

“But I remember you!” she cried out, “The man with one hand—the one who had that—that—that

terribly deformed—” My face must have done something she didn’t know about, because she stopped.

“Where am I? Why have you kidnapped me and brought me here?”

I said quietly, “You needn’t be afraid.” I remembered saying the same thing to Marja; she had been afraid of me too. But I could not reassure her with the same words that had comforted a five-year-old child. “Allow me to introduce myself. Lewis-Kennard Montray-Lanart,
z’par servu
—”

“I know who you are,” she said steadily. “What I don’t know is how I got here. A red sun—”

“If you’ll be calm, I’ll explain everything,” I said. “I am sorry, I cannot remember your name—”

“Kathie Marshall,” she said.

“
Terranan
?”

“Yes. But I know we’re not on Terra, nor on Vainwal,” she said, and her voice trembled; but she made no display of fear. I said, “The
Terranan
call this Cottman’s Star. We call it Darkover. We brought you here because we need your help—”

“You must be crazy,” she said. “How could I help you? And if I could, what makes you think I would, after you’ve kidnapped me?”

That was, I supposed, a fair question. I reached out to try to touch her mind; if she could not understand our language, at least this might reassure her that we meant no harm.

Callina said, “You were brought here because you were twinned in mind with my sister Linnell—”

She backed away. “Twinned minds? That’s ridiculous! Do you think I believe in that kind of thing?”

“If you do not,” said Callina quietly, “how is it that suddenly you can understand what I am saying?”

“Why, you’re speaking Terran… no!” she said, and I saw the terror rise in her mind again. “Why, what language am I speaking—?”

It was reasonable that if she was Linnell’s Cherillys double, she would have
laran
potential; at least she could understand us now. Callina said, “We hoped we could persuade you to help us; but there will be no compulsion and certainly no force.”

“Where am I, then?”

“In the Comyn Castle in Thendara.”

“But that’s halfway across the Galaxy…” she whispered, and turned frantically to stare out the window, at the red light of the declining sun. I saw her white hands clench on a fold of curtain. “A red sun—”

she whispered, “Oh, I have nightmares like this when I can’t wake up…” She was so deathly white I feared she would collapse; Callina put an arm around her, and this time Kathie did not pull away.

“Try to believe us, child,” Callina said. “You are here, on Darkover. We brought you here.”

“And who are you?”

“Callina Aillard. Keeper of Comyn Council.”

“I’ve heard about the Keepers,” Kathie said, then, shakily, “this whole thing is crazy! You
can’t
take a Terran citizen and pull her halfway across the Galaxy like this! My—my father will tear the planet apart looking for me—” She covered her face with her hands. “I—I want to go home!”

I wished that we had never started this whole thing. I was remembering the aureole of doom, fate, death which I had seen around Linnell… merciful Evanda, was it only last night? I wondered if this had endangered Linnell in some way; what happened when Cherillys duplicates met one another? There was not even a legend to guide me. There was an old legend from the Kilghard Hills, about a mountain chief, or a bandit lord—in those days, I supposed, it would be hard to distinguish between them—who had located his duplicate so that he could command his army by being in two places at once; but I couldn’t remember any more than that, and I had no idea what had happened to the duplicate once his day was done. Possibly the bandit chief let his duplicate be hanged for his own crimes. In any case, I was sure he came to a bad end.

Would this woman’s presence endanger Linnell? There was one precaution I could take; I could put a protective barrier around her mind, so that she would keep her invulnerability, her complete

unawareness of these Darkovan forces. I hoped that in touching her mind, to give her knowledge of the language, I had not already breached that unawareness; at least I would make sure no one else did so.

In effect, I meant to put a barrier around her mind so that any attempt to make telepathic contact with Kathie, or dominate her mind, would be immediately shunted, through a sort of bypass circuit built into the barrier, to me.

There was no sense in trying to explain what I meant to do. I would have to start by explaining the very nature of the
laran
Gifts, and since, as Linnell’s exact duplicate, she had
laran
potential, when I had done explaining, she might be adapted and vulnerable to Darkovan forces. I reached out as gently as I could, and made contact.

It was an instant of screaming pain in every nerve, then it blanked out, and Kathie was sobbing convulsively.

“
What did you do
? I felt you—it was horrible—but no, that’s crazy—or
I’m
crazy—what happened?”

“Why couldn’t you wait till she understood?” Callina demanded. But I had done what I had to do, and I had done it now, because I wanted Kathie safely barriered before anyone saw her and guessed. But it hurt to see her cry; I had never been able to stand Linnell’s tears. Callina looked up helplessly, trying to soothe the weeping girl.

“Go away. I’ll handle this.” And as Kathie’s sobs broke out afresh, “Lew, go
away
!”

Suddenly I was angry. Why didn’t Callina trust me? I bowed elaborately and said, “
Su serva, domna
,”

in my coldest, most ironic voice, turned my back and went out.

And in that moment, when I left Callina in anger, I snapped the trap shut on us all.

As darkness fell, every light in the Comyn Castle began to glow; once in every journey of Darkover around its sun, the Comyn, city folk from Thendara, mountain lords with business in the lowlands, offworld consuls and ambassadors and Terrans from the Trade City, mingled together on Festival Night with a great show of cordiality. Now it involved everyone of any importance on the planet; and Festival opened with a great display of dancing in the great ball-room.

Centuries of tradition made this a masked affair, so that Comyn and commoner might mingle on equal terms. In compliance with custom I wore a narrow half mask, but had made no other attempt at

disguise; though I had worn my mechanical hand, simply so that I would not be a marked man. My father, I thought wryly, would have approved. I stood at one end of the hall, talking idly with a couple of Terrans in the space service, and as soon as I decently could, I got away and went to one of the windows, looking out at the four miniature moons that had nearly floated into conjunction.

Behind me the great hall blazed with colors and costumes reflecting every corner of Darkover and much of our history. Derik wore an elaborate and gaudy costume from the Ages of Chaos, but he was not masked—one part of a prince’s duty is simply to be visible to his subjects. I recognized Rafe Scott, too, in the mask and whip of a
kifirgh
duelist, complete with clawed gloves.

In the corner reserved by tradition for young girls, Linnell’s spangled mask was a travesty of disguise.

Her eyes were glowing with happy consciousness of all the eyes on her; as
comynara
she was known to everyone on Darkover—at least in the Domains—but she rarely saw anyone outside the narrow circle of her cousins and the few selected companions permitted to a lady of the Aillard Domain. Now, masked, she could speak to, or even dance with, complete strangers; the excitement of it was almost too much for her.

Beside her, also masked, I saw Kathie, and wondered if that was another of Callina’s brilliant ideas.

Well, there was no harm in it; with the bypass circuit I had put into her brain, she was safely barricaded; and there was hardly a better way of proving to her that she was not a prisoner but an honored guest. They would probably think her a minor noble woman of the Aillard clan.

Linnell laughed up at me as I approached her.

“Lew, I am teaching your cousin from Terra some of our dances. Imagine, she didn’t know them.”

My cousin from Terra. I supposed that was another idea of Callina’s. Well, it explained the faint unfamiliarity with which she spoke Darkovan. Kathie said gently, “I wasn’t taught dancing, Linnell.”

“You weren’t? What did you study, then? Lew, don’t they dance on Terra?”

“Dancing,” I said dryly, “is an integral part of all human cultures. It is a group activity passed down from the group movements of birds and anthropoids, and also a social channeling of mating behavior among all higher primates, including man. Among such quasi-human cultures as those of the
chieri
it becomes an ecstatic behavior pattern akin to drunkenness. Yes, they dance on Terra, on Megaera, Samarra, Alpha Ten, Vainwal, and in fact from one end of the Galaxy to the other. For further

information, lectures on anthropology are given in the city; I’m not in the mood.” I turned to Kathie in what I hoped was proper cousinly fashion. “Suppose we do it instead.”

I added to Kathie as we danced, “Certainly you wouldn’t know that dancing is a major study with children here; Linnell and I both learned as soon as we could walk. I had only basic instruction—after that I went to training in the martial arts—but Linnell has been studying ever since.” I glanced affectionately back at Linnell, who was dancing with Regis Hastur. “I went to a dance or two on Vainwal. Are our dances so different?”

But as I talked I was studying the Terran woman carefully. Kathie had guts and brains, I realized. It took them to come here after the shock she had had, and play the part tacitly assigned to her. And Kathie had another rare quality; she seemed unaware that the arm circling her waist was unlike any other arm and hand. That’s not common; even Linnell had given it a quick, furtive stare. Well, Kathie worked in hospitals, she had probably seen worse things.

With seeming irrelevance, Kathie said, “And Linnell is your cousin, your kinswoman—?”

“My foster-sister; she was brought up in my father’s home. We’re not blood kin, except insofar as all Comyn have common ancestry.”

“She’s very—well, it’s as if she were
really
my twin sister; I feel as if I’d always known her, I loved her the moment I saw her. But I’m afraid of Callina. It’s not that she’s been unkind to me—no one could have been kinder—but she seems so remote, somehow, not quite human!”

“She’s a Keeper,” I said, “they are taught not to show emotions, that’s all.” But I wondered if that were all it was.

“Please—” Kathie touched my arm, “let’s not dance; on Vainwal I’m a good enough dancer, but here I feel like a stumbling elephant!”

‘“You probably weren’t taught as intensively.” To me that was the strangest thing about Terra; the casualness with which they regarded this one talent which distinguishes man from the four-footed kind.

There is a saying on Darkover;
only men laugh, only men dance, only men weep
. Women who could not dance—how could they have true beauty?

I started to return Kathie to the corner where the young women waited; and as I turned, I saw Callina enter the ballroom. And for me, the music stopped.

I have seen the black night of interstellar space flecked with a hundred million stars. Callina looked like that, in a filmy web like a scrap torn out of that sky, her dark hair netted with pale constellations. I heard drawn breaths, gasps of shock everywhere.

“How beautiful she is,” breathed Kathie, “but what does the costume represent? I’ve never seen one like it—”

“I’ve no idea,” I said, but I lied. The tale was told in the
Ballad of Hastur and Cassilda
, the most ancient legend of the Comyn; Camilla, slain by the shadow-sword in the place of her bright sister, so that she passed away into the realms of darkness under the shadow of Avarra, Dark Lady of birth and death… I had no idea why a woman on the eve of her bridal, even in the case of so unappealing a marriage as this, should choose to come in such a dress. I wondered what would happen when Beltran of Aldaran caught the significance of that? A more direct insult would be hard to devise, unless she had come in the dress of the public hangman!

I excused myself quickly from Kathie and went in the direction of Callina. I agreed that this marriage was a sickening farce, but she had no right to embarrass her family like this. But Merryl reached her first, and I caught the tail end of his lecture.

“A pretty piece of spite—embarrass us all before our guests, when Beltran has made so generous a gesture—”

“He may keep his generosity as far as I am concerned,” Callina said. “Brother, I will not look or act a lie. This dress pleases me; it is perfectly suited to the way I have been treated all my life by Comyn!”

Her laugh was musical and bitter. “Beltran would endure more insult than this, for
laran
-right in Comyn Council! Wait and see!”

“Do you think I am going to dance with you while you are wearing that—” his voice failed him; he was crimson with wrath. Callina said, “As for that, you may please yourself. I am willing to behave in a civilized manner. If you are not, it is your loss.” She turned to me and said, almost a command, “Lord Alton will dance with me.” She held out her arms, and I moved into them; but this boldness was unlike her, and put me ill at ease. Callina was a Keeper; always, in public, she had been timid, self-effacing, overwhelmingly shy and modest. This new Callina, drawing all eyes with a shocking costume, startled me. And what would Linnell think?

“I’m sorry about Linnell,” said Callina, “but the dress pleases my mood. And—it is becoming, is it not?”

It was, but the coquetry with which she glanced up at me, shocked and startled me; it was as if a painted statue had come to life and begun flirting with me. Well, she had asked me. “You’re too damned beautiful,” I said, hoarsely, then drew her into a recess and crushed my mouth down on hers, hard and savagely. “Callina, Callina, you’re not going through this crazy farce of a marriage, are you?”