Sharra's Exile (54 page)

“Marja?”

“He—defended her with his life,” Regis said. “Beltran— would have taken her into Sharra; she has the Alton Gift. But Dyan…”

I was braced to hear that Dyan had been party to this; I was not prepared for what Regis told me next.

“Somehow—he thrust her out—
elsewhere
. I could find no trace of her, even telepathically. I do not know where he has her hidden; but somewhere, she is safe from Sharra. And Dyan—did you know he has the Alton Gift, Lew?”

In the confusion I had forgotten. But I should have known, of course. Power to force his will on another mind, even unwilling… and Dyan had Alton blood; he and my father had been first cousins. My

father’s mother was own sister to Dyan’s father, and there were other kin-ties, further generations back.

Once, under terrible pressure—I had used a little-known power of the Altons, I had teleported from Aldaran to the Arilinn Tower. Dyan might, for some reason, have done this to Marja—but he could have sent her anywhere on Darkover, from Armida itself to Castle Ardais in the Hellers—or to the Spaceman’s Orphanage in Thendara where she had been brought up.

When there was time, I would have to make a search for her, physical and telepathic; I did not think Dyan could hide her from me permanently, or even that he would want to. But before that, Kadarin held the Sharra matrix, and if he chose to draw it, I knew I could never trust myself again. I tried to warn Regis of this. He touched the Sword of Aldones, and he looked grim. “This is the weapon against Sharra. Since I belted it on… there are many things I know,” he said, strangely, “things I had not learned. I have known for days that I have a strange power over Sharra, and now, with
this
—” it was as if something spoke
behind
and
through
the Regis I knew; he looked haggard and worn, years older than he was. But now and then, as I looked into his eyes, the other Regis, the youngster I knew, would peep through; and he looked frightened. I didn’t blame him.

“Show me your matrix,” he said.

I balked at that. Not without the presence of a Keeper. I said, “If Callina is there,” and he turned to one of the doctors and asked what had happened to her.

“She was faint,” said Kathie, “I took her into one of the cubicles to lie down. It must have been all the blood.”

That alerted me to danger. Darkovan women don’t faint at trifles, or at the sight of blood. I had to shout and create a scene, though, before they would take me to her; and I found her in one of the small cubicles, seated stone-still, her eyes withdrawn and pallid, as if she were Ashara’s self, gazing at nothing in the world we could see…

Regis shouted at her, and so did I, but she was motionless, her eyes gazing into nowhere unfathomable distances. At last I reached out, tried to touch her mind—I felt her, very far away, some cold icy
otherness
… then she gasped, stared at me, and came back to herself.

“You were in trance, Callina,” I told her, and she looked at us in consternation. I believe that even then, if she had taken us into her confidence, it might have been different… but she made light of the curious trance, saying lightly, “I was resting, no more… half asleep. What is it, what do you want?”

Regis said quietly, “I want to see if we can clear his matrix and free him from the…the Sharra one. I did it for Rafe. I think I could have done it for Beltran if he had asked me.” I picked up the unspoken part of that: Beltran was still eager to use Sharra, he had regarded it as the ultimate weapon against subjection to the Terrans… blackmail to get them off our world forever.

And Dyan, wrong-headed and desperately anxious for power the weakening Comyn Council would not
yield to him, had followed him into subjection to Sharra
— I could feel Regis’s grief and sorrow at that, and suddenly for a moment I saw Dyan through Regis’s eyes;
the older kinsman, handsome, worldly,
whom the younger Regis had liked and admired… then feared, with still the extreme fascination that
was closely akin to love… the only kinsman who had wholly accepted him
. I had seen Dyan only cruel, threatening, harsh; a martinet, a man eager for power and using it in brutally unsubtle ways; a man sadistically misusing his power over cadets and younger kinsmen. This other side of Dyan was one I had never seen, and it gave me pause. Had I, after all, misjudged the man?

No; or else even his love of power would never have misled him into the attempt to that ultimate perversion of the Comyn powers:
Sharra’s fire
… I had been burned by that fire, and Dyan had seen the scars. But in his supreme arrogance, he thought he could succeed where I had failed, make Sharra serve him; be master, rather than slave to Sharra’s fire… and Dyan was not even Tower-trained?

“All the more reason, Lew, that you must be freed,” Regis argued. After a moment I slipped the leather thong off over my head and fumbled one-handed to unwrap the silks. Finally I let it roll out into my palm, seeing the crimson blaze overlaying the blue interior shimmer of the matrix—

Callina focused her attention on me, matching resonances, until she could take it into her hand; the trained touch of a Keeper, and not overwhelmingly painful. Then I felt something like a tug-o-war in my mind, the call, restimulated, of Sharra,
Return, return and live in the life of my fires
… and through it I felt Marjorie… or was it Thyra?
In my embrace you shall burn forever in passion undiminished
…

I felt Regis, through this, as if he were somehow reaching into my very brain, though I knew it was only my matrix he was touching, disentangling it thread by thread… but the more he worked on it, the stronger grew the redoubled call, the pulse of Sharra beating in my brain, till I stood burning in agony…

The door was flung open and Dio was in the room, rushing to me, physically flinging Callina aside.

“What do you think you are doing to him?” she raged.

The flames diminished and died; Regis caught at some piece of furniture, staggering, hardly able to stand erect.

“How much do you think he can stand? Hasn’t he been through enough?”

I collapsed gratefully into a chair. I said, “They were only—”

“Only stirring up what’s better left alone,” Dio stormed. “I could feel it all the way up to the eighth floor above here… I could feel them
cutting
at you…” and she ran her hands over me as if she had expected to see me physically covered in blood.

“It’s all right, Dio,” I said, knowing my voice was hardly more than an exhausted mumble. “I was trained to—to endure it—”

“What makes you think you’re able to endure it now?” she demanded angrily, and Regis said, in

despair, “If Kadarin draws the Sharra sword…”

“If he does,” Dio said, “he will have to fight; but can’t you let him get together enough strength to fight it?”

I did not know. Rafe had never been farther than the outer layer of the circle we had formed around Sharra; I had been at its very heart, controlling the force and flow of the power of Sharra. I was doomed, and I knew it. I knew what Callina and Regis had been trying to do, and I was grateful, but for me it was too late.

My eyes rested on Callina, and I saw everything around me with a new clarity. She was everything of the past to me; Arilinn, and my own past; Marjorie had died in her arms, and then I had found in her the first forgetfulness I had known. Kinswoman, Keeper, all the past… and I ached with regret that I would not live to take her with me to Armida, to reclaim my own past and my own world. But it was not to be.

A darker love would claim me, the wildfire of Sharra surging in my veins, the dark bond to Thyra who had made herself Keeper of that monstrous circle of Sharra, fire and lust and endless burning torture and flame… Callina might call me to her, but it was too late, now and forever too late. Dio spoke to me, but I had gone back to a time before she had come into my life, and I hardly remembered her name.

What were we doing here within these white walls?

Someone came into the room. I did not recognize the man although from the way he spoke to me I knew that he was someone I was supposed to know. One of the accursed Terrans, those who would die in the flames of Sharra when the time was ripe. His words were mere sounds without sense and I did not understand them.

“That woman Thyra! We had her in one of our strongest cells, and she’s gone—just like that, she’s gone out of a maximum security cell! Did you witch her out of there somehow?”

Fool, to think any cell could hold the priestess and Keeper of Sharra the Fire-born
—

Space reeled around me; there was a slamming thunderclap and I stood braced on the cobblestone of the forecourt of the Comyn Castle, my feet spanning the enlaced symbols there…and I knew Kadarin had unsheathed the Sword. Kadarin stood there, his pale hair moving in an invisible wind, his hands on Thyra’s shoulders, his metallic eyes cold with menace, and Thyra…

Thyra! Flames rose upward from her copper hair, sparks trembled at the tips of her fingers. In her hands she held naked the Sharra Sword, cold flames racing from hilt to tip. Thyra! My mistress, my love—what was I doing here, far from her? She raised one hand and beckoned, and I began nervelessly to move forward, without being conscious of the motion. She was smiling as I knelt at her feet on the stone, feeling all my strength going out to her, and to that fire that flowed and flamed in her hands…

Then the flame flared blue and wild to the heights of the castle, and I knew Regis had unsheathed the Sword of Aldones. They were there, there physically, standing across from me, Regis and Callina, and she
reached
for me, enfolding me in the cold blue of Ashara’s icy limbo, and then we were not in the Castle courtyard at all, but in the gray spaces of the overworld… far below I could see our bodies like tiny toys from a great height, but the only reality in the world was those two swords, crimson with flame and cold ice-blue, crossed and straining at one another, and I…

I was a puppet, a mote of power in the astral world, something stretched to breaking between them
…

Callina’s voice, reminding me of Arilinn and all of my past, Thyra’s crooning call, enticing, seductive, with memories of lust and fire and power… I was torn, torn between them as I felt myself a link between the two circles, Regis and Callina with the Sword of Aldones, Thyra and Kadarin, each pulling at me fiercely to make a third, to lend my power…

And then there was another strength in the linked circles… something cold and arrogant and brutal, the harsh touch as of my father’s own strength, the Alton Gift which had opened my own to power, but this was not my father’s touch—
Dyan! And he had always disliked me… and I was at his mercy
…

I did not mind dying, but not like this
— Again in my mind was the final cry of my father’s voice, and we were so deeply enlaced that I could see Dyan look past me at Regis with infinite warmth and regret that in the end they should have been on opposite sides.
I wanted to stand at your side when you were
King over all of Darkover, my gallant Hastur cousin
… and then, through me, I could feel Dyan’s touch on the memory of my father’s destroying call, the last thought in his dying mind…

And Dyan, in a moment of anguish and grief:

Kennard! My first, my only friend… my cousin, my kinsman
, bredu…
and there is no other, now, living,
who bears your blood, and if I strike now I shall have killed you past death or any immortality
… and then a final, careless thought, almost laughter,
this son of yours was never fit for this kind of power
…

And abruptly I was free, free of Sharra, thrust entirely away, and in that moment of freedom I was locked into the closing rapport of Regis and Callina, the sealed circle of power…

The fire-form reared high, higher, the size of the castle, the size of the mountain, with a scorching darkness at its heart… but from Regis, risen now to giant-size, blazing cold lightning struck at the heart of Sharra as he held the Sword of Aldones, poised to strike…

Sharra was bound in chains by the Son of Hastur who was the Son of Light…

And clothed in his cloak of living light Aldones came!

Now there was nothing to see, no human form, only fire lapping higher and higher, the spark of the Sharra matrix blazing out from the center of that darkness, and the core of brilliance through the veils clothing the figure of the God, like Regis in form, but Regis looming high, higher, not one of the Hastur-kin but the God himself…

Two identical matrixes cannot exist in one time and space; and once before, so the legend said, Sharra had been chained by the Son of Aldones, who was the Son of Light…

I cannot explain the legend, even now, although I saw it. I had felt the daemon-touch of Sharra. Infinite good is as terrifying, in its own way, as infinite evil. It was not Regis and Kadarin fighting with identically forged swords, one a copy of the other. It was not even matrix battling against space-twisting matrix, though that was nearer the truth. Something tangible and very real fought behind each sword, something that was not on this plane of reality at all, and could manifest itself and maintain a foothold in this dimension only through the swords. Lightnings streamed between them, wrapped in the rainbow aura that was Regis and Hastur, coiling into the licking flames at the heart of which Thyra glowed like a burning coal.

And then for an instant I felt that last bright arrogance reach out, Dyan shining across the space, his hawk-face keen and curious. For an instant then I think the linkage broke and the swords were only swords, and for a split second we stood in the courtyard of the Castle again and the cobbles were unsteady under my feet. And in that moment I know that he could have reached out and killed either of us…

And for a moment Thyra stood before me, only a woman again, although the Form of Fire still licked around her, and the smell of burning beat on the air, and her throat was naked to my knife…

I had sworn their death in vengeance for my hand. But in that moment I could remember only that there had been a time when she stood before me, only a frightened girl, terrified by her own growing powers.