The Sword of Aldones (21 page)

Marja, a child but an Alton—a telepath. And the blankness where she had been, the sense of something torn away.

Then she was dead.

Marjorie. Marius. Linnell.

Now Marja.

Lawton did not press us for details. He must have known we were all touching our last reserves of strength. I found myself sitting and asking questions as if anything could ‘matter now. “Andres?”

“Dyan left him for dead, but he may pull through.”

It was savage comfort to know that Andres had defended her. like that. “Ashara?”

Dio stood up, her mouth, pinched tight. I think we had all forgotten she was there. “Regis! Keep them! I am going to the Tower!”

I cried, “What for?” but she was already gone.

Lawton said grimly, “The first thing is to have Dyan picked up. If he has the little girl-“

Kadarin broke in. “You can’t! There’s no way to take the Sharra matrix away from him now. I’ve had the thing in my own hands often enough to know! Dyan could get it away from Marius only because he didn’t know how to guard himself. No man living—” Kadarin started upright. “Lawton! all of you! Bear witness! His life is mine, when, how and as I can kill him, fair fight or unfair, his life is—”

“Mine!” I cut through his words. “Marja was mine! And whoever kills him, owes me a life—”

“You pair of maniacs!” Lawton said, “let’s catch him first, before you start fighting for the privilege of killing him!”

With a gesture that was animal in its ferocity, Kadarin said, “If he frees Sharra, don’t trust me! I’m the masterseal, and I’ll be right in it!”

Regis turned to me. “Well, Lew, it will have to be you. You’ve touched Sharra, but you’re sealed to the Comyn too. If we could hold you in rapport from here, you could go into the Sharra matrix—”

I cracked, then. “No!” I shouted. “No!” They could all die before they’d force me into that; why should I care now if Sharra ravaged Darkover? What had I left to lose? I grabbed the pistol out of Rafe’s belt, and snapped off the safety.

“I’ll blow out my own brains first!”

Regis’ hand caught mine in a bone-crushing grip. We struggled briefly, crazily, but he had two hands; the recoil of the gun knocked me back and the bullet fired harmlessly through the window, in a burst of shattering glass. Regis shook my cramped fingers from the butt.

“You’re insane!” he said. He tossed the pistol to Rafe. “Here. This was yours originally, wasn’t it? Take it. It’s been around a lot lately. One lunatic is enough!”

Lawton swore, kicking at the glass on the floor. “I ought to throw you all in the clink. Rafe, go get somebody to clean this mess up, and take Alton downstairs. He’s off his head again.”

I dragged to my feet, but I had to hold the chair. “I’m a prisoner?”

“Hell, no! But you walk out of here now, you’ll pass out on the sidewalk! Man, use your head! Go on down to the infirmary! We’ll let you know when we need you!”

Quite suddenly the rage dissolved, leaving me empty and numb. Kadarin unfolded his long legs and came to me. “Truce, Lew,” he said quietly. “Marja was mine, too. We can’t do much now. You’re worn out. Maybe later we can figure out some way to get me out of that hellish thing before Dyan burns us all to hell-and-gone.” His eyes met mine; there was no hate left in them. Mine, too, had burnt away. I stumbled and let myself lean wearily on his arm. “Truce,” I said.

So it was Kadarin who took me down to Medical and into the hospital wing. I sat down on the cot in the cubicle, my emotions burned out but my nerves jumping and my telepathic barriers nonexistent. I bent wearily to pull off my boots.

“Need any help?”

I asked him, straight, “You think Dyan will let Sharra loose?”

“I’m damn sure he’ll try.”

It felt unreal. For six years my main compulsion had been to kill Kadarin, I had pictured it to myself a thousand times, and here we were, talking, quietly and rationally and from the same side. It felt unpleasant, but somehow sensible. I supposed it was the Terran way of doing things.

“Want me to get you something from the Medic?”

“No.” I added, grudgingly, “No, thanks.”

Then I looked up, squarely at him. I knew he would never stoop to lie about it.

“Bob, was it by your order that Marjorie was—forced into the Sharra fire, that last time? Was it your way of revenging yourself on me? When you knew—” I swallowed, “that it would kill her?”

“Why would I kill her—to revenge myself on you?” He flung the question at me with a passionate sincerity I could not doubt; the same agonized question, that had been tormenting me for six years.

“Lew, I knew Sharra as no living man has ever known. There was no danger, not for either of the girls, while I was in control. You know I loved Thyra, yet I managed to keep her safe.” His face was bitter, agonized. “There aren’t ten men alive who can determine the limits of safety for a woman they’ve had, but I did it for Thyra! Marjorie—”

His dark face was ravaged by such misery that I almost pitied him; his barriers were down too, and the violence of his grief was like a burning in me. He would never be free of that grief, that guilt. “Marjorie— Margie was just a child, I thought. She never told me! I swear I never knew you had been her lover 1 I swear it!”

I rolled over and buried my face, unable to endure it, but Kadarin went on his voice heavy with pain. “So she went into it—and you know what happened. Any woman would have died coming from the arms of a lover to the pole of such power, and I’ve hated you for that—”

His voice suddenly softened into deep compassion. “But it never occurred to me that you couldn’t know. Hell, you were just a kid yourself. A pair of babies, you and Marjorie, and I never even warned you. Zandru’s hells, Lew, talk about revenge, you had yours—!”

Abruptly he was calm; dead calm. He said without inflection, “I claimed your life once. I give it back to you.”

I looked up at him, equally numbed. He had claimed my life; a solemn obligation, irrevocable in Darkovan law, while we both lived. Had another killed me, he would have been legally obligated to track down and kill my murderer. But Darkovan law was collapsing around us. We stood in the smashing rubble. I did not know my own voice when I said, “I’ll take it from you.”

Gravely, unsmiling, we shook hands.

“Tell me this,” I said wearily. “Why was Thyra’s child mine?”

There was irony in his gaunt face. “I thought you’d have that all figured out. I hoped for a telepath son, with the

Alton Gift.”

Damned, insolent-He said evenly, “Thyra never forgave me. I was so pleased with Marja that she was jealous, she refused to have the child where I could see her—” Suddenly his face twisted again. “It will kill Thyra! I swore Marja should not be used as a pawn, and I couldn’t even keep her safe. Thyra has pretended so long to hate the child. Gods! Great Gods! Everything I love, everyone I love, I hurt or kill!” I flinched with the anguish of his despair.

Abruptly he turned and went out, slamming the door so violently that the walls trembled.

I MUST HAVE SLEPT.

I opened my eyes at last in the bare infirmary cubicle to see Callina kneeling beside me. Her soft eyes were filled with tears; she seized my hand, but did not speak. I wanted to catch her in my arms and crush her to me; but Kadarin’s words still held me, compelled with horror. For her very life, I dared not touch her.

But it would be harder than ever; I sensed, without knowing how, that some inner reserve in Callina was gone. There was no longer that chill, that conscious and wary aloofness.

“We’ve gone through it all for nothing, Callina,” I said. “Marius and Linnell are gone, we’ve let the Comyn have our lives to play with, and what have we got?”

“There may still be something to save. Darkover—”

“The hell with Darkover! Let the Terrans have it and welcome!”

Callina passed her hand briefly across my eyes. I saw, in a blur, the horrifying face I had seen once before. It vanished; I saw Dyan, and Kadarin.

“The Sword of Aldones will cancel out Sharra,” she said. “Kadarin was helping them to make plans, when he—vanished. He just wasn’t there! Like Thyra.”

That meant Sharra was free. I looked helplessly at the girl. “I’ve tried,” I told her, “but I can’t even touch the Sword of Aldones. Regis can, but he can’t use it alone. No one man can.”

Her fingers closed blindly on my good hand. “Ashara said you could use me for a focus—”

I shook my head. I couldn’t hurt Callina that way. I would literally have to tear our two minds to pieces and rebuild them into one. I’d been through it myself, I could take it. But Callina!

Her voice was soft and resolute. “It’s—well, it’s you. And I want to.”

Her bravery shamed me. Whatever happened, no woman should outdo me in courage.

Suddenly, tenderly, I gave her arm a little shake. “All right, girl,” I said, “well try it. But think about it. I want you to be sure.”

“I’m sure now,” she said.

It was strange to see her there; lovely Callina, all the beauty and mystery of the comynari, star-like and remote, there in that bare white cubicle. The note of grotesquerie in these surroundings, the tumbled cot where I had slept, made it all seem more, not less strange.

She laughed, nervously; her hand in mine felt cold and fragile. Physical contact can lay the mind bare. I would have liked to hold her in my arms for this, but I did not dare. I had learned with Dio how such contact can break down barriers, but I forced the thought back. I felt curiously shy; I did not want to touch Callina’s mind with another woman in the forefront of my thoughts.

I reached for contact.

For a moment there was a frighteningly familiar resistance; like Dio, every defense of her mind went up to bar me away. This time I made it a rough shock-wave; her hand tore loose from mine and she slumped down, her arms over her head as if by this desperate hiding she could arrest the soul-stripping contact. She did not resist actively, but her passive, trembling terror was worse. It was worse than anything I had ever had to do.

A tense moment of shock, and then Callina, white and shaking, snapped the rapport, sobbing wildly. I let it break, and drew her into my arms, and gradually the weeping quieted. “I—I tried so hard—”

“I know.” She had made every effort to endure the unbearable. Perhaps no woman can endure that absolute rapport with a man. If I had kept on, forced the resistance—it hadn’t killed Marius, and ‘Callina was Keeper, a comynara— but I simply was not capable of torturing a woman like that. It was worse than rape.

There was an alternative. It was drastic, but I was desperate. “Could you make the rapport?” I asked her. I said it easily, but inside, I was shaking. It put me wholly at her mercy; although a Keeper, she was not trained in handling that particular kind of focus.

Could I endure the forcible breaking of all my barriers? I had closed off those old areas, years ago, to save my sanity. I dropped that line of thought. I had to endure it, simply because I was stronger than she.

Her touch was uncertain, fumbling, raw—an agony. It was desperately hard to keep from flinging her out of my brain; but with grim self-command, I endured it, lowering each barrier as she touched it. How had she come to be Keeper, if she was as clumsy a telepath as this? The bridge was stronger now, but she had not made the decisive move that would snap identity and bring it to completion; and I dared not move.

But it was so close to complete that I grew tense with the unbearable need to, have it done, even if it killed us both. Force flows toward the weaker pole. I, who had chosen the passive part, was overloaded to the limit of endurance. I could neither see nor hear her now. If I made a move to end the torture, I could burn us both out. But if this did not end soon, I must risk it, even to the release of death.

Then the shock, the numbing flare of contact-Regis/

Unbelievably, for a single unendurable moment, we—I— it fused into an impossible triple rapport. The load of emotion was terrible, breaking down every barrier in each brain, and our three minds went into one great glare of force, too vast and too searingly painful to comprehend.-

Groping for sanity, I forced the rapport apart. We were three separate people again. Then, as blinding physical pain forced itself on me, Regis was incredibly there in the room with us, and he caught me as I pitched forward in a dead faint.

“Damn it, this is getting to be a habit,” I said shakily. I was lying on the bed again, Regis and Callina looking down at me anxiously. Regis pressed my hand as I sat up. “You’ve been doing all the hard work,” he said.

“What happened?”

“Don’t you know? How did I get here, anyway?” He swallowed convulsively and turned to Callina. Although we were deep in rapport, our conscious thoughts had dropped apart and I could not tell what they were thinking. But three! Even the Altons could link only two, and that with infinite danger! THREE!

Regis said, “What happened to us? I only know that something exploded in me—then it broke up, and I thought you were dead, Lew. I couldn’t think of anything but to get to you and Dio. I didn’t even know where you were, I was frantic, then all of a sudden I was here, and you pitched off the bed, and I grabbed you,” he finished blankly.

“Callina and I had tried to link minds in focus—”

“Callina?” Regis stared. Callina suddenly stood on tiptoe and put her lips lightly against his. “Regis,” she said softly, “we aren’t resentful. We can—make room for you.”

Regis put his arms around the girl and held her. “Doesn’t he know? Not even now?”

“I’ve always been barricaded,” she said.

Regis let her go, turning abruptly to me. “Now that we’re aware, and guarded, let’s set,up contact again and see what this thing is, and what kind of power we have with it. As far as I know, this is something pretty new, and almost unique.”

Callina reached out and made the linkage; this time there was no hesitation or fumbling, and I glanced at her with a surge of possessive pride. Regis, rather’red about the ears, looked round.

If you two are going to think things like that at each other, his thought twisted humorously into ours, I’d better drop out!