Sharra's Exile (37 page)

I did not think Beltran was eager to plunge the Domains into war. Yet I knew his recklessness, and I did not think we could gamble on that; not when his outraged pride was at stake, the pride of the Aldarans.

I said to Andres, “You hear servants’ gossip; tell me, has Beltran moved into the Aldaran apartments here in Comyn Castle?”

Andres nodded glumly, and I hoped that he would find them filled with vermin and lice; they had stood empty since the Ages of Chaos. It said something about the Comyn that they had never been converted to other uses.

Andres stood over me, grumbling, “You’re not intending to go and pay a call on him there, I hope!”

I wasn’t. There was only one way in the world I would ever come again within striking range of my cousin, and that was if he had me bound and gagged. He had betrayed me before; he would have no further chance. Sunk in the misery of that moment, I confess, to my shame, that for a moment I played with the escape that Dan Lawton, in the Terran Zone, had offered me, to hide there out of reach of Sharra— but that was no answer, and it left Regis and Callina at the mercy of whatever unknown thing was working in the Comyn.

I was not altogether alone. The thought of Callina warmed me; I had pledged to stand beside her. And I had not yet spoken alone with my kinswoman Linnell, except over the grave of my brother. It was the eve of Festival Night, when traditionally, gifts of fruit and flowers are sent to the women of every family, throughout the Domains. Not the meanest household in Thendara would let tomorrow morning pass without at least a few garden flowers or a handful of dried fruits for the women of the household; and I had done nothing about a gift for Linnell. Truly, I had been too long away from Darkover.

There would be flower sellers and fruit vendors doing business in the markets of the Old Town, but as I stepped toward the door, I hesitated, unwilling again to show myself. Damn it, during the time I had lived with Dio, I had almost forgotten my scarred face, my missing hand, and now I was behaving as if I were freshly maimed—Dio! Where was Dio, had I truly heard her voice in the Crystal Chamber? I told myself sternly that it did not matter; whether Dio was here or elsewhere, if she chose not to come to me, she was lost to me. But still I could not make myself go down to ground level of the enormous castle, go out into the Old Town through Beltran’s damnably misnamed
Honor Guard
.

Some of them would have known me, remembered me
…

At last, hating myself for the failure, I told Andres to see about some flowers for Linnell tomorrow.

Should I send some to Dio too? I truly did not know the courtesies of the situation. Out there in the Empire, I knew, a separated husband and wife can meet with common courtesy; here on Darkover, it was unthinkable. Well, I was on Darkover now, and if Dio wanted nothing from me, she would

probably not want a Festival gift either. With surging bitterness I thought,
she has Lerrys to send her
fruits and flowers
. If Lerrys had been before me, at that moment, I think I would have hit him. But what would that settle? Nothing. After a moment I picked up a cloak, flung it about my shoulders; but when Andres asked where I was going, I had no answer for him.

My feet took me down, and down into courtyards and enclosed gardens, through unfamiliar parts of the castle. At one point I found myself in a court beneath the deserted Aldaran apartments—deserted all my life, till now. Half of me wanted to go in there and face Beltran, demand—demand what? I did not know. Another part of me wanted, cravenly, to walk through the city, take refuge in the Terran Zone, and then— then what? I could not leave Darkover, not while the Sharra matrix was here; I had tried.

And tried again. It would mean death, a death neither quick nor easy.

Maybe I would be better dead, even that death, so that I was free in death of Sharra
… and again it seemed to me that the Form of Fire raged before my eyes, a thrilling in my blood, cold terror and raging, ravening flame like ichor in my veins—

No; this was real. I tensed, looking up at the hills behind the city.

Somewhere there, strange flames burned, an incredible ninth-level matrix twisted space around itself, a gateway opened, and the fire ran in my veins— There was fire before my eyes, fire all through my brain—

No
! I am not sure that I did not scream that furious denial aloud; if I did no one heard me, but I heard the echoes in the courtyard around me, and slowly, slowly, came back to reality. Somewhere out there, Kadarin ran loose, and with him the Sharra matrix, and Thyra whom I had hated, loved, desired and feared… but I would die before they dragged me back into
that
again. Deliberately, fighting the call in my mind, I raised the stump of my arm and slammed it down, hard, on stone. The pain was incredible; it made me gasp, and tears came to my eyes, but that pain was
real;
outraged nerves and muscles and bones, not a phantom fire raging in my brain. I set my teeth and turned my back on the hills, and that call, that siren call which throbbed seductively in my mind, and went into the Castle.

Callina. Callina could drive these devils from my mind.

I had not been inside the Aillard wing of Comyn Castle for many years, not since I was a child. A silent servant met me, managed not to blink more than once at the ruin of my face. He showed me into a reception room where, he said, I would find
Domna
Callina and Linnell with her.

The room was spacious and brilliant, filled with sunshine and silken curtains, green plants and flowers growing in every niche, like an indoor garden. Soft notes of a harp echoed through the room; Linnell was playing the
rryl
. But as I came in she pushed it aside and ran to me, taking an embrace and kiss with the privilege of a foster-sister, drawing back, hesitant, as she touched the stump of an arm.

“It’s all right,” I said. “You can’t hurt me. Don’t worry about it, little sister.” I looked down at her, smiling. She was the only person on this world who had truly welcomed me, I thought; the only one who had had no thought of what my coming would mean. Even Marius had had to think of what it

would mean in terms of Domain-right. Even Jeff; he might have had to leave Arilinn and take his place in Council.

“Your poor hand,” she said. “Couldn’t the Terrans do anything for it?”

Even to Linnell I didn’t want to talk about it. “Not much,” I said, “but I have a mechanical hand I wear when I don’t want to be noticed. I’ll wear it when I dance with you on Festival Night, shall I?”

“Only if you want to,” she said seriously. “I don’t care what you look like, Lew. You’re always the same to me.”

I hugged her close, warmed as much by her accepting smile as by the words. I suppose Linnell was a beautiful woman; I have never been able to see her as anything but the little foster-sister with whom I’d raced breakneck over the hills; I’d spanked her for breaking my toys or borrowing them without leave, comforted her when she was crying with toothache. I said, “You were playing the rryl… play for me, won’t you?”

She took up the instrument again and began to play the ballad of Hastur and Cassilda:

The stars were mirrored on the shore,

Dark was the lone immortal moor,

Silent were rocks and trees and stone—

Robardin’s daughter walked alone,

A web of gold between her hands

On shining spindle burning bright…

I had heard Dio singing it, though Dio had no singing voice to speak of—I wondered, where was

Callina? I should speak with her—

Linnell gestured, and I saw, in a niche beyond the fireplace, Callina and Regis Hastur, seated on a soft divan and so absorbed in what they were saying that neither had heard me come into the room. I felt a momentary flare of jealousy— they looked so comfortable, so much at peace with each other—then Callina looked up at me and smiled, and I knew I had nothing to fear.

She came forward; I wanted to take her in my arms, into that embrace which was so much more than the embrace I would have given a kinswoman; instead she reached out and touched my wrist, the

feather touch with which a working Keeper would have greeted me, and with that automatic gesture, frustration slipped between us like an unsheathed sword.

A Keeper. Never to be touched, never to be desired, even by a defiling thought
… angry frustration, and at the same time, reassurance; this is how she would have greeted me if we were both back in Arilinn, where I had been happy… even had we been acknowledged lovers for years, she would no more have touched me than this.

But our eyes met, and she said gravely, “Ashara will see you, Lew. It is the first time, I think, in more than a generation, that she has agreed to speak with anyone from outside. When I spoke to her of the Sharra matrix, she said I might bring you.”

Regis said, “I would like to speak with her, too. It may be that she would know something of the Hastur Gift…” but, he broke off at Callina’s cold frown.

“She has not asked for you. Even I cannot bring anyone into her presence unless she wishes it.”

Regis subsided as if she had struck him. I blinked, staring aghast at this new Callina, the impassive mask of her face, the eyes and voice of a cold, stony stranger. Only a moment, and she was again the Callina I knew, but I had seen, and I was puzzled and dismayed. I would have said something more, even to reassure Regis that we would ask the ancient
leronis
to grant him an audience, but Linnell claimed me again.

“Are you going to take him away at once? When we have not seen each other for so many years? Lew, you must tell me about Terra, about the worlds in the Empire!”

“There will be time enough for that, certainly,” I said, smiling, looking at the fading light. “It is not yet nightfall… but there’s nothing good to tell of Terra,
chiya;
I have no good memories. Mostly I was in hospitals…” and as I said the word I remembered another hospital in which not I, but Dio had been the patient, and a certain dark-haired, sweet-faced young nurse. “Did you know, Linnie-—no, of course, you couldn’t know; you have a perfect double on Vainwal; so like you that at first I called her by your name, thought it was you yourself!”

“Really? What was she like?”

“Oh, efficient, competent—even her voice was like yours,” I said. And then I stopped, remembering the horror of that night, the shockingly deformed, monstrous form that should have been my son… I was strongly barriered, but Linnell saw the twitching of my face and put up her hand to stroke my scarred cheek.

“Foster-brother,” she said, giving the word the intimate inflection that made it a term of endearment,

“don’t talk about hospitals and sickness and pain. It’s all over now, you’re here at home with us. Don’t think about it.”

“And there are enough troubles here on Darkover to make you forget whatever troubles you may have had in the Empire,” said Regis, with a troubled smile, joining us at the window, where the sun had faded, blurred by the evening clouds. “Council was not properly adjourned; I doubt we’ve heard the last of that. Certainly not the last of Beltran…” and Callina, hearing the name, shuddered. She said, looking impatiently at the clouds, “Come, we must not keep Ashara waiting.”

A servant folded her into a wrap that was like a gray shadow. We went out and down the stairs, but at the first turning, something prompted me to turn back; Linnell stood there, framed in the light of the doorway, copper highlights caught in her brown hair, her face serious and smiling; and for a moment, that out-of-phase time sense that haunts the Alton gift, a touch perhaps of the precognition I had inherited from the Aldaran part of my blood, made me stare, unfocused, as past, present, future all collapsed upon themselves, and I saw a shadow falling on Linnell, and a dreadful conviction—

Linnell was doomed
…
the same shadow that had darkened my life would fall on Linnell and cover her
and swallow her
—

“Lew, what’s the matter?”

I blinked, turning to Callina at my side. Already the certainty, that sick moment when my mind had slid off the time track, was fading like a dream in daylight. The confusion, the sense of tragedy, remained; I wanted to rush up the stairs, snatch Linnell into my arms as if I could guard her from tragedy… but when I looked up again the door was closed and Linnell was gone.

We went out through the archway and into a courtyard. The light rain of early summer was falling, and though at this season it would not turn to snow, there were little slashes of sleet in it. Already the lights were fading in the Old City, or could not come through the fog; but beyond that, across the valley, the brilliant neon of the Trade City cast garish red and orange shadows on the low clouds. I went to the railed balcony that looked down on the valley, and stood there, disregarding the rain in my face. Two worlds lying before me; yet I belonged to neither. Was there any world in all the star-spanning Empire where I would feel at home?

“I would like to be down there tonight,” I said wearily, “or anywhere away from this Hell’s castle—”

“Even in the Terran Zone?”

“Even in the Terran Zone.”

“Why aren’t you, then? There is nothing keeping you here,” Callina said, and at the words I turned to her. Her cobweb cloak spun out on the wind like a fine mist as I pulled her into my arms. For a moment, frightened, she was taut and resisting in my arms; then she softened and clung to me. But her lips were closed and unresponsive as a child’s under my demanding kiss, and it brought me to my senses, with the shock of
déjà vu…somewhere, sometime, in a dream or reality, this had happened
before, even the slashes of rain across our faces
…She sensed it too, and put up her hands between us, gently withdrawing. But then she let her head drop on my shoulder.

“What now, Lew? Merciful Avarra—what now?”

I didn’t know. Finally I gestured toward the crimson smear of garish neon that was the Trade City.

“Forget Beltran. Marry me—now—tonight, in the Terran Zone. Confront the Council with an

accomplished fact and let them chew on it and swallow it—let them solve their own problems, not hide behind a woman’s skirts and think they can solve them with marriages!”