Sharra's Exile (45 page)

I said, “I keep thinking I have seen him before.” I did not know what I was going to say until I heard myself saying it. “I feel—I feel as if all hell was going to break loose!”

Regis nodded gravely. He said, “You have some of the Aldaran Gift, don’t you? Foresight…” he saw Dio was still at my elbow and bowed to her. “Greetings,
vai domna
. You are Lerrys’s sister, are you not?”

I looked again at the harlequin-masked man. I felt I should know him, that somehow his name was on the very tip of my tongue. At the same time I felt a curious twisting fear; why could I not remember, not recognize him?

But before I could force myself further, the dome lights were switched off. Immediately the room was flooded with streaming moonlight. There was a soft “A-ahh—” from the thronged guests as through the clearing transparency of the dome, the four moons floated high, in full conjunction, one above the other; the pale violet face of Liriel, sea-green Idriel, the peacock shimmer of Kyrrdis, and the pale pearl of Mor-mallor. I felt a faint touch on my arm and looked down at Dio.

This is not how I had imagined we would return home together
… for a moment I was not sure whether it was her thought or mine. Couples were moving onto the floor for the moonlight dance which was traditionally a dance for pledged couples; I saw Linnell approaching Derik—drunk or no, she would consider herself bound and obligated for this. I was unable, suddenly, to resist the old tie, the old attraction; I drew Dio into my arms and we moved onto the floor. Over her shoulder I saw that Regis was standing alone at the edge of the dance floor, his face cold and detached, in spite of the women who made a point of standing conveniently near in case he should choose one of them. Dio felt warm and familiar in my arms. Was this what I had wanted all along? I found that I resented that smile which took so much for granted. Yet the rhythm of the music pounded in my blood. I had forgotten this—the sense of being altogether in key with one another, resonating to the same music, like a single body moving to the sound, and as she had done once before, she reached out, almost without volition, and the mind-touch came between us, a locking closer than any physical intimacy… closeness, home,

fulfillment. As the final chord of music rang in the night, I caught her close and kissed her, hard.

The silence was anticlimax. Dio slid from my arms, and I felt cold and alone again. The lights, coming on again under the dome, caught her looking up at me with a strange smile.

“So I have had that much of you,” she said softly. “Was it never any more than that, Lew—that I was a woman, and you were alone and—in need? Was it never more than that?”

“I don’t know, Dio. I swear I don’t know,” I said wearily. “Can’t we leave it for now, and settle it sometime when— when half of Thendara isn’t watching us?”

She said, unexpected, her face very grave, “I don’t think we will be given that much time. I’m frightened, Lew. Something is very wrong. On the surface, everything’s as it’s always been, but there’s something—something that shouldn’t be here, and I don’t know what—”

Dio had the sensitive Ridenow gift; I trusted her instincts. But what could I do? Certainly nothing could be done here, no one would dare strike at any of us before the City and the assembled guests. Still, Regis had said very much the same thing, and I was myself uneasy.

As I threaded my way through the crowd, in search of Linnell or Callina, I saw again the stranger in the harlequin costume. Whom did I know who was tall and rangy, like that, why did he strike me as

strange, over-familiar? He was too tall to be Lerrys, yet it seemed the hostility which beat out toward me from him was very much like what I had sensed in Lerrys when he warned me to stay away from Dio.

(And Dio was at my side. Would Lerrys make good his threats, here and now?)

Again I moved through the crowd. I had spoken to Regis and forgotten to speak to him about Derik—

there was too much on my mind, it seemed I had been moving aimlessly back and forth through this wretched yammering crowd all night, and my barriers were beginning to loosen; I would not be able to endure the mental jangle of it much longer. A few cadets were crowding near the long banquet tables, greedily attacking the heaped delicacies there, delighted at the change from barracks food. Among them I recognized both of Javanne’s sons, Rafael and the younger Gabriel. I supposed one of them would still consider himself my Heir…

I have no son, I shall never have a son; but I have a daughter and I shall fight for her right to hold
Armida after me
… and then I was seized with a sickening sense of futility. Would there be anything to hold, after Beltran took his place in Comyn Council and destroyed us all? Would it not be better to take Marja—and Dio if she would come—and go back to Terra, or Vainwal, or out to one of the worlds at the far edge of the Empire where we could build a new life for ourselves?

I’m not a fighter. I can fight if I must, and my father tried his best, from the day I was big enough to clasp my hands around the hilt of a sword, to make certain that I would be good at it, and I had learned because I had had no choice. But I have never enjoyed it, despite his efforts to make me excel in arms-play, in unarmed combat, as a soldier.

Damn him, even his last words had been of battle… I could hear them now, surging inside me as if they
were being spoken now, not in memory: Return to Darkover, fight for your brother’s rights and your
own…

and he had thrust me into this seething hell…

“How you are scowling, Lew,” Linnell said in pretty reproof. “This is supposed to be a celebration!”

I tried to move my face into something like a sociable smile. Sometimes I would rather be in the ninth and coldest of Zandru’s hells than in a crowd where I have to be sociable, and this was one of those times, but I was not going to spoil Linnell’s enjoyment. I said, “Sorry, this ugly mug of mine is bad enough, I suppose, without making it worse.”

“You’re not ugly to me, foster-brother,” she said, in the intimate mode that made it an endearment. “If I wish your face were unmarred it is only a way of wishing you hadn’t suffered so much. The flowers you sent me were beautiful,” she added. “See, I am wearing some of them on my gown.”

I smiled a little ruefully and said, “You must thank Andres; he selected them. They suit you, though.” I thought Linnell herself was rather like a flower, rosy and bright, smiling up at me. “I saw you dancing with Derik; I hope you told that wretch Merryl to take him away and sober him up!”

“Oh, but he isn’t drunk, Lew,” she said seriously, laying a hand on my wrist. “It’s only his bad luck that he should have one of these spells on Festival Night…He gets like this sometimes, and when he was younger, they used to keep him in bed and out of sight—he doesn’t drink at all, because it makes him so much worse, he never even touches wine with dinner. I was angry with him because he took one drink—some fruit drink which had been doctored with strong
firi
, and he wouldn’t offend Merryl by refusing it—”

“That was a mean trick; I had some of it myself,” I said. “Now I wonder just who did that, in such a way that Derik would get some?” I had a few suspicions. Lerrys, for instance, would be glad to see our presumptive king, poor thing that he was, making more of a fool of himself than usual.

“Oh, surely, it was an accident, Lew,” Linnell said, shocked. “No one would do a thing like that on purpose, would they? It does taste very good, I hardly knew there was anything in it; I might easily have drunk more than one glass, and of course, poor Derik, he’s not familiar enough with drink to know that something which tasted only of fruits would make him so much worse—”

So someone who had a vested interest in proving Derik thoroughly incompetent had made sure he had some harmless-tasting drink which would emphasize his various impediments and confuse him worse than ever. Merryl? Merryl was supposedly his friend. Lerrys? He might do anything which would

throw us into the arms of the Terran Empire, and he had the kind of devious mind which would enjoy a dirty trick like that. I wondered how, in that family, Dio had turned out so forthright and

straightforward.

I said, “Well, he certainly appeared drunk, and I’m afraid most people would think it of him!”

“When we are married,” she said, smiling gently, “I will make certain no one can lead him into such things. Derik is not always a fool, Lew. No, he is not brilliant, certainly he will always need someone like Regis—or you, Lew—to guide him in matters of policy. But he knows he is not very bright, and he will let himself be guided. And I will make certain that it is not Merryl who guides him, either.”

Linnell might sound and look like a delicate, flowerlike, fragile young girl, but behind all that there was strong common sense and practicality, too. I said, “It’s a pity you are not Head of the Domain, sister; they would never have been able to marry you off to Beltran.” I turned and saw Kathie, who had been dancing with Rafe Scott, and hoped she had had sense enough not to say anything to him. And beyond her was the harlequin who had so deeply disturbed me… damn it,
who was he
?

“Lew, who is Kathie really? When I’m near her I feel terribly strange. It’s not so much that she
looks
like me—it’s as if she were a part of myself, I know what she’s going to do before she does it… I know, for instance, that she’s going to turn—there, you see? And she’s coming this way…and then I feel, it’s a kind of pain, as if I had to touch her, embrace her. I can’t keep away from her! But when I actually do touch her, I have to pull away, I can’t endure it…” Linnell was twisting her hands nervously, ready to burst into hysterical tears or laughter, and Linnell wasn’t a girl to fret over trifles. If it affected her like this, it was something serious. What
did
happen, I wondered, when Cherillys doubles came face to face?

Well, I was about to see, whatever it was. As Kathie ended the dance she moved toward Linnell, and almost without discernible volition, Linnell began to move in her direction. Was Kathie working some malicious mental trick on my little cousin? But no, Kathie had no awareness of Darkovan powers, and even if she had potential for
laran
, nothing could get through that block I’d put around her mind.

Linnell touched Kathie’s hand, almost shyly; in immediate response, Kathie put an arm around

Linnell’s waist, and they walked enlaced for a minute or two; then with a sudden nervous movement, Linnell drew herself free and came to me.

“There is Callina,” she said.

The Keeper, aloof in her starry draperies, threaded her way through the maze of dancers seeking new partners, moving toward the refreshment tables.

“Where have you been, Callina?” Linnell demanded. She looked at the dress with sorrowful

puzzlement, but Callina made no attempt to justify or explain herself. I reached out to touch her mind; but I felt only the strange, cold, stony presence which I had felt once or twice near Callina, a door locked and slammed, cold and guarded.

“Oh, Derik drew me off to listen to some long drunken tale—I thought you told me he never drinks, Linnie? He never did get it all told… the wine conquered him at last. May he never fall to a worse enemy. I ordered Merryl to find his body-servant and have him carried to his rooms, so you’ll have to find someone else to dance with for the midnight dance, darling.” She looked indifferently around the room. “I suppose I’ll be dancing with Beltran; Hastur is signaling to me. Probably he intends to begin the ceremony now.”

“Am I to come with you then?”

Callina said, still with that icy indifference, “I will not give this farce any of the trappings of a wedding, Linnie. Nor will I drag any of my kinsmen into it… why do you think I made sure Merryl was well out of the way?”

“Oh, Callina—” Linnell said, reaching for her, but she moved away, leaving Linnell with her arms outstretched, hurt and bewildered.

“Don’t pity me, Linnie,” she said tensely, “I—won’t have it.” I was sure that what she meant was,
I
can’t bear it
.

I don’t know what I would have said or done at that moment, if she had turned to me; but she drew herself apart from us; her eyes brooded, blue ice like Ashara’s, past me into silence. Bitter and helpless, I watched her move away through the crowds in that dress that was a reminder of death, doom,

shadows.

I should have guessed everything, then, when she left us without a word or a touch, silent and remote as Ashara’s self, making a lonely island of her tragedy and shutting us all away from her. I watched Beltran, at Hastur’s side, advance to greet her, and saw that she gave him only a formal bow and not an embrace; listened as the bracelets were locked on their wrists.

“Parted in flesh, may you never be so in spirit; may you be forever one,” Hastur said, and all over the room, wives reached for husbands, and lover for lover, to exchange the ritual kiss. Callina was Beltran’s consort, the marriage a legal fact, from the moment Hastur released her hand. I did not turn to see if Dio was near me. The truth of the matter is, I had, at that moment, forgotten her existence, I was so caught up into Callina’s anguish.

The next dance after a handfasting was always, by tradition, a dance for married or pledged couples.

Callina, with the privilege of the bride, led Beltran onto the dance floor; but they moved with nothing touching but their fingertips. I saw Javanne and Gabriel move, smiling, onto the floor; the Regent bowed to an elderly dowager, one of Callina’s distant kinswomen, and they moved into the sedate measure.

“Regis,” Linnell said gaily, “are you going to disappoint every unwedded woman in the Domains again tonight?”

“Better disappoint them now than later, kinswoman,” said Regis, smiling. “And I notice you are not dancing—where is our royal cousin?”

“He is ill—someone gave him some punch which had more to it than he knew,” Linnell said, “and

Merryl has taken him away, so I have neither kinsman nor lover to dance with me tonight—unless you would like to dance, Lew? You’re more my brother than Merryl ever was,” she added with a touch of annoyance.