Sharra's Exile (51 page)

I bent and picked her up bodily. “It won’t hurt me; but don’t fight me.”

I made contact with her mind; swamped it, forced resistance down—somewhere at the back of my

mind, I remembered how I had feared to do this to Marius. It was a form of rape, and I shrank from it; but I told myself that without this overshadowing she could not survive—

The first law of a telepath is that you do not enter any unwilling mind
—

But she had consented; I told myself that, and without further waiting, I covered the last resistance and her mind disappeared, completely held down within my own and concealed. Then I stepped through the trembling rainbow…

A million little needles prickled at me, nameless force spitting me through and through like a strangely penetrating rain— I was inside, through the Veil. I set Kathie down on her feet and withdrew, as gently as I could, but she slumped, nerveless, to the floor. Callina knelt, chafing her hands, and after a moment she opened her eyes.

There were doors and long passages before us, hazy as if the
rhu fead
were filled with the same gaseous cloud as was the Lake; I almost expected to see the strange fishbirds swimming there. Here and there were niches filled with things so strange I could not imagine them; behind a rainbow of colors, I saw a bier where lay a woman’s body—or a wax effigy—or a corpse, I could not tell; only the long pale reddish hair; and it seemed to me that the woman’s body was too realistic for any unreality, that her breast seemed to rise and fall softly as she slept; yet the rainbow shimmer was undisturbed, she had slept there or lain there in unchanging, incorruptible death for thousands of years. Behind another of the rainbows was a sword lying on a great ancient shield—but the hilt and shield glimmered with colors and I knew it was no simple weapon and that it was not what we sought.
Regis should have
come with us, I thought, how will I know the Sword of Aldones when I find it
?

“I will know,” said Callina quietly. “It is here.”

Abruptly the passage angled, turned, and opened up into a white-vaulted chapel, with something like an altar at the far end, and above it, done in the style of the most ancient mosaics, a portrayal of the Blessed Cassilda, with a starflower in her hand. In a niche in one of the walls was another of the trembling rainbows, but as I drew near, I felt the sting of pain, and knew this was one of those protected entirely from Comyn— Now was the time to see if Kathie could actually reach these guarded things.

Callina put out curious hands; they jerked back of themselves. As if she had heard my thoughts—and perhaps she did—Kathie asked, “Are you still touching my mind?”

“A little.”

“Get out. All the way…”

That made sense; if this forcefield was adjusted to repel the Comyn, then the slightest touch of my mind would endanger her. I withdrew entirely, and she began to walk swiftly toward the rainbow; passed through it.

She disappeared into a blur of darkening mist. Then a blaze of fire seared up toward the ceiling—I wanted to cry out to her not to be afraid; it was only a trick… an illusion.

But even my voice would not carry through the forcefleld against Comyn. A dim silhouette, she passed on and through the fire; perhaps she did not know it was there.

Then there was a crash of thunder that rolled through the chapel and jarred the floor as if with earthquake. Kathie darted back through the rainbow. In her hand, she held a sword.

So the Sword of Aldones was a real sword, after all, long and gleaming and deadly, and of so fine a temper that it made my own look like a child’s leaden toy. In the hilt, through a thin layer of insulating silk, blue jewels gleamed and sparkled.

It was so much like the Sharra sword that I could not keep back a shudder as I looked at it. But the Sharra sword now seemed like an inferior forgery, a dull copy of the glorious thing I looked on. It was shrouded in a scabbard of fine dyed leather; words, graved in fine embroidery with copper thread, writhed across the scabbard.

“What does it say?” Kathie asked, and I bent to read the words, but they were in so ancient a dialect of casta that I could not make them out, either. Callina glanced at them, and after a moment translated.

This sword shall be drawn only when all else is ended for the children of Hastur, and then the
unchained shall be bound.

Well, one way or the other, the world we had known was at an end; and Sharra unchained. But I would not venture to draw forth the sword from the scabbard. I remembered what had happened to Linnell when she was confronted with her duplicate, and I—I had been sealed to the Sharra matrix; even now I did not think I was free, not entirely.

So we had the Sword of Aldones; but I still did not know how it could be used.
The unchained shall be
bound
. But how?

A tingle of power flowed, not unpleasantly, up my arm; as if the sword wished to be drawn, to leap from its scabbard…

“No,” Callina warned, and I relaxed, letting my breath go, shoving the sword back into the leather; I had drawn it only a few inches.

“I’ll take it,” she said, and I sighed with relief. Callina was a Keeper; she knew how to handle strange matrixes. And while the Sharra sword was a concealment for a great and powerful matrix, the Sword of Aldones was—I sensed this without knowing how I knew—itself a matrix, and dangerous to handle. If Callina felt capable of that risk, I was not going to dispute with her about it.

“That’s that,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

The last light of the sun was setting as we came out of the
rhu fead
. The women went ahead of me; there was no need, now, for me to safeguard Kathie. The Veil was only to screen against those not of Comyn blood getting
into
the chapel; it had never occurred to my forefathers in the Ages of Chaos to guard against anyone getting out. I lingered, half wanting to explore the strange things here.

Then Kathie cried out; and I saw the dying sunlight glint on steel. Two figures, dark shapes against the light, blurred before my eyes; then, I recognized Kadarin, sword in hand, and at his side a woman, slender and vital as a dark flame.

She did not, now, look much like Marjorie; but even so, I knew Thyra. Kathie started back against me; I put her gently aside to face my sworn enemy.

“What do you want?”

I was playing for time. There was only one thing Kadarin could want from me now, and my blood

turned to ice with the horror of that memory, and around my neck my matrix began to blaze and to pulse with fire…

Come to me, return to me in fire… and I will sweep away all your hatred and lust, all your fears and
anguish in my own flame, raging unchained, burning, burning forever
…

“Hiding behind women again?” Kadarin taunted. “Well, give me what the Keeper carries, and perhaps I shall let you go…
if you can
!” He flung back his head and laughed, that strange laugh that carried echoes of a falcon’s cry. He did not look like a man now, or anything human; his eyes were cold and colorless, almost metallic, and his colorless hair had grown long, flying about his head; his hands on his sword were long and thin, almost more like talons than fingers. And yet there was a strange beauty to him as he stood with his head flung back, laughing that crazy laughter. “Why don’t you make it easy for yourself, Lew? You know you’ll do what we want in the end. Give me that—” he pointed to the Sword of Aldones, “and I’ll let the women go free, and you won’t have
that
to torment yourself with…”

“I’ll see you frozen solid in Zandru’s coldest hell before that, you—” I cried out, and whipped out my dagger; I stood confronting him. There had been a time when I could probably have beaten him in swordplay; now, with one hand, and a head wound and a slash in my good arm, I didn’t think I had a chance. But I might, at least, force him to kill me cleanly first.

“No, wait, Lew,” said Callina quietly. “This is—Kadarin?” There was nothing in her voice but

fastidious distaste, not a trace of fear. I saw a shadow of dismay on Kadarin’s face, but he was not human enough, now, to react to the words. He said, in a ghastly parody on his old, urbane manner,

“Robert Raymon Kadarin,
para servirti, vai domna
.”

She raised the Sword of Aldones slightly in her hand.

“Come and take it—if you can,” she said, and held it out invitingly to him. I cried out, “Callina, no—”

and even Thyra cried out something wordless, but Kadarin snarled, “Bluffing won’t help,” and lunged at her, wresting the sword from her hand—

Her hand exploded in blue fire, and Kadarin went reeling back, in the blue glow, the Sword of Aldones flared with brilliance, the brightness of copper filings in flame, and flared there, lying on the ground between us, while Kadarin, stunned and half senseless, slowly dragged himself to his feet, snarling a gutter obscenity of which I understood only its foulness.

Callina said quietly, “I cannot take it now that it has touched Sharra, either. Kathie—?”

Slowly, hesitating, her hand reluctant, she knelt and stretched out her hand; slowly, frightened, as if she feared that the same blue blaze of power would knock her senseless. But her hand closed over the hilt without incident. Perhaps, to her, it was only a sword. She drew a long breath.

Thyra cried out, “Let me—”

“No, wild-bird.” For an instant, I saw through the monstrous thing he had become, a hint of the man I had, once, loved as a sworn brother; the old tenderness as he drew Thyra back, holding her quiet. “You cannot touch it either—but neither can the Alton whelp, so it’s a draw. Let them go; there will be a time and place—” he glared out at me again, the moment of gentleness and humanity gone. “And nothing will protect you then; who has been touched by the flamehair, she will claim again for her own. And then the hells themselves will burn in Sharra’s flame…”

Gods above! Once this had been a man, and my friend
! I could not even hate him now; he was not human enough for that.

He was Sharra, clothed in the body of a man who had once been human… and he willed it so, he had
surrendered of his own will to the monstrous thing he had become
! I could hardly see Thyra at his side, through the illusion of tossing flames which raged between us…

“No,” Thyra cried out, “not now! Not now!” and the flames receded. I could see her clearly now; there had never been any fire. She came toward me, hands outstretched; only a woman, small and frail with little bones like a bird’s. She was dressed like a man for riding, and her hair was the same rich copper as Marjorie’s, and her eyes, clear golden-amber like Marjorie’s, looked up to me in the old sweet half-mocking way; and I remembered that I had loved her, desired her…

She said, reaching out for a half-forgotten rapport between us, “What have you done with my daughter?

Our daughter?”

Marja
! For a moment it seemed I could feel the touch of sweet memory, Marjorie merging into Thyra in my arms, a living flame, the touch of the child-mind—

Thyra was in rapport and her face changed.

“You have her, then?”

I said quietly, “You did not want her, Thyra. It was a cruel trick played on a drugged man, and you deserve all the misery you have had from it…”

But for a moment I had forgotten to watch her, forgotten that she was nothing, now, but Kadarin’s pawn… and in that moment a stab of agony went through my shoulder and my heart felt the agony of death and I knew that Thyra’s dagger had wounded me…

I reeled back with the shock of it. Callina caught me in her arms; even through pain and sudden despair…
this was the end, and Sharra still raged, I had died too quickly, I had died
… I was startled at the strength with which she held me upright. Kadarin made a lunge forward, hauled Thyra bodily off me.

“No! That’s not the way—we still need him—ah, what have you done, Thyra—you’ve killed him—”

I felt myself fainting, darkness sinking down and covering my eyes, a horrid noise battering at my eardrums—was death like this, pain and noise and blinding light? No, it was a Terran helicopter, hovering, sinking, and loud shouts, and one voice suddenly coming clear.

“Robert Raymon Kadarin, I arrest you in the name of the Empire, on charges of… lady, drop that knife; this is a nerve-blaster and I can drop you in your tracks. You too—put that sword down.”

Through the wavering darkness before my eyes I made out the dark-uniformed forms of Spaceforce men. I should have known they would find Kadarin, one way or the other, and with Terran weapons prohibited here in the Domains. I could bring charges against them, I thought weakly, they have no right to be here. Not like this. Not with blasters outside the Trade City. I should arrest them instead of them arresting us.

Then I sank into a darkness that was like death indeed, and all I could feel was an immense regret for all I had left undone. Then even that was gone.

CHAPTER THREE

Dio watched the horses out of sight, and as they turned out of the Street of Coppersmiths, it seemed to Regis that the woman was weeping; but she shook her head, and one or two bright drops went flying.

She looked at him, almost defiantly, and said, “Well, Lord Hastur?”

“I promised I would see you safely back to the Castle,
Domna
,” he said, offering his arm.

She laughed; it was like a rainbow coming out through the cloud. “I thank you, my lord. Not necessary.

I’ve walked unguarded in worse places than this!”

“That’s right, you’ve been offworld,” Regis said, feeling again the old longing, the old envy; for all his suffering, Lew was freer than he was himself, with all the worlds of an interstellar Empire at his command. Oh, to go beyond the narrow skies of his own world, to see the stars…he knew now that he would never go. For better or for worse, his fate lay here, whatever it might be; an unwanted crown, the new
laran
which so weighed on him that he felt he would split asunder like a butterfly from its constricting cocoon. He was Hastur; the rest he should put aside, all his old dreams, like the brightly colored tops and balls of his childhood. He walked at Dio’s side, along the Street of Coppersmiths, turning at the corner to take the road to the Comyn Castle, and heard the whispers, saw the crowd draw before him in awe and astonishment.