The Shadow Matrix (4 page)

the reclusive Priscilla might not welcome them with open arms did not occur to them

until they were almost there, and neither of them could easily back down without

appearing a fool.

After three days of steady riding, they had come to Elhalyn Castle unannounced.

Priscilla Elhalyn had not appeared very perturbed by the intrusion. After all, Mikhail

was the grandson of Alanna Elhalyn, who had been the sister of Priscilla's own father,

Stefan. A visit from a cousin was always acceptable, her attitude implied. Indeed, in

her rather vague and disordered way, she behaved almost as if she had expected them.

She was a small woman, with eyes clouded like gray agates, surrounded by her

children and few servants, pleasant enough, but hardly the adventure he had been

hoping to have.

Elhalyn Castle itself was a modest pile—not as large or impressive as Ardais—but

well-built and strong. One of the servants said it dated back to the Ages of Chaos,

when the Compact had finally ended the wars which had plagued the

planet for so long. Studying the stonework, Mikhail had

suspected the building was not that old. Still, with the muddle that passed for history

from

that

time,

he

knew

that

anything was possible. •

So much had been lost during those troubled times, so many records, and so much

knowledge. Some of the knowledge was better off lost, he knew, for they had used

matrices in ways that were unthinkable to his "mind. There had been
clingfire, a
stuff

that adhered to the skin and burned to the bone, which was a terrifying idea. And that

was not the worst. Mikhail could hardly imagine it, and was glad for Darkover that

those terrible times were far in the past.

Not that recent times had been uneventful, of course. The Sharra Rebellion had

wracked the world shortly after his birth, and the World Wreckers had tried to destroy

the entire ecology of Darkover a few years later. But, for nearly the last two decades,

things on Darkover had been quiet. There was no real need of the protection of

Guardsmen, except that as Elhalyn Regent he had a certain status, and it was

customary.

Elhalyn Castle had been in a shocking state of disrepair, and Mikhail wondered why.

The climate of Darkover was unforgiving. The winters were brutal, and all the houses

he knew were well-maintained, just to ensure the basic health of the residents during

the coldest months of the year. Drafty corridors and doors that creaked on their hinges

were a new and rather unpleasant experience. Dyan had some pungent comments to

make on the subject, but Mikhail put it down to the well-known eccentricity of the

Elhalyns.

Mikhail had studied Priscilla's five children for any hint of the documented instability

of the Elhalyn line, but they had seemed healthy and normal, despite the oddity of their

home. They were unused to strangers, and rather shy, but after a day, they seemed to

accept the two men well enough. The two girls, the youngest of the children, Miralys

and Valenta, stopped hiding behind their mother's skirts, and the boys—Alain, Vincent,

and Emun—asked questions about horses, Thendara, the Terranan, and other matters of

curiosity. The boys had admired Valient, the sire of his present horse, and Dyan's

spirited mare Roslinda, re-

marked on the clothing they wore, and generally behaved like other youngsters he had

known.

It had been rather tedious, until the night of the séance. He could still remember the

cold touch of whatever had spoken and shuddered. He was, in retrospect, very glad that

the ghost of Derik—if it had been "he—had extracted his oath never to speak of the

incident. Doing so would have cast serious doubts on his own sanity, he was sure.

But when he made that promise, he had never expected to return to the Elhalyn lands,

nor to see Priscilla and her children again. Certainly he had not anticipated becoming

Regent for the Elhalyn Domain, with orders from Regis Hastur to find one among the

three sons of Priscilla to reclaim the long vacant throne of the kings of Darkover.

There had been several times since that tumultuous meeting in the Crystal Chamber

when Mikhail had wished to refuse the Regency. That choice would have perhaps

restored his relationship with his parents, as well as relieving him of an unwanted

burden. But his sense of duty was too strong. He could not bring himself to speak the

words. If only he had not been trained to rule!

For that matter, if only his parents were not so stubborn and mistrustful of him, of Lew

Alton, and Marguerida. There was no good thinking about it! He had been trained to be

a dutiful heir to Regis Hastur, to rule, and then it had all been snatched away from him.

All he could do was his best at the task ahead of him, even if it did feel as if he had

been shuffled off. Any
leronis
could have tested the boys, and he knew it. But Regis

had insisted that Mikhail do it, and would settle for no one else.

The longer he thought about it, the more certain Mikhail was that he was missing

critical pieces of information. He had not been shuffled off, no matter how he felt

about it. He was part of the plan—an unwilling pawn in one of Regis' games. It was

infuriating! He felt trapped, both by his loyalties and by his uncle's manipulations. He

was not free to pursue his own ambitions, and he resented it more than he had realized

until this moment.

It was all very dispiriting. There was little comfort in the realization that no one, so far

as Mikhail knew, was entirely happy with the things that Regis proposed. He felt a

brief empathy for his young cousin, Dani Hastur, who should by

now have been proclaimed heir. All he had managed to get out of anyone was a cryptic

remark from Lady Linnea. "Regis is not certain of Dani yet." If Mikhail felt exiled and

trapped at the same time, how must Danilo Hastur feel?

Everything Regis had proposed, even the inclusion of the Aldarans in the Comyn

Council, was very logical. But Darkovans, Mikhail knew, were not a very logical

people. They were passionate, and when their emotions were in full cry, as it seemed

his mother's were at present, they did not listen to anything but their hearts. And, he

decided, Regis did not seem to grasp this.

Mikhail wondered what secrets his uncle was keeping, thinking a little guiltily of his

own. He had never spoken of the séance, and he had never revealed his two visits to

the Aldaran family. These were small things, and Regis had told him once that half of

statecraft was having information and knowing when to use it and when not to.

Mikhail dismissed his conflicted thoughts with a shrug. All this speculation was giving

him a headache. He knew that Regis had changed in some manner, and all he could do

was live with it. He could not quite put a name to the difference, but now he thought

about it, there was also something almost hasty in his actions, as if he had some secret

timetable he must keep to.

Enough! It was too beautiful a day for such thoughts. He could now see the looming

bulk of Elhalyn Castle against the horizon, and was relieved that Priscilla had left the

place. Halyn House was the old dower residence ten miles closer to the sea and he only

hoped it was in a better state than the moldering castle, which even from a distance

looked rundown and depressing.

But even if it wasn't any better kept, he believed he could put up with it so long as he

knew it was not going to be forever, that long before he entered his dotage he would be

free of either the Regency or the possibility of taking Regis' place once and for all.

Odd. Once he had wanted that—had longed for the thankless job that Regis had done

so ably for two decades. That was long before he met Marguerida. He let out a soft

chuckle that made Charger prick his ears. Mikhail let himself remember the lists he

had made as a youngster, of things he intended to do when he took the throne. They

had been, he suspected, both idealistic and extremely foolish.

The wind shifted a little, and the smell of the Sea of Dalereuth wafted toward him. It

was a sharp scent, full of salt and something he could not put a name to. Marguerida

would know, for she had grown up on an oceanic world after she left Darkover at the

age of five. Even with the impressions of Thetis he had gotten from her mind over the

months, Mikhail had no real sense of what it was like to live beside a rolling ocean,

full of odd creatures shaped like stars, or the leaping sea-mammals she called
delfins.

Sometimes, he knew, she longed for Thetis, for its warmth, and Mikhail wondered if

she would ever be completely happy on Darkover. He hoped she would, because he

could not be happy without her, and if she left, he could not bear it. And after her

training in the Tower was complete, she would be free to do just that—leave Darkover.

It was not a happy thought. If she chose to depart, it would create havoc and likely ruin

whatever plans Regis was hatching.

A strange croak from overhead made him look up, letting go of his morbid thoughts.

There was a large bird, some sort .of crow, but a type he had never seen before. It was

shining black, with patches of white feathers across the edges of the wings. It looked at

him with a suspicious red eye, cried again, and circled above him three times. He

flinched a little, for the bird looked dangerous with its large talons and sharp beak.

Mikhail watched the bird wheeling in the air, enjoying the perfection of its flight. He

followed it until it vanished, then urged his horse ahead. It was still several miles to

Halyn House, and if he wanted to arrive before dusk, he needed to hurry.

As he rode, Mikhail experienced a slight frisson of uneasiness that had been lurking in

the back of his mind for miles. Then he silently cursed himself for a superstitious fool.

That sea crow had been no omen, no portent of doom. He was just out of sorts from

being given a task he did not wish for and did not want.

He began to sing, his voice lifting in a rather naughty ditty he had learned from

Marguerida, a student drinking

song from her days at University. It was quite wicked, and he could hear the

Guardsmen chuckling behind him, a cheerful noise that so lightened his heart that he

nearly forgot his cares as he rode toward Halyn House.

2

It was such a beautiful day, Margaret Alton reflected, that it was a shame it was being

ruined by her headache. Sitting on a low bench in the fragrance garden at Arilinn, she

tried to use the methods she had learned during her four months in the Tower to

alleviate the pain. But although she had mastered the technique, her headache

stubbornly refused to stop pounding in her skull.

She flinched as the intensity of the pain seemed to increase, until it felt as if someone

were stabbing stilettos into her brow, just above the eyes. She could feel the pulse of

her blood, hot in her veins, and she suddenly realized this was no ordinary headache.

No, Margaret decided, this was something entirely different from the dreadful

sensation she got in her head when she remained too long within the Tower. It had

never occurred to her that being near large collections of matrices would be almost

impossible for her—even though the sight of a personal starstone made her queasy.

And nothing had prepared her for the environment of Arilinn Tower—for the enormous

energies confined behind the stone walls. Worse, no one else had realized what the

great screens were doing to her until she fell violently ill.

Her first experience had been a harrowing one, with an episode of threshold sickness

almost as terrible as the one she had suffered at Castle Ardais the previous summer.

Whenever she looked at the building, and remembered those first days in the student

dormitory, she shuddered. She could have died, she knew.

Fortunately she had not, and the problem had a fairly simple solution. Outside the

actual Tower, away from the energies of the matrices, her illness abated. She now lived

in a little cottage outside the walls. She loved it, for here

she was free of the constant chatter of her fellow students, and their hostility as well. It

was the first time she had ever lived alone, and the sense of separateness, of privacy,

soothed something within her she had not even known was painful. She only, entered

the Tower for lessons now. And those were devoted at present not so much to studying

her own
laran,
as to learning various meditative techniques that would permit her to be

in the proximity 9f the large number of matrix stones that were housed in Arilinn or

any "Tower.

The Tower was nothing like she had imagined before she came there. Margaret had

assumed the place would be a single building, like those she had glimpsed on her two

visits to the overworld a few months earlier. Instead, it was a small but bustling

community, with the Tower at its center. There were weavers who made robes