The Sword of Aldones

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  I flung the lie into his face. "My brother never took a copper from Terra, and you know it! Lie to them, but don't try to lie to an Alton about his brother!"

  "The plain truth will do," Lawton said. "You are right so far; your brother was not in our pay, nor a spy. But he worked for us, and he had applied for Empire citizenship. I sponsored him myself. He had as good a right to it as you, though you never chose to claim it. Even by your standards, that is no spy." Lawton paused. "He was probably the only man on Darkover working to bring about an honest alliance. The rest were out to line their pockets. How come this is news to you? You're a telepath."

  I sighed. "If I had a sekal for every time I've explained that, I could buy and sell the Terran Zone," I said. "Telepathic contact is used to project conscious thoughts. Quicker than words, no semantic barriers--and no one but another telepath can listen in. But it takes deliberate effort; one to send, the other to receive. Then, even when I'm not trying, I get a sort of--well--leakage. I can feel; right now you're confused, and sore as hell about something. I don't know what and I'm not trying to find out; telepaths learn not to be curious. I've been in rapport with my brother. I know everything he knew. But I don't remember--and I don't want to remember."

  Suddenly, from Lawton's complete calm, I knew he had simply been trying to goad me; to make me lose my temper and drop my barriers. He was half Comyn; for all I knew, he might be a telepath himself. He'd been trying to find something out, and whatever it was, he'd probably found it.

  "I'll tell you why I'm here," Lawton said abruptly. "Usually we let city-states govern themselves, until the government collapses. It usually does, within a generation after the Empire comes. When we meet real tyranny, we depose it; planets like Darkover, we simply wait for them to fall apart. And they do."

  "I heard it all on Terra. Make the universe safe for democracy--and then for Terran Trade!"

  "Maybe," Lawton said, imperturbably. "While you rule peaceably, you «an rule till the planet crumbles. But there's been disorder lately. Riots. Raiding. Smuggling. And too much telepathic dirty-work. Marius died after you had forced rapport on him."

  Regis said, "Who told you those lies. I saw him die with a knife in-his heart."

  "Marius wasn't a citizen yet, so I can only ask questions about his death, not punish it," he said. "But there's another report that you're holding a Terran girl here, prisoner."

  My heart pounded suddenly. Kathie. Had Callina and I rashly exposed this last secret of Darkovan science?

  "The daughter of the Terran Legate on Samarra--Kathie Marshall. She was scheduled to leave Darkover on the Southern Cross, days ago; I thought she had gone. But she's missing, and someone saw her here."

  Regis said indifferently, "There were a great many Terrans here Festival Night. Some one must have seen--" he raised his voice. "Andres? Bring the comynara here; she is with Dio Ridenow."

  His eyes held an intensity whose meaning escaped me; I started to open my mind, but sensed his instant prohibition. Lawton and Rafe would both know it, if we were exchanging telepathic messages, even if they couldn't read what they were about.

  Regis said, "I would not, of course, know anything about Miss--is it Marshall? But I know who you saw. The resemblance has caused us some amusement, and a little embarrassment. Since, of course, no comynara could possibly be permitted to behave in public as your Terrananis do."

  Inward I raged and worried. What now? Why must they drag the name of the dead into this? After an eternity, I heard light, familiar footsteps, and Kathie Marshall came into the room.

  She wore Darkovan dress; a ruffled gown that hung loose from her slender shoulders, her unbound hair dusted with metallic fragments. Bangles tinkled on her ankles and slender wrists.

  "Kathie?" said Lawton.

  Kathie raised a pretty, uncomprehending face. "Chi'zei?"

  "Linnell, my dear," Regis drawled, "I have spoken of the foolish resemblance to some Terranis; I wished them to see at first hand."

  I was praying that none of them knew Kathie well. The difference was so haunting that it struck me with passionate grief; a ghost, a mockery.

  Kathie put a hand down to touch my face. It was not a Terran gesture. She walked and moved like a Darkovan. "Yes, Regis, I remember," she said, and I had all I could do to keep back a cry of astonishment. For Kathie was speaking the complicated, liquid-syllabled pure mountain Darkovan-- not with her own harsh Terran accent but with soft quick fluency. "But should you have so many strangers around you when you are hurt? To tell you some fantastic story about the Terrans?"

  It wasn't Linnell's intonation. But the fact remained, she was speaking Darkovan, and speaking it with an accent as good as my own or Dio's.

  Lawton shook his head. "Fantastic," he muttered, "There certainly is a resemblance! But I happen to know Kathie couldn't speak the language anything like that!"

  The big Terran broke in. "Dan, I tell you, I saw--"

  "You were mistaken." Lawton was still looking intently at Kathie, but she did not move. Another false note. It is rudeness unspeakable to stare at an unmasked young girl on Darkover; men have been killed for it. Lawton knew it. Linnell would have been dying of confusion. But as that thought crossed my mind, Kathie blushed and ran out of the room.

  "I'm trying to tell you," Kendricks said, "I was on spaceport duty when the Marshall girl left. I checked the passenger list after they were all drugged and tied-in. She certainly didn't get off after that, and it's been reported from Samarra by relay, so how could she be here? The fastest ship made takes seventeen days hyperdrive, between there and here."

  Lawton muttered, "I guess we've made prime fools of ourselves. Alton, before I go, can you tell me how the Ridenow brothers died?"

  Regis said, "I tried to explain--"

  "But it didn't make sense. You said someone had a trap-matrix out. I know a little about matrices, but that's a new one on me."

  No Terran can really grasp that concept, but I tried. "It's a sort of mechanical telepath that conjures up horrifying images from race-memory and superstition. The person who sets one can control the minds and emotions of others. The Ridenow are sensitives--disturbed mental atmospheres affect them physically. This one was so badly disturbed that it short-circuited all the neural patterns. They died of cerebral hemorrhage."

  It was a grossly over-simplified explanation, but Lawton at least seemed to understand. "Yes, I've heard of things like that," he said, and I surprised a strange, bitter look on his face. Then, to my surprise, he bowed.

  "Thank you for your co-operation," he said. "There will be other matters to discuss when you are recovered.

  Rafe Scott lingered when the others had gone.

  "Look, if I could talk to you by yourself, Lew," he said, glowering at Regis.

  Regis only said with angry contempt, "Get out of here, you filthy Terran half-caste!" He put his hand in the middle of Rafe's back, giving him a sharp push--more offensive than a blow.

  Rafe turned around and hit him.

  Regis' fist slammed into Rafe's chin. The Terran boy lowered his head, rushed in and clinched, and they swayed back and forth in a struggling, furious grip. AH Regis' contempt, all the humiliation Rafe had suffered at the hands of the Comyn, exploded; they slammed at each other, the room filled with their pummeling violence. I lay there forgotten by both, yet somehow more a part of the fight than they were themselves. I felt, half deliriously,, that the two halves of myself were slugging it out; the Darkovan Lew, the Terran. Rafe, once almost a brother--Regis, my best friend in the Comyn--both were myself and I was fighting myself, and each blow struck was in my own quarrel.

  Andres settled it abruptly by collaring both the angry young men and jerking them violently through the curtains. "If you've got to fight," he growled, "do it outside!"

  There was the brief sound of a scuffle, then Regis' voice, clear and scathing. "I should dirty my hands!"

  Somehow, being part of their contention, these words were strangely meaningful; as if my own
inward struggle had been somehow resolved.

  After a while Andres came in, keeping up a steady monotoned grumble that was vaguely soothing. His hands were gentle as he looked at the half-healed wound at the back of my head; he ignored my profane protests that I was perfectly capable of taking care of myself, grinned when I swore at him, until finally I broke into rueful laughter that hurt my head, and let him do what he -would. He washed my face as if I were a fretful child, would have fed me with a spoon if he'd thought for a minute that I'd allow it--I didn't--and finally dug out a pack of contraband cigarettes smuggled in from the Terran Zone. But when I had finally chased the old fussbudget off to rest, I could elude thought no longer.

  Time had healed, a little, my grief for Marjorie. My father's death, bitterly as I regretted it, was more the Comyn's loss than mine. We had been close, especially toward the end, but I had resented the thing that made me half-caste. Much as I missed him, his death had set me at ease with my own blood. And the murder of Marius was a nightmare thing, mercifully unreal.

  But Linnell's death was a grief from which I have never been free; that night my own pain was only an obligato to the torture of my nerves.

  What had killed Linnell? No one had touched her, except Kathie. She was not, like Dio, a sensitive.

  And then I understood.

  I had killed Linnell.

  All evening, intuitively, Linnell had been striving for contact with her duplicate. Their instinct had been better than my science. I--pitiful, damned, blind imbecile--I had blocked them away from one another. When the horror of Sharra had been loosed, Linnell had instinctively reached for the safety of contact with her duplicate. What had I said to Marius? One body can't take it…

  And the bypass circuit in Kathie!s mind had thrown Linnell into contact with me--and through me, into that deadly matrix in Kadarin's hands. Years ago, Sharra had been given a foothold in my brain. And force flows toward the weaker pole. It had all rushed into the unprotected Linnell, overloading her young nerves and immature body.

  She had gone out like a burnt match.

  Havoc had indeed raged in the Comyn. Linnell, the Ride-now, Derik, Dio. I smiled, grimly. The defenses I'd given Dio had probably saved her from the fate of her brothers. And after her malice-Blinding light broke suddenly on me. There wasn't a scrap of malice in Dio. In her own way, the perverse little imp had been warning me!,

  A narrow chink of moonlight lay in a cold streak across my face; in the shadows there was a stir, a step and a whisper. "Lew, are you asleep?"

  The dim light picked out a gleam of silvery hair, and Dio, like a pale ghost, looked down at me. She turned and slid the curtains back, letting the light flood the room and the moons peer over her shoulder.

  The chilli radiance cooled my hot face. I found no words to question her. I even thought, incuriously, that I might have fallen asleep and be dreaming she was here. I could see the shadow of the bruise lying on her cheek, and murmured, "I'm sorry I hurt you."

  She only smiled, half-bewildered. Her voice was as dreamy as the unreal light when she bent down to me.

  "Lew, your face is so hot--"

  "And yours is so cool," I whispered. I touched the bruise with my good hand, wanting to kiss it. Her face was in shadow, very grave and still. Suddenly, forcefully, Callina came into my mind. Not the aloof Keeper, but the proud and passionate woman defying the council, refusing before Ashara to bare her mind to my touch--

  Dio, too, had feared that. Could any woman endure that intimacy, that bond that was deeper than any physical touch? Callina, remote, precious, untouchable--and Dio, who had been everything to me that a woman can be to a man. Or almost everything. And why was I thinking of Callina, with Dio beside me? She seemed to be forcing the thought on me; so strongly, I was almost constrained to speak the name aloud. Her pallid face seemed to flicker, to be Callina's own, so dreamishly that I could not believe I was awake.

  "Why are you here?"

  Dio said, very simply, "I always know when you are in pain or suffering."

  She drew my head to her breast. I lay there with my eyes closed. Her body was warm and cool at once and the scent of her was at once fresh and familiar, the mysterious salty smell of tears mingling with the honey and musk of her hair.

  "Don't go away."

  "No. Never."

  "I love you," I whispered. "I love you."

  For a moment Callina's sobs deepened--Callina? Callina? She was almost a physical presence between us; rather the two women blended and were one. To which one had. I whispered my love? I did not know. But the soft arms around me were real.

  I held her close, knowing with a sort of sick certainty that--as a woman--I had nothing for her now. The telepath's personal hell, just as painful as ever.

  But it didn't seem to matter. And suddenly I knew that the Dio I had loved on Vainwal, passionate and superficial and hoydenish, was not the real girl at all. This was the real one. I was not the man she had known there, either.

  I could not have spoken if I had tried. There was shame, and a proffered apology, in my kiss; but she gave it back as it was given, gently, without passion.

  We fell asleep like little children, clasped in each other's arms.

  * * *

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  When i woke, I was alone. For several minutes, in the morning sunlight, I wondered if the whole bizarre episode had been a dream; then, as the curtains parted and Dio came in, a grim smile turned up my mouth. In a dream, I would surely have possessed her.

  "I've brought you another visitor," she said. I began to protest; I didn't want to see anyone. But she pulled the curtains aside--and Marja ran into the room.

  She stopped, staring--then ran and flung herself on me with a smothering hug.

  I loosened her, staring at Dio. "Gently, chiya, gently, you'll have me on the floor. Dio, how--"

  "I learned about her when Hastur first brought her here," Dio said. "But Ashara's Tower is no place for her now. Take care of him, Marja mea," she added, and before I could ask any more questions, she went away again.

  Andres reported that there were Terrans still guarding the castle corridors, but no one came near us all day. I resigned myself to inaction, and spent the day playing with Marja and making a few hazy plans. She would not be taken from me again! Andres seemed puzzled, but there was no way to explain without speaking of Marjorie and Thyra, and even to Andres, I could not do that. I told him, simply, that she was my daughter; he gave me a knowing look and, to my relief, left it at that.

  I tried to ask Marja a few careful questions, but the answers were vague and meaningless; all one could expect from so young a child. Toward nightfall, since no one had come to reclaim her, I told Andres to put her to bed in a sleeping-cubicle near my own, and when she had fallen asleep I left her there and called Andres.

  "How many Terrans are in the castle?"

  "Ten, maybe fifteen. Not Spaceforce--even Lawton wouldn't have that much insolence. They're-in plain clothes, and they behave themselves."

  I nodded. "None of them would know me by sight, I suppose. Hunt me up a suit of Terran clothes."

  He gave me a bleak grin. "No use trying to stop you, I suppose. I'll look after the little lass, then. And, I don't have to be a telepath to know what you're thinking, vai dom. I've lived with your family half my life. If that don't answer your question, what would?"

  There were many doors to the Alton suites, and the Terrans couldn't guard them all. In the hallways no one paid the slightest attention to me. They were looking after a Darkovan man with one hand; a man in Terran clothing, one hand stuck in a pocket, roused not the slightest curiosity.

  I hesitated outside the Hastur apartments, wanting to take counsel with the old Regent; then, regretfully, passed. If he knew our plan, he might forbid me, and a thousand oaths bound me to obey him. Better not chance it.

  I found Callina in her own rooms, seated before Linnell's harp; her head was buried in her arms and I thought she was crying; then with sudden su
spicion, I grabbed her and jerked her head up»

  She came up stiffly, resisting; her eyes, blank and dead, stared at me without recognition. "Callina!" I shouted, but I might as well have whispered. I dragged her bodily to her feet. Her eyes were fixed in a lifeless, blue-ice stare. "Wake up!" I shouted, and shook her hard. But I had to put her in a chair and slap her before the spark of life suddenly blazed in her eyes and her head went up.

  "What do you think you are doing? Let me go!"

  "Callina, you were in trance--"

  "Oh, no! No!" She threw herself on me, pressing herself to me in desperate appeal. I caught the words, "Ashara" and "--send--her--out," but they meant nothing, and I held her away. I dared not touch her until this was over. Gradually, she calmed. "I'm sorry, Lew. I'm--me again."

  "But who are you?" I said at hazard, "Dio? Ashara?"

  She smiled, a sorrowful smile. If you don't know, who does?"

  I dared not show tenderness. "We've got to act tonight, Callina, while the Terrans think I'm still too weak to do anything Where is Kathie?"

  Her face twisted. "It's like Linnell's ghost--"

  I dreaded it, too, but I said nothing, and finally Callina sighed. "Shall I go to her?"

  "Let me," I said. I walked through two cubicles, finally found the one where we had taken Kathie. She was lying on a couch, almost naked, scanning a set of tiles; but she heard my step and started violently, catching a sort of veil around her. "Get out!" she squeaked. "Oh--it's you again!"

  "Kathie, I haven't the slightest designs on you, except to ask you to dress and come with us. Can you ride?"

  "Yes. Why?" She paused. "I think I know why. Something strange happened to me, I think, when Linnell was killed."

  I couldn't discuss that. I reached to the dressing panel, rummaged among the forcebars and racks, finally pulled out some garments. I recognized them, with a stab of pain; Linnell's perfume hung about them; but there was nothing else I could do. I threw the armful in her lap. "Put these on," I said, and sank down to wait, but her angry stare made me recall, suddenly, the Terran taboos>I rose, actually reddening. How could Terran women be so immodest out of doors and so prudish within? "I forgot. Call me when you are ready."