Citadels of Darkover

by Deborah J. Ross

  “Is this what you seek?” he asked.

  My heart skipped a beat. All I could do was nod. Again there was a spark in his blue eyes that reached mine.

  “This comes from the Vale of Valiante. We usually do not speak of the Vale to outsiders. I have decided to break that custom for the sake of my grandfather. Only to you, the seeker of dragon bones.”

  Lunch arrived. He was silent as we ate a sort of frittata with a salad of leaves and flowers on the side. I was becoming impatient as we finished the ice melon desert.

  “My grandparents raised me.” Dominic picked up his story. “As I know your grandparents raised you while your mother and father roamed the stars. These beast stones are so many in our valley that they are children’s playthings.”

  I almost choked a piece of ice melon but managed to cover it up with a cough. Fossils so many that they were children’s playthings? And how did he know my grandparents raised me?

  “My grandfather began collecting them as boy. He wants to know how they were made. He has seen at least sixty-eight winters. So if he is to know before he dies, I will bring you to him and you will tell him. That is my price for our bargain. But this must, must be secret. Swear again.”

  A second time, and this time eagerly, I swore.

  “Return to the spaceport,” he said. “Get whatever you need for a long journey. When we leave Thendara you must look like us.” He smiled that seductive smile. “You are about my size, so you may wear my clothing. Show me your map. Here, at the Emerald Grasshopper Inn, we will meet. In four hours.”

  I didn’t have much to bring. My field clothing could blend in and I wasn’t going without the under-fleece. On my bed I laid out the exo-paleontology field multi-sensor, latest generation, that my father had sent me as a graduation gift. Beside it was my Search and Rescue light/megaphone that could either fit in the palm of my hand or be configured as a head lamp. I had always carried it since I was seventeen when I took a course in Snowdonia in North Wales.

  I was already breaking the rules by leaving Thendara without authorization. Could I smuggle the tech past gate security? There was one other thing I always travelled with, a battered sensor-blocking bag that when I was five had held toy dinosaurs, also from my soldier father. It was obsolete even then, now a century old. I put the field multi sensor and the SAR light in the bag. On a whim, for luck, I added the travel charm

  ~o0o~

  The man looking into the mirror the next morning would not be recognized as Terranan. I was wearing a rough homespun wool shirt and pants with battered riding boots. I also wore Dominic’s spare tartan travel jacket. My sandy brown hair with its reddish-brown highlights was an unruly mop.

  “Now that looks better.” Dominic laughed, coming up behind me. “I have for you the finishing touch.”

  He handed me a large knife in a leather sheath engraved with spirals. “It’s the knife you were eyeing in the marketplace. You need a weapon and you can’t handle a sword. A man without a sword or knife doesn’t look right.”

  I reached out to take the knife. In that moment our fingers touched. This time it was more than a spark, it was a flow of energy. I knew then that I could never betray Dominic, no matter how much I was tempted. I knew one more thing: His decision to buy the knife was purely practical but more than that. Darkovan lovers—bredu—exchanged knives. If that old woman was right, if time and the stars aligned, one day I would have to find a knife for Dominic.

  “We start in an hour,” he said in a husky voice. “Meanwhile, don’t talk too much. Your accent is strange and you still get words wrong.” He stopped. “You can ride a horse, can’t you?”

  “Yes, in the mountains of Terra.”

  The horses that Dominic brought from the stables were not what I expected. They were mountain-bred, with an insulating coat of tightly curled hair. Dominic said, “The white one is mine, ‘Riannar,’ which means starlight in the Vale dialect. I am going to give you the reddish one, ‘Saayor,’ which means wise woman. She’s easier with new riders.” The other three carried packs.

  Saayor was not as easy as Dominic said. I was used to Terran Quarter Horses but not anything smaller. I almost fell off getting into the saddle, had to have Dominic lengthen the stirrups, and the first couple of times she turned too wide when I tried the reins.

  “Barleto,” one of guests yelled. To my consternation, Dominic laughed.

  We first took the road to Armida in Alton country, and that night we had a travel shelter to ourselves. “I am sorry I laughed,” Dominic said. “It is so funny to hear someone call a Terranan a country bumpkin.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “Stiff and saddle sore?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll get better as we go on.”

  On the second day, we came to a creek with a stone bridge. Without guidance from Dominic, Riannar turned off the road down to the creek and along a narrow, almost hidden trail. High above us, a hawk rode thermal air currents.

  Each day in the wilderness of Darkover, I felt more and more as if my ancestors’ ancient DNA was being revitalized. I wanted to believe that Dominic was interested in me, not just dragon bones and beast stones. I couldn’t be sure. The three-day course for visitors to Thendara hadn’t touched on relationships and sexual customs. Was Dominic thinking the same thing? What did he know about the customs of the Empire?

  ~o0o~

  We slept side by side. Each night we huddled closer together, but nothing more.

  On the sixth day after we left the Armida road, the trail got steeper, the track narrower, and the forest thicker. A pair of large black birds, local raven equivalents, dove and soared just above our heads.

  About an hour after we had stopped for our noon meal, the horses, of their own accord, began to pick up the pace. After another hour, we looked down upon a valley surrounded by towering snow-covered peaks.

  “That, Rhodri, my friend, is the Vale of Valiante. That is our citadel.”

  In the middle of the valley a rocky hill dominated the landscape. On the crest of that hill was indeed a citadel, shining pale purple in the red sun. At the base of that hill was a village, with sturdy buildings and smoke rising from chimneys.

  The horses quickly began to descend the slope. Emerging from a grove of blue-leafed trees I got a better look at the village with its scattered buildings, houses, and barns.

  “Something is wrong.” Dominic kicked Riannar into a trot.

  “How do you know?

  “My laran.”

  A couple of minutes later, we saw a man on a horse galloping toward us.

  Dominic yelled, “Iain!”

  Now he and the pack horses were galloping. Saayor raced to follow, as I hung on.

  The man Iain pulled up his horse as we approached. I could see at once that he was related to Dominic, perhaps a younger brother. Iain broke into a brief smile as Dominic pulled up beside him. Neither said an audible word. In a microsecond, the smiles turned to desperate expressions.

  “It’s my grandfather!” Dominic told me. “He went up to the citadel and hasn’t come out. There’s a search team looking for him.”

  Together we raced into the village, where Dominic dropped the reins of the pack horses. He and Iain pushed their horses up the slope to the citadel. Saayor was keeping pace.

  We reached the gateway arch. “We’ll be in the old throne room through that door,” Dominic said. “You tie up our horses. Then follow us.”

  I had a moment of joy, knowing that Dominic trusted me with the horses. I also felt his growing fear.

  I tied the three horses to a hitching post and took a quick look around. The citadel was old, half a ruin, and the roof was long gone, but the cobble stones had been swept clean. I had never seen anything like the stratified sedimentary rock that comprised the citadel walls. Layer after layer of thin blue stripes ranged from pale to navy, interspersed with brilliant green blue and embedded in grey, probably slate.

  I passed through the stone arch, carved
with a leaf and branch pattern. Moss covered the corridor. It too was striped sedimentary rock. A large room opened ahead of me, brightly lit by the rays of Darkover’s red sun. On the far wall, protected by a faded, fraying awning along the length of the wall, was mounted an articulated skeleton embedded in clean rock matrix.

  I could have sworn it was the second cousin of a Terran mosasaur.

  Only then did I notice the semi-circle of people, including Dominic and Iain, around a second arched doorway; listening to a man at the centre. I knew immediately from my own search and rescue training that this was the universal “stop, assess, plan, repeat,” SAR session, whether in a society with sensors and satellites or horses and laran.

  The man in the centre, obviously the SAR incident commander, stopped his briefing and looked at me. “Who are you?”

  “Dom Felix, this is my friend Rhodri ab Brymor,” Dominic said.

  Felix pointed to me. “We don’t have time for newcomers. You stay here and don’t get in the way.”

  “I can help, sir,” I blurted. “Dom Felix, as incident commander, please know that I am fully trained in search and rescue, five years’ experience. Let me help.” Everyone was staring at me, including Dominic. I realized I said the words “incident commander” and “search and rescue” not in cahuenga, for I did not know the equivalent, but in Terran Standard.

  “He speaks the truth,” a woman said. “I know his thoughts. He is schooled in rescues, but not here. Somewhere else.” Then she paled. “He is Terranan.”

  “Thyra, our wisest Elder,” Dominic whispered to me. “She has the most powerful laran in the Vale.”

  “You can find no trace of old Dom Kieran?” Felix asked.

  Thyra’s face showed anger and frustration. “I know he is down in the caverns beneath the citadel, but where, exactly?” she said. “It’s this cursed laran fog. I cannot make sense of anything because of the stones.”

  “Search your assigned areas. Do it quietly. Listen for any sounds.” Felix turned to Dominic. “Dominic, you search the north wing. If you take the Terranan with you, don’t let him get lost. I will go to the watch tower with Thyra. She may sense something from there.”

  Felix turned to me. “I don’t care what you did on Terra. This is Darkover. You do everything Dominic tells you.”

  A middle-aged woman handed out burning reed torches. Dominic led me down a passageway.

  “What is laran fog?” I asked

  “What do you know about laran?”

  “Darkovan telepathy, just what’s in all the planetary guides.”

  “Here, down these stairs. For most of us, and more so for the powerful, laran is, in most circumstances, clear—sort of like looking out on a sunny day. The stones do something to the laran.... Images are blurred or fade in and out. For those whose minds can speak over distances it is hard to understand one another. It is like when fog suddenly comes down from the mountains. That’s why we call it laran fog. The deeper in the caverns, the worse it is.”

  I remembered the cultural sensitivity lecture, where Melora n’ha Mesyr had told us that Darkovans believed the Terranan overly dependent on technology. Now I wondered if they were overly dependent on laran.

  Dominic, who clearly knew the citadel, took me through a maze of corridors, our torches lighting the way. When the torches had burned down to half their original length, he stopped. He used his free hand to rub his temple.

  “He’s not here.” Then: “Do you have a headache, Rod?”

  I’d been ignoring the nagging pain behind my eyes. “A slight one.”

  “You must have some laran, my friend. The stones can also bring laran headaches. There’s nothing more we can do here.”

  ~o0o~

  Back in the throne room, the mood was glum. “What more can we do?” Iain said. “It’s getting late, it will be dark soon.”

  It was then, almost subconsciously, I made the decision I had been pondering since we began the search. “Let me try something,” I said in my horrible cahuenga.

  They stared at me.

  I slipped off my knapsack and dumped out the remains of a crumbling travel cake, my rain cape, and the sensor block bag. I took out the field multi-sensor unit, civilian Exo-Paleontology version of Special Forces tech. About the size of a larger com-tab, it featured artificial intelligence together with a McKechnie scanner, particle penetration sensors, ground penetrating radar, ultrasound and acoustic sensors, infrared heat sensitive sensors, the classic Yelnu probe, and a video recorder. The unit was built to detect fossils, but the manufacturers had added a search and rescue capability. I knew by showing the Darkovans advanced tech I was breaking every law on a Class D Closed World. I didn’t care.

  “Maybe Terranan tech can help,” I said. “Vai domna, show me where your laran senses are strongest for Dominic’s grandfather.”

  She thought for a moment. “Toward the west, I think. I am not sure.”

  Time was urgently short, but I had to let the sensor do its initial sweep. That took about two minutes, although it seemed longer, to build up a basic image of the citadel that probably was as foggy as their degraded laran.

  “Now we’ll go,” I said. “Just myself, the laran lady, and Dominic.”

  Carrying a torch, Dominic led me down another stone corridor. I concentrated on watching the sensor. Thyra followed with her own torch. The multi-sensor was slowly building data. The maze of corridors appeared in low resolution pale green on a dark background.

  At one point I stumbled over a loose flagstone and brushed against the wall. I had flash of vision: an island in a sea.

  From time to time Thyra said, “Stop.” Each time she shook her head. Each time the sensor indicated no high-level life forms.

  We turned a corner, Thyra said, “I sense him now. Farther down... No. I’ve lost him.”

  Just then the screen displayed, “Compiling,” It refreshed and a new, crystal-clear image of the citadel appeared. The corridors were bright green, three-dimensional layers of lines; yellows, purples and greys displayed differences in the composition and thickness of the stone walls.

  It took Thyra and Dominic just seconds to recognize the configuration of the citadel. As Dominic looked closer, his hand grazed my arm. Again, there was a spark of intimacy. I felt his fears for his grandfather.

  Thyra reached out and touched the edge of the sensor. “Can you make that thing larger?” She pointed to one section. “This may be where I may have sensed Dom Kieran.”

  I pushed the enhance slider to its fullest extent. We spotted a faint blue dot, still fuzzy. One last button, “Analyze.” It took too many seconds. “Life form. Insufficient data for definite conclusion. Possible Terran Homo sapiens, confidence 34 per cent.”

  “That’s it,” she said. “The cliff gate. You old fool, Kieran, what were you doing there?”

  Dominic said. “Get the others. I am going to the cliff gate.” As he raced down the corridor, the flames from his torch threw dancing shows on the walls until he disappeared.

  It took many minutes, along corridors, back to the throne room, along more corridors and then on a narrow cliffside trail for the rescue team to reach the cliff gate. Iain carried a folded-up stretcher. It was getting dark; the last arc of the huge red sun was setting behind the mountains.

  Dominic was waiting. I took the SAR light from my pack. In the bright white of my headlamp and the flickering orange of the torches, we saw a pile of shattered rock, plain grey volcanic tuff, blocking the front of the narrow gate.

  I pointed my multi-sensor. The acoustic sensor detected slow breathing and a rapidly beating heart. “He’s alive.”

  “Headache’s almost gone,” Dominic said. “Thyra?”

  She looked at the sensor at the blue icon. “Yes, I know where that is. Form a circle.”

  I watched as the Darkovans joined hands. In just moments, the rocks blocking the entrance fell away, creating a space large enough for Felix and his team to enter.

  “Can I use your light, R
hodri?” Felix asked. I handed it to him and he was first through the gap in the stones.

  Then the sensor beeped. I looked down, astonished. It displayed “34 fossils found.” The AI had been working in background during our search for Kieran. The sea monster in the throne room had been bright red. The other 33 indicators were orange—showing possible fish or other sea creatures. There were many more dots in pale peach, indicating the algorithm couldn’t give a definite conclusion. That usually meant small shells or invertebrates.

  Meanwhile, the rescuers were pulling themselves out from the gap. Moments later, the elderly man was carefully brought out on the stretcher.

  ~o0o~

  Kieran was taken to the Thyra’s house, so she could monitor his condition. Dominic led upstairs to a room where the moment I lay down on the huge bed, I was instantly asleep. I dreamt once, briefly, of an island in a sea.

  I awoke much later. From the light in the windows, it must have been noon. A tray beside my bed held three kinds of cheese, thick slices of bread packed with dried fruit and a mug of steaming hot jaco. An hour later Dominic suggested we go for a walk. It was a warm day, an afternoon breeze wafting down from the pinkish peaks.

  “Grandfather is already up and about—and anxious to meet you.” Dominic said.

  “He’s recovered already?

  Dominic nodded. “He’s always been a determined man—and although he was trapped by the rock fall, his injuries were slight, or so he says. Thyra is monitoring him. He wants to meet at the foot of the citadel trail.”

  In the light of the bloody sun, the stones of the citadel were marked by thin lines of purplish blue patterns like vines after the leaves have fallen. Waiting for us was a white-haired man, Kieran, sitting on a large, old stone block. He was flanked by Felix and Thyra. The stone was grey and brown volcanic tuft. No blue lines.

  “Grandfather this is...”

  “Your Terranan dragon-hunter friend. I thank you, Rhodri ab Brymor Owens, for helping rescue last me last night... Yes, I know your name. I do have laran, but it is weak. Since I was a boy I have always sensed old, very old, echoes of life in our beast stones.” He looked at Thyra and Felix. “To others they are curiosities.”