LEW! YOU MUST GO, I CANNOT—YOU MUST GO BACK TO DARKOVER, FIGHT FOR YOUR BROTHER’S RIGHTS AND FOR THE HONOR OF ALTON AND THE DOMAIN—YOU MUST GO BACK AND FREE YOURSELF FROM SHARRA—LEW, I COMMAND YOU. IT IS MY DYING WISH, THE LAST WISH—
And then a flood of love and tenderness and a moment of pure joy.
“Elaine,” he cried out in my mind. Yllana. Beloved.
Then I broke into his room, and he lay there, quite dead. But on his face was a tender smile of happiness.
* * *
BOOK TWO: The Form of Fire
* * *
CHAPTER ONE
« ^ »
Darkover. The end of exile
There was someone at the door. Regis Hastur struggled up through confused dreams and found himself in his own rooms in Comyn Castle, his body-servant arguing in dogged whispers with someone who stood at the door, insisting. Regis threw a furred bedgown about his shoulders and went to see what it was.
“Vai dom, this—this person is insisting on seeing you, even at this godforgotten hour—”
“Well, I’m awake now anyhow,” he said, blinking. For a moment he did not recognize the sturdy, dark-eyed youngster who stood there, and the youngster’s wry smile told Regis that he knew it.
“We haven’t met many times and I don’t think we’ve ever been formally introduced,” he said. “Not since I was eight or nine years old, anyhow. My name is Marius, and I won’t argue about the rest of it when I’m here to ask a favor of you.”
Now Regis recognized Kennard’s younger son. He had seen him, briefly, somewhere in Thendara, about three years ago; perhaps in the company of Lerrys Ridenow? He said, “Of course I remember you, kinsman.” And when he had spoken that word, kinsman, a formal recognition as to an equal, he thought, tardily, how vexed his grandfather would have been. The Council, after all, had gone to considerable lengths to avoid extending that formal recognition to Kennard’s younger son.
Yet they had placed Regis himself in Kennard’s hands for fostering between the ages of nine and twelve. Regis and Lew had been bredin, sworn brothers. How could he now refuse that recognition to Kennard’s son and Lew’s brother, who, by all standards of honor and decency, was Regis’s foster-brother too. But he had neglected that obligation. Even now, his body-servant was staring at Marius as if the youngster were something with a hundred legs which the man had found in his porridge-bowl.
Regis said, “Come in, Marius; what can I do for you?”
“It’s not for me,” Marius said, “but for my friend. I have been living, this season, in my father’s town house in Thendara. I haven’t been made to feel exactly welcome in Comyn Castle.”
“I know, and I’m sorry, Marius. What can I say? I don’t make Council decisions, but that doesn’t mean I agree with them, either. Come in, won’t you? Don’t stand here in the hallway. A drink? Erril, take his cloak.”
Marius shook his head. “There’s no time for that, I’m afraid. My friend—you know him; he told me, once, you were prisoners together at Aldaran, and you know something of—” Marius fidgeted, lowered his voice as if he spoke a gutter obscenity— “of Sharra.”
Now Regis remembered his dream, the monstrous fire-form flaring and ravaging in his nightmare, ships bursting in flame— “I remember,” he said, “all too well. Your friend—Rafe Scott, isn’t it?” He remembered, too, that he had seen them together in Thendara. Yes; in the company of Lerrys Ridenow, who liked the society of Terrans. “What’s happened, Marius?”
And yet his mind was running quick counterpoint, this can’t happen, all these years I have not even dreamed of Sharra, and now… this is more than coincidence.
“He was my guest,” Marius said, “and the servants heard him crying out and came and wakened me; but when I went to him he didn’t know me, just kept crying out, raving about Sharra— I couldn’t make him hear me. Could you—could you come?”
“What you want is a healer,” Regis said. “I don’t have any skill at that kind of thing…” and he found himself wondering if Danilo, who had been prisoner with him during those weeks at Aldaran, who also had been touched by the fire-form, had wakened in terrifying nightmares of Sharra. And what did it mean?
“Lord Regis,” said the body-servant in outrage, “you’re not thinking of going out with this—at this hour of night, at the beck and call of just anybody?”
Regis had been thinking of refusal. What Marius needed was a healer or a licensed matrix technician. Regis had spent a season in a Tower, learning to manage his own laran so that it would not make him ill or drive him mad, but he had none of the advanced skills for matrix healing of mind or body, and what he knew of Sharra was very little. Only that for all that time his own matrix had been overshadowed, so that he could not touch it without seeing that ravaging form of fire— but the servant’s words made him angry again.
“I don’t know if I can help you very much, Marius, and I don’t know the Scott youngster at all. I haven’t seen him since then, not to speak to. But I’ll come as a friend,” he said, disregarding his servant’s look of outrage. “Get me my clothes, Erril, and my boots. If you’ll excuse me while I get dressed—”
Hurrying into his clothes, he thought that he was perhaps the only telepath still in the Domains who had had even that much indirect experience with Sharra. What little he knew of it did not tempt him to learn more.
But what can this mean? The matrix is not even on Darkover! It went with Lew and Kennard into exile…
He splashed his face with icy water, hoping to clear his confusion. And then he realized what could have happened…
I am responsible for this. I sent the message, and my grandfather will be very angry when he finds out that it was I. And already I am suffering the consequences of my actions.
It flashed through his mind, relived in an instant as it had happened. It had been a score of tendays ago; and he had, as Heir to Hastur, been privy to a decision made by the cortes, the ruling body of Thendara. He was in honor bound not to discuss their decisions with any outsider; but what to do when honor conflicts with honor? And in the end he had gone to the one man on Darkover who might have a stake in reversing this decision.
Dyan Ardais had heard him out, a faint smile playing ironically over his lips, as if he could sense how Regis hated this… the necessity that he, Regis, should come as a suppliant, begging favors of Dyan. Regis had concluded, angrily, “Do you want to see them do this to Kennard?”
Dyan had frowned, then, and made him go all over it again. “What exactly are they intending to do?”
“At the first session of Council, this year, they are going to declare Kennard’s estates forfeit because he has abandoned Darkover; and they are going to give Armida into the hands of Gabriel Lanart-Hastur! Just because he commands the Guards and because he’s married to my sister!”
“I don’t see what choice they have.”
“Kennard must come home,” Regis said angrily. “They shouldn’t do this behind his back! He should have a chance to protest this! And Kennard has another son!”
After a long silence, Dyan had said, “I’ll make certain that Kennard knows, at least. Then, if he chooses not to return and press his claim—well, I suppose the law must take its course. Leave it to me, Regis. You’ve done all you can.”
And now, weeks later, hurrying to join Marius, Regis wondered about that. Even if Kennard had returned, he would not be fool enough to bring the Sharra matrix back to Darkover, would he?
Perhaps, he thought, perhaps it is only nightmare…perhaps it is not the frightening coincidence I think. Perhaps Rafe’s nightmare reached out to the one person in Thendara who had been touched by Sharra and so I, too, dreamed—
He slung his cloak about his shoulders and said to Marius, “Let’s go. Erril, call my bodyguard.” He didn’t want the man; but he also knew, even at this hour, he could not walk the streets of Thendara wholly unattended; and even if he could, he had been forced to promise his grandfather that he would not.
It had been many years since Regis had entered Kennard Alton’s Thendara town house. It stood at the edge of a wide cobbled square, and tonight it was all dark except for a single light at the back. Marius led him to a side door; Regis said to the Guardsman, “Wait here.” The man argued a little in an undertone—the Vai Dom should be careful, it might be a trap—but Regis said wrathfully that such a statement was an offense to his kinsman, and the Guardsman, who had, after all, known Kennard as his Commander, and probably Lew too as cadet and officer, growled and subsided.
But after he had left them Regis thought he would have been glad of the man’s company after all. He tended to trust Marius, but Rafe Scott was a Terran, and they were noted for their indifference to codes of honor. And Rafe was also blood kin somehow, to that arch-traitor Kadarin, who had been Lew’s sworn friend, but had betrayed him, beaten and tortured him, drugged him and forced him, unwilling, to serve Sharra…
From inside the darkened house rose a cry, a scream, a howl of terror, as if no human throat could quite compass that cry. For a moment, behind Regis’s eyes he felt the blaze of fire—the primal terror of the fire-form, raging, ravening…then he shut it out, knowing it was the terror in the other’s mind that he picked up and read. He managed to barrier his mind, and turned to Marius, white with dread, at his side. He wondered if the younger man had enough laran to pick up the image, or whether it was Rafe’s distress that troubled him.
Kennard had proved to the Council that Lew had the Alton gift and they had accepted him. They had not accepted Marius; did that mean that Kennard’s younger son was wholly without laran?
“Remember, Marius, I don’t know if I can do anything at all for him. But I ought to see him.”
Marius nodded, and led the way into an inner room. A frightened servant stood shaking by the door, afraid to go in. “There hasn’t been any change, dom Marius. Andres is with him.”
Regis just flicked the barest glance of recognition at the burly, graying man in Darkovan clothing—though Regis knew he was a Terran—who had been chief coridom, or steward, at Armida when Regis was there as a child. Rafe Scott was sitting bolt upright, staring at nothing Regis could see, and as Regis came into the room, again there was that infernal, animal howl of terror and dread. Even through his strong barriers, Regis could sense the blaze of heat, fire, torment… a woman, locks of fiery hair blazing, tossing—
Regis felt the hair on his forearms, every separate hair on his body bristling and standing upright; like some animal in the presence of a primordial enemy. Marius had asked Andres something in a low, concerned tone, and the man shook his head. “All I could do was hold him so he wouldn’t hurt himself.”
“I wish Lerrys was in the city,” Marius said. “The Ridenow are trained to deal with alien intelligences—presences that aren’t on this dimension at all.”
Regis looked at the terrified face of the young man before him. He had seen Rafe only once, and that briefly; he remembered him best as a child, a boy of thirteen, at Aldaran. He had thought, then, that the boy was young to be admitted into one of the matrix circles. He must be nineteen or twenty now—
Not a boy, then. A young man. But, living among Terrans, he has not had the training which would teach him to cope with such things.
… but Lew was trained at Arilinn, and the best they could do could not keep him unburned by the fires of Sharra—
It would do no good to send for an ordinary matrix technician. They could do many things—unfasten locks without a key, trace lost objects through clairvoyance matrix-amplified, set truthspell for business dealings where ordinary trust would not serve, diagnose obscure complaints, even perform simple surgery without knife or blood. But Sharra would be beyond their knowledge or their competence. For better or for worse, Regis, who knew little, knew as much of Sharra as anyone.
He felt the most terrible revulsion against touching that horror; but he reached out, steadying his mind by gripping the matrix around his neck, and tried to make a light contact with Rafe’s mind. At the strange touch, Rafe convulsed all over, as if in the grip of horror again, and cried out, “No! No, Thyra! Sister, don’t—”
For just a fraction of a second Regis saw and recognized the picture in Rafe’s mind, a woman, not the flame-haired horror that was Sharra, but a woman, red-haired, red-lipped, with eyes of a curious golden color…
And then Rafe blinked and in the twinkling of an eye it was gone and he looked at Regis with intelligence in his eyes. Regis noted, with mild surprise, that his eyes too were golden, like the woman he had seen. Rafe said, “What’s the matter, why are you staring at me? What are you doing here—” He blinked again and looked round him wildly. “Marius, what happened?”
“You tell me that,” said Marius angrily. “All I know is that you wakened the whole house screaming and raving of—of—” Again the hesitation and Rafe finally, matter-of-factly, supplied the word. He said “Sharra,” and Regis was relieved, obscurely, as if a deadlock had been broken.
Marius said, “I couldn’t make you hear me; you didn’t know me.”
Rafe frowned and said, “I’m sorry for having disturbed you—in hell’s name, did you go and fetch the Hastur out of bed at this hour of the night?” He looked at Regis in apology and dismay. “I’m sorry. It must have been a bad dream, no more.”
Outside the dawn was graying into pale light. Marius said, embarrassed, “Will you honor my house, Lord Regis, and take some breakfast here? It is a poor apology for disturbing your rest—”
“It will be my pleasure, cousin,” Regis said, using the word just a trace more intimate than the formal kinsman, not quite as intimate as foster-brother. His grandfather would be very angry when he heard; but all the smiths in Zandru’s forges can’t mend a broken egg, and done was done. Marius gave orders to Andres, and Regis added, “Ask the servants to feed my Guardsman in the kitchens, will you?”
When the servants were gone, Marius said, “What happened, Rafe? Or don’t you really know?”
Rafe shook his head. “I don’t think it was a dream,” he said. “I saw my sister Thyra, and she—she turned into Sharra again. I was afraid—”
Regis demanded, “But why should it happen now, of all times, when nothing like it has happened for six years?”
Rafe said, “I’m almost afraid to find out. I thought Sharra was gone—dormant, at least here on Darkover—”
“But it isn’t here on Darkover,” Regis said, “The Altons took it offworld; perhaps to Terra. I’ve never known why—”
“Perhaps,” Rafe said, “because, here on Darkover, it could never be controlled and might do more harm—” and he was silent, but Regis, seeing the picture in his mind, remembered that the old Terran spaceport at Caer Dorm, in the mountains, had gone up in flames. “If it had been here, Kadarin might have gotten it back.”
“I didn’t know he was still alive,” said Regis.
Rafe sighed. “Yes. Though I haven’t seen either of them for years. They were—in hiding for a long time.” He seemed about to say something more, then shrugged and said, “Under ordinary circumstances, I would have been glad to know that Thyra was still alive, but now—”
With shaking fingers he fumbled at the matrix around his neck. “I was only a child when the Sharra circle was broken, and then I—I was in shock. I was ill for a long time. When I recovered, they told me Marjorie was dead, that Lew had taken the matrix offworld and would never return, and I—I found I could not use my starstone; I had been part of it, and when the link with the Sharra matrix was broken, my own starstone was—was burned out, I thought. But now I am not sure—”
He unwrapped the stone. It was, Regis thought dispassionately, a very small one, a blue je
wel, faceted, flawed. He bent his eyes on it; it flamed crimson within, so clearly that even Regis and Marius could see the form of fire. He put the stone away, with fingers that wobbled as he tried to draw the strings of the little leather pouch.
“What does it mean?” he asked in a whisper.
“There’s only one thing it can mean,” Regis said. “It means that Kennard has come home. Or Lew. Or both. And that, for some reason or other, they have brought the Sharra matrix home with them.”
On the first day of Council season, Regis Hastur came early to the Crystal Chamber. He debated, for a moment, going in through the Hastur entrance—in the hallway around the Chamber, there was a private entrance for each Domain, and a small antechamber to each railed-off segment, so that the members of the Domain might meet privately for a moment before making formal appearance in Council—but then shrugged, and, pausing for a friendly word with the Guardsman at the door, went into the main entrance.
Outside it was a day of brilliant sun, and the light streamed through the prisms in the ceiling which gave the chamber its name; it was like standing at the multicolored heart of a rainbow. The Crystal Chamber was eight-sided, and spacious—at least, Regis thought, it seemed spacious now; at the height of Comyn powers it must have seemed small for all those who had Domain-right in the Comyn. Where Regis stood was a central dais, the wide double doors at the back protected by trusty Guardsmen; the other seven sides were allotted, each to one of the Domains, and each was a section divided off by wooden railings and lined with benches, boxes, and a few curtained-off enclosures so that the lords and ladies of each Domain might watch unseen or maintain their privacy until the time came fur the full Council session. One segment was empty, and had been empty since Regis, or any of his living relatives, could remember; and he remembered that his grandfather had told him once, when he was a boy, that the Domain of Aldaran had been untenanted since he, or any of his relatives, could remember. The old Seventh Domain, Aldaran, had been exiled from the Comyn for so long that no one could remember why; the reasons, if indeed there were reasons, had been lost in the Ages of Chaos. He had seen it every year since he was old enough to attend Council; empty, dusty benches and seats, a bare space on the wall where once the double-eagle banner of Aldaran had hung.
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