They were my heritage; both of them, not one alone, and try as I might, I could not see the coming battle as between Terran and Comyn, but Darkover against Darkover, strife between those who would loose ancient evil in our world in the service of Comyn, and those who would protect it from that evil.
I had allied myself with the ancient evil of Sharra. It mattered nothing that I had tried to close the gateway; it was I who had first summoned Sharra, misusing the laran which was my heritage, betraying Arilinn which had trained me in the use of that laran. Now I would destroy that evil, even if I destroyed myself with it.
Yet for the moment, breathing the icy wind of the high pass, the snow-laden wind that blew off the eternal glacier up there, I could forget that this might be my last ride. Kathie was shivering, and I took off my cloak and laid it over her shoulders as we rode side by side. She protested, “You’ll freeze!” but I laughed and shook my head.
“No, no—you’re not used to this climate; this is shirtsleeve weather to me!” I insisted, wrapping her in the folds. She clutched it round her, still shivering. I said, “We’ll be through the pass soon, and it’s warmer on the shores of Hali.”
The red sun stood high, near the zenith; the sky was clear and cloudless, a pale and beautiful mauve-color, a perfect day for riding. I wished that there were a hawk on my saddle, that I was riding out from Arilinn, hunting birds for my supper. I looked at Callina and she smiled back at me, sharing the thought, for she made a tiny gesture as if tossing a verrin hawk into the air. Even Kathie, with her glossy brown curls, made me think of riding with Linnell in the Kilghard Hills when we were children. Once we had ridden all the way to Edelweiss, and been soundly beaten, when we came home after dark, by my father; only now I realized that what had seemed a fearful whipping to children twelve and nine years old, had in reality been a few half-playful cuffs around the shoulders, and that father had been laughing at us, less angry than grateful that we had escaped bandits or banshee-birds. I remembered now that he had never beaten any of us seriously. Though once he threatened, when I failed to rub down and care for a horse I had ridden, leaving the animal to a half-trained stableboy, that if I neglected to see to my mounts, next time I too should have no supper and sleep on the floor in my wet riding-clothes instead of having a hot bath and a good bed waiting.
Harsh as he had been—and there had been times when I hated him—it seemed that only now, facing my own death, was I wholly aware of how he had loved us, of how all his own plans for us had fallen into ruin. I started to say, “Linnie, do you remember,” and remembered that Linnell was dead and that the girl who rode before me, clutching a cloak around her with Linnell’s very gesture, was a stranger, a Terran stranger.
But I looked past her at Callina, and our eyes met. Callina was real, Callina was all the old days at Arilinn, Callina was the time when I had been happy and doing work I loved in the Towers. The copper bracelet on her left wrist, sign of a tie with Beltran, was a joke, an obscenity, entirely irrelevant. I let myself dream of a day when I would tear it from her wrist, fling it in Beltran’s face…
Callina was a Keeper, never to be touched, even with a lustful thought… but now she was riding at my side, and she raised her face to mine, pale and smiling. And I thought; Keeper no more; the Comyn married her off to Beltran as they would dispose of a brood mare, but if she can be given to Beltran, they cannot complain if—after she is properly widowed, for while I lived Beltran would not take her as his wife—if afterward she gives herself to me.
And then…Armida, and the Kilghard Hills… and our own world waiting for us. She smiled at me, and for a moment my heart turned over inside me at that smile; then I forced myself to remember. The way out led through Sharra; and it was very doubtful that I would be alive to see the sun set. But at least Beltran, who had, like myself, been sealed to Sharra, would go with me into the darkness. But still her eyes sought mine, and against all conceivable sanity, I was happy.
Below us, now, lay the pale shores of Hali, with the long line of trees fading in the mist. Here, so the legend said, the Son of Aldones had fallen to Earth, and lay on the shores of the Lake, so that the sands were evermore mirrored and shimmering…I looked on the pale glimmer of the sands of the shores, and knew that the sands were of some gleaming stone, mica or garnet, beaten into sand by the waves of a great inland sea which had washed here long before this planet spawned life. Yet the wonder remained; along these shimmering shores Hastur had lain, and here came Camilla the Damned, and the Blessed Cassilda, foremother of the Comyn, and ministered to him…
The shadows were lengthening; the day was far advanced, and one of the moons, great violet-shining Liriel, was just rising over the lake, waning a little from the full. We had perhaps two hours before sunset, and I discovered I did not like to think about riding back to Thendara in the darkness. Well, we would ride that colt when he was grown to bear a saddle; our task now was within the rhu fead, the old chapel which was the holy place of the Comyn.
It rose before us, a white, pale-gleaming pile of stone. Once there had been a Tower here; it had fallen in the Ages of Chaos, burned to the ground in those evil old days by a laran weapon next to which the Sharra matrix was a child’s toy. We reined in the horses, near the brink of the Lake, where mist curled up whitely along the shore. The sparse pinkish grass thinned out in the sands. I kicked loose a pebble; it sank, slowly turning over and over, through the cloud-surface.
“That’s not water, is it?” Kathie said, shaken. “What is it?”
I did not know. Hali was the nearest of the half-dozen cloud-lakes whose depths are not water, but some inert gas… it will even sustain life; once I walked for a little while in the depths of that Lake, looking at the strange creatures, neither fish nor bird, which swam, or flew, in that cloud-water. Legend said that once these Lakes had been water like any other, and that in the Ages of Chaos, some sorcerer, working with the laran of that day, had created them, with their peculiar gaseous structure, and the curious mutated fishbirds which flew or swam there… I thought that just about as likely as the ballad which tells how the tears of Camilla had fallen into the water and turned them into cloud when Hastur chose Cassilda for his consort.
This was no time for children’s tales and ballads!
Kathie said in confusion, “But—but surely I have been here before—”
I shook my head. “No. You have some of my memories, that’s all.”
“All!” Her voice held a note of hysteria. I said, “Don’t worry about it,” and patted her wrist, clumsily. “Here, come this way.”
Twin pillars rose before us, a twinkling rainbow glimmering like frost between them; the Veil, like the Veil at Arilinn, to keep out anyone not allied to Comyn. If Kathie’s genes were identical to Linnell’s, she should be able to pass this Veil—but it was not a physical test alone, but a mental one; no one without laran of the Comyn kind… and Kathie had been brought here because of her own immunity to that Comyn mental set.
“Even blocked,” I said to Kathie, “it would strip your mind bare. I’ll have to hold your mind completely under mine.” I seemed to speak out of some strange inner surety, knowing precisely what I should do, and in a small corner of my mind, I wondered at myself. She shrank away from the first touch of my mind, and I warned tonelessly, “I must. The Veil is a kind of forcefield, attuned to the Comyn brain; you wouldn’t survive two seconds of it.”
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, snar
ling 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?”
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