Heritage and Exile

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Kermiac nodded and said, “Her judgment is good; honor your pledge, then, Bob.”

  Kadarin laid the long bundle on the bench while he began removing his snow-crusted outer wear. I said, “You look as if you’d been out in the worst weather in the Hellers, Bob. Was it as bad as that?”

  He nodded. “I didn’t want to linger or be stormbound on the way, carrying this.” He nodded at the bundle, accepted the hot drink Marjorie brought him and gulped it thirstily. “Season’s coming in early; another bad storm on the way. What have you done while I was away?”

  Thyra met his eyes and I felt, like a small palpable shock, the quick touch and link as he came into the circle. It was easier than long explanations. He set down the empty cup and said, “Well done, children.”

  “Nothing’s done,” I said, “only begun.”

  Thyra knelt and began to unfasten the knots in the long bundle. Kadarin caught her wrist. “No,” he said, “I made a pledge. Take it, Lew.”

  “We know,” said Thyra, “we heard you.” She sounded impatient.

  “Then will you set my word at nothing, wild-bird?” His hand holding hers motionless was large, brown, heavy-knuckled. Like the Ardais and the Aillards, he had six fingers on his hand. I could easily believe nonhuman blood there, too. Thyra smiled at him and he drew her against him, saying, “Lew, it’s for you to take this.”

  I knelt beside the bundle and began to unfasten the heavy wrappings. It was longer than my arm and narrow, and had been bundled into layer on layer of heavy canvas cloth, the layers bound and knotted with embroidered straps. Marjorie and Beltran came to look over my shoulder as I struggled with the knots. Inside the last layer of heavy canvas was a layer of raw colorless silk, like the insulation of a matrix. When I finally got it unrolled, I saw that it was a ceremonial or ornamental sword, forged of pure silver. An atavistic little prickle went down to the ends of my spine. I had never set eyes on this before. But I knew what it was.

  My hands almost refused to take it, despite the thing of beauty the forge-folk had made to cover and guard it. Then I forced myself back to sanity. Was I as superstitious as Thyra thought me? I took the hilt in my hand, sensing the pulsing life within. I seized the sword in both hands and gave the hilt a hard twist.

  It came off in my hand. Inside lay the matrix itself, a great blue stone, with an inner glimmer of curling fires which, trained as I was, made my head reel and my vision blur.

  I heard Thyra gasp aloud. Beltran had quickly turned away. If it made me, after three seasons in Arilinn, fight for control, I could imagine what it had done to him. I quickly wadded it up in the silk, then took it gingerly between my fingers. I was immensely reluctant to look, even for a moment, into those endlessly live depths. Finally I bent my eyes to it. Space wrenched, tore at me. For a moment I felt myself falling, saw the face of a young girl shrouded in flame, crimson and orange and scarlet. It was a face I knew somehow—Desideria! The old woman I had seen in Kadarin’s mind! Then the face shifted, shrouded, was no more a woman but a looming, towering form of fire, a woman’s form, chained in gold, rising, flaming, striking, walls crumbling like dust. . . .

  I wrapped it in the silk again and said, “Do you know what this is?”

  Kadarin said, “It was used of old by the forge-folk to bring metals from the deeps of the ground to their fires.”

  “I’m not so sure,” I said. “Some of the Sharra matrices were used that way. Others were . . . less innocent. I’m not sure this is a monitored matrix.”

  “All the better. We want no Comyn eyes spying on what we do.”

  “But that means it’s essentially uncontrollable,” I said. “A monitored matrix has a safety factor: if it gets out of hand the monitor takes over and breaks the circle. Which is why I still have a right hand.” I held out the ugly scar. He flinched slightly and said, “Are you afraid?”

  “Of this happening again? No. I know what precautions to take. But of this matrix? Yes, I am.”

  “You Comyn are superstitious cowards! All my life I’ve heard about the powers of the Arilinn-trained telepaths and mechanics. Now you are afraid—”

  Anger surged through me. Comyn, was I? And cowardly? It seemed that the anger pulsed, beat within me, surging up my arm from the matrix in my fist. I thrust it back into the sword, sealing it there. Thyra said, “Nothing’s gained by calling names. Lew, can this be used for what Beltran has in mind?”

  I found I had an incomprehensible desire to take the sword in my hand again. The matrix seemed to call me, demanding that I take it out, master it. . . . It was almost a sensual hunger. Could it really be dangerous, then? I put the canvas wrappings around it and gave Thyra’s question some thought.

  Finally I said, “Given a fully trained circle, one I can trust, yes, probably. A tower circle is usually seven or eight mechanics and a Keeper, and we seldom handle more than fourth- or fifth-level matrices. I know this one is stronger than that. And we have no trained Keeper.”

  “Thyra can do that work,” Kadarin said.

  I considered it for a moment. She had, after all, drawn us all around her, taking the central position with swift precision. But finally I shook my head.

  “I won’t risk it. She’s worked wild too long. She’s self-taught and her training could come apart under stress.” I thought of the prowling beast I had sensed when the circle formed. I felt Thyra’s eyes on me and was painfully embarrassed, but I had been disciplined to rigid honesty within a circle. You can’t hide from one another, it’s disaster to try.

  “I can control her,” Kadarin said.

  “I’m sorry, Bob. That’s no answer. She herself must be in control or she’ll be killed, and it’s not a nice way to die. I could control her myself, but the essence of a Keeper is that she does the controlling. I trust her powers, Bob, but not her judgment under stress. If I’m to work with her, I must trust her implicitly. And I can’t. Not as Keeper. I think Marjorie can do it—if she will.”

  Kadarin was regarding Marjorie with a curious wry smile. He said, “You’re rationalizing. Do you think I don’t know you’re in love with her, and want her to have this post of honor?”

  “You’re mad,” I said. “Damn it, yes, I’m in love with her! But it’s clear you know nothing about matrix circles. Do you think I want her to be Keeper in this circle? Don’t you know that will make it impossible for me to touch her? As long as she’s a functioning Keeper, none of us may touch her, and I least of all, because I love her and want her. Didn’t you know that?” I drew my fingers slowly away from Marjorie’s. My hand felt cold and alone.

  “Comyn superstition,” Beltran said scornfully, “driveling nonsense about virgins and purity! Do you really believe all that rubbish?”

  “Belief has nothing to do with it,” I said, “and no, Keepers don’t have to be sheltered virgins in this day and age. But while they’re working in the circles they stay strictly chaste. That’s a physical fact. It has to do with nerve currents. It’s no more superstition than what every midwife knows, that a pregnant woman must not ride too fast or hard, nor wear tight lacing in her dresses. And even so, it’s dangerous. Terribly dangerous. If you think I want Marjorie to be our Keeper, you are more ignorant than I thought!”

  Kadarin looked at me steadily, and I saw that he was weighing what he said. “I believe you,” he said at last. “But you believe Marjorie can do it?”

  I nodded, wishing I could lie and be done with it. A telepath’s love life is always infernally complicated. And Marjorie and I had just found each other. We had had so very little, so very little. . . .

  “She can, if she will,” I said at last, “but she must consent. No woman can be made Keeper unwilling. It is too strong a weight to carry, except by free will.”

  Kadarin looked at us both then and said, “So it all hangs on Marjorie, then. What about it, Margie? Will you be Keeper for us?”

  She looked at me and, biting her lip, she stretched out her hands to mine. She said, “Lew, I don’t know . . .”
>
  She was afraid, and small wonder. And then, like a compelling, magical dream, I remembered the morning when we had walked together through Caer Donn and shared our dreams for this world. Wasn’t this worth a little danger, a little waiting for our happiness? A world where we need not feel shame but pride for our dual heritage, Darkovan and Terran? I felt Marjorie catch the dream, too, as without a word, she slowly loosed her hand from mine and we drew apart. From this moment until our work was ended and the circle dissolved, Marjorie would stand inviolate, set apart, alone. The Keeper.

  No words were necessary, but Marjorie spoke the simple words as if they were an oath sealed in fire.

  “I agree. If you will help me, I will do what I can.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  For ten days the storm had raged, sweeping down from the Hellers through the Kilghard Hills and falling on Thendara with fury almost unabated. Now the weather was clear and fine, but Regis rode with his head down, ignoring the bright day.

  He’d failed, he felt, having made a pledge and then doing nothing. Now he was being packed off to Neskaya in Gabriel’s care, like a sick child with a nanny! But he raised his head in surprise as they made the sharp turn that led down the valley toward Syrtis.

  “Why are we taking this road?”

  “I have a message for Dom Felix,” Gabriel said. “Will the few extra miles weary you? I can send you on to Edelweiss with the Guards. . . .”

  Gabriel’s careful solicitude set him on edge. As if a few extra miles could matter! He said so, irritably.

  His black mare, sure-footed, picked her way down the path. Despite his disclaimer to Gabriel, he felt sick and faint, as he had felt most of the time since his collapse in Kennard’s rooms. For a day or two, delirious and kept drugged, he had had no awareness of what was going on, and even now much of what he remembered from the last few days was illusion. Danilo was there, crying out in wild protest, being roughly handled, afraid, in pain. It seemed that Lew was there sometimes too, looking cold and stern and angry with him, demanding again and again, What is it that you’re afraid to know? He knew, because they told him afterward, that for a day or two he had been so dangerously ill that his grandfather never left his side, and when, waking once between sick intervals of fragmented hallucinations, he had seen his grandfather’s face and asked, “Why are you not at Council?” the old man had said violently, “Damn the Council!” Or was that another dream? He knew that once Dyan had come into the room, but Regis had hidden his face in the bedclothes and refused to speak to him, gently though Dyan spoke. Or was that a dream, too? And then, for what seemed like years, he had been on the fire-lines at Armida, when they had lived day and night with terror; during the day the hard manual work kept it at bay, but at night he would wake, sobbing and crying out with fear. . . . That night, his grandfather told him, his half-conscious cries had grown so terrified, so insistent, that Kennard Alton, himself seriously ill, had come and stayed with him till morning, trying to quiet him with touch and rapport. But he kept crying out for Lew and Kennard couldn’t reach him.

  Regis, ashamed of this childish behavior, had finally agreed to go to Neskaya. The blur of memory and thought-images embarrassed him, and he didn’t try to sort out the truth from the drugged fantasies. Just the same, he knew that at least once Lew had been there, holding him in his arms like the frightened child he had been. When he told Kennard so, Kennard nodded soberly and said, “It’s very likely. Perhaps you were astray in time; or perhaps from where he is, Lew sensed that you had need for him, and reached you as a telepath can. I had never known you were so close to him.” Regis felt helpless, vulnerable, so when he was well enough to ride, he had meekly agreed to go to Neskaya Tower. It was intolerable to live like this. . . .

  Gabriel’s voice roused him now, saying in dismay, “Look! What’s this? Dom Felix—”

  The old man was riding up the valley toward them, astride Danilo’s black horse, the Armida-bred gelding which was the only really good horse at Syrtis. He was coming at what was, for a man his age, a breakneck pace. For a few minutes it seemed he would ride full tilt into the party on the path, but just a few paces away he pulled up the black and the animal stood stiff-legged, breathing hard, its sides heaving.

  Dom Felix glared straight at Regis. “Where is my son? What have you thieving murderers done with him?”

  The old man’s fury and grief were like a blow. Regis said in confusion, “Your son? Danilo, sir? Why do you ask me?”

  “What have you vicious, detestable tyrants done with him? How dare you show your faces on my land, after stealing from me my youngest—”

  Regis tried to interrupt and quell the torrent of words. “Dom Felix, I do not understand. I parted from Danilo some days ago, in your own orchard. I have not laid eyes on him since; I have been ill—” The memory of his drugged dream tormented him, of Danilo being roughly handled, afraid, in pain. . . .

  “Liar!” Dom Felix shouted, his face red and ugly with rage and pain. “Who but you—”

  “That’s enough, sir,” said Gabriel, breaking in with firm authority. “No one speaks like that to the heir to Hastur. I give you my word—”

  “The word of a Hastur lickspittle and toady! I dare speak against these filthy tyrants! Did you take my son for your—” He flung a word at Regis next to which “catamite” was a courtly compliment. Regis paled against the old man’s rage.

  “Dom Felix—if you will hear me—”

  “Hear you! My son heard you, sir, all your fine words!”

  Two Guardsmen rode close to the enraged old man, grasping the reins of his horse, holding him motionless.

  “Let him go,” Gabriel said quietly. “Dom Felix, we know nothing of your son. I came to you with a message from Kennard Alton concerning him. May I deliver it?”

  Dom Felix quieted himself with an effort that made his eyes bulge. “Speak, then, Captain Lanart, and the Gods deal with you as you Comyn dealt with my son.”

  “The Gods do so to me and more also, if I or mine harmed him,” Gabriel said. “Hear the message of Kennard, Lord Alton, Commander of the Guard: ‘Say to Dom Felix of Syrtis that it is known to me what a grave miscarriage of justice was done in the Guards this year, of which his son Danilo-Felix, cadet, may have been an innocent victim; and ask that he send his son Danilo-Felix to Thendara under any escort of his own choosing, to stand witness in a full investigation against men in high places, even within Comyn, who may have misused their powers.’ ” Gabriel paused, then added, “I was also authorized to say to you, Dom Felix, that ten days from now, when I have escorted my brother-in-law, who is in poor health at this moment, to Neskaya Tower, that I shall myself return and escort your son to Thendara, and that you are yourself welcome to accompany him as his protector, or to name any guardian or relative of your own choosing, and that Kennard Alton will stand personally responsible for his safety and honor.”

  Dom Felix said unsteadily, “I have never had reason to doubt Lord Alton’s honor or goodwill. Then Danilo is not in Thendara?”

  One of the Guards, a grizzled veteran, said, “You know me, sir, I served with Rafael in the war, sixteen years gone. I kept an eye on young Dani for his sake. I give you my word, sir, Dani isn’t there, with Comyn conniving or without it.”

  The old man’s face gradually paled to its normal hue. He said, “Then Danilo did not run away to join you, Lord Regis?”

  “On my honor, sir, he did not. I saw him last when we parted in your own orchard. Tell me, how did he go, did he leave no word?”

  The old man’s face was clay-colored. “I saw nothing. Dani had been hunting; I was not well and had kept my bed. I said to him I had a fancy for some birds for supper, the Gods forgive me, and he took a hawk and went for them, such a good obedient son—” His voice broke. “It grew late and he did not return. I had begun to wonder if his horse had gone lame, or he’d gone on some boy’s prank, and then old Mauris and the kitchen-folk came running into my chamber and told me, they saw him meet with rider
s on the path and saw him struck down and carried away. . . .”

  Gabriel looked puzzled and dismayed. “On my word, Dom Felix, none of us had art, part or knowledge of it. What hour was this? Yesterday? The day before?”

  “The day before, Captain. I swooned away at the news. But as soon as my old bones would bear me I took horse to come and hold . . . someone to account. . . .” His voice faded again. Regis drew his own horse close to Dom Felix and took his arm. He said impulsively, “Uncle,” using the same word he used to Kennard Alton, “you are father to my friend; I owe you a son’s duty as well. Gabriel, take the Guards, go and look, question the house-folk.” He turned back to Dom Felix, saying gently, “I swear I will do all I can to bring Danilo safely back. But you are not well enough to ride. Come with me.” Taking the other’s reins in his own hands, he turned the old man’s mount and led him down the path into the cobbled courtyard. Dismounting quickly, he helped Dom Felix down and guided his tottering steps. He led him into the hall, saying to the old half-blind servant there, “Your master is ill, fetch him some wine.”

  When it had been brought and Dom Felix had drunk a little, Regis sat beside him, near the cold hearth.

  “Lord Regis, your pardon . . .”

  “None needed. You have been sorely tried, sir.”

  “Rafael . . .”

  “Sir, as my father held your elder son dear, I tell you Danilo’s safety and honor are as dear to me as my own.” He looked up as the Guardsmen came into the hall. “What news, Gabriel?”

  “We looked over the ground where he was taken. The ground was trampled and he had laid about him with his dagger.”

  “Hawking, he had no other weapon.”

  “They cut off sheath and all.” Gabriel handed Dom Felix the weapon. He drew it forth a little way, saw the Hastur crest on it. He said, “Dom Regis—”

  “We swore an oath,” said Regis, drawing Danilo’s dagger from his own sheath where he wore it, “and exchanged blades, in token of it.” He took the dagger with the Hastur crest, saying, “I will bear this to restore to him. Did you see anything else, Gabriel?”