The last thing Regis cared about at that moment was food, but he forced himself to join in a discussion about whether soup made from dried meat and beans, or crushed-grain porridge, would be better. When it was bubbling over the fire, Danilo came and sat beside him. He said, “Regis, I don’t want to make you angry again. But we’ve got to have this out. You’re no better. Do you think I can’t see that you can hardly ride?”
“What do you want me to say to you, Dani? I’m doing the best I can.”
“You’re doing more than you can,” said Danilo. The light of the blazing fire made him look very young and very troubled. “Do you think I’m blaming you? But you must let me help you more.” Suddenly he flared out, “What am I to say to them in Thendara, if the heir to Hastur dies in my hands?”
“You’re making too much of this,” Regis said. “I never heard that anyone died of threshold sickness.”
Yet Javanne had looked genuinely frightened . . .
“Maybe not,” Danilo said skeptically, “but if you cannot sit your horse, and fall and break your skull, that’s fatal, too. Or if you exhaust yourself and take a chill, and die of it. And you are the last Hastur.”
“No I’m not,” Regis said, at the end of endurance. “Didn’t you hear me tell Lew? I have an heir. Before I ever came on this trip I faced the fact that I might die, so I named one of my sister’s sons as my heir. Legally.” Danilo sat back on his heels, stunned, wide open, and his thought was as clear as if he had spoken aloud, For my sake? Regis forcibly stopped himself from saying anything more. He could not face the naked emotion in Danilo’s eyes. This was the time of danger, the forced intimacy of these evenings, when he must barricade himself continually against revealing what he felt. It would be all too easy to cling to Danilo for strength, to take advantage of Danilo’s emotional response to him.
Danilo was saying angrily, “Even so, I won’t have your death on my head! The Hasturs need you for yourself, Regis, not just for your blood or your heir!”
“What do you suggest I do about it?” Regis did not know, himself, whether it was an honest question or a sarcastic challenge.
“We are not pursued. We must rest here till you are well again.”
“I don’t think I shall ever be well again until I have a chance to go to one of the towers and learn to control this.” Laran? Gift? Curse, he thought. In his blood, in his brain. But that was not the only thing making him ill, he knew. It was the constant need to barrier himself against his feelings, against his own unwelcome thoughts and desires. And for that there was no help, he decided. Even in the towers they could not make him other than he was. They might teach him to conceal it, though, live with it.
Danilo laid his hand on Regis’ shoulder. “You must let me look after you. It is my duty.” He added after a moment, “And my pleasure.”
By an effort that literally made his head spin, Regis remained motionless under the touch. Rigidly, refusing the proffered rapport, he said, “Your porridge is burning. If you’re so eager to do something, attend to what you’re supposed to be doing. The damned stuff is inedible even when properly cooked.”
Danilo stiffened as if the words had been a blow. He went to the fire and took off the boiling concoction. Regis did not look at him or care that he had hurt him. He was beyond thinking about anything, except his own attempt not to think.
He felt a violent anger with Danilo for forcing this intimate confrontation on him. Suddenly he recalled the fight Danilo had picked in the barracks; a fight which, had it not been for Hjalmar’s intervention, might have gone far beyond a single blow. He wanted to lash out at Danilo now, flay him with cruel words. He felt a need to put distance between them, break up this unendurable closeness, keep Dani from looking at him with so much love. If they fought, perhaps Regis would no longer have to be constantly on guard, afraid of doing and saying what he could not even endure to think. . . .
Danilo came with porridge in a small pannikin. He said tentatively, “I don’t think this is burned . . .”
“Oh, stop being so damned attentive!” Regis flung at him. “Eat your supper and let me alone, damn you, just stop hovering over me! What must I do to make you realize I don’t want you, I don’t need you? Just let me alone!”
Danilo’s face went white. He went and sat on the other bench, his head bent over his own porridge. His back to Regis, he said coldly, “Yours is there when you want it, my lord.”
Regis could see clearly, as if time had slid out of focus, that searing moment in the barracks, when Danilo had flung him off with an insult. It was clear in Danilo’s mind, too: He has done to me, knowing, what I did to him, unknowing.
By main force Regis held himself back from immediate apology. The smell of the porridge made him feel violently sick. He went to the stone shelf and laid himself down, wrapping himself in his riding-cloak and trying to suppress the racking shudders that shook his whole body. It seemed to him that he could hear Danilo crying, as he had done so often in the barracks, but Danilo was sitting on the bench, quietly eating his supper. Regis lay looking at the fire, until it began to flare up, flame—hallucination. Not forest fire, not Sharra. Just hallucination again. Psi out of control.
Still, it seemed that he could see Lew’s face, vividly, by firelight. Suppose, Regis thought, when I reached up toward him, drew him down beside me, he had flung me off, slapped me? Suppose he had thought the comfort I offered him a thing too shameful to endure or acknowledge?
I was only a child. I didn’t know what I was doing.
He wasn’t a child. And he knew.
Unable to endure this train of thought, he let the swaying sickness take him again. It was almost a relief to let the world slide away, go dim and thin out to nothing. Time vanished. He heard Danilo’s voice after a time, but the words no longer made sense; they were just vibration, sound without sense or relevance. He knew with the last breath of sanity that his only hope of saving himself now was to cry out, get up and move around, call out to Danilo, hang on to him as an anchor in this deadly nowhere—
He could not. He could not surrender to this; he would rather die . . . and he heard some curious remote little voice in his mind say Die, then, if it is so important to you. And he felt something like a giant swing to take him, toss him high, further out into nowhere with every swooping breath, seeing stars, atoms, strange vibrations, the very rhythm of the universe—or was it his own brain cells vibrating, madly out of control?
He’d done this to himself, he knew. He’d let it happen, too much of a coward to face himself.
Call out to Dani, that inner voice said. He’ll help you, even now, if you ask him. But you’ll have to ask, you’ve made it impossible for him to come to you again unless you call him. Call quickly, quickly, while you still can.
I can’t—
He felt his breathing begin to come in gasps, as if he hung somewhere in the far spaces which were all he could see now, with every breath coming for an instant back to that struggling, dimming body lying inert on the shelf. Quickly! Cry out now for help or you will die, here and now with everything left undone because of your pride . . .
With the last of his strength Regis fought for enough voice to shout, call aloud. It came out as the faintest of stifled whispers.
“Dani . . . help me . . .”
Too late, he thought, and felt himself slide off into nothingness. He wondered, with desperate regret, if he was dying . . . because he could not bear to be honest with himself, with his friend. . . .
He swung in darkness, immobile, numb, paralyzed. He felt Danilo, only a dim blue haze through his closed eyes, bending over him, fumbling at his tunic-laces. He could not even feel Danilo’s hands except that they were at his throat. He thought insanely, Is he going to kill me?
Without warning his body convulsed in a spasm of the most hideous pain he had ever known. He was there again, Danilo’s face visible through a reddish blood-colored mist, standing over him, his hand just touching the matrix around Regis’ neck.
Regis said hoarsely, “No. Not again—” and felt the bone-cracking spasm return. Danilo dropped the matrix as if it burned him and the hellish pain subsided. Regis lay gasping. It felt as if he had fallen into the fire.
Danilo gasped, “Forgive me—I thought you were dying! I knew no other way to reach your mind. . . .” Carefully, without touching it, Danilo covered the matrix again. He dropped down on the stone bed beside Regis, as if his knees were too weak to hold him upright.
“Regis, Regis, I thought you were dying—”
Regis whispered, “I thought so too.”
“I told myself, if I let you die because I could not forgive a harsh word, then I was a disgrace to my father and all those who had served Hastur. I am a catalyst telepath, there had to be something I could do to reach you—I shouted and you didn’t hear, I slapped and pinched you, I thought you were dead already, but I could feel you calling me. . . .” He was entirely unstrung. Regis whispered, “What was it that you did? I felt you—”
“I touched the matrix—nothing else seemed to reach you, I was so sure you were dying—” He broke down and sobbed. “I could have killed you! I could have killed you!”
Regis drew Danilo down beside him, holding him tight in his arms. “Bredu, don’t cry,” he whispered. “See, I’m not dead.” He felt suddenly shy again. Danilo’s face, wet with tears, was pressed against his cheek. Regis patted it clumsily. “Don’t cry any more.”
“But I hurt you so—I can’t bear to hurt you,” Danilo said wildly.
“I don’t think anything less would have brought me back,” Regis said. “It’s my life I owe you this time, bredu.” He was still dizzy and aching with the aftermath of what he now knew must have been a convulsion. Later he was to learn that this last-resort heroic treatment, gripping a matrix, was used only at the point of death; when stronger telepaths determined that without it, the sufferer might wander endlessly in the corridors of his own brain, cutting off all outside stimuli, until he died. Danilo had done it by pure instinct. Now Regis remembered what Javanne had said. “I’ve got to get up and move around or it may come back. But you’ll have to help me, Dani, I’m too weak to walk alone.”
Danilo helped him upright. By the last light of the dying fire Regis could see the tears on his face. He kept his arm around Regis, steadying him. “I should never have quarreled with you when you were sick.”
“It was I who picked the quarrel, Dani. Can you forgive me?”
He was cruel to Dani out of fear, Regis knew, fear of what he was himself. Perhaps Dyan, too, turned to cruelty out of fear and came at last to prefer cruelty to fear—or to shame—at knowing himself too well.
Laran was terrible. But they had no choice, only to meet it with honor.
Danilo said shyly, “I kept your porridge hot for you. Can you try to eat it now?”
Regis took the hot pottery pannikin, burning his fingers a little on the edges. The thought of food made him feel sick, but obediently he chewed a few mouthfuls and discovered that he was actually very hungry. He ate the hot unsweetened stuff, saying after a time, “Well, it’s no worse than what we got in barracks. If you ever find yourself a masterless man, Dani, we’ll get you a job as an army cook.”
“God forbid I should be a masterless man while you live, Regis.”
Regis reached for Danilo’s hand, holding it tight. He felt exhausted and aching, but at peace. He finished the porridge and Danilo took the bowl away to rinse it out. Regis lay down on the shelf again. The fire was dying down and it was cold. Danilo came and spread out his own cloak and blanket beside Regis, sat beside him, pulling off his boots.
“I wish I knew more about threshold sickness.”
“Be damn glad you don’t,” Regis said harshly, “it’s hell. I hope you never have it.”
“Oh, I had it,” Dani said. “I know now that’s what it must have been when I began . . . reading minds. There was no one to tell me what it was, and I never had it so seriously. The trouble is, I don’t know what to do about it. Or I could help you.” He looked at Regis hesitantly in the dim light and said, “We’re still in rapport a little. Let me try.”
“Do what you want to,” Regis said, “I won’t drive you away again. Only be careful. Your last experiment was painful.”
“I did find out one thing,” Danilo said. “I could see and feel things. There’s a kind of . . . of energy. Look.” He bent over Regis, running his fingertips lightly above his body, not touching him. “I can feel it this way, without touching you, and certain places it’s strong, and others I feel it ought to be and isn’t. . . . I don’t know how to explain it. Do you feel it?”
Regis remembered the very little the leronis had told him when she tested him, unsuccessfully, for laran. “There are certain . . . energy centers in the body, which waken with the wakening of laran. Everybody has them, but in a telepath they’re stronger and more . . . perceptible. If that’s true, you should have them, too.” He reached out toward Danilo, running his hands over his face, feeling the definite, tangible flow of power. “Yes, it’s like an . . . an extra pulsebeat here, just above your brow.” He had once been shown a drawing of these currents, but at that time he had no reason to believe it applied to him. Now he struggled to remember, sensing it must be important. “There’s one at the base of the throat.”
“Yes, I can see it,” Danilo said, touching it lightly with a fingertip. The touch was not painful, but Regis felt it like a faint, definite electric shock. Yet once he was fully aware of the pulse, his perceptions cleared and the dizziness which had been with him for weeks now seemed to clear and shift somehow. He felt that he had discovered something very important, but he didn’t know what. Danilo went on, trying to trace out the flows of power with his fingertips. “I don’t really have to touch you to feel them. I seem to know—”
“Probably because you’ve got them yourself,” Regis said. “Matrix work needs training, but it must be possible to learn to control laran, or the techniques couldn’t have evolved. Unless you want to believe all those old stories about gods and demigods coming down to teach the Comyn how to use them, and I don’t.” It was very dark, but he could see Danilo clearly, as if his body were outlined with the pale, pulsing energy flows. Danilo said, “Then maybe we can find out how to keep you from going into that kind of . . . of crisis again.”
Regis said, “I seem to be in your hands, Dani. Quite literally. I don’t know if I could live through another attack like that one.” He knew that the physical shock Danilo had given him by touching his matrix had revived him, but that he was drained, dangerously weak. “You had threshold sickness? And got over it?”
“Yes. Though, as I say, I had no idea what it was. But finding out about these energy currents helped. I could make them flow smoothly, most of the time, and it seemed that I could use that energy. I’m not saying this very well, am I? I don’t know the right words.”
Regis smiled ruefully and said, “Maybe there aren’t any.” He lay watching the energy flows in Danilo’s body and had the strange sensation that, although they were both heavily clothed against the cold, they were both, somehow, naked, a different kind of naked. Maybe this is what Lew meant: living with your skin off. He could feel the energy flows in Danilo, too, pulsing, moving smoothly and steadily with the forces of life. Danilo went on, gently searching out the flows, not touching him; even so, the touch that was not a touch stirred physical awareness again. Regis had not heard Lew explain how the same currents carried telepathic force and sexual energy, but he sensed just enough to be self-conscious about it. He gently reached out and held Danilo’s hand away from him.
“No,” he said, not angry now, but honestly, facing it—they could not lie to each other now. “You don’t want to stir that up, do you, Dani?”
There was a frozen instant while Danilo almost stopped breathing. Then he said, in a smothered whisper, “I didn’t think you knew.”
“So when you called me names—you were nearer right than you knew yourself, Dani. I d
idn’t know it then, either. But I would rather not . . . approach you as Dyan did. So take care, Dani.”
He was not touching Danilo now, but just the same he felt the steady currents of energy in Danilo begin to halt, the pulse go ragged and uneven, like an eddy and whirlpool in a smooth-running river. He didn’t know what it meant, but he sensed without knowing why that it was important, that he had discovered something else that he really needed to know, something on which his very life might depend.
Danilo said hoarsely, “You? Like Dyan? Never!”
Regis fought to steady his own voice, but he was aware of the energy currents now. The steady pulsing which had eased and cleared his perceptions was beginning to back up, eddy and move unevenly. He said, fighting for control, “Not in any way that . . . that you have to fear. I swear it. But it’s true. Do you hate me, then, or despise me for it?”
Danilo’s voice was rough. “Don’t you think I can tell the difference? I will not speak your name in the same breath—”
“I am very sorry to disillusion you, Dani,” Regis said very quietly, “but it would be worse to lie to you now. That’s what went wrong before. I think it was trying so hard to . . . to keep it from you, to keep it from myself, even, that has been making me so sick. I knew about your fears; you have good reason for them. I tried very hard to keep you from knowing: I almost died rather than let you think of me like Dyan. I know you are a cristoforo, and I know your customs are different.”
He should know, after three years in one of their monasteries. And now Regis knew what cut off his laran: the two things coming together, the emotional response, wakening that time with Lew, and the telepathic awareness, laran. And for three years, the years when they should have been wakening and strengthening, every time he had felt any kind of emotional or physical impulse, he had cut it off again; and every time there was the slightest, faintest telepathic response, he had smothered it. To keep from rousing, again, all the longing and pain and memory. . . .
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