Then she said, “Thank God! You’re awake this time and you know me!” and ran straight into my arms. I strained her to me. I wanted never to let her go again. She was sobbing. “It’s really you again! All this time, you’ve never looked at me, not once, only at the matrix. . . .”
Cold horror flooded me. Then some of it had been true.
I said, “I don’t remember anything, Marjorie, nothing at all since Kadarin drugged me. For all I know, I have been in this room all that time. What do you mean?”
I felt her trembling. “You don’t remember any of it? Not the forge-folk, not even the fire at Caer Donn?”
My knees began to collapse under me; I sank on the bed and heard my voice cracking as I said, “I remember nothing, nothing, only terrible ghastly dreams. . . .” The implications of Marjorie’s words turned me sick. With a fierce effort I controlled the interior heaving and managed to whisper, “I swear, I remember nothing, nothing. Whatever I may have done . . . Tell me, in Zandru’s name, did I hurt you, mishandle you?”
She put her arms around me again and said, “You haven’t even looked at me. Far less touched me. That was why I said I couldn’t go on.” Her voice died. She put her hand on mine. I cried out with the pain and she quickly caught it up, saying tenderly, “Your poor hand!” She looked at it carefully. “It’s better, though, it’s much better.”
I didn’t like to think what it must have been, if this was better. No wonder fire had flamed, burned, raged through all my nightmares! But how, in the name of all the devils in all the hells, had I done this?
There was only one answer. Sharra. Kadarin had somehow forced me back into the service of Sharra. But how, how? How could he use the skills of my brain while my conscious mind was elsewhere? I’d have sworn it was impossible. Matrix work takes deliberate, conscious concentration. . . . My fists clenched. At the searing pain in my palm I unclenched them again, slowly.
He dared! He dared to steal my mind, my consciousness . . .
But how? How?
There was only one answer, only one thing he could have done; use all the free-floating rage, hatred, compulsion in my mind, when my conscious control was gone—and take all that and channel it through Sharra! All my burning hatred, all the frenzies of my unconscious, freed of the discipline I kept on them, fed through that vicious thing.
He had done that to me, while my own conscious mind was in abeyance. Next to that, Dyan’s crime was a boy’s prank. The ruin of my face, the burn of my hand, these were nothing, nothing. He had stolen my conscious mind, he had used my unconscious, uncontrolled, repressed passions. . . . Horrible!
I asked Marjorie, “Did they force you, too, into Sharra?” She shivered. “I don’t want to talk about it, Lew,” she said, whimpering like a hurt puppy. “Please, no, no. Just . . . just let’s be together for now.”
I drew her down on the bed beside me, held her gently in the circle of my arms. My thoughts were grim. She stroked her light fingers across my battered face and I could feel her horror at the touch of the scars. I said, my voice thick in my throat. “Is my face so . . . so repulsive to you?”
She bent down and laid her lips against the scars. She said with that simplicity which, more than anything else, meant Marjorie to me, “You could never be horrible to me, Lew. I was only thinking of the pain you have suffered, my darling.”
“Fortunately I don’t remember much of it,” I said. How long would we be here uninterrupted? I knew without asking that we were both prisoners now, that there was no hope of any such trick as we had managed before. It was hopeless. Kadarin, it seemed, could force us to do anything. Anything!
I held her tight, with a helpless anguish. I think it was then that I knew, for the first time, what impotence meant, the chilling, total helplessness of true impotence.
I had never wanted personal power. Even when it was thrust on me, I had tried to renounce it. And now I could not even protect this girl, my wife, from whatever tortures, mental or physical, Kadarin wanted to inflict on her.
All my life I had been submissive, willing to be ruled, willing to discipline my anger, to accept continence at the peak of early manhood, bending my head to whatever lawful yoke was placed on it.
And now I was helpless, bound hand and foot. What they had done they could do again. . . . And now, when I needed strength, I was truly impotent. . . .
I said, “Beloved, I’d rather die than hurt you, but I must know what has been going on.” I did not ask about Sharra. Her trembling was answer enough. “How did he happen to let you come to me now, after so long?”
She controlled her sobs and said, “I told him—and he knew I meant it—that unless he freed your mind, and let us be together, I would kill myself. I can still do that and he cannot prevent me.”
I felt myself shudder. It went all the way to the bone. She went on, keeping her voice quiet and matter-of-fact, and only I, who knew what discipline had made her a Keeper, could have guessed what it cost her. “He can’t control the . . . the matrix, the thing, without me. And under drugs I can’t do it at all. He tried, but it didn’t work. So I have that last hold over him. He will do almost anything to keep me from killing myself. I know I should have done it. But I had to”—her voice finally cracked, just a little—“to see you again when you knew me, ask you . . .”
I was more desperately frightened than ever. I asked, “Does Kadarin know that we have lain together?”
She shook her head. “I tried to tell him. I think he hears only what he wants to hear now. He is quite mad, you know. It would not matter to him anyway, he thinks it is only Comyn superstition.” She bit her lip and said, “And it cannot be as dangerous as you think. I am still alive, and well.”
Not well, I thought, looking at her pallor, the faint bluish lines around her mouth. Alive, yes. But how long could she endure this? Would Kadarin spare her, or would he use her all the more ruthlessly to achieve his aims—whatever, in his madness, they were now—before her frail body gave way?
Did he even know he was killing her? Had he even bothered to have her monitored?
“You spoke of a fire at Caer Donn . . . ?”
“But you were there, Lew. You really don’t remember?”
“I don’t. Only fragments of dreams. Terrible nightmares.”
She lightly touched the horrible burn on my hand. “You got this there. Beltran made an ultimatum. It was not his own will—he has tried to get away—but I think he is helpless in Kadarin’s hands now too. He made threats and the Terrans refused, and Kadarin took us up to the highest part of the city, where you can look straight down into the city, and—oh, God. Lew, it was terrible, terrible, the fire striking into the heart of the city, the flames rising everywhere, screams . . .” She rolled over, hiding her head in the pillow. She said, muffled, “I can’t. I can’t tell you. Sharra is horrible enough, but this, the fire . . . I never dreamed, never imagined. . . . And he said next time it would be the spaceport and the ships!”
Caer Donn. Our magical dream city. The city I had seen transformed by a synthesis of Terran science and Darkovan psi powers. Shattered, burned. Lying in ruins.
Like our lives, like our lives. . . . And Marjorie and I had done it.
Marjorie was sobbing uncontrollably. “I should have died first. I will die before I use that—that destruction again!”
I lay holding her close. I could see the seal of Comyn, deeply marked in my wrist a few inches above the dreadful flaming burn. There was no hope for me now. I was traitor, doubly condemned and traitor.
For a moment, time reeling in my mind, I knelt before the Keeper at Arilinn and heard my own words: “. . . swear upon my life that what powers I may attain shall be used only for the good of my caste and my people, never for personal gain or personal ends . . .”
I was forsworn, doubly forsworn. I had used my inborn talents, my tower-trained skills, to bring ruin, destruction on those I was doubly sworn, as Comyn, as tower telepath, to safeguard and protect.
Marjo
rie and I were deeply in rapport. She looked at me, her eyes wide in horror and protest. “You did not do it willingly,” she whispered. “You were forced, drugged, tortured—”
“That makes no difference.” It was my own rage, my own hate, they had used. “Even to save my life, even to save yours, I should never have let them bring us back. I should have made him kill us both.”
There was no hope for either of us now, no escape. Kadarin could drug me again, force me again, and there was no way to resist him. My own unknown hatred had set me at his mercy and there was no escape.
No escape except death.
Marjorie—I looked at her, wrung with anguish. There was no escape for her either. I should have made Kadarin kill her quickly, there in the stone hut. Then she would have died clean, not like this, slowly, forced to kill.
She fumbled at the waist of her dress, and brought out a small, sharp dagger. She said quietly, “I think they forgot I still have this. Is it sharp enough, Lew? Will it do for both of us, do you think?”
That was when I broke down and sobbed, helplessly, against her. There was no hope for either of us. I knew that. But that it should come like this, with Marjorie speaking as calmly of a knife to kill us both as she would have asked if her embroidery-threads were the right color—that I could not bear, that was beyond all endurance.
When at last I had quieted a little, I rose from her side, going to the door. I said aloud, “We will lock it from the inside this time. Death, at least, is a private affair.” I drew the bolt. I had no hope that it would hold for long when they came for us, but by that time we would no longer care.
I came back to the bed, hauled off the boots I had found myself putting on for some unknown purpose. I knelt before Marjorie, drawing off her light sandals. I drew the clasps from her hair, laid her in my bed.
I thought I had left the Comyn. And now I was dying in order to leave Darkover in the hands of the Comyn, the only hands that could safeguard our world. I drew Marjorie for a moment into my arms.
I was ready to die. But could I force myself to kill her?
“You must,” she whispered, “or you know what they will make me do. And what the Terrans will do to all our people after that.”
She had never looked so beautiful to me. Her bright flame-colored hair was streaming over her shoulders, faintly edged with light. She broke down then, sobbing. I held her against me, straining her so tightly in my arms I must have been hurting her terribly. She held me with all her strength and whispered, “It’s the only way, Lew. The only way. But I didn’t want to die, Lew, I wanted to live with you, to go with you to the lowlands, I wanted . . . I wanted to have your children.”
I knew no pain in my life, nothing would ever equal the agony of that moment, with Marjorie sobbing in my arms, saying she wanted to have my children. I was glad I would not live long to remember this; I hoped the dead did not remember. . . .
Our deaths were all that stood between our world and terrible destruction. I took up the knife. Touching my finger to the edge left a stain of blood, and I was insanely glad to feel its razor sharpness.
I bent down to give her a long, last kiss on the lips. I said in a whisper, “I’ll try not to . . . to hurt you, my darling. . . .” She closed her eyes and smiled and whispered, “I’m not afraid.”
I paused a moment to steady my hand so that I could do it in a single, swift, painless stroke. I could see the small vein throbbing at the base of her throat. In a few moments we would both be at peace. Then let Kadarin do his worst. . . .
A spasm of horror convulsed me. When we were dead, the last vestige of control was gone from the matrix. Kadarin would die, of course, in the fires of Sharra. But the fires would never die. Shara, roused and ravening, would rage on, consume our people, our world, all of Darkover. . . .
What would we care for that? The dead are at peace!
And for a painless death for ourselves, would we let our world be destroyed in the fires of Sharra?
The dagger dropped from my hand. It lay on the sheets beside us, but for me it was as far away as if it were on one of the moons. I regretted bitterly that I could not give Marjorie, at least, that swift and painless death. She had suffered enough. It was right that I should live long enough to expiate my treason in suffering. It was cruel, unfair, to make Marjorie share that suffering. Yet, without her Keeper’s training, I would not live long enough to do what I must.
She opened her eyes and said tremulously, “Don’t wait, Lew. Do it now.”
Slowly, I shook my head.
“We cannot take such an easy way, beloved. Oh, we will die. But we must use our deaths. We must close the gateway into Sharra before we die and destroy the matrix if we can. We have to go into it. There’s no chance—you know there’s no chance at all—that we will live through it. But there is a chance that we will live long enough to close the gateway and save our world from being ravaged by Sharra’s fire.”
She lay looking at me, her eyes wide with shock and dread. She said in a whisper, “I would rather die.”
“So would I,” I said, “but such an easy way is not for us, my precious.”
We had sacrificed that right. I looked with longing at the little dagger and its razor sharpness. Slowly, Marjorie nodded in agreement. She picked up the little dagger, looked at it regretfully, then rose from the bed, went to the window and flung it through the narrow window-slit. She came back, slipped down beside me. She said, trying to steady her voice, “Now I cannot lose my courage again.” Then, though her eyes were still wet, her voice held just a hint of the old laughter. “At least we will spend one night together in a proper bed.”
Can a night last a lifetime?
Perhaps. If you know your lifetime is measured in a single night.
I said hoarsely, drawing her into my arms again, “Let’s not waste any of it.”
Neither of us was strong enough for much physical love-making. Most of that night we spent resting in each other’s arms, sometimes talking a little, more often caressing one another in silence. From long training at disciplining unwelcome or dangerous thoughts, I was able to put away almost completely all thought of what awaited us tomorrow. Strangely enough, my worst regret was not for death, but for the long, quiet years of living together which we would never know, for the poignant knowledge that Marjorie would never know the hills near Armida, that she would never come there as a bride. Toward morning Marjorie cried a little for the child she would not live long enough to bear. Finally, cradled in my arms, she fell into a restless sleep. I lay awake, thinking of my father and of my unborn son, that too-fragile spark of life, barely kindled and already extinguished. I wished Marjorie had been spared that knowledge, at least. No, it was right that someone should weep for it, and I was beyond tears.
Another death to my account . . .
At last, when the rising sun was already staining the distant peaks with crimson, I slept too. It was like a final grace of some unknown goddess that there were no evil dreams, no nightmares of fire, only a merciful darkness, the dark robe of Avarra covering our sleep.
I woke still clasped in Marjorie’s arms. The room was full of sunlight; her golden eyes were wide, staring at me with fear.
“They will come for us soon,” she said.
I kissed her, slowly, deliberately, before I rose. “So much the less time of waiting,” I said, and went to draw back the bolt. I dressed myself in my best, defiantly digging from my packs my finest silk under-tunic, a jerkin and breeches of gold-colored dyed leather. A Comyn heir did not go to his death like a common criminal being hanged! Some such emotion must have been in Marjorie yesterday, for she had evidently put on her finest gown, pale blue, woven of spider-silk and cut low across the breasts. Instead of her usual plaits, she coiled her hair high atop her head with a ribbon. She looked beautiful and proud. Keeper, comynara.
Servants brought us some breakfast. I was grateful that she could smile proudly, thanking them in her usual gracious manner. There were no trace
s in her face of the tears and terror of yesterday; we held our heads high and smiled into each other’s eyes. Neither of us dared speak.
As I had known he would, Kadarin came in as we were silently sharing the last of the fruits on the tray. I did not know how my body could contain such hate. I was physically sick with the lust to kill him, to feel my fingers meeting in the flesh of his throat.
And yet—how can I say this?—there was nothing left there to hate. I looked up just once and quickly looked away. He was not even a man any more, but something else. A demon? Sharra walking like a man? The real man Kadarin was not there any more. Killing him would not stop the thing that used him.
Another score against Sharra: this man had been my friend. The destruction of Sharra would not only kill him, it would avenge him, too.
He said, “Have you managed to make him see sense, Marjorie? Or must I drug him again?”
Her fingertips touched mine out of his sight. I knew he did not see, though he would always have noticed before. I said, “I will do what you ask me.” I could not bring myself to call him Bob or even Kadarin. He was too far from what I had known.
As we walked through the corridors, I looked sidewise at Marjorie. She was very pale; I felt the life in her flaring fitfully. Sharra had drained her, sapped her life-forces nearly to the death. One more reason not to go on living. Strange, I was thinking as if I had a choice.
We stepped out onto the high balcony overlooking Caer Donn and the Terran airfield. On a lower level I saw them all assembled, the faces I had seen in my . . . what? Dream, drugged nightmare? Or had that part been real? It seemed I knew the faces. Some ragged, some in rich garments, some knowing and sophisticated, some dulled and ignorant, some not even entirely human. But one and all, their eyes gleamed with the same glassy intensity.
Sharra! Their eagerness burned at me, tearing, ravaging.
I looked down at Caer Don. My breath stuck in my throat. Marjorie had told me, but no words could have prepared me for this kind of destruction, ruin, desolation.
Only after the great forest fire that had ravaged the Kilghard Hills near Armida had I seen anything like this. The city lay blackened; for wide areas not one stone remained upon another. All the old city lay blasted, wasted, the damage spreading far into the Terran Zone.
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