To Save a World

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  She looked down at the white water that coursed and plunged and raced, throwing up silvery spray so far beneath her that the water seemed all one whiteness in the moonlight, and suddenly imaged herself flying, falling through that vast space, into the race and torrent; whirled, battered, drowned— or would she, as some old legends said that the Comyn folk could do, put forth sudden wings, fly wingless far above the world, wheeling on hawk-pinions, looking down from far above… But that was legend. Or dream. She hugged herself with thin bare arms and clutched dizzily at the wall, almost hypnotized by the tumult and sound of the distant waterfall. To fly, borne on invisible wings, or the secret powers of the Comyn, aloft, above everyone who sought to pin her down and keep her earth-bound… but that was long ago. Legend.

  Now the Comyn held only the powers of the mind, and even those she had been denied. The leronis, the great sorceress of Hastur blood, had called Sybil to her but this year, had made her look into the starstone, so that Sybil felt she stood more naked than if the woman had stripped from her the last garment, feeling the touch of the leronis on her mind. Sybil had stood unflinching, not daring to show fear; but inside her something cowered and wept and could not raise its eyes, and at last the leronis had sighed and put away the stone. “You have laran, my child; you bear the Gift of our clan. And yet…” the woman sighed again, and shook her head. “There is a power in you, Sybil, that I do not understand; and yet I had thought I knew all the Gifts of Comyn. You are telepath—not greatly, but enough. You could be trained in a Tower; could wield all the power of a leronis, perhaps a Keeper. Yet something in me—something I have come to trust—says… no.”

  Sybil had protested “Why, lady?” There was a sullen anger in her. The women of the Towers wielded power and force, they used the trained powers of the mind—all other women of the Comyn were powerless, given in marriage and“ forced to bear children for their clan, but wielding no power of their own… and the leronis would deny her this! Rage had surged in her, but she made her voice sweet and docile as she had been taught, and murmured, in the voice that her brother Ludovic, lord of the clan, had said was like the gentle murmuring of a green rainbird, “Why, lady? I am comynara, I have laran, you yourself have said it… why?”

  But the Hastur sorceress only shook her head, meeting Sybil’s eyes with a flash that told the girl that the older woman knew, and did not fear, all of her hidden rage. She said, “Because your mind is not the mind of a woman, Sybil; it holds something other than laran. I do not know what it is, but I fear it; and I fear you; and I will not have you in a Tower. If you are to master the craft of the star-stones, if you are to wield all the ancient powers of the Comyn, I must know, absolutely, that you are to be trusted. So I say no.”

  And then Sybil had raised her eyes and glared at the woman and had thrust forth a power she did not know was in her, to seize the woman, to compel her will upon her— I will have this power. The woman had pushed her mind away easily, and had shaken her head with a sad laugh. “You see, my poor child? I do not fear you as you are now; but I fear what you might be, wielding the craft of the starstones.” And she had gone away, taking with her Sybil’s young foster-sister Rohana, to be brought to the Tower and trained in the craft of the starstones, and Sybil had been left here to loneliness, and hunger, and melancholy, and the aching need of something… something, she could not guess what it might be…

  After a long time, aware that she was cramped and chilled to the bone, she straightened and slowly turned away. Behind her lay the Comyn castle, a great and sprawling mass of stone and echoing silence; the empty courtyards gave resonant sighs as her silk-shod feet whispered on the flagstones, and even her own breathing seemed to stir an echoing murmur. The icy cold of the stones crept up her stiffened legs and throbbed in her breasts.

  From very far away Sybil heard a halt, a clash, a challenge, the echo of ringing steps and silence; the Guardsmen were making their nightly rounds. Hurrying her steps a little, she slipped shadowlike under an archway, sheltering against the chilly night breeze; then she started, catching her hands to her throat with a little squeak of surprise as a light, thrust abruptly forward, rayed harshly across her face.

  Half-blinded, she pressed her fingers over her eyes; then as her pupils slowly adjusted to the light, she lowered her hands to see a man’s face above the crude flare of the lantern.

  “Well, now! Look what I found!”

  Sybil shrank back as the unfamiliar face spread into a wide grin. The voice was deep and harsh, almost hoarse, but it sounded good-natured. “What are you doing here, you?”

  The spreading light was less painful to Sybil’s eyes now. She could distinguish black leather straps on a green cloak; one of the Guardsmen who came from their homes, at Council season, to guard the Comyn lords and ladies. She had seen them from time to time; they bowed deeply as she passed, and lowered their eyes in humility when; as sometimes happened, she spoke some condescending word or gave some minor command. But this was one she had never seen before—and never before had one of them dared to address her uninvited, by so much as a word.

  She said coldly, “Go about your business, fellow.”

  “Easy there, wench,” the man chuckled, “My business is right here, see; finding out who goes in and out of this court. What’s yours?”

  Sybil’s small white teeth clamped in her lip. It would be too humiliating to identify herself to this… this roughneck! She saw that he was a thickset man, with a heavy neck and burly broad shoulders, and his grin, through the untidily sprouting whiskers, showed very long, strong white teeth like a horse’s!

  “I live here,” she said shortly.

  The man laughed. “And so do a dozen other women, but I’ll take your word for it. Come, give us a kiss, chiya, and I’ll let you go.” He bent and deliberately set the lantern on the ground, then deliberately stepped toward her, and Sybil—too frozen in astonishment to move—felt his rough hands on her bare arms. The hoarse, chuckling voice was very close to her ear.

  “Who were you looking for, girl, won’t I do instead?”

  Paralyzed, a horrid sick emptiness clawing inside her belly, Sybil felt the rough arms around her waist, felt her feet leave the ground as he caught her up bodily against his chest, and the stubbled face scraped hard against her soft cheek. For a moment she hung limp, unable to move a muscle—this couldn’t be happening! Then, in a convulsion of terror, she exploded like a frantic cat, arching backward, silently clawing at her captor. She opened her mouth to scream, but her dry throat would give voice only to a little whimper of terror.

  “Take it easy, hell-cat!” the strange voice muttered in the half-dark. She felt rough and weathered fingers searching the silks and ribbons that confined her breast, and her voice came back in a choking scream.

  “Put me down! How dare you? You’ll be flayed alive for this!”

  Something in her imperious command, even through the shrillness of hysteria, came through to the man, and he set her abruptly on her feet, snatching up the lantern. “Zandu’s hells,” he swore. “Who are you?”

  She swayed as he released her, dizziness blurring her eyes, and caught for support at the rough stonework, steadying herself with a hand flattened against the wall. Her voice sounded high and strange in her own ears.

  “I am Sybil-Mhari Aillard,” she said hoarsely, “and the Lord Ludovic will have the skin stripped from your body in ribbons an inch wide!”

  “Domna!” The man’s voice was husky and disbelieving. He said protestingly, “But…” and he sagged and leaned back. A curious little stab, like a cramp in her belly, sharp but somehow not unpleasant, suddenly weakened Sybil’s knees again as she contemplated his whitening face. He stared, gulped audibly once or twice. After a moment he managed to collect himself somewhat, the hoarse voice was puzzled and apologetic, but if Sybil had expected him to cringe—and she had—she was oddly disappointed.

  “My lady, I must beg your forgiveness. I took you for a serving-girl—and what in the name of t
he Blessed Cassilda,” he finished rationally, “are you doing, my lady, out here in the courtyard in the night air, in your smock like any wench from the kitchens?”

  Sybil blinked, put oddly on the defensive. She started to say, I wanted to look at the waterfall, but then she realized she need not explain herself to a common Guardsman! The doings of a Comyn lady were no concern of his! He was holding the lantern close to her face, and his own features emerged more clearly—rough-cut and bronzed, an old scar seaming his cheek, but with twinkling eyes that even now looked good-humored. His breath was none too steady as he said “Well, my little lady, it’s perfectly sure I’d be buzzard meat if you wanted to make trouble for me, but you wouldn’t do a thing like that, would you? I meant no harm, you know, and after all, who’d expect the Lady Sybil-Mhari to be roaming about the courtyard after moonrise?” His smile was coaxing, almost intimate. “I can only say I’m sorry—or maybe I’m not,” he finished suddenly. “If you’d not told me who you were, maybe I’d have wanted more than a kiss, and taken it too!”

  Sybil swayed slightly, feeling—as she had felt when she looked into the starstone—the strange alien touch against her mind… Desire… Fear… His hot eyes were still fastened on her, searching through the untied ribbons at her bosom, but hesitant, somehow held back…fear. She could feel his fear… and the desire, burning into her, burning through her… he dared not touch her now…

  She swayed slightly, and, this time without apology, he put his arms behind her shoulders, bent to support her light weight.

  She whispered “I feel… faint…” and let herself fall limp against him, her head dropping pliantly into the hollow of his shoulder; she could feel the slow pounding of his heart through his jerkin, she could feel… she buried her forehead still more closely into the heat of him. There is a power in you, the leronis had said. Now, feeling its surge, she knew what lay behind his fear and desire; her hands felt icy cold, and, shivering, she caught one of his warm ones and pressed it to her throat.

  “I… I can’t breathe,” she whispered, making her voice soft, beguiling. She made sure, before releasing his hand, that he would not be able to let her go again. She closed her eyes, as he lifted her; hung suspended, it seemed, swaying between air and fire, and felt again the strange ecstatic sensation of hurling, tumbling, flying, falling—the waterfall roaring beneath.

  When she opened her eyes, he had laid her down in a sheltered grass-plot opening from one of the courtyards and was kneeling beside her, his rough hands working, with deft blunt motions, on the ribbons imprisoning her breast. She breathed deeply and whispered “Now I feel better—I don’t know what happened to me…” But when he would have drawn his hands hesitantly away again, she captured and held them.

  “No, no… don’t let me go,” she begged, feeling the cold, emptiness surge back again. She was frightened, sick with the fear she felt in him, and yet compelled by something more powerful still, something building… She did not know what it was, was it only this? Then his arms were around her again, disbelieving, hungry, gentle, and his mouth forcing her lips apart.

  It was strange, shaking and strange, the surge and tremble that overwhelmed her. Never before had she known any touch like this; the fumbling and sweatily respectful hand-kiss of her cousins, the cold fatherly hand of the Lord of the Domain on her brow, the giggling embrace of her girl-companions—nothing like this rough hunger, so tender for all its fierceness. “My little lady,” he whispered huskily, against her throat. “You don’t even know what it is you want, do you?”

  No. But I will know, I will. … The memory spun in her, there is a power in you, and I fear it… but could it be only this, only this? She fastened her mouth to his, biting savagely at his stiff lips, struggling furiously—not in protest, but in eagerness, against the gentle pressure of his hands. There was a writhing, a straining, a moment of agony; she felt the dew damp on her back, icy cold through the thin silk of her dress, his heavy rough hairiness drowning her silken breasts. She twisted and fought, not with any desire to escape, but rather in the same savage determination with which she fought to grip an untamed horse with her thin thighs, the same grim conflict with which she struggled to hood an unruly falcon. She knew what was happening to him, she knew what was happening to her, but it was not what she thought, it was only a beginning, as she felt all his fear, respect, hesitation, sink down and die beneath the growing urgency, need, hunger…

  She pushed away his hot kisses as the man’s spent breathing hissed past his parted teeth, and sat up, retying her shoulder-ribbons with flying fingers. Was this the final ineffable joy, the delight immeasurable, about which the other maidens squealed and whispered? She pushed his hand away when he would have assisted her, her whole body flinching in revulsion. She felt bruised and shaken, and she clenched her teeth tight to keep them from chattering. She broke into his whispered stream of endearments with a quick, shaken, “Take me back—they will be looking for me.”

  He raised her gently, as he might pick up a child who has stumbled, and she drew a deep breath, something… she hardly knew what… growing to swift birth inside her tight, throbbing breasts, her bruised and aching body. She forced herself to conceal her shaking, and to smile up at him, then leaned her head hard against his encircling arm and murmured with deliberate pathos, “You must take me back—I am almost a prisoner, you know.”

  He supported her faltering steps, half carrying her, whispering, “Yes, yes, my little silken bird, my little flower.” He paused at the edge of the archway, retrieving his lantern from its hiding-place, and looked at her, saying hesitantly, “Little lady, you cannot return like this!”

  In the crude light Sybil looked down at her crushed and torn ribbons, her crumpled and stained dress, tasting the blood on her lips with a slow satisfaction. She touched her tangled coppery curls with exploring fingers as he persuaded, “Come, little one, smooth your dress, let me fasten your sash. No one must see you like this!” There was fear in him again, and she could feel it like a taste in her mouth. Sybil tilted her head to one side, then heard the sound for which, without knowing it until this moment, she had been waiting. The clash of pikes, the ringing step and the challenge. She clenched her small fists, feeling her breath roughen and catch in her throat, smiling up at him.

  “Must they not?” she murmured, then suddenly whirled, breaking away from him, and cried out imperiously, “Guard! Guard, to me!”

  “What…” the man took a backward step; booted feet, running, echoed in harsh sequence on the flagstones and an explosion of lights burst in their faces; the face of a steel-capped Guard— Blessed Cassilda be thanked! It’s a Guard who knows me by sight!—thrust through the archway and a startled voice gasped “Lady Sybil-Mhari!”

  She pointed, with a dramatic gesture, feeling the frightening power surge up inside her. “Kill him!” she commanded, and heard her voice breaking on what she herself would have taken for a wild sob of shame and fright, if she had heard it from another throat. She could almost see herself reflected in the Guard’s eyes, in his mind, swollen lips oozing a trace of bitten blood, the loosened ribbons falling to show her bruised breast, the skirt torn to show a hint of narrow thighs. The Guard spat out a cry of dismay and horror, shouting to his confederates; Sybil turned away, modestly mantling her face with her hair, as a second Guard appeared behind the first and his face echoed all the changes she had seen in the first. A tiny smile of contempt trembled on Sybil’s lips, but she made it into a piteous grimace, widening her eyes as she looked down at the man in whose arms she had lain only a few minutes ago. She whispered pathetically “The Lord Ludovic must never know—my honor is in your hands—but how can it be? But if he—were… somehow… to fall into the waterfall…”

  And now she saw the blanching of terror, the whitening of nostril and jaw, as the man’s eyes sought hers in wild entreaty.

  “Lady… little lady…” he gasped helplessly, and his hoarse and husky voice, as when he had whispered endearments, sent a thrill of
warmth through her.

  There is a power in you… and I fear it … oh, she thought ecstatically, if the Hastur sorceress could only know . . . she would have robbed me of this…

  She watched the Guards seize the man, expertly pinion his arms; followed like a shadow, hugging herself with her thin arms, on the crest of rising excitement, as they hustled him rudely toward the cliff. He was shouting now, hoarse indecencies, until one of the Guards shoved a hand over his mouth. They struggled briefly at the wall, and suddenly Sybil felt a wild thrill surging through her body. It knifed hotly through her breasts, overwhelming as a kiss; stabbed fluid warmth all through her, gripped her thighs in a vise of pleasure. She gasped, her breath jolting out on the cresting heat of it, and cried aloud in unbearable delight as the man’s figure tottered on the ledge, clawed wildly at the air, flailed and disappeared. Sybil sank down in the grass, breathing in heavy sobs, knowing now what was the true power, the joy of love—vaguely, in her overwhelming surge of emotion, she wondered what his name had been, how she could discover his name. She would remember it always in her prayers for the dead, the name of the one who had released the power within her, had brought her to fulfillment. She became aware that one of the Guards was bending solicitously over her. She was too spent to rise; she let him lift her, leaning heavily on his arm, swaying helplessly.

  “Lady Sybil,” he said gently, “Your honor, and your secret, are forever safe with me. I will conduct you safe to the women’s quarters; see you only that your maids do not gossip, and this night’s work shall never be known.” He guided her tottering steps with reverent hands. “Poor little lady, if I had been at hand, that beast, that disgrace to the Guards and their honor, had never dared lay his hands on you…

  She lowered her long lashes. “What is your name? I would thank my… my preserver in my prayers, before I sleep.”