When we woke it was late and already snowing heavily. When I went to saddle the horses, the wind was whipping the snow in wild stinging needles across the yard. We could not ride in this. When I came inside again, Marjorie looked at me in guilty dismay.
"I delayed us. I'm sorry‑"
"I think we are beyond pursuit now, preciosa. But we would only have had to turn back; we cannot ride in this. I'll put the horses into the outbuilding and give them some fodder."
"Let me come and help‑"
"Don't go out hi the snow, beloved. I'll attend to the horses."
When I came in, Marjorie had kindled a fire on the long‑dead hearth and, finding an old battered stone kettle discarded in a corner, had washed it, filled it at the well and put some of our dried meat to stew with the mushrooms. When I scolded her for going into the yard‑in these snow‑squalls men have been lost and frozen between their own barnyard and doorway‑she said shyly, "I wanted us to have a fireside. And a ... a wedding‑feast."
I hugged her close and said, "The minute he sees you my father will be delighted to arrange all that."
"I know," she said, "but I'd rather have it here." The thought warmed me more than the fire. We ate the hot soup before the fire. We had to share one spoon and eat it straight from the old kettle. We had little fuel and the fire burned down quickly, but as it sank into darkness Marjorie whispered, "Our first fireside."
I knew what she meant. It was not the formal ceremony, di catenas, the elaborate wedding‑feast for my kin, her proclamation before Comyn Council, that would make her my wife. Everywhere in the hills, where ceremonies are few and witnesses sparse, the purposeful sharing of "a bed, a meal, a fireside" acknowledges the legal status of a marriage, and I knew why Marjorie had risked losing her way in the snow to kindle a fire and cook us up some soup. By the simple laws of the hills, we were wedded, not in our own eyes alone, but in a ceremony that would stand in the eyes of all men. I was glad she had been sure enough of me to do this without asking. I was glad the weather kept us here for another night. But something was troubling me. I said, "Regis and Danilo are nearer to Thendara now than we are to Arilinn, unless they have been recaptured. But neither of them is a skilled telepath, and I doubt if a message has gone through. I should send a message, either to Arilinn or to my father. I should have done it before."
She caught my hand as I pulled the matrix from its resting place. "Lew, is it really safe?"
"I must, love, safe or not. I should have done it the moment I had my matrix back. We must face the possibility that they will try again. Beltran won't abandon his aims so quickly, and I fear Kadarin is unscrupulous." I backed off from speaking the name of Sharra aloud, but it was there between us and we both knew it.
And if they did try again, without my knowledge or control, without Marjorie for Keeper, what then? Playing with forest fire would be child's play, next to the risk of waking that thing without a trained Keeper! I had to warn the towers.
She said hesitantly, "We were all in rapport. If you ... use your matrix ... can they feel it, trail us that way?"
That was a possibility, but whatever happened to us, Sharra must be controlled and contained, or none of us would ever be safe again. And in all these days I had sensed no touch, no seeking mind.
I drew out the matrix and uncovered it. To my dismay, I felt a faint, twisting tinge of sickness as I gazed into the blue depths. That was a danger signal. Perhaps during the days I had been separated from it, I had become somewhat unkeyed. I focused on it, steadying my mind to the delicate task of establishing rapport again with the starstone; again and again I was forced to turn my eyes away by the pain, the blurring of vision.
"Leave it, Lew, leave it, you're too tired‑'*
"I cannot." If I delayed, I would lose mastery of the matrix, be forced to begin again with another stone. I fought the matrix for nearly an hour, struggling with my inability to focus it. I looked at Marjorie with regret, knowing that I was draining my strength with this telepathic struggle. I cursed the fate that had made me a telepath and a matrix mechanic, but it never occurred to me that I should abandon the struggle unfinished.
If this had‑unimaginably‑happened in Arilinn, I would have been given kirian or one of the other psi‑activator drugs and helped by a psi monitor and my own Keeper. Now I had to master it alone. I myself had made it impossible and dangerous for Marjorie to help me.
At last, my head splitting, I managed to focus the lights in the stone. Quickly, while I still had the strength, I reached out through the gray and formless spaces that we call the underworld, looking for the light‑landmark that was the relay‑circle at Arilinn.
For a moment I had it. Then, within the stone, there was a wild flaring flame, a rush of savage awareness, a too‑familiar surge of fiery violence ... flames rising, the great form of fire blotting out consciousness ... a woman, dark and vital, bearing a living flame, a great circle of faces pouring out raw emotion. . . .
I heard Marjorie gasp, fought to break the rapport. Sharra! Sharra! We had been sealed to it, we were caught and drawn to the fires of destruction....
"No! No!" Marjorie cried aloud, and I saw the fires thin out and vanish. They had never been there. They were reflected in the dying coals of our ritual marriage‑fire; the eerie edge of light around Marjorie's face was only the last firelight there. She whispered, trembling, "Lew, what was it?"
"You know," I hesitated to say the name aloud, "Kadarin. And Thyra. Working directly with the sword. Zandru's hells,
Marjorie, they are trying to use it the old way, not with a Keeper‑controlled circle of telepaths in an orderly energon ring‑and it's uncontrollable even that way, as we found out‑but with a single telepath, focusing raw emotion from a group of untrained followers."
"Isn't that terribly dangerous?"
"Dangerous! The word's inadequate! Would you kindle a forest fire to cook your supper? Would you chain a dragon‑fire to roast your chops or dry your boots? I wish I thought they would only kill themselvesl"
I strode up and down by the dead fire, restlessly listening to the battering of the storm outside. "And I can't even warn them at Arilinn!"
"Why not, Lew?"
"So close to‑to Sharra‑my own matrix won't work," I said, and tried to explain how Sharra evidently blanked out smaller matrices.
"How far will that effect reach, Lew?"
"Who knows? Planet‑wide, maybe. I've never worked with anything that strong. There aren't any precedents."
"Then, if it reached all the way to Arilinn, won't the tele‑paths there know that something is wrong?"
I brightened. That might be our only hope. I staggered suddenly and she caught at my arm.
"Lew! You're worn out. Rest here by me, darling." I flung
myself down at her side, dizzy and despairing. I had not even
spoken of my other fears, that if I used my personal matrix,
v I, who had been sealed to Sharra, might be drawn back into
that vortex, that savage fire, that corner of hell....
She knew, without my saying it. She whispered, "I can feel
it reaching for us. ... Can it draw us back, back into itself?"
t] She clung to me in terror; I rolled over and took her to me,
holding her with savage strength, fighting an almost uncontrollable desire. And that frightened hell out of me. I should be drained, spent, exhausted, incapable of the slightest sexual impulse. That was frustrating, but it was normal, and I had long since come to terms with it.
But this wild lust‑and it was pure lust, a hateful dark animal thing with no hint of love or warmth‑set my pulses racing, made me gasp and fight against it. It was too strong; I let it surge up and overwhelm me, feeling the fire burn up in my veins as if some scalding ichor had replaced the blood in
my body. I smothered her mouth under mine, felt her weakly struggling to fight me away. Then the fire took us both.
It is the one memory I have of Marjorie whic
h is not all joy. I took her savagely, without tenderness, trying to slake the burning need in me. She met me with equal violence, hating it equally, both of us gripped with that uncontrollable savage desperation. It was fierce and animal‑no! Not animal! Animals meet cleanly, driven only by the life‑force in them, knowing nothing of this kind of dark lust. There was no innocence in this, no love, only raw violence, insatiable, a bottomless pit of hell. It was hell, all the hell either of us would ever need to know. I heard her sobbing helplessly and knew I was weeping, too, with shame and self‑hatred. Afterward we did not sleep.
Chapter TWENTY‑ONE
Even at Nevarsin, Regis thought, it had never snowed so hard, or so persistently. His pony picked its way deliberately along, following in the steps of Danilo's mount, as mountain horses were trained to do. It was snowing again.
He wouldn't mind any of it, he thought, the riding, the cold or the lack of sleep, if he could see properly, or keep the world straight under him.
The threshold sickness had continued off and on, more on than off in the last day or so. He tried to ignore Danilo's anxious looks, his concern for him. There wasn't anything Danilo could do for him, so the less said about it, the better.
But it was intensely unpleasant. The world kept thinning away at irregular intervals and dissolving. He had had no attacks as bad as the one he'd had at Thendara or on the way north, but he seemed to live in mild chronic disorientation all the time. He didn't know which was worse, but suspected it was whichever form he happened to have at the time.
Danilo waited for him to draw even on the path. "Snowing already, and it's hardly midafternoon. At this rate it will take us a full twelve days to reach Thendara, and well lose the long start we had."
The more quickly they reached Thendara, the better. He knew a message must get through, even if Lew and Marjorie were recaptured. So far there was no sign of pursuit But Regis knew, cursing his own weakness, that he could not take much more of the constant exertion, the long hours in the saddle and the constant sickness.
Earlier that day they had passed through a small village, where they had bought food and grain for the horses. Perhaps they could risk a fire tonight‑if they could find a place to build it!
"Anything but a hay‑barn," Danilo agreed. The last night they had slept in a barn, sharing warmth with several cows
and horses and plenty of dry hay. The animals had made it a warm place to sleep, but they could not risk a fire or even a light, with the tinder‑dry hay, so they had eaten nothing but hard strips of cured meat and a handful of nuts.
"We're in luck," Danilo said, pointing. Away to the side of the road was one of the travel‑shelters built generations ago, when Aldaran bad been the seventh Domain and this road had been regularly traveled in all seasons. The inns had all been abandoned, but the travel‑shelters, built to stand for centuries, were still habitable, small stone cabins with attached sheds for horses and proper amenities for travelers.
They dismounted and stabled their horses, hardly speaking, Regis from weariness, Danilo from reluctance to intrude on him. Dani thought he was angry, Regis sensed; he knew he should tell his friend he was not angry, just tired. But he was reluctant to show weakness. He was Hastur: it was for him to lead, to take responsibility. So he drove himself relentlessly, the effort making his words few and sharp, his voice harsh. It only made it worse to know that if he had given Danilo the slightest encouragement, Dani would have waited on him hand and foot and done it with pleasure. He wasn't going to take advantage of Danflo's hero‑worship. The Comyn had done too much of that.... The horses settled for the night, Danilo carried the saddlebags inside. Pausing on the threshold, he said, "This is the interesting time, every night. When we see what the years have left of whatever place we've found to stay.**
"It's interesting, all right," Regis said dryly. "We never know what well find, or who'll share our beds with us." One night they had had to sleep in the stables, because a Jiest of deadly scorpion‑ants had invaded the shelter itself.
"Um, yes, a scorpion‑ant is a lower form of life than I care to go to bed with," Danilo said lightly, "but tonight we seem to be in luck." The interior was bare and smelled dusty and unaired, but there was an intact fireplace, a pair of benches to sit on and a heavy shelf built into the wall so they need not sleep on the floor at the mercy of spiders or rodents. Danilo dumped the saddlebags on a bench. "I saw some dead branches in the lee of the stable. The snow won't have soaked them through yet. There may not be enough to keep a fire all night, but we can certainly cook some hot food."
Regis sighed. "Ill come and help you get them in." He opened the door again on the snow‑swept twilight; the world toppled dizzily around him and he clung to the door. "Regis, let me go, you're ill again." "I can manage."
"Damn it!" Suddenly Danilo was angry. "Will you stop pretending and playing hero with me? How the hell will I manage if you fall down and can't get up again? It's a lot easier to drag a couple of armfuls of dry branches in, than try to carry you through the snowl Just stay in here, will your pretending playing hero. Was that how Danilo saw his attempt to carry his own weight? Regis said stiffly, "I wouldn't want to make things harder for you. Go ahead."
Danilo started to speak but didn't. He set his chin and strode, stiff‑necked into the snowy darkness. Regis started to
unload the saddlebags but became so violently dizzy that he
had to sit down on one of the stone benches, holding on with
both hands.
He was a dead weight on Danilo, he thought. Good for nothing but to hold him back. He wondered how Lew was faring in the mountains. He'd hoped to draw pursuit away from him, that hadn't worked either. He felt like huddling on ; the bench, giving way to the surges of sickness, but remem‑;bered Javanne's advice: move around, fight it. He hauled ;: himself to his feet, got his flint‑and‑steel and the wisps of dry >‑ hay they had kept for tinder, and knelt before the fireplace, /clearing away the remnants of the last travelers' fire. How J many years ago was that one built? he wondered. t Wind, and cold slashes of snow blew through the open ''"doorway; Danilo, laden with branches, staggered inside, :, Shoved them near the fireplace, went quickly out again. Regis ..tried to separate the driest branches to lay a fire, but could not steady his hands enough to manipulate the small mechanical flint‑and‑steel, fed with resinous oil, which kept the spark alive. He laid the device on the bench and sat with his head in his hands, feeling completely useless, until Danilo, bent under another load of branches, came hi and kicked the door shut behind him.
"My father calls that a lazy man's load," he said cheerfully, "carrying too much because you're too lazy to go back ' for another. It ought to keep the cold out awhile. Anyway, I'd rather be cold here than warm in Aldaran's royal suite, damn him." He strode to where Regis had laid the fire, kneeling to spark it alight with Regis's lighter. "Bless the man who invented this gadget. Lucky you have one."
It had been part of Gabriel's camping‑kit that Javanne had given him, along with the small cooking pots they carried. Dani looked at Regis, huddled motionless and shivering on the bench. He said, "Are you very angry with me?" Silently, Regis shook his head.
Danilo said haltingly, "I don't want to ... to offend you. But I'm your paxman and I have to do what's best for you. Even if it's not always what you want."
"It's all right, Dani. I was wrong and you were right," Regis said. "I couldn't even light the fire."
"Well, I don't mind lighting it. Certainly not with that gadget of yours. There's water piped in the corner, there, if the pipes aren't frozen. If they are, we'll have to melt snow. Now, what shall we cook?"
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 thi
nk 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 beard 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 Jie 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." Gift? Curse, he thought. In his blood, in his brain.
The Heritage Of Hastur d-18 Page 37