Darkover: First Contact

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “There are no people in these hills who have not some chieri blood, father.”

  “But only the Hastur kin sought to preserve that blood in their line with their breeding program,” Dom Rafael said, “and so many of the old families—Hastur, Aillard, Ardais, even the Aldarans and the Serrais, bear in their blood and heritage so many strange things that true men are wary of them! A child may be born who can kill with a thought, or see into the future as if time ran both ways, or cause fire to strike or the rivers to rise.... There are two kinds of laran; the kind which all men have and may use, aided with a starstone, and the evil kind borne by the Hastur kin. Our line is not altogether free of it, and when you got that redheaded son upon your mother’s leronis, you brought the Hastur kin laran back into our folk. But what’s done is done, and Erlend may be useful to us one day. Have you gotten the girl with child again yet? Why not?” But he did not wait for Bard’s answer.

  “Still, I am sure you can see why I have no will to be ruled by the Hasturs; they are riddled through and through with the chieri blood, and their Gifts are not diluted by the normal humankind, but fixed into their line by that breeding program. I feel that humankind should rule, not wizard-folk!”

  “But,” said Bard, “why tell me all this now? Or are you saying that when Erlend is grown he will be near enough to their kin that he can claim their line?” He spoke sarcastically, and his father did not bother to reply.

  “What you do not know,” he said, “is that I studied laran craft when I was a young boy. I was not, as you know, reared to king-craft, for Ardrin was the eldest, but I did not have the stronghold of di Asturien either, for there were three brothers between us, and I had leisure for study and learning. I was a laranzu, and dwelt for a time in Dalereuth Tower, and learned something of their craft.”

  Bard had known that his father bore a starstone, but that was in no way uncommon, and not everyone who bore a starstone knew laran lore. He had not known that he had dwelt within a Tower.

  “Now there is a law in the use of the starstone,” Dom Rafael said. “I do not know who formulated it, or why it should be so, but it is so; that everything which exists, except for a starstone, exists in one, and only one, exact duplicate. Nothing is unique, except for a starstone, which has no duplicate. However, everything else—everything, every rabbithorn in the woods, every tree and flower, every rock in the fields—has its precise duplicate, and also every human being has one exact double somewhere, more like him than his own twin. And that tells me that somewhere, Bard, you have an exact double. He may dwell in the Dry towns, or in the unknown lands beyond the Wall Around the World, he may be the son of a peasant, or live beyond the uncrossable gulf of the Sea of Dalereuth which leads into the Unknown Sea. And he would be more like you than your own twin, even though he dwelt far beyond the Hundred Kingdoms. I hope it is not so, I hope he dwells in the Kilghard Hills; otherwise it would be hard to teach him our language and the manners of our people. But whatever he may be, he will have laran, even if he has never been taught to use it; and he will have your military genius, once again, though he may not know yet how to use it; and he will look so much like you that your own mother, if she were still alive, would not be able to tell you apart by looks alone. Do you see now, dear son, why this would be good to have?”

  Bard frowned. “I am beginning to see—”

  “And another thing. Your double would not be sworn to Hastur, nor bound to him by any oath. Understand me?”

  Bard saw. He saw indeed. “But where do we find this duplicate of myself?”

  “I told you that I had studied laran-craft,” Dom Rafael said, “and I know the whereabouts of a screen, a set of relay starstones constructed to bring these duplicates together. When I was a youth, we could, though it was difficult, bring men and women, other leroni, from one set of starstones to another. If we have one set of duplicates on the screen, we can bring your duplicate from wherever he may be living.”

  “But,” Bard asked, “when we have him, how do we know he will be willing to help us?”

  “He cannot help being what he is,” said Dom Rafael. “If he were already a great general, we would know about him. He may indeed be one of my own bastard sons, or of Ardrin’s, living in poverty without knowledge of war. But once we give him the chance of power and greatness—not to mention a chance to exercise the military genius which, if he is your duplicate, he will possess, if only as potential—then he will be grateful to us and willing to serve as our ally. Because, Bard, if he is your double—then he will be ambitious too!”

  Three days later, Alaric-Rafael, heir to Asturias, was solemnly crowned in the regency of his father. Bard repeated in public the oath he had sworn to his brother, and Alaric presented him with a beautifully worked heirloom sword—Bard knew it was one his father had kept for many years, hoping that his one legitimate son would bear it into battle one day. But it was abundantly clear that King Alaric, whatever kind of ruler he might be, would not be a great warrior; so Bard accepted the sword from his brother’s hands, and with it the command of all the armies of Asturias and all her subject kingdoms.

  At the moment, I am general of Asturias and Marenji, and no more. But that it only a beginning.

  A day will come when I will be general of all the Hundred Kingdoms, and they will all know and fear the Wolf of Asturias!

  And as general of Marenji, he thought, he was legally entitled to go into that country and deal with those damned women on the Island of Silence!

  I could declare them a treasonable assembly, and give them notice to quit the island! He was sure the people of Marenji would consider this a blasphemy, at present. But he asked Alaric to issue a proclamation that the people of Marenji were believed to be hiding the handfasted wife of Bard di Asturien; and that any person concealing the whereabouts of Carlina di Asturien would be considered a traitor and subjected to the extreme penalties of the law.

  Alaric issued the proclamation, but in private he expressed dismay to Bard.

  “Why do you want a woman who doesn’t want you? I think you ought to marry Melisendra. She’s very nice, and she’s the mother of your son, and Erlend ought to be legitimate, he’s a fine boy, and laran-gifted. Marry her, and I’ll give you a fine wedding.”

  Bard said firmly that his brother and his lord ought not to talk about things he would not understand until he was older.

  “Well, if I were ten years older, I’d marry Melisendra myself, so there,” Alaric said. “I like her. She’s good to me, she never makes me feel like a cripple.”

  “She had better not,” Bard growled. “If she dared to be rude to you, I’d break her neck, and she knows it!”

  “Well, I am a cripple, and I must learn to live with it,” said Alaric, “and Lady Hastur, the leronis who cared for me at Neskaya, who helped me to talk again, taught me that it does not matter if my body is lamed. And Geremy—he is crippled, and yet he is a fine man, strong and honorable—it will be very hard for me to learn to think of the Hasturs as enemies,” he added with a sigh. “I find it hard to understand politics, Bard. I wish there could be peace among all people, and then we could be friends with the Lord Varzil, who has been like a foster father to me. But I am used to being treated like a cripple, because I am, and I must have help to dress myself, and walk—but someone like Melisendra, she helps me not to mind so much, because she helps me to feel, even when she is helping to tie me into my leg brace, that I am no worse off than anyone else.”

  “You are the king,” Bard said, but Alaric sighed, a resigned sigh.

  “You don’t know what I mean at all, do you, Bard? You’re so strong, and you’ve never been really sick, or frightened, so how could you know? Do you know what it’s like to be really scared, Bard? When I first had the fever, and I couldn’t even breathe . . . Geremy, and three of Ardrin’s healer-women, sat up with me all night with their starstones, for seven nights, just helping me to breathe when I couldn’t.”

  Bard thought against his will of the ter
ror that had gripped him on the shores of the Lake of Silence when the eerie faces in the fog had drifted around him, turning his bowels to water . . . but even to his brother he would not confess that. “I was afraid when I rode first into battle,” he said. That he did not mind saying.

  Alaric sighed enviously. “You were no older than I am now, and you were made King Ardrin’s banner bearer! But it’s different, Bard; you had a sword, you could do something against your fear, and I could—could only lie there and wonder if I was going to die, and know I had no way to help it, one way or the other, I was wholly helpless. And after that you—you always know that it can happen again, that you can die, or be destroyed. No matter how brave I am, I know, now, that there will always be something I can’t fight,” Alaric said. “And with some people, I feel like that all the time, that poor, sick, paralyzed coward. And some, like Varzil, and Melisendra, remind me that I don’t have to be that way, that life is really not so terrible—do you know what I mean, Bard? Even a little?”

  Bard looked at the boy and sighed, knowing that his brother was pleading for understanding, and not knowing how to give it to him. He had seen soldiers like this, wounded almost to death, and when they lived, after all, something had happened within them that he did not understand. That had happened to Alaric, but it had happened to him before he was old enough to face it.

  “I think you are alone too much,” he said, “and it makes you fanciful. But I am glad Melisendra is kind to you.”

  Alaric sighed and held out his hand, small and white, to Bard, who engulfed it in his huge browned one. Bard, he thought, didn’t understand him at all, but he loved him, and that was just as good.

  “I hope you get your wife back, Bard. It’s very wicked of people to keep her from you.”

  Bard said, “Alaric, Father and I must be away from court for a few days. Father and I and some of his leroni. Dom Jerral will be here to advise you, if you need him.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Father knows of someone who would be a great help in commanding the armies, and we are going to find him.”

  “Why not simply order him to come to court? The regent can command anyone to come.”

  “We do not know where he lives,” Bard said. “We must find him by laran.” That, he thought, was quite explanation enough.

  “Well, if you must go, you must. But please, can Melisendra stay with me?” he asked, and Bard, though he knew Melisendra was one of the most skilled leroni, decided not to refuse his brother.

  “If you want Melisendra,” he said, “she shall certainly stay with you.”

  He had braced himself for an argument with his father, but to his surprise, Dom Rafael nodded.

  “I had not intended to bring Melisendra in any case; she is the mother of your son.”

  Bard wondered what difference that made, but he did not bother to ask. It was enough for him that his brother wanted Melisendra’s company.

  They left the castle that night and rode toward Bard’s old home. Three leroni, two woman and a man, had accompanied them, and Dom Rafael led them to a room Bard had never seen before, in an old tower room at the end of a broken staircase.

  “I have not used any of these things in decades,” be said, “but laran-craft, once learned, is not forgotten.” He turned to the wizards and asked, “Do you know what this is?”

  The man looked at the apparatus, and then at his two comrades, and Dom Rafael, in dismay. “I know, my lord. But I thought the use of such things was outlawed outside the safety of a Tower.”

  “In Asturias, there is no law but mine! Can you use it?”

  The laranzu glanced again, uneasily, at the women. He said, “A duplicate under Cherillys’ Law? I suppose so. But of what or whom?”

  “Of my son here; the commander of King Alaric’s armies.”

  One of the women looked at Bard and he caught the ironic flicker of her thought. Another of the Kilghard Wolf? I should think one of him to be more than abundance! He supposed she was a friend of Melisendra’s. But they shrugged, quickly shielded again, and said, “Yes, my lord, if that is your wish.”

  He could sense their surprise, distaste, wonder; but they made no audible protest, making their preparations, setting seals on the room so that no alien presences could enter and no other leroni spy on them from elsewhere.

  When all was prepared, Dom Rafael signaled to Bard to take his place before the screen, to remain silent and motionless. He obeyed, kneeling silently. He was so placed that he could not see his father, nor any of the three telepaths, but he sensed them near him. Bard did not think he had much laran, and what he did have had never been properly trained. He had always rather despised the art of sorcery, thinking it a skill or craft for women; he felt a little frightened as the almost tangible web of their thoughts tightened around him. He sensed that they were extending their thoughts into him, deep into brain and body, seeking out the very pattern of his being; he thought, fancifully, that they were seeking out his very soul, tying it up tight and imprisoning it in that glassy screen there.

  He could not move a finger or a foot. He felt a moment of paralyzed panic . . . no. This was a perfectly ordinary piece of laran sorcery, with nothing to fear; his father would not let anything harm him.

  He remained motionless, looking at his reflection in the glassy surface. Somehow he knew it was not only the reflected shadow on glass but himself there in that multilayered screen, reinforced at all levels with starstone crystals which resonated to the starstones of the leroni around him. He felt the combined web of their layered thoughts swing out over vast gulfs of empty space, extending, searching, searching to find something to fit that pattern, fit it exactly . . . something came near, close to touching . . . near to captive . . . no. It was not a duplicate, a resemblance, touching perhaps at ninety out of a hundred, but not the exact duplicate which alone could be captured within the screen. He felt the other slide away, vanish, as the search swung out again.

  (Far away in the Kilghard hills, a man named Gwynn, an outlaw and fatherless—although his mother had told him he had been fathered in the sack of Scathfell by Ansel, son of Ardrin the first of Asturias, thirty years ago—woke from an evil dream in which faces had swung around him, circling, swooping like hawks on their prey, and one of the faces was like his own as twin to twin . . . .)

  Again the web swung out, this time over greater gulfs, starless night, a tremendous void beyond space and time, with swirling, nightmarish vortexes of terrible nothingness. Again a shadow formed behind Bard on the screen, shimmered, wavered, twitched, struggled as a sleeper struggles to wake from nightmare; somewhere a spark flared in Bard’s brain; myself, or the other? He did not know, could not guess. It struggled for freedom but they held it, imprisoned in their web, moving from point to point of the pattern encased in the screen . . . searching to see that every atom, every trifle was congruent, identical....

  Now!

  Bard saw in his mind before his eyes saw the flare of lightnings in the room, a searing shock as the other was torn loose from the shadow in his mind, the pattern doubled and breaking, splitting apart . . . terror flamed in him; was it his own fear, or the terror of the other, unimaginably hurled across that great gulf of space. . . . He caught a glimpse of a great yellow sun, hurling worlds, stars flaming across the dark void, galaxies spinning and drifting in shock. . . . Lightning crashed through his brain and he lost consciousness.

  He stirred, conscious now of savage headaches, pain, confusion. Dom Rafael was lifting him, feeling his pulse. Then he let him go and went past, and Bard, sick and stunned with the lightning, followed with his eyes; and the leroni, behind him, watching, looked dazed too. He caught a wisp of thought from one of them, I don’t believe it. I did it, I was part of it but still I don’t believe it. . . .

  Lying on the floor at the opposite pole of the great screen lay the naked body of a man. And Bard, though he had been prepared intellectually for this, felt a surge of gut-wrenching terror.

 
; For the man lying on the floor was himself.

  Not someone very much like him. Not an accidental or close family resemblance. Himself.

  Broad-shouldered, and halfway between them, the blackish blotch of a birthmark which he had seen only in a mirror. The muscles bunching in his sword arm, the same dark-reddish patch of hair at the loins, the same crooked toe on the left foot.

  Then he began to see differences. The hair was cut a little shorter, though at the crown of his head there was the same unruly whorl. There was no scar across the knee; the double had not been at the battle of Raven’s Glen and did not have the sword-slash he had taken there. The other did not have the thick callous at the inside of the elbow where the shield strap rested. And these little differences somehow made it worse. The man was not simply a magical duplicate created somehow by the laran of the screen; be was a real human being, from somewhere else, who was, none the less, precisely and exactly Bard di Asturien.

  He didn’t like it. Still less did he like the confusion and fear which the other was feeling. Bard, without much laran, could still somehow feel all that emotion.

  He couldn’t stop himself. He got up and went across the room to the naked man lying there. He knelt beside him and put an arm under his head.

  “How are you feeling?”

  Only after he had spoken did be stop to wonder if the alien other could understand his language. That would be luck entirely too good, though he supposed that perhaps his kin somewhere in the Kilghard Hills had probably fathered this duplicate. Could any man be so like without being kin somehow ? The strange man’s skin looked darker, as if it had been burned brown by a fiercer sun. . . . No, that was folly, the sun was the sun . . . but still, the picture was in his mind of spinning galaxies, a world with a single cold white moon, and the frightening thing was that somehow all those images seemed to belong in Bard’s mind!