Darkover: First Contact

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Bard did not answer that. He said, “I would not like to think of Melora as my enemy. If she is not my friend, I think it well that she is neutral.”

  Paul, riding between Bard and Melisendra, wondered why Melora could bring to Bard’s face that note of anger and grief and misery. Master Gareth said, “Indeed, she’d never be your enemy, sir. She always spoke well of you.”

  Bard, sensing that both Melisendra and Paul could read his emotions, made an angry effort to control them. What was that woman Melora to him anyhow? That part of his life was over. At the end of this campaign, he would put all his leroni to seeking out a way to attack the Island of Silence and bring Carlina home to him, and then he need never think of Melora again. Or—he thought, intercepting a look between Paul and Melisendra—of Melisendra. Paul could have her and welcome. It would, at least, keep Paul safely preoccupied for awhile.

  For awhile. Until I am safely established, with Alaric king over all these lands. Then he will be too dangerous to me; an ambitious man, accustomed to wielding all that power. . . .

  And then he felt an unexpected surge of pain. Was he never to have a friend, a brother, an equal, that he could trust? Was he to lose every friend and peer as he had lost Beltran and Geremy? Perhaps, after all, he could think of another way; perhaps Paul need not die.

  I do not want to lose him as I lost Melora. . . . He stopped himself, furious. He would not think of Melora again!

  Suddenly Melisendra jerked her horse to a violent stop; her face contorted, and at the same moment Master Gareth flung up his hands as if to ward off some invisible evil. One of the other leroni screamed; another choked aloud in terror, bending over his horse’s saddle and clinging there by instinct, almost unable to sit. Bard looked at them in dismay and bewilderment. Paul moved swiftly to steady Melisendra, who sat swaying in her saddle, paler than the snow at the edges of the paths.

  She paid no heed to him. “Oh—the death, the burning!” she cried, and her voice held terror beyond expressing. “Oh, the agony—death, death, falling from the sky—the fire—the screams—” Her voice died in her throat, and she sat with her eyeballs rolled up until only white showed, as if they stared at some inward horror.

  Master Gareth choked, “Mirella! Dear gods, Mirella—she is there—”

  This brought Melisendra back, but only for a moment. “We cannot be sure she has come there yet, dear Father, she—I have not heard her cry out, I am sure I should know if she were among them—but oh, the burning, the burning—” She screamed again, and Paul reached over from his own horse. She let her head fall against him, sobbing.

  He whispered, “What is it, Melisendra, what is it—” but she was beyond answering him. She could only cling to him, weeping helplessly. Master Gareth, too, looked as if he were about to fall from his saddle. Bard put out a hand to steady the old laranzu and at the touch the images flooded into him.

  Flaring light. Searing pain, intolerable agony as flames rose and struck inward, consuming, tearing . . . mounting fire, walls crumbling and falling . . . voices raised in shrieks of agony, terror, wild lamentation . . . air-cars booming and fire, death raining down from the sky. . . .

  Paul had been immune, but as Bard’s mind opened to the images, he saw and felt them too, and felt himself go pale in horror. “Fire-bombing,” he whispered. He had believed this world civilized, too civilized for such warfare, and war almost a game, a manly test of courage, of domination and challenge. But this. . . .

  A woman’s body flaring like a torch, the smell of burning hair, burning flesh, agony searing. . . .

  Bard steadied the old man, as he would have with his own father. He was sick with the horror of the images flaring through his mind. But Master Gareth managed somehow to pull himself free from the horrors within. “Enough!” he said harshly, aloud. “We cannot help them by sharing their death agonies! Barricade yourselves, all of you! At once!” He spoke in command voice, and suddenly the air around them was free of smoke and the smell of death and burning, the intolerable screams of agony gone. Paul looked around, dazed, at the peaceful trail and the soft silent clouds overhead, the small sounds of an army on the march. A horse whinnied somewhere, supply wagons creaked and rumbled, a drover somewhere good-naturedly cursed his mules. Paul blinked with the suddenness of the falling quiet.

  “What was it? What was that, Melisendra?” His arms were still around her; she straightened, a little abashed.

  “Hali,” she said, “the great Tower by the shores of the Lake; Lord Hastur had sworn that the Towers should be neutral, at least Hali and Neskaya—I do not know who struck them.” Her face was still stunned with the horror she had shared. “Every leronis in the Hundred Kingdoms must have shared that death.... This is why the Lord Varzil has sworn neutrality. If this goes on, soon there will be no land to conquer. . . .”

  They all looked sober; many of the leroni were weeping. Melisendra said, “Not one of us here but has a sister, a brother, a friend, a loved one at Hali. It is the largest of the Towers; there are thirty-six women and men there, three full Circles, with leroni from every one of the kingdoms and laran-bearing families. . . .” Her voice died again.

  “So much for the Compact,” said Master Gareth fiercely. “Shall they sit quietly in Elhalyn and limit their warfare to sword and crossbow when fire is sent against them from the sky? But who would have dared to strike them? It is not the forces of Asturias, surely?”

  Bard shook his head, numbed.

  “Serrais, now, has no such strength, and why should the Lord Hastur strafe his own Tower who were loyal to him and had sworn to hold themselves neutral? Can it be that the Aillard or the Aldaran have joined in this war, and that all the Hundred Kingdoms are aflame?”

  Paul listened, shaken. On the surface this world was so simple, so beautiful, and yet this, this hideous telepathic warfare hidden....

  “It can be worse than fire-bombing,” Melisendra said, picking up his thoughts as she so often did. “At least they were borne by aircraft and the defending Tower could have knocked them out of the sky. I once struck down an air-car bent on such attack. But I have known a circle of leroni to put a spell on the ground beneath a castle under siege—” she pointed to a ruin atop a distant hill—“and the ground opened, and shook—and the castle fell in ruins and everyone was killed.”

  “And is there no defense against such weaponry?”

  “Oh, yes,” Melisendra said indifferently, “If the Lord of the Castle had had his own circle of wizards and they were stronger than the attackers. For generations, all of our family—and all the great families of Darkover—had laran ever stronger bred into them; that was while all this land lay under the rule of the Hastur kin, the descendants of Hastur and Cassilda. But there is a limit to what can be done with breeding; sooner or later there is too much inbreeding, and lethal recessives take over. My father—” she gestured to Master Gareth, who still looked pale and exhausted—“was married to his half-sister, and of fourteen children, only the three survived, all daughters. There are no MacArans in these hills now, only a few away to the north who were never taken into the breeding program . . . and few Dellerays, and the old line of Serrais died out; the Ridenow took the name when they married into that line. And my sister Kyria died in bearing a daughter, so that Melora and I brought up her child. . . . Mirella is a leronis too, one of those kept virgin for the Sight, and I pray she may stay so, for I know she fears to die the same way.”

  Paul was not really in rapport with Melisendra now, but he could sense the waves of old, half-conquered fear; he remembered Melisendra had borne a child, and felt sudden sympathy for the terrors she must have known. Always before this he had had but little sympathy for the special problems of women; now it struck him with remorse. In his own world, a woman would have known enough to make certain she was not at risk of pregnancy, but he had not bothered, here, to inquire, and it occurred to him, troubled, that Melisendra had not stopped to weigh the cost of their lovemaking.

  “It has begu
n to be lethal in our family,” she went on, almost absently—Paul wondered if she was talking to him, or trying to ease her own tensions and fears. “Erlend is healthy, the Goddess be praised, but already he has laran, and he is young for it. . . . Bard is only distantly related to us, of course, and Kyria married a cousin, so that may be why. . . . Melora and I must be careful to whom we bear children; even if we survive, the children may be stillborn. . . . I do not think Mirella should have children at all. And there are certain laran gifts which could combine with mine so that I would not survive forty days of such a pregnancy. Fortunately those are rare now, but I do not think their virulence is wholly lost in the line, and since records are not now kept, and the old art of monitoring cell-deep is not known now, the last of those who knew all of it died before she could teach what she knew. . . . None of us can know, when we bear a child, what may come of it. And some of these new weapons. . . .” She shuddered and resolutely changed the subject again, but not much. “I was fortunate that Bard was not carrying any of that heredity. It was perhaps the only fortunate thing about that whole affair.”

  It took another day of marching before they came up with the armies of Serrais, and that meant another night encamped on the road. Under ordinary conditions, Paul did not even see Melisendra when they were with the army; but near the camp was a little grove of trees with a well, and when he strolled that way, as the nightly drizzle began to fall (Bard told him this was normal for the season, except in the high summer—what a climate!) Melisendra, wrapped in the gray cloak of a leronis, beckoned to him. They stood embracing for some minutes, but when he whispered to her, moving his head suggestively toward the concealing trees, she shook her head.

  “It would not be seemly. Not like this, with the army. Don’t you think I want to, my beloved? But our time will come.”

  He was about to protest—how did he know they would have any time at all, after this campaign?—but the look in her eyes stopped him. He could not treat Melisendra like a camp follower. Quite soon, she went back to the other leroni—her father, she said, would have been angry at even this surreptitious embrace, would have thought that she was behaving badly—not that he minded whom she loved, but to do it furtively, like this, on campaign, when all others must leave their loved ones behind, was shameful. When she had gone he stood watching her reflectively, thinking that this was the first time he had ever listened to a woman’s refusal. If any other woman had done this, he would have considered her a cheap, manipulative slut, trying to lead him around by the balls.... What was happening to him? Why was Melisendra different?

  And, an unwelcome thought, was it possible that his own attitude, in those days, had left something to be desired? Paul was not given to questioning the rightness of his own motives and actions, and this was a new idea to him, one he put aside at once. Melisendra was different, that was all, and love was the art of making exceptions.

  But it seemed to be his night for unwelcome thoughts. He lay awake, unable to sleep, and wondered what would happen when Bard knew that it was not a casual affair with Melisendra but that he wanted her for all time. And if he and Bard were the same man, with the same sexual tastes and desires, why was it that he had not tired of Melisendra at once, as Bard had done?

  I have no consciousness of guilt toward her, and so Melisendra does not make me uncomfortable . . . and Paul almost laughed; Bard, feel guilty about anything? Bard was as free of the neurotic pattern of guilt as any man Paul had ever known, as free of it as Paul was himself. Guilt was a thing created by women and priests to keep men from doing what they wanted to do and had the strength to do, a tool of the weak to get their own way. . . . Still it was a long time before Paul could get to sleep. He wondered dismally what was happening to him on this world.

  At least it was better than the stasis box. And with this thought he finally managed to sleep.

  The next day was gray and dismal, with rain landing down, and Paul was surprised that they tried to march; though a little thought told him that in this climate, if they let rain stop them, they’d never do anything. And indeed, he saw herdsmen, mounted on strange horned beasts, watching over flocks in the fields, flocks of what Bard told him were rabbithorns; and farmers, many of them women, shrouded in thick tartan cloaks and wrappings, digging in the fields. At least, he thought glumly, they didn’t have to worry about watering their crops. He was glad he wasn’t a farmer. From what little he knew of them, it was either too wet or too dry. They rode by a lake and saw small boats out in the rain, hauling in nets. He supposed fish-farming was a good trade to be carried on in the rain.

  Around noon—the days were longer here, and Paul could never be sure of the time unless he could see the sun—they stopped to eat the cold trail rations served out by the quartermasters: bread, coarse, with raisins or some kind of dried fruit, and nuts baked into it, a kind of bland cheese, a handful of nuts in their shells and a pale, sourish wine which, nevertheless, had considerable body and was refreshing and warming. It was, he knew, the commonest home brew of the countryside, and he felt he could get to like it.

  Halfway through the meal, Bard’s aide came to summon Paul to him. As he rose to obey the summons, Paul was conscious of looks and comments; he should, perhaps, warn Bard that this supposed favoritism to one who was, after all, new-come to his armies, could get him into trouble. But when he mentioned it, Bard shrugged it off.

  “I never do the expected thing; that’s one of the reasons I got the name Wolf,” he said. “It keeps them off balance.” Then he told Paul that one of his runners had come in, bearing news that the Serrais army was not far away. As soon as the weather cleared, he would have to send out sentry birds to spot their exact position and formation. “But I have a young laranzu with the Sight,” he said, “and it may be that we can take them by surprise in the rain. Ruyven,” he said to another of his aides, “run and tell Rory Lanart, when he has finished his meal, to come to me at once.”

  When Rory came, Paul noted with dismay that the young laranzu was only about twelve years old. Did children fight battles of sorcery and wickedness in this world, too? It was bad enough to have women in the field, but children? Dismay struck more deeply as he thought of young Erlend, the starstone about his throat. Would Erlend grow up in a world like this? He watched the child looking into the starstone, relaying the information they wanted in a quiet, faraway voice, and wondered what Melisendra thought of having her son brought up to this.

  Bard, after all, is no more than a barbarian chief in a barbarian world. He and I are not the same man. He is the man I might have been in this barbarian society. There but for the grace of God, and all that.

  He raised his head to find Bard watching him; but his double did not give any sign or hint as to whether or not he had read Paul’s mind this time. He only said, “Finished your meal? Bring along what you want to—I always put some nuts in my pocket to eat as I ride—and tell the aides to get the men started again. Rory, ride at the head of the army with me, I’m going to need you, and someone should lead your horse if you’re going to be using the Sight.”

  They had not ridden for more than an hour, as Paul judged it, past the time of the nooning break when they came to the top of a hill; and Bard pointed, silently. Spread out in the valley below them, an army lay, formed up and waiting, and Paul identified, even at this distance, the green and gold banner of the Ridenow of Serrais. Between them and the Serrais army below was a little wood, a sparse grove of trees and undergrowth. A sudden flight of birds racketed upward, disturbed at their feeding in the bushes. Paul could hear Bard thinking: that’s done it, that’s the end of any idea that we might possibly take them by surprise. But their leroni would have better sense than that. And surely they have leroni with them.

  Aides were riding along the ranks of the men, forming them up in the battle plan Bard had discussed, briefly, with Paul—one of the things which the other aides resented, he knew, was that their leader spoke to Paul, outsider and new-comer, as an equal. They had, o
f course, no idea quite how much Paul was Bard’s equal. But they sensed something and it made them angry. Some day, Paul knew, when there was time, he would have to deal with it. And he thought, with a trace of amusement, that when he and Bard were leading separate armies, each believing that it was led by the Kilghard Wolf himself, at least that source of friction would be gone; there would be no intrusive outsider to come between the Wolf and his loyal followers.

  The signal was, as always, the drawing of Bard’s sword. Paul watched, his hand on the hilt of his own sword, waiting for Bard to give the sign for the charge. The rain had drizzled itself out, and only stray drops were falling. Now, suddenly, through a great break in the clouds, the great red sun came out and blazed, spreading light into the valley. Paul looked at the sky, thinking offhand that it was better to fight without the rain, but aware that the turf underfoot was still wet and the horses would find it slippery in the charge. Master Gareth had drawn his little army of sorcerers, gray-cloaked, off to one side, to keep them out of the way of the charge. When Paul had first ridden into battle, he had been anxious about Melisendra. Now he knew that she was in no physical danger in a battle such as this. Even under the concealing gray cloak, he could tell Melisendra by her riding.

  He saw Bard draw his sword—then heard him cry out, and saw him raise the sword to slash at empty air. What, in God’s name, does he see? And all the men riding near him were behaving the same way—slashing at empty air, crying out, raising their arms to shield their eyes against some unseen menace; even the horses were rearing and whinnying in distress. Paul saw nothing, smelled nothing, even though one of the men cried out, “Fire! Look there—” and fell crashing from his horse, rolling away, screaming. And suddenly as he caught Bard’s eyes, in contact with his twin, he saw what Bard saw: over their heads, wheeling and screeching, strange birds flew, diving viciously at the eyes, causing the horses to rear up as their foul breath pervaded everything; and the horror was that the birds had the faces of women, contorted with lewd grins. . . .