The Apogian War

Chapter 73

He never knew how he got there, but seconds later, it seemed, he felt scaring pain all over his n***d body, and found himself floating up to the chin in a great tub of boiling water. Danilo, kneeling at his se was anxionly chafing his wrists. His head was splitting, but he d see solid objects again, and his own body was reassuringdy firm. A se vant was hovering around with clean garments, trying to attract Da nilo's attention long enough to get his approval of them. Regis lay watching, too languid to do anything but accept their ministrations. He noticed that Danilo unobtrusively kept his own body between Regis and the Aldaran servant. Danilo chased the man out quickly, muttering under his breath, "I'm not going to trust any of them alone with you!" At first the water had seemed scalding to his chilled body; now he to alized it was barely warm, in fact it must have been drawn for some time, was probably a bath prepared for Danilo before he came in. Danilo was still bending over him, his face tight with worry. Suddenly Regis was filled with such intolerable anxiety that he cut off the in tense, sensuous pleasure of the hot water soothing his chilled and stiffened body-eleven nights on the trail and not warm once!-and drew himself upright, hauling himself out of the hot tub, reaching for a towel to wrap himself in. Danilo knelt to dry him, saying, "I sent the servant for a healer-woman, there must be someone that sort here. Regis, I never saw anyone faint like that before; your eyes were open but you couldn't hear me or see me..." "Threshold sickness." Briefly he sketched in an explanation. "Tve had a few attacks before. I'm over the worst." I hope, he added to him self. "I doubt if the healer could do anything with this. Here, give me that, I can dress myself." Firmly he took the towel away from Danilo. "Go and tell her not to bother, and find out if there's anything hot to drink." Skeptically Danilo retreated. Regis finished drying himself and clam bered into the unfamiliar clothing. His hands were shaking almost too hard to tie the knots of his tunic. What's the matter with me, he asked himself why didn't I want Dani to help me dress? He looked at his hands in cold shock, as if they belonged to someone else. I didn't want him to touch mel Even to him that sounded incongruous. They had lived together in the rough intimacy of the barracks room for months. They had been close-linked, even thinking one another's thoughts. This was different. Irresistibly his mind was drawn back to that night in the barracks, when he had reached out to Danilo, tom by an almost frenzied desire to share his misery, the spasm of loathing and horror with which Da nilo had flung him away... And then, shaken and shamed and terrified, Regis knew what had prompted that touch, and why he was suddenly shy of Danilo now. The knowledge struck him motionless, his bare feet cold through the wolfskin rug on the tile floor. To touch him. Not to comfort Dani, but to comfort his own need, his own loneliness, his own hunger.... He moved deliberately, afraid if he remained motionless another in stant the threshold sickness would surge up over him again. He knelt on the wolfskin, drawing fur-lined stockings up over his knees and deliber ately tying the thongs into intricate knots. On the surface of his mind he thought that fur clothing was life-saving here in the mountains. It felt wonderful. But, relentless, the memory he had barricaded since his twelfth year burst open like a bleeding wound; the memory he had let himself lose consciousness before recovering on the northward trail: Lew's face, alight with fire, his barriers down in the last extremity of exhaustion and pain and fear. And Regis had shared it all with him, there were no barriers between them. None. Regis had known what Lew wanted and would not ask, was too proud and too shy to ask. Something Regis had never felt be fore, that Lew thought he was too young to feel or to understand. But Regis had known and had shared it. And afterward, perhaps because Lew had never spoken of it, Regis was too ashamed to remember. And he had never dared open his mind again. Why? Why? Out of fear, out of shame? Out of... longing? Until Danilo, without even trying, broke that barricade. And now Regis knew why it was Dani who could break it He doesn't know, Regis thought, and then with a bleak and spartan pride, He must never know. He stood up, felt the splitting pain at his forehead again. He knew a frightened moment of disquiet. How could he keep this from him? Dani was a telepath too! Lew had said it was like living with your skin off. Well, his skin was off and he was doubly n***d. Taking a grip on himself, he walked out into the other room, decided his boots weren't dry. Inside he felt cold and trembly, but physically he was quite warm and calm. How could he face Lew again, knowing this? Coldly, Regis told him self not to be a fool. Lew had always known. He wasn't a coward, he didn't lie to himself) Lew remembered, so no wonder he was astonished when Regis had said he did not have laran! Lew had asked him why he could not bear to remember... "You should have gone straight to bed and let me bring you supper there," Danilo said behind him, and Regis, firmly taking mastery of his face, looked around. Danilo was looking at him with friendly concem, and Regis remembered, with a shock, that Danilo knew nothing, noth ing of the memory and awareness that had Blooded him in the scant few minutes they had been parted. He said aloud, trying for a casual neutral tone, "I collapsed before I saw anything of the suite but this room. I have no idea where I'm going to be sleeping" "And I've had days with nothing to do but explore. Come, I'll show you the way. I told the servant to bring your supper in here. How does it feel to be quartered in a royal suite, after the student dormitory at Nevarsin?" There was room enough for a regent and all his entourage in this guest suite: enormous bedrooms, servants quarters in plenty, a great hall, even a small octagonal presence chamber with a throne and foot stools for petitioners. It was more elaborate than his grandfather's suite in Thendara. Danilo had chosen the smallest and least elaborate bed room, but it looked like a royal favorite's chamber. There was a huge bed on a dais which would, Regis thought irreverently, have held a Dry Towner, three of his wives and six of his concubines. The servant he had seen before was warming the sheets with a long-handled warming pan, and there was a fire in the fireplace. He let Danilo help him into the big bed, put a tray of hot food beside him. Danilo sent the man away, saying gravely, "It is my privilege to wait on my lord with my own hands." Regis would have laughed at the solemn, formal words, but knew even a smile would hurt Danilo unspeakably. He kept his composure, until the man was out of earshot, then said, "I hope you're not going to take that formal my-lord tone all the time now, bredu." There was relief in Danilo's eyes too. "Only in front of strangers, Regis." He came and lifted covers off steaming bowls of food, clam bered up on the bed and poured hot soup from a jug. He said, "The food's good. I had to ask for cider instead of wine the first day, that's all. I see they brought both tonight, and the cider's hot." Regis drank the soup and the hot cider thirstily; but although it was his first hot meal in days, he found it almost too hard to chew and swallow. "Now tell me how you found me here, Regis." Regis' hand went to the matrix on the thong around his neck. shrank a little. "I thought such things were to be used only by techni cians, with proper safeguards. Isn't it dangerous?" "I knew no other way." Danilo looked at him, visibly moved. "And you took that risk for me, bredu?" Regis deliberately withdrew from the moment of emotion. "Take that last cutlet, won't you? I'm not hungry.... I'm here and alive, aren't 17 I expect I'll have trouble with my kinfolk, I got away from Gabriel and my escort by a trick. I was supposed to be on my way to Neskaya Tower." The diversion worked. Danilo asked with a faint revulsion, "Are you to be a matrix mechanic, now they know you have laran?" "God forbid! But I have to learn to safeguard myself." Danilo had made a long mental leap. "Is this-using a matrix, un trained-why you have been having threshold sickness?" "I don't know. Perhaps. It couldn't help." Danilo said, "I should have sent for Lew Alton, instead of the healer woman. He's tower-trained, he'd know what to do for it." Regis flinched. He didn't want to face Lew just yet. Not till he had his own thoughts in order. "Don't disturb him. I'm all right now." "Well, if you're sure," Danilo said uncertainly. "No doubt, by now, he's in bed with his girl and wouldn't thank anyone for disturbing him, but just the same-" "His girl?" "Aldaran's foster-daughter. The guards are lonely and have nothing to do but gossip, and I thought it just as well to learn as much as I could about what's going on here. They say Lew's madly in love with her, and old Kermiac's arranging a marriage." Well, Regis thought, that made good sense. Lew had never been happy in the lowlands and he was lonely. If he took a wife from his mountain kinsmen, that was a good thing. Danilo said, "There's wine, if you want it," but Regis firmly shook his head. He might sleep better for it, but he dared not risk anything that might break down his defenses. He took a handful of sugared nuts and began nibbling them. "Now, Dani, tell me all about it. Old Kermiac did not know why they had brought you here, and I had no chance to ask Lew alone." He wondered suddenly which of the women in the fireside room was Lew's sweetheart. The hard-faced girl with the harp? Or the delicate, remote, younger one in blue? "But you must have known all about it," said Danilo, "or how could you have come after me? I tried... I tried to reach out for you with my mind, but I was afraid. I could feel them. I was afraid they'd se that somehow... Regis sensed he was almost crying, "It's terriblet Laran is terrible! I don't want it, Regis! I don't want it! Impulsively Regis reached out to lay a steadying hand on his wrist, stopped himself. Oh no. Not that. Not so easy an excuse to to touch him. He said, keeping his voice detached, "It seems we have no choice, Dani. It has come to us both." "It's like-like lightning! It hits people who don't want it, hits them at random-"Danilo's voice shook. Regis wondered how anyone lived with it. He said, "I don't much want it either, now that I've got it. No more than I want to be heir to Comyn." He sighed. "But we have no choice. Or the only choice we have is to misuse it-like Dyan-or to meet it like men, and honorably." He knew he was not talking only of laran now. "Laran cannot be all evil. It helped me find you." "And if I've brought you into danger of death..." "That's enough of that!" The words were a sharp rebuke, Danilo shrank as if Regis had slapped him, but Regis felt he dared not face an other emotional outburst. "Lord Kermiac has called me guest. Among mountain people that is a sacred obligation. Neither of us is in danger." "Not from old Kermiac perhaps. But Beltran wants to use my laran to awaken other telepaths, and what's he going to do with them when he's got them awakened? Whatever they're doing..." He stared right through Regis and whispered, "It's wrong. I can feel it, reaching for me even in my sleep!" "Surely Lew wouldn't be a party to anything dishonorable?" "Not knowingly, maybe. But he's very angry with the Comyn, and wholly committed to Beltran now," Danilo said. "This is what he told me." He began to explain Beltran's plan for revival of the old matrix tech nology, bringing Darkover from a non-industrial, non-technological cul ture into a position of strength in a galactic empire. As he spoke of star travel Regis' eyes brightened, recalling his own dreams. Suppose he need not desert his world and his heritage to go out among the stars, but could serve his people and still be part of a great star-spanning cul ture... it seemed too good to be true. "Surely if it could have been done at all, it would have been done at the height of the strength of the towers. They must have tried this." "I don't know," said Danilo humbly, "I'm not as well-educated as you Darkovan.