The Apogian War

Chapter 72

And my own wees beted me. I wayed a little where I stood, Go and mat, Lew. Look, Rafe's alcep on the me Thyra, call some him to bed. Of with you now, all of your "Tex" said Bebra, homomow we have work to do, we've delayed I somberly t may take a long time now to permade him to that you, Betan. And you cannot me force on him. You know that, Belan looked angry. I won't hurt a hair of his precious little head, man. But you'd better be damned good at perseading. Without his help, I don't know what we'll do." I didn't eer We nended Danilo so temibly. We separated quietly, all of sched. I had a temble feeling of weight on my heart. Thyra walked beside the budly servant who was carrying Rafe to bed. Kadarin and Bethman, I knew, were going to watch beside Kermisc. I should have dd ut vigil. I loved the old man and I was responsible for the mo I was about to leave Marjorie at the foot of her tower stairway, but dhe ding hand to my hand Plea, Lew. Stay with me. As you did the other day." I started to appe, fhen mallized something else. Whether it was fue biet thing physical contact with Thyra, vieler it was fie spetting free of the quarrel, or the old songs and Ballade...didal't trust y Es sow, it took all my painfully aired discipline, all of it, to kony from taking her into my arms, kissing her senseless, carrying her myne is and into her som, to the bed we had shared so Stephat there. But we were deeply in contact; she had wes, , dhared that awareness with me. She was bushing, but she did stus ker eyes from mine the said at last, quietly, "You told me when we were soding like this, nothing could happen that would 1 dook my head in ewidement. "I don't undentand it either, Mar je Nomally, at this stage" and hos I laughed, a short unmirthful end, "y and 1 cold iis down n***d together and sleep like beter or sweated babies, I don't know what's happened, Marjorie, But I don't Gola sbonet I almost dosted at her. "Don't you hink I want to Now she did avert her eyes for a moment. She said in a whisper, "Kadarin says it's only a superstition. I'll...I'll risk it if you want to, If you need to," Now I really felt ashamed. I was better disciplined than this. I made myself take a long breath, unclench my hands from the railings of the stair. "No, beloved. Perhaps I can find out what's gone wrong. But I I heard her plea, not aloud but straight to my mind, straight to my beart: Don't leave me! Don't go, Lew, don't... I broke the contact harshly, cutting her off, shutting her out. It hurt horribly, but I knew that if this went on I would never be able to leave her, and I knew where it would end. And her discipline held. She closed her eyes, draw ing a deep breath. I saw that curious look of distance, withdrawnness, isolation, slip down over her features. The look Callina had had, that Festival Night. The look I had seen so often on Janna's face, my last season at Arilinn. She had known I loved her, wanted her. It hurt, but felt relieved, too. Marjorie said quietly, "I understand, Lew. Go and sleep, my darling." She turned and went away from me, up the long stairs, and I went away, blind with pain. have to be alone." I passed the closed door of the suite where Regis and Danilo had been lodged. I knew I should speak to Regis. He was ill, exhausted. But my own misery made me shrink from the task. He had made it clear he did not want my solicitude. He was reunited with his friend, why should I disturb them now? He would be asleep, I hoped, resting after that terrible journey alone through the Hellers. I went to my own room and threw myself down without bothering to undress. Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong. I had felt a disruption like this once before, like a vortex of fury, l**t, rage, destruction, surging up through us all. It should not be like this. It could not be like this! Normally, matrix work left the workers drained, spent, without any thing left over for any violent emotion. Above all, I had grown accus tomed to the fact that there was nothing left over for sexuality. It wasn't that way now. I had been angry with Thyra at first, not aroused by her. I had been angry when it seemed she mocked Marjorie, and then suddenly I'd been so overcome by my own need that it would have been easy for me to tear off her clothes and take her there before the fire! And Marjorie. A Keeper. I shouldn't have been capable even of thinking about her this way. Yet I had thought about it. Damn it, I still ached with wanting her. And she had wanted me to stay with hert Was she weeping now, alone in her room, the tears she had been too proud to shed before me? Should I have risked it? Sanity, prudence, long habit, told me no; no, I had done the only thing it was safe to do. I glanced briefly at the wrapped bundle of the matrix and felt the faintest thrill of awareness along my nerves. Insulated like that, it should have been wholly dormant. Damn it, I trained at Arilinn and any first-year telepath learns to insulate a matrix! What I insulate stays insulated! I must be dreaming, imagining. I was living on my nerves and by now they were raw, hypersensitive. That damned thing was responsible for all our troubles. I'd have liked to heave it out the window, or better, send it out on a Terran rocket and let it work its mischief on cosmic dust or something! I heart ily wished that Beltran and the Sharra matrix and Kadarin and old Desideria, with all her forge-folk about her, were all frying together on one of their own forges. I was still in accord with Beltran's dream, but standing between us and the accomplishment of the dream was this ravening nightmare of Sharra. I knew, I knew with the deepest roots of my self, that I could not control it, that Marjorie could not control it, that nothing human could ever control it. We had only stirred the surface of the matrix. If it was roused all the way it might never be controlled again, and tomor row I would tell Beltran so. Clutching this resolve, I fell into an uneasy sleep. For a long time I wandered in confused nightmares through the cor ridors of Comyn Castle; whenever I met someone, his or her face was veiled or turned away in aversion or contempt. Javanne Hastur refusing to dance with me at a children's ball. Old Domenic di Asturien with his lifted eyebrows. My father, reaching out to me across a great chasm. Callina Aillard, turning away and leaving me alone on the rain-swept balcony. It seemed I wandered through those halls for hours, with no single human face turned to me in concern or compassion. And then the dream changed. I was standing on the balcony of the Arilinn Tower, watching the sunrise, and Janna Lindir was standing be side me. I was dreamily surprised to see her. I was back again where I had been happy, where I had been accepted and loved, where there was no cloud on my mind and heart. But I had thought my circle had been broken and scattered, the others to their homes, I to the Guards where I was despised, Janna married... no, surely that had been only a bad dream! She turned and laid her hand in mine, and I felt a deep happi ness.

realized it was not Janna but Callina Aillard, saying softly, mockingly, "You do know what's really wrong with you," taunting me from the safe barrier of what she was, a Keeper, f*******n, untouch able.... Maddened by the surge of need and hunger in me, I reached for her, I tore the veils from her body while she screamed and struggled. I threw her down whimpering on the stones and flung myself atop her, n***d, and through her wild cries of terror she changed, she began to flame and glow and burn, the fires of Sharra engulfing us, consuming us in a wild spasm of l**t and ecstasy and terror and agony.... I woke up shuddering, crying out with the mingled terror and en chantment of the dream. The Sharra matrix lay shrouded and dormant. But I dared not close my eyes again that night.

After Lew had gone away, closing the door behind him, it was Regis who moved first, stumbling across the floor as if wading through a snowdrift, to clasp Dani's shoulders in a kinsman's embrace. He heard his own voice, hoarse in his ears. "You're safe. You really are here and safe." He had doubted Lew's word, though never in all his life had he reason to doubt. What kind of evil was here? "Yes, yes, well and safe," Danilo said, then drew a harsh breath of dismay. "My lord Regis, you're soaked through!" For the first time Regis became aware of the heat from the fireplace, the hangings sealing off drafts, the warmth after the icy blasts of the corridors. The very warmth touched off a spasm of shivering, but he forced himself to say, "The guards. You are really a prisoner, then?" "They're here to protect me, so they say. They've been friendly enough. Come, sit here, let me get these boots off, you're chilled to the bone!" Regis let himself be led to an armchair, so ancient in design that until he was in the seat he was not sure what it was. His feet came out of the boots numb and icy-cold. He was almost too weary to sit up and unlace his tunic; he sat with his hands hanging, his legs stretched out, finally with an effort put his stiff fingers to the tunic-laces. He knew his voice sounded more irritable than he meant. "I can manage for myself, Dani. You're my paxman, not my body servant!" Danilo, kneeling before the fire to dry Regis' boots, jerked upright as if stung. He said into the fire, "Lord Regis, I am honored to serve you in any way I may." Through the stiff formality of the words, Regis, wide open again, felt something else, a wordless resonance of despair: He didn't mean it, then, about accepting my service. It was...it was only a way of atoning for what his kinamam had done.... Without stopping to think, Regis was out of the chair, kneeling be side Dani on the hearth. His voice was shaking, partly with the cold which threatened to rip him apart with shudders, partly with that in tense awareness of Dani's hurt. The Gods witness I meant it! It's only...only...Suddenly he knew the right thing to say. "You remember what a fuss it caused, when I expected anyone to wait on me, in the barracks!" Their eyes caught and held. Regis had no idea whether it was his own thought or Danilo's: We were boys then. And now... how long ago that seems! Yet it was only last season! It seemed to Regis that they were looking back, as men, across a great chasm of elapsed time, at a shared boyhood. Where had it gone? With a sense of fighting off unutterable weariness-it seemed he had been fighting off this weariness as long as he could remember-he reached for Danilo's hands. They felt hard, calloused, real, the only firm anchor-point in a shifting, dissolving universe. Momentarily he felt his hands going through Danilo's as if neither of them were quite solid. He blinked hard to focus his eyes, and saw a blue-haloed form in front of him. He could see through Danilo now, to the wall beyond. Trying to focus against the swarming fireflies that spun before his eyes, he remembered Javanne's warning, fight it, move around, speak. He tried to get his voice back into his throat. "Forgive me, Dani. Who should serve me if not my sworn man...?" And as he spoke the words he felt, amazed, the texture of Danilo's re lief: My people have served the Hasturs for generations. Now I too am where I belong. No! I do not want to be a master of men...l But the swift denial was understood by both, not as a personal rejec tion, but the very embodiment of what they both were, so that the giv ing of Danilo's service was the pleasure and the relief it was, so that Regis knew he must not only accept that service, but accept it fully, graciously. Danilo's face suddenly looked strange, frightened. His mouth was moving but Regis could no longer hear him, floating bodiless in the sparkling darkness. The base of his skull throbbed with ballooning pain. He heard himself whisper, "I am... in your hands..." Then the world slid sidewise and he felt himself collapse into Danilo's arms.