The Apogian War

Chapter 71

The mountul harp-chords were very soft, the woman's voice very We sat at feast, we fought in jest, Sister, 1 vow to the A berserker's age came in my hand, And I slew them shamefully. Lew said, Enough of this, you are tired and anxious about Dani, and you must have some rest. When you are well recovered, I want you to know all about what we are doing. Then you will know why those who are really loyal to Darkover may serve us all best by putting some check on the Comyn powers." Regis could feel Lew's sincerity through the touch on his hand, yet there was some hesitation too. He slid his hand up Lew's arm to touch the tattooed mark there. He said, "You're not completely sure of this either, Lew. You are sworn, sealed to Comyn." Lew took his hand away, saying bitterly, "Swom? No. Vows in which I had no part were sworn for me when I was five years old. But come, we'll talk of this another time. If you've been imagining Danilo a pris oner it will reassure you to find him in the best gouest suite, the only one, I suppose, fit to entertain a Hastur. If he's your swom man be should be lodged with you." He turned, briefly making his excuses to the women. In his sensitized state Regis could feel their emotions, too: sharp resentment from the older, the singer. The younger one seemed aware of nothing but Lew. Regis didn't want to be part of these complexities! He was glad when they were alone in the corridor. "Regis, what's really wrong with you? You're ill!" Regis tried-he knew he didn't succeed too well-to cut off the rap port entirely. He knew that if he told Lew he had threshold sickness on the road, Lew would be immensely concerned. Even Javanne had treated it as a serious matter. For some reason he was anxious to avoid this. He said, "Nothing much; I'm very tired. I'm not used to mountain riding and I may have a chill." Actively he resisted Lew's solicitude. He could feel his kinsman's anxiety about him, and it made him irritable for some unknown reason. He wasn't a child now! And he could sense the balllement with which Lew gently but definitely withdrew. Lew paused at an ornate double door, scowling at the guard stationed there. "You guard a guest, sir?" "Safeguard, Dom Lewis. Lord Beltran ordered me to see that no one disturbed him. Everybody's not friendly to the valley folk here. Seel" the guard said, thrusting the door open. "He's not locked in." 253 Lew went in and called, "Danilo?" Regis, following him, took in at a glance the luxurious old-fashioned surroundings. Danilo came from an inner room, stopped short. Regis felt overwhelming relief. He couldn't speak. Lew smiled. "You see," he said, "alive and well and unharmed." Danilo Blung back his head in an aggressive gesture. He said, "Did you send to have him captured, too?" "How suspicious you are, Dani," Lew said. "Ask him yourself. I'll send servants to look after you." He touched Regis lightly on the arm. "My own honor pledged on it, no harm shall come to either of you, and you shall depart unharmed when you are able to travel." He added, "Take good care of him, Dani," and withdrew, closing the door.

When I came back to the fireside room, Thyra was still playing her harp, and I realized how short a time I had been away; she was still singing the ballad of the outlaw berserker. And when will you come back again, Brother, tell me, tell me? When the sun and the moon rise together in the West, And that shall never be. It must be immeasurably old, I thought, and alien, to speak of one moon instead of four! Beltran had returned and was gazing into the fire, looking angry and remote. He must have gotten the scolding he de served from Kermiac. Before this, the old man's illness had kept any of us from telling Kermiac what Beltran had done. I was distressed be cause Beltran was distressed-I couldn't help it, I liked him, I under stood what had prompted his rash orders. But what he had done to Danilo was unforgivable, and I was angry with him, too. And he knew it. His voice, when he turned to me, was truculent. "Now that you've put the child to bed-" "Don't mock the lad, cousin," I said. "He's young, but he was man enough to cross the Hellers alone. I wouldn't." Beltran said, "I've had that already from Father; he had nothing but praise for the boy's courage and good manner! I don't need it from you, too!" And he turned his back on me again. Well, I had little sympathy for him. He might well have lost us any chance of Danilo's friendship or help; and Danilo's help, as I saw it now, was all that could save this circle. If Beltran's laran could be fully opened, if with Danilo's aid we could discover and open up a few more latent telepaths, there was a chance, a bare chance but one I was willing to take, that we might somehow control the Sharra matrix. Without that it seemed hopeless, Marjorie smiled and said, "Your friend wouldn't speak to me or look at me. But I would like to know him." "He's a valley man, love, he'd think it rude and boorish to stare at a maiden. But he is my good friend." Kadarin's lip curled in amusement. "Yet it wasn't for your sake he crossed the mountains, but for the Syrtis boy." "I came here of my free will, and Regis knew it," I retorted, then laughed heartily. "By my probably nonexistent forefathers, Bob, do you think I am jealous? I am no lover of boys, but Regis was put in my charge when he was a little lad. He's dearer to me than my own brother born." Marjorie smiled her heart-stopping smile and said, "Then I shall love him, too." Thyra looked up and taunted, through the chords of her harp, "Come, Marjorie, you're a Keeper! If a man touches you you'll go up in smoke or something!" Icy shudders suddenly racked me. Marjorie, burning in Sharra's flame.... I took one stride toward the fire, wrenched the harp from Thyra's hands, then caught myself, still rigid. What had I been about to do? Fling the harp across the room, bring it down crashing across that mocking face? Slowly, deliberately, forcing my shaking muscles to relax, I brought the harp down and laid it on the bench. "Breda," I said, using the word for sister, not the ordinary one but the intimate word which could also mean darling, "such mockery is un worthy of you. If I had thought it possible, or if I had had the training of you from the first, don't you think I would have chosen you rather than Marjorie? Don't you think I would rather have had Marjorie free?" I put my arm around her. For a moment she was defiant, gazing angrily up at me. "Would you really have trusted me to keep your rule of chastity?" she flung at me. I was too shocked to answer. At last I said, "Breda, it isn't you I don't trust, it's your training." She had been rigid in my arms; suddenly she went limp against me, her arms clinging around my neck. I thought she would cry. I said, still trembling with that mixture of fury and tenderness, "And don't make jests about the fires! Evanda have mercy, Thyra! You were never at Arilinn, you have never seen the memorial, but have you, who are a singer of ballads, never heard the tale of Marelie Hastur? I have no voice for singing, but I shall tell it you, if you need reminding that there is no jesting about such mattent" I had to break off. My voice Kadaria said quietly, "We all saw Marjorie in the fire, but it was an illusion. You weren't hart, were you, Margie?" No, No, I wasn't. No, Lew. Don't, please don't. Thyra didn't mean anything," Marjorie said, shaking. I ached to reach out for her, take her in my arms, keep her safe. Yet that would place her in more danger than anything else I could possibly do. I had been a fool to touch Thyra. She was still clinging to me, warm and close and vital. I wanted to thrust her violently away, but at the same time I wanted-and she knew it, damn it, she knew it!-I wanted what I would have had as a matter of course from any woman of my own circle who was not a Keeper. What would have dispelled this hostility and tension. Any woman tower-trained would have sensed the state I was in and felt respon sible.... I forced myself to be calm, to release myself from Thyra's arms. It wasn't Thyra's fault, any more than it was Marjorie's. It wasn't Thyra's fault that Marjorie, and not herself, had been forced by lack of any other to be Keeper. It wasn't Thyra who had roused me this way. It wasn't Thyra's fault, either, that she had not been trained to the cus toms of a tower circle, where the intimacy and awareness is closer than any blood tie, closer than love, where the need of one evokes a real re sponsibility in the others. I could impose the laws of a tower circle on this group only so far as was needed for their own safety. I could not ask more than this. Their own bonds and ties went far back, beyond my coming. Thyra had noth ing but contempt for Arilinn. And to come between Thyra and Kadarin was not possible. Gently, so she would not feel wounded by an abrupt withdrawal, I moved away from her. Beltran, staring into the fire as if hypnotized by the darting flames, said in a low voice, "Marelie Hastur. I know the tale. She was a Keeper at Arilinn who was taken by mountain raiders in the Kilghard Hills, ravaged and thrown out to die by the city wall. Yet from pride, or fear of pity, she concealed what had been done to her and went into the matrix screens in spite of the law of the Keepers. And she died, a blackened corpse like one lightning-struck." Marjorie shrank, and I damned Beltran. Why did he have to tell that story in Marjorie's hearing? It seemed a piece of gratuitous cruelty, very unlike Beltran. Yes. And I had been about to tell it to to breaking her own harp acrom her head. That was very unlike me, too. What in all the Gods had come to us! Kadarin said harshly, "A lying tale. A pious fraud to scare Keepen into keeping their virginity, a bogeyman to frighten babies and girl children!" I thrust out my scared hand, "Bob, this is no pious fraud!" "Nor can I believe it had anything to do with your virginity," he re torted, laughing, and laid a kind hand on my shoulder. "You're giving yourself nightmares, Lew. For your Marelie Hastur I give you Cleindon Aillard, who was kinswoman to your own father, and who married and bore a son, losing no iota of her powers as Keeper. Have you forgotten they butchered her to keep that secret? That alone should give the lie to all this superstitious drivel about chastity." I saw Marjorie's face lose a little of its tension and was grateful to him, even if not wholly convinced. We were working here without ele mentary safeguards, and I was not yet willing to disregard this oldest and simplest of precautions. Kadarin said, "If you and Marjorie feel safer to lie apart until this work is well underway, it's your own choice. But don't give yourselves nightmares either. She's well in control. I feel safe with her." He bent down, kissing her lightly on the forehead, a kiss completely without pas sion but altogether loving. He put a free arm around me, drew me against him, smiling. I thought for a moment he would kiss me too, but he laughed. "We're both too old for that," he said, but without mock ery. For a moment we were all close together again, with no hint of the terrible violence and disharmony that had thrust us apart. I began to feel hope again. Thyra asked softly, "How is it with our father, Beltran?" I had for gotten that Thyra was his daughter too. "He is very weak," Beltran said, "but don't fret, little sister, he'll outlive all of us." I said, "Shall I go to him, Beltran? I've had long experience treating shock from matrix overload-" "And so have 1, Lew," Kadarin said kindly, releasing me. "All the knowledge of matrix technology is not locked up at Arilinn, bredu. I can do better without sleep than you young people." I knew I should insist, but I did not have the heart to face down an other of Thyra's taunts about Arilinn. And it was true that Kermiac had been training technicians in these hills before any of us were born.