The Apogian War

Chapter 57

Our hands were still clasped. Suddenly she colored and tried to with draw her wrist from my fingers. I tightened them, saying, "I feared to be burned...too near the fire. I am very ignorant of your mountain ways. How should I address you, cousin?" "Would a woman of your valley lands be thought too bold if she called you by name, lno?" "princess," I said, caressing the name with my voice. "princess." Her small fingers felt fragile and live, like some small quivering animal that had taken refuge with me. Never, not even at Aril, had I known such warmth, such acceptance. She said my hands were cold and drew them under her cloak again. All she was telling me seemed wonderful. I knew something of electric power generators-in the Kilghard Hills great windmills harnessed the steady winds-but her voice made it all new to me, and I pretended less knowledge so she would go on speaking. She said, "At one time Patrix-powered generators provided lights for the castle. That technique is lost." "It is known at Aril," I said, "but we rarely use it; the cost is high in human terms and there is some danger." Just the same, I thought, in the mountains they must need more energy against the crueler climate. Easy enough to give up a luxury, but here it might make the difference between civilized life and a brutal struggle for existence. "Have you been taught to use a Patrix, princess?" "Only a little. Kermiac is too old to show us the techniques. sia is stronger than I because she and fiend can link together a little, but not for long. The techniques of making the links are know," what we do not "That is simple enough," I said, hesitating because I did not like to think of working in linked circles outside the safety of the tower force fields. "princess, who is fiend, where does he come from?" "I know no more than he told you," she said. "He has traveled on many worlds. There are times when he speaks as if he were older than my guardian, yet he seems no older than sia. Even she knows not much more than 1, yet they have been together for a long time. He is a strange man, lno, but I love him and I want you to love him too." I had warmed to fiend, sensing the sincerity behind his angry in tensity. Here was a man who met life without self-deception, without the lies and compromises I had lived with so long. I had not seen him for days; he had gone away before the blizzard on unexplained business. I glanced at the strengthening sun. "The morning's well on. Will anyone be expecting us?" "I'm usually expected at breakfast, but sia likes to sleep late and no one else will care." She looked shyly up into my face and said, "I'd rather stay with you." I said, with a leaping joy, "Who needs breakfast?" "We could walk into Trade citt and find something at a food-stall. The food will not be as good as at my guardian's table...." She led the way down a side path, going by a flight of steep steps that were roofed against the spray from the waterfall. There was frost under foot, but the roofing had kept the stairway free of ice. The roaring of the waterfall made so much noise that we left off trying to talk and let our clasped hands speak for us. At last the steps came out on a lower terrace leading gently downslope to the city. I looked up and said, "I don't relish the thought of climbing back!" "Well, we can go around by the horse-path," she said. "You came up that way with your escort. Or there's a lift on the far side of the water fall; the Persia built it for us, with chains and pulleys, in return for the use of our water power." A little way inside the city gates princess led the way to a food-stall. We ate freshly baked bread and drank hot spiced cider, while I pon dered what she had said about matrices for generating power. Yes, they had been used in the past, and misused, too, so that now it was illegal to construct them. Most of them had been destroyed, not all. If Ka darin wanted to try reviving one there was, in theory at least, no limit to what he could do with it. If, that was, he wasn't afraid of the rids. Fear seemed to have an part in that curious enigmatic personality. But ordinary prodence? "You're lost somewhere again lno What is it?" "If fiend wants to do these things le soust know of a matric capa ble of handling that kind of power. What and where "I can only tell you that it's not on any of the monitor screens in the towers. It was used in the old days by the forge-folk to bring their metals from the ground. Then it was kept at Aldaran for centuries, until one of Kermisc's wards, trained by him, used it to break the sing of Stom Castle." I whistled. The Patrix had been outlawed as a weapon centuries ago. The Rule had not been made to keep us away from such simple toys as the guns and blasters of the Terans, but against the terrifying weapons devised in our Ages of Chaos. I wasn't happy about trying to key a group of inexperienced Mind gaps into a really large Patrix, either. Some could be harnessed and used safely and easily. Others had darker histories, and the name of Sharra, Goddess of the forge folk, was linked in old tales with more than one Patrix. This one might, or might not, be possible to bring under control. She said, looking incredulous, "Are you afraid?" "Damn right," I said. "I thought most of the talismans of Sharra worship had been destroyed before the time of Regis Fourth. I know some of them were destroyed." "This one was hidden by the forge-folk and given back for their ship after the siege of Storn." Her lip curled. "I have no patience with that kind of superstition." wor "Just the same, a Patrix is no toy for the ignorant." I stretched my hand out, palm upward over the table, to show her the coin-sized white scar, the puckered seam running up my wrist. "In my first year of train ing at Aril I lost control for a split second. Three of us had burs like this. I'm not joking when I speak of risks." For a moment her face contracted as she touched the puckered scar tissue with a delicate fingertip. Then she lifted her firm little chin and said, "All the same, what one human mind can build, another human mind can master. And a Patrix is no use to anyone lying on an altar for ignorant folk to worship." She pushed aside the cold remnants of the bread and said, "Let me show you the city." Our hands came irresistibly together again as we walked, side by side, through the streets. Trade citt was a beautiful city. Even now, when it lies beneath tons of rubble and I can never go back, it stands in my memory as a city in a dream, a city that for a little while was a dream. A dream we shared. The houses were laid out along wide, spacious streets and squares, each with plots of fruit trees and its own small glass-roofed greenhouse for vegetables and herbs seldom seen in the hills because of the short growing season and weakened sunlight. There were solar collectors on the roofs to collect and focus the dim winter sun on "Do these work even in winter?" the indoor gardens. "Yes, by a persia trick, prisms to concentrate and reflect more sun light from the snow." I thought of the darkness at Armida during the snow-season. There was so much we could learn from the Persia! princess said, "Every time I see what the Persia have made of Trade citt I am proud to be persia. I suppose Thendara is even more ad vanced." I shook my head. "You'd be disappointed. Part of it is all persia, part of it all Vandart. Trade citt Trade citt is like you, princess, the best of each world, blended into a single harmonious whole..." This was what our world could be. Should be. This was Belt's dream. And I felt, with my hands locked tight in princess's, in a closeness deeper than a kiss, that I would risk anything to bring that dream alive and spread it over the face of Darkover. I said something about how I felt as we climbed together upward again. We had elected to take the longer way, reluctant to end this magical interlude. We must have known even then that nothing to match this morning would ever come again, when we shared a dream and saw it all bright and new-edged and too beautiful to be real. "I feel as if I were drugged with kirian!" She laughed, a silvery peal. "But the kireseth no longer blooms in these hills, lno. It's all real. Or it can be." I began as I had promised later that day. fiend had not returned, but the rest of us gathered in the small sitting room. I felt nervous, somehow reluctant. It was always nerve-racking to work with a strange group of Mind gaps. Even at Aril, when the circle was changed every year, there was the same anxious tension. I felt n***d, raw-edged. How much did they know? What skills, potentials, lay hid den in these strangers? Two women, a man and a boy. Not a large cir cle. But large enough to make me quiver inside. Each of them had a Patrix. That didn't really surprise me since tradition has it that the Patrix jewels were first found in these mountains. None of them had his or her Patrix what I would call properly safe guarded. That didn't surprise me either. At Aril we're very strict in the old traditional ways. Like most trained technicians, I kept mine on a leather thong around my neck, silk-wrapped and inside a small leather bag, lest some accidental stimulus cause it to resonate. Belt's was wrapped in a scrap of soft leather and thrust into a pocket. princess's was wrapped in a scrap of silk and thrust into her gown between her breasts, where my hand had laint Rafe's was small and still dim; he had it in a small cloth bag on a woven cord around his neck. sia kept hers in a copper locket, which I considered criminally dangerous. Maybe my first act should be to teach them proper shielding. I looked at the blue stones lying in their hands. princess's was the brightest, gleaming with a fiery inner luminescence, giving the lie to her modest statement that sia was the stronger Mind gap. sia's was bright enough, though. My nerves were jangling. A "wild Mind gap," one who has taught himself by trial and error, extremely difficult to work with. In a tower the contact would first be made by a Keeper, not the old carefully-shielded leronis of my father's day, but a woman highly trained, her strength safeguarded and disciplined. Here we had none. It was up to me. It was harder than taking my clothes off before such an assembly, yet somehow I had to manage it. I sighed and looked from one to the other. "I take it you all know there's nothing magical about a Patrix," I said. "It's simply a crystal which can resonate with, and amplify, the energy-currents of your brain." "Yes, I know that," said sia with amused contempt. "I didn't ex pect anyone trained by Council to know it, though." I tried to discipline my spontaneous flare of anger. Was she going to make this as hard for me as she could? "It was the first thing they taught me at Aril, kinswoman, I am glad you know it already." I concentrated on Rafe. He was the youngest and would have least to unlearn. "How old are you, little brother?" "Thirteen this winter, kinsman," he said, and I frowned slightly. I had no experience with children-fifteen is the lowest age limit for the Towers-but I would try. There was light in his Patrix, which meant that he had keyed it after a fashion. "Can you control it?" We had none of the regular test materials; I