Citadels of Darkover

by Deborah J. Ross

  Without the Terranan, I wouldn’t have known there was anywhere else to go! That isn’t the same thing!

  Can’t you see how utterly the Terranan have corrupted you? That was Donal’s voice, warm and shot through with gold. This is why we fight. For you. For the others they’ve taken or will take. Oh, chiya. And Miralys could feel the circle’s attention shifting, like the rumble and the flickering flash of lightning that preceded thunder-snow in the Hellers.

  From Miralys, from Comyn castle...to Interim Legate Neemah Bell, who they’d first seen through Miralys’s eyes. Miralys could feel the circle reaching out, reaching through her, touching her Ridenow Gift.

  Miralys clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle the howl of anguish that threatened to burst forth. What right do you have to use me this way without telling me?

  It was for your own good, chiya. For the good of all of us. When the Terranan leave—

  “That’s the part you don’t understand,” Miralys whispered aloud. The words felt as though they were being torn from her throat. “They won’t just leave.”

  Won’t they?

  Through her rapport with the rest of the circle, Miralys could see, could feel, Neemah Bell rise from her chair and walk across the room, moving like a puppet depending from insubstantial strings.

  If there had been a true Keeper in the circle, rather than Byrna Castamir playing the Keeper’s role, Miralys could never have stood against the combined might of their laran. She would simply have been pulled into their undertow.

  As it was, Miralys had barely more than a few seconds before they overwhelmed her. She reached for the first familiar mind she could find, sleeping restlessly in the castle below.

  The Hastur.

  Uncle! Uncle, wake up!

  And then Miralys could fight it no longer. Helplessly, she fell into a rapport that had once been as familiar to her as breathing, and she remembered nothing more.

  ~o0o~

  “I hear I have you to thank for resolving the matter with Officer Petrie.” Neemah Bell was waiting for Miralys when Miralys returned to her office on the first day of the new work period.

  Miralys just shrugged uncomfortably. The official story—the one the Hastur had given out to the Terranan—was that Miralys had fallen ill with some Darkovan fever on the night she’d barged into Neemah Bell’s office. It was a story that excused an assortment of evils: Miralys’s invasion of the Interim Legate’s office that night and her subsequent behavior, her several days’ absence from the Legation while she recovered—physically, at least—from the aftermath of what had happened in Ashara’s Tower.

  Miralys wondered if the pain in her soul would ever leave her. Once upon a time, Amalie and Donal and Byrna had been the closest thing she had to family other than her foster father.

  “Well, whatever it is you said to that Comyn Council of yours, I’m grateful.”

  “I didn’t say anything. I was too busy languishing in my bed with a fever.” Yes and no. True and untrue. Like so many things. By the time Miralys had awakened in a bed at Comyn Castle, the Council had released Jennifer Petrie back to the Terranan, claiming that they’d discovered that Officer Petrie had been under the influence of a native hallucinogen on the night she’d killed Coryn Ardais. A violation of the Compact, yes. But mostly a terrible accident.

  Thanks to the Keeper of the real circle at Comyn Castle, that was certainly what Officer Petrie remembered.

  The Hastur had promised the Interim Legate that the Council would keep a closer eye on what went on in the establishments in Trade City. Neemah Bell promised that the Legation would take greater care to ensure Terranan weapons never made it out of the Terran Zone and into the streets of Thendara.

  Miralys had asked the Hastur, dreading the answer, what would become of the tattered remnants of the Neskaya Circle. The Hastur had said it was up to the Council. She’d wanted to plead that they’d only been trying to do the right thing, but a look from the Hastur had turned the words to dust in her throat.

  Miralys wished the Keeper had altered her memory, too.

  Neemah Bell gave Miralys a penetrating look, clearly unsatisfied with the official story. Unsatisfied with the lies.

  Finally the Interim Legate smiled, but her eyes were still searching Miralys’s face. “You know, I had the oddest dream that night you fell ill. I dreamed I’d been turned into one of those puppets that children play with...”

  “Perhaps you’d caught a touch of my fever.” Miralys looked down at her hands.

  Neemah Bell raised one dark eyebrow. “Perhaps,” she agreed.

  Miralys wondered how much longer they’d be able to keep the truth of laran from their Terranan cousins. And what will the Terranan do when they know the truth? What will they do when they know Darkover has something to offer them beyond technologically-backward cousins lost to the First Expansion diaspora?

  What was it Amalie had said? Give the Terranan another century and there will be nothing left of us.

  Neemah Bell asked her a question, but Miralys didn’t really hear it.

  She was too busy wondering if Amalie had been right.

  DARK AS DAWN

  by Robin Wayne Bailey

  “Dark as Dawn” was one of the most morally complex stories I’ve received over the years. It reminded me poignantly of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s novel, Two to Conquer. Her protagonist was a despicable character who used his laran to exploit, manipulate, and ultimately destroy anyone who got in his way. In the end, his punishment (and redemption) came about through being forced to experience the harm he had caused. Robin Wayne Bailey’s character is as much victim as he is oppressor, and I leave it to the reader to decide whether he is ultimately a villain or a flawed but hope-filled hero.

  Robin Wayne Bailey is the author of numerous novels, including the Dragonkin trilogy and the Frost series, as well as Shadowdance and the Fritz Leiber-inspired Swords Against the Shadowland. His short stories have appeared in many magazines and anthologies with frequent appearances in Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress series and Deborah J. Ross's Lace and Blade volumes. Many of his stories have been collected in two volumes, Turn Left to Tomorrow and The Fantastikon: Tales of Wonder, published by Yard Dog Books. He's a former two-term president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and a co-founder of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. His latest book is Little Green Men—Attack!, an anthology co-edited with Bryan Thomas Schmidt.

  Garrett hugged himself as he stared out through the small window of his room into the cold night of Ardcarran. The town lanterns and torches were all extinguished in these late-night hours, and not even the pale light from two of Darkover’s four moons, Idriel and Liriel, each at half-phase, could push back the shadows and chilly darkness.

  Not a soul moved in the streets below. Even the brothels and bordellos for which Ardcarran was famed seemed quiet. It is as if the entire city is holding its breath, Garrett thought as he rubbed his smooth-shaven, hairless arms.

  After a few long moments with nothing to see, he turned around and leaned against the wall. He winced at the contact and drew himself immediately erect. His back and buttocks still stung from the brutal lashes and welts newly administered by John Barron, who lay soundly asleep in Garrett’s bed with an empty bottle of firi clutched under one arm and his whip half-coiled on the sheet that barely covered him.

  Garrett gritted his teeth against pain as he closed the shutter. The fire in the room’s small fireplace had burned down to embers and ashes, and he shivered as he selected a pair of slender logs to build the fire up again. He placed them quietly in the hearth place. Rising, he glanced once more toward John Barron. His Terranan lover didn’t like the Darkovan cold, so, moving the whip out of reach, Garrett stretched out gently on the bed next to John and cuddled beside to him. He lay like that, unmoving, for a long moment, reflecting on how much his life had recently changed.

  Then, with upmost caution, he placed one hand upon John’s arm.

  The world
went dark for Garrett, darker than any darkness he had ever known. It frightened him at first, but then, a soft cascade of broken images and nonsensical memory fragments began to flow through his awareness. In some distant corner of his brain, Garrett struggled to remain still and not disturb John. It was so much easier if John slept, relaxed and unaware.

  Yet these images and fragments were like a deck of cards thrown into the air. They made no sense to Garrett, and he was too new to the art of touch telepathy, too untrained, to find the patterns in John’s mind.

  He pushed a little harder, as Devin Ardais taught him. Ardais the Catalyst, who had slept with Garrett for a couple of nights and somehow awakened this latent laran ability. Ardais, who now demanded things of Garrett, things that Garrett wasn’t always prepared to do, but couldn’t always resist. Things like this–mind rape.

  Devin Ardais was an information broker, a fancy word for blackmailer, among other terrible things. In his own way, he was more cruel than John Barron. He used people like Garrett thoughtlessly, and who better, he reasoned, to obtain information furtively than a prostitute? Pillow talk had toppled entire planetary systems. It was an age-old story, but on Darkover, a world of telepaths and people with special mental abilities, it had a whole new twist.

  Suddenly a pair of those cards tumbled, spun, and fit together like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. An image formed of a Terran starship now in orbit. Another pair of cards joined with the first pair. The starship departing for...Samarra! With John Barron in command.

  Garrett shot bolt-upright in bed, breaking his contact with John’s arm. Startled, John Barron also woke. He rubbed his eyes and stared at Garrett.

  “What...what is it, Garrett?”

  “You’re leaving!” Garrett shouted as tears sprung from his eyes.“You’re leaving, and I’ll never see you again!”

  John sat up and gathered Garrett into his arms. “How do you know I’m leaving, boy? What’s gotten you so upset?”

  Garrett fought to make up a convincing lie. For all John’s sadism and sometime-cruelty, Garrett genuinely loved John. The thought of losing him was a hot knife in his young heart.

  “You told me just now,” Garrett answered. “You were holding me close and tight and whispering things in my ear, and you told me!”

  John frowned and, letting go of Garrett, swung his feet over the side of the bed. With his back to Garrett, he said, “I must have been talking in my sleep. That’s all it was, just talk.”

  Garrett crawled across the bed and wrapped his arms around John, then laid his head on John’s shoulder. He cried softly, knowing that John had just lied to him as he had just lied to John.

  An ember popped in the fireplace, momentarily brightening the room as it sent sparks up the flue. John shot a look toward the flames, and then stood up. “I’ve got to get back to base,” he said abruptly.

  “Will you be back?” Garrett asked.

  Without turning around, John shoved his right leg, then his left into his trousers and pulled them up. “You ask that every time,” he answered, his voice cold. “It sounds a bit desperate. You know I’m a Terran officer, that someday duty would take me away.”

  “But not tonight, John, not so soon! Please, if you have to go just stay a little longer. Stay until dawn!”

  John hesitated, his bare shoulders still gleaming with sweat in the fireplace light. He turned toward Garrett, but already he was slipping into his shirt and buttoning it. “You’re a beautiful boy, Garrett,” was all he said.

  Garrett’s hand reached for the whip which was still coiled on the sheets. “Take this!” Garrett urged, thrusting the hard, leather-wrapped handle toward John. “Use it on me, if you like!’

  But John shook his head and backed away from the bed. “Keep it,” he answered. “Consider it a souvenir.”

  Garrett scowled, then hurled the whip at John. “The scars you made on my back are souvenirs enough! Now get out if you’re going! Get out of my room and out of my life! Have a great new life on Samarra!”

  John spun around, leaned across the bed, and grabbed Garrett in a choking grip around the throat. “How do you know about Samarra?” he demanded.

  “I told you,” Garrett hissed, barely able to get out words. “You talk in your sleep!”

  John brought his face close to Garrett’s, as his fingers squeezed harder into the boy’s soft tissues. “I should kill you to keep you quiet. Prostitutes die all the time in Ardcarran, and nobody asks questions.” He eased his grip on Garrett’s neck and finally let him go, pushing him roughly back on the bed. “Just keep whatever you think you’ve learned to yourself.”

  Garrett rubbed his throat, and his eyes gleamed as he stared at John. “You do love me,” he whispered.

  John dressed as quickly as he could, then left the room without even a word of goodbye. Garrett watched him go until the door closed. The harsh sound of the lock falling into place felt like the breaking of Garrett’s heart. For long moments, he wrapped himself in the sweaty sheets of their love-making, clutched the whip to his heart, and just cried.

  When he was almost at the edge of sleep, someone knocked at his door. He sprang up, hoping that John had come back, but when he opened the door, he recoiled in fear and backed away.

  Devin Ardais and two of his men walked into Garrett’s room. One of the men closed the door again as Ardais went to stand before the fireplace. His black cloak was speckled with flakes of snow. He sighed as he pulled off thin gloves. “The weather seems to be turning foul,” he said. “We were drinking in a bar across the street when we saw the Terranan leave. I trust you had your usual good time.”

  Garrett clenched his fists as he stood naked before the three men. “You’re spying on me.” he said. “I don’t like that!”

  Devin Ardais looked stern. “It doesn’t matter what you like, youngster. You work for me now. I gave you a special gift, and you owe me. Now tell me what you learned from the Terranan. They’re always so full of secrets, both military and personal, and a cunning man can turn a profit from those secrets.” He smiled a wicked smile. “I’m a very cunning man.”

  “You’re a parasite!” Garrett shot back as he tried to put the bed between himself and his visitors and still have a shot at the door. “And you’re not even a good fuck.”

  Devin shrugged “Well, on that part, I’ll bow to your expertise. As for the rest, my little minion, never doubt that you do work for me. And if you forget it again, my two large associates...” he indicated his thuggish companions, “...will be close at hand to remind you.”

  The larger man strode up to Garrett and, with a lightning-fast move, caught Garrett’s right arm and twisted it up painfully behind Garrett’s back. “Lord Ardais asked you a nice question,” he said.

  “Fuck you!” Garrett shouted, but the man twisted his arm harder, and pain shot up Garrett’s scapula and shoulder. Garrett screamed, then through clenched teeth, he gave Ardais what he wanted. “He’s been promoted to commander!” Garrett hissed.“And he’s the new ambassador to Samarra! That’s all I got!”

  Devin Ardais tapped his cheek thoughtfully. “Actually, that’s quite good,” he answered. “A Terran ambassador with a penchant for whipping young boys and having sex with them.” He paced to the window, opened the shutter and stared outward. It was still dark outside. “Yes, we can make something of that, I’m sure. But I have a bigger plan as well, one specially suited for John Barron.”

  Garrett struggled against the grip on his arm. “You leave him alone!” he shouted. “I’m warning you!”

  Devin Ardais looked genuinely surprised. “You are warning me?” he asked, incredulous. “That’s so generous of you. I’m afraid that I have to leave now, but when I’m gone, Gant...,” he indicated the large brute holding Garrett.“...Gant is going to spend a little time with you to make sure you understand your new place in my organization.”

  “I’m not part of your...!” Garrett started to say, but Gant slapped him in the back of the head.

  “Behave
yourself,” Gant murmured as he increased the pressure on Garrett’s tortured arm.

  “Gently, Gant!” Devin scolded. “Don’t break him! He’s potentially a very valuable asset.” He beckoned to his other associate, a man equally as formidable and intimidating as Gant. “Now, Garth and I must catch up to the newly promoted Captain Barron and make him a few offers he can’t possibly resist. We’ll see you again soon, Garrett.”

  Garrett writhed in Gant’s painful grip.“If you hurt John, I’ll get you!”

  Gant slapped him in the head again, so hard that he saw stars and his ears rang. Devin and Garth paid no attention as they quietly departed the suite. Garrett screamed, both angry and afraid, not sure which was the stronger emotion. And Gant hit him again, across the mouth to silence him. A third blow to his midsection knocked the wind from him and sent him to his knees. When Gant drew back to hit him yet again, Garrett threw up his hands to protect himself.

  But his hands closed around Gant’s arm. The world went dark. Gant gasped and his powerful body went rigid. Something electric passed between Garrett and Gant, and images began to flood Garrett’s mind, violent and cruel images. At first, they repulsed Garrett. He didn’t understand them. But they began to take on meaning and context. He released his grip on the larger man and, in the darkness, he made fists. He felt an aggressive power flow through his muscles, a new confidence and strength.

  And he liked it.

  The deep darkness faded, and the spark between him and Gant flickered out. His room became just his room again. However, Gant still stood as if frozen. Garrett stared at him, feeling the bitter pain of Gant’s slaps and blows. After a few more moments, Gant’s eyes began to flutter, and he showed signs of waking from whatever sleep or coma Garrett’s touch had induced.

  Garrett didn’t hesitate. He drove a perfect fist into Gant’s solar plexus. Gant doubled over, only to meet Garrett’s hard knee. When the big man crumpled to the floor, Garrett straddled him and pounded his face to a bloody pulp, stopping only when Gant breathed a final, ragged sigh.