Heritage and Exile

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  The single candle near his bed wavered, flickered in and out of focus; colors looped and spun across his visual field and the room swelled up, receded and shrank until it seemed to lie far away, then loom enormously around him in great echoing space.

  He recognized the feeling from when Lew gave him kirian, but he was not drugged now!

  He clutched at the bedclothes, squeezing his eyes shut. He could still see the candleflame, a dark fire printed inside his eyelids, the room around him lit with blazing brilliance, reversed afterimages, dark to bright and bright to dark, and a roaring in his ears like the distant roaring of a forest fire . . .

  . . . The fire-lines at Armida! For an instant it seemed that he saw Lew’s face again, crimson, gazing into a great fire, drawn with terror and wonder, then the face of a woman, shining, ecstatic, crowned with fire, burning, burning alive in the flames . . . Sharra, golden-chained Forge-Goddess. The room was alive with the fire and he burrowed beneath the blankets, sunk, battered, swirled. The room was dissolving around him, tilting . . . every thread in the smooth fine linen of the blankets seemed to cut into him, hard and rough, the twisted fibers of blanket trying to curl and frizzle and dig painfully into his skin, like cutting edges. He heard someone moan aloud and wondered who was there moaning and crying like that. The very air seemed to separate itself and come apart against his skin as if he had to sort it out into little droplets before he could breathe. His own breath hissed and whistled and moaned as it went in and out, like searing fire, to be quenched by the separate droplets of water in his lungs. . . .

  Pain crashed through his head. He felt his skull smashing, shattering into little splinters; another blow sent him flying high, falling into darkness.

  “Regis!” Again the crashing, reeling sickness of the blow and the long spin into space. The sound was only meaningless vibration but he tried to focus on it, make it mean something. “Regis!” Who was Regis? The roaring candleflame died to a glimmer and Regis heard himself gasp aloud. Someone was standing over him, calling his name, slapping him hard and repeatedly. Suddenly, noiselessly, the room fell into focus.

  “Regis, wake up! Get up and walk around, don’t drift with it!”

  “Javanne . . .” he said, struggling fuzzily upright to catch her hand as it was descending for another blow. “Don’t, sister . . .”

  He was surprised at how weak and faraway his voice sounded. She gave a faint cry of relief. She was standing beside his bed, a white shawl slipping from her shoulders above her long nightgown. “I thought one of the children cried out, then heard you. Why didn’t you tell me you were likely to have threshold sickness?”

  Regis blinked and dropped her hand. Even without the touch he could feel her fear. The room was still not quite solid around him. “Threshold sickness?” He thought about it a moment. He’d heard of it, of course, born into a Comyn family: a physical and psychic upheaval of awakening telepaths in adolescence, the inability of the brain to cope with sudden overloads of sensory and extrasensory data, resulting in perceptual distortions of sight, sound, touch. . . . “I never had it before. I didn’t know what it was. Things seemed to thin out and disappear, I couldn’t see properly, or feel . . .”

  “I know. Get up now and walk around a little.”

  The room was still tilting around him; he clung to the bed-frame. “If I do, I’ll fall. . . .”

  “And if you don’t, your balance centers will start drifting out of focus again. Here,” she said with a faint laugh, tossing the white shawl to him, looking courteously away as he wrapped it around his body and struggled to his feet. “Regis, did no one warn you of this when your laran wakened?”

  “Didn’t who warn me? I don’t think anyone knew,” he said, taking a hesitant step and then another. She was right; under the concentrated effort of getting up and moving, the room settled into solidity again. He shuddered and went toward the candle. The little lights still danced and jiggled behind his eyes, but it was candle-sized again. How had it grown to a raging forest fire out of childhood? He picked it up, was amazed to see how his hand shook. Javanne said sharply, “Don’t touch the candle when your hand’s not steady, you’ll set something afire! Regis, you frightened me!”

  “With the candle?” He set it down.

  “No, the way you were moaning. I spent half a year at Neskaya when I was thirteen, I saw one of the girls go into convulsions in crisis once.”

  Regis looked at his sister as if for the first time. He could sense, now, the emotion behind her cross, brisk manner, real fear, a tenderness he had never guessed. He put his arm around her shoulders and said, wonderingly, “Were you really afraid?” The barriers were wholly down between them and what she heard was, Would you really care if something happened to me? She reacted to the wondering amazement of that unspoken question with real dismay.

  “How can you doubt it? You are my only kinsman!”

  “You have Gabriel, and five children.”

  “But you are my father’s son and my mother’s,” she said, giving him a short, hard hug. “You seem to be all right now. Get back into that bed before you take a chill and I must nurse you like one of the babies!”

  But he knew now what the sharpness of her voice concealed and it did not trouble him. Obediently he got under the covers. She sat on the bed.

  “You should spend some time in one of the towers, Regis, just to learn control. Grandfather can send you to Neskaya or Arilinn. An untrained telepath is a menace to himself and everyone around him, they told me so when I was your age.”

  Regis thought of Danilo. Had anyone thought to warn him?

  Javanne drew the covers up under his chin. He recalled now that she had done this when he was very small, before he knew the difference between elder sister and a never-known mother. She was only a child herself, but she had tried to mother him. Why had he forgotten that?

  She kissed him gently on the forehead and Regis, feeling safe and protected for the moment, toppled over the edge of a vast gulf of sleep.

  The next day he felt ill and dazed, but although Javanne told him to keep to his bed, he was too restless to stay there.

  “I must return at once to Thendara,” he insisted. “I’ve learned something which makes it necessary to talk to Grandfather. You said, yourself, I should arrange to go to one of the towers. What can happen to me with three Guardsmen for escort?”

  “You know perfectly well you’re not able to travel! I should spank you and put you to bed as I’d do with Rafael if he were so unreasonable,” she said crossly.

  His new insight into her made him speak with gentleness. “I’d like to be young enough for your cosseting, sister, even if it meant a spanking. But I know what I must do, Javanne, and I’ve outgrown a woman’s rule. Please don’t treat me like a child.”

  His seriousness sobered her, too. Still unwilling, she sent for his escort and horses.

  All that long day’s ride, he seemed to move through torturing memories, repeating themselves over and over, and a growing unease and uncertainty: would they believe him, would they even listen? Danilo was out of Dyan’s reach, now; there was time enough to speak if he endangered another. Yet Regis knew that if he was silent, he connived at what Dyan had done.

  In midafternoon, still miles from Thendara, wet snow and sleet began to fall again, but Regis ignored the suggestions of his escort that he should seek shelter and hospitality somewhere. Every moment between him and Thendara now was a torture; he yearned to be there, to have this frightening confrontation over. As the long miles dragged by, and he grew more and more soggy and wretched, he drew his soaked cape around him, huddling inside it like a protective cocoon. He knew his guards were talking about him, but he shut them firmly away from his consciousness, withdrawing further and further into his own misery.

  As they came over the top of the pass he heard the distant vibration from the spaceport, carried thick and reverberating in the heavy, moist air. He thought with wild longing of the ships taking off, invisible behind the wal
l of rain and sleet, symbols of the freedom he wished he had now.

  He let the thickening storm batter him, uncaring. He welcomed the icy wind, the sleet freezing in layers on his heavy riding-cloak, on his eyelashes and hair. It kept him from sliding back into that strange, hypersensitive, hallucinatory awareness.

  What shall I say to Grandfather?

  How did you face the Regent of Comyn and tell him his most trusted counselor was corrupt, a sadistic pervert using his telepathic powers to meddle with a mind placed in his charge?

  How do you tell the Commander of the Guard, your own commanding officer, that his most trusted friend, holding the most trusted and responsible of posts, has ill-treated and shamefully misused a boy in his care. How do you accuse your own uncle, the strongest telepath in Comyn, of standing by, indifferent, watching the rarest and most sensitive of telepaths being falsely accused, his mind battered and bruised and dishonored, while he, a tower-trained psi technician, did nothing?

  The stone walls of the Castle closed about them, cutting off the biting wind. Regis heard his escort swearing as they led their horses away. He knew he should apologize to them for subjecting them to this cold, wearying ride in such weather. It was a totally irresponsible thing to do to loyal men and the fact that they would never question his motives made it worse. He gave them brief formal thanks and admonished them to go quickly for supper and rest, knowing that if he offered them any reward they would be offended beyond measuring.

  The long steps to the Hastur apartments seemed to loom over him, shrinking and expanding. His grandfather’s aged valet rushed at him, blurred and out of focus, clucking and shaking his head with the privilege of long service. “Lord Regis, you’re soaked through, you’ll be ill, let me fetch you some wine, dry clothes—”

  “Nothing, thank you.” Regis blinked away the drops of ice melting on his eyelashes. “Ask the Lord Regent if he”—he tensed to keep his teeth from chattering—“if he can receive me.”

  “He’s at supper, Lord Regis. Go in and join him.”

  A small table had been laid before the fire in his grandfather’s private sitting room, and Danvan Hastur looked up, dismayed, almost comically echoing the elderly servant’s dismay.

  “My boy! At this hour, so wet and dripping? Marton, take his cloak, dry it at the fire! Child, you were to be with Javanne some days, what has happened?”

  “Necessary—” Regis discovered his teeth were chattering so hard he could not speak; he clenched them to get control. “To return at once—”

  The Regent shook his head skeptically. “Through a blizzard? Sit down there by the fire.” He picked up the jug on his table, tilted a thick stream of steaming soup into a stoneware mug and held it out to Regis. “Here. Drink this and warm yourself before you say anything.”

  Regis started to say he did not want it, but he had to take it to keep it from falling from the old man’s hand. The hot fragrant steam was so enticing that he began to sip it, slowly. He felt enraged at his own weakness and angrier at his grandfather for seeing it. His barriers were down and he had a flash of Hastur as a young man, a commander in the field, knowing his men, judging each one’s strengths and weaknesses, knowing what each one needed and precisely how and when to get it to him. As the hot soup began to spread warmth through his shivering body he relaxed and began to breathe freely. The heat of the stoneware mug comforted his fingers, which were blue with cold, and even when he had finished the soup he held it between his hands, enjoying the warmth.

  “Grandfather, I must talk to you.”

  “Well, I’m listening, child. Not even Council would call me out in such weather.”

  Regis glanced at the servants moving around the room. “Alone, sir. This concerns the honor of the Hasturs.”

  A startled look crossed the old man’s face and he waved them from the room. “You’re not going to tell me Javanne has managed to disgrace herself!”

  Even the thought of his staid and fastidious sister playing the wanton would have made Regis laugh, if he could have laughed. “Indeed not, sir, all at Edelweiss is well and the babies thriving.” He was not cold now, but felt an inner trembling he did not even recognize as fear. He put down the empty mug which had grown chill in his hands, shook his head at the offer of a refill.

  “Grandfather. Do you remember Danilo Syrtis?”

  “Syrtis. The Syrtis people are old Hastur folk, your father’s paxman and bodyguard bore that name, old Dom Felix was my hawk-master. Wait, was there not some shameful thing in the Guards this year, a disgraced cadet, a sword-breaking? What has this to do with the honor of Hastur, Regis?”

  Regis knew he must be very calm now, must keep his voice steady. He said, “The Syrtis men are our wards and paxmen, sir. From their years of duty to us, is it not our duty to safeguard them from being attacked and abused, even by Comyn? I have learned . . . Danilo Syrtis was wrongfully attacked and disgraced, sir, and it’s worse than that. Danilo is a . . . a catalyst telepath, and Lord Dyan ill-used him, contrived his disgrace for revenge—”

  Regis’ voice broke. That searing moment of contact with Danilo flooded him again. Hastur looked at him in deep distress.

  “Regis, this cannot possibly be true!”

  He doesn’t believe me! Regis heard his voice crack and break again. “Grandfather, I swear—”

  “Child, child, I know you are not lying, I know you better than that!”

  “You don’t know me at all!” Regis flung at him, almost hysterical.

  Hastur rose and came to him, laying a concerned hand on his forehead. “You are ill, Regis, feverish, perhaps delirious.”

  Regis shook the hand off. “I know perfectly well what I am saying. I had an attack of threshold sickness at Edelweiss, it’s better now.”

  The old man looked at him with startled skepticism. “Regis, threshold sickness is nothing to take lightly. One of the symptoms is delusion, hallucination. I cannot accuse Lord Dyan of the wild ravings of a sick child. Let me send for Kennard Alton; he is tower-trained and can deal with this kind of illness.”

  “Send to Kennard indeed,” Regis demanded, his voice wavering, “he is the one man in Thendara who will know for a fact that I am neither lying nor raving! This was by his contrivance, too; he stood by and watched Danilo disgraced and the cadet corps shamed!”

  Hastur looked deeply troubled. He said, “Can it not wait—” He looked at Regis sharply and said, “No. If you rode through a blizzard at this hour to bring me such news, it certainly cannot wait. But Kennard is very ill, too. Can you possibly manage to go to him, child?”

  Regis cut off another angry outburst and only said, with tight control, “I am not ill. I can go to him.”

  His grandfather looked at him steadily. “If you are not ill you will soon be so, if you stand there shivering and dripping. Go to your room and change your clothes while I send word to Kennard.”

  He was angry at being sent like a child to change his clothes but he obeyed. It seemed the best way to convince his grandfather of his rationality. When he returned, dry-clad and feeling better, his grandfather said shortly, “Kennard is willing to talk to you. Come with me.”

  As they went through the long corridors, Regis was aware of his grandfather’s bristling disapproval. In the Alton rooms, Kennard was seated in the main hall, before the fire. He rose and took one step toward them and Regis saw with deep compunction that the older man looked terribly ill, his gaunt face flushed, his hands looking hugely swollen and shapeless. But he smiled at Regis with heartfelt welcome and held out the misshapen hand. “My lad, I’m glad to see you.”

  Regis touched the swollen fingers with awkward carefulness, unable to blur out Kennard’s pain and exhaustion. He felt raw-edged, hypersensitive. Kennard could hardly stand!

  “Lord Hastur, you honor me. How may I serve you?”

  “My grandson has come to me with a strange and disturbing story. It’s his tale, I’ll leave him to tell it.”

  Regis felt consuming relief. He had fear
ed to be treated like a sick child dragged unwilling to a doctor. For once he was being treated like a man. He felt grateful, a little disarmed.

  Kennard said, “I cannot stand like this long. You there—” He gestured to a servant. “An armchair for the Regent. Sit beside me, Regis, tell me what’s troubling you.”

  “My lord Alton—”

  Kennard said kindly, “Am I no longer Uncle, my boy?” Regis knew if he did not resist that fatherly warmth with all his strength, he would sob out his story like a beaten child. He said stiffly, “My lord, this is a serious matter concerning the honor of the Guardsmen. I have visited Danilo Syrtis at his home—”

  “That was a kindly thought, nephew. Between ourselves, that was a bad business. I tried to talk Dyan out of it, but he chose to make an example of Dani and the law is the law. I couldn’t have done anything if Dani had been my own son.”

  “Commander,” Regis said, using the most formal of Kennard’s military titles, “on my most solemn word as a cadet and a Hastur, there has been a terrible injustice done. Danilo was, I swear, wrongly accused, and Lord Dyan guilty of something so shameful I hardly dare name it. Is a cadet forced to submit—”

  “Now you wait a minute,” Kennard said, turning blazing eyes on him. “I had this already from Lew. I don’t know what those three years among the cristoforos did to you, but if you’re going to come whining to me about the fact that Dyan likes young lads for lovers, and accuse—”

  “Uncle!” Regis protested in shock. “What kind of ninny do you think me? No, Commander. If that had been all—” He stopped, hunting for words, in confusion.

  He said, “Commander, he would not accept refusal. He persecuted him day and night, invaded his mind, used laran against him. . . .”

  Kennard’s eyes sharpened. “Lord Hastur, what do you know of this wild tale? The boy looks ill. Is he raving?”

  Regis stood up with a surge of violent anger that matched Kennard’s own. “Kennard Alton, I am a Hastur and I do not lie! Send for Lord Dyan if you will, and question me in his presence!”