I woke up shuddering, crying out with the mingled terror and enchantment of the dream. The Sharra matrix lay shrouded and dormant.
But I dared not close my eyes again that night.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
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 irritible 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 kinsman had done. . . .
Without stopping to think, Regis was out of the chair, kneeling beside Dani on the hearth. His voice was shaking, partly with the cold which threatened to rip him apart with shudders, partly with that intense 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 bluehaloed 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 relief: 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 . . . !
But the swift denial was understood by both, not as a personal rejection, but the very embodiment of what they both were, so that the giving 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.
He never knew how he got there, but seconds later, it seemed, he felt searing pain all over his naked body, and found himself floating up to the chin in a great tub of boiling water. Danilo, kneeling at his side, was anxiously chafing his wrists. His head was splitting, but he could see solid objects again, and his own body was reassuringly firm. A servant was hovering around with clean garments, trying to attract Danilo’s attention long enough to get his approval of them.
Regis lay watching, too languid to do anything but accept their ministrations. He noticed that Danilo unobtrusively kept his own body between Regis and the Aldaran servant. Danilo chased the man out quickly, muttering under his breath, “I’m not going to trust any of them alone with you!”
At first the water had seemed scalding to his chilled body; now he realized it was barely warm, in fact it must have been drawn for some time, was probably a bath prepared for Danilo before he came in. Danilo was still bending over him, his face tight with worry. Suddenly Regis was filled with such intolerable anxiety that he cut off the intense, sensuous pleasure of the hot water soothing his chilled and stiffened body—eleven nights on the trail and not warm once!—and drew himself upright, hauling himself out of the hot tub, reaching for a towel to wrap himself in. Danilo knelt to dry him, saying, “I sent the servant for a healer-woman. There must be someone of that sort here. Regis, I never saw anyone faint like that before; your eyes were open but you couldn’t hear me or see me . . .”
“Threshold sickness.” Briefly he sketched in an explanation. “I’ve had a few attacks before. I’m over the worst.” I hope, he added to himself. “I doubt if the healer could do anything with this. Here, give me that. I can dress myself.” Firmly he took the towel away from Danilo. “Go and tell her not to bother, and find out if there’s anything hot to drink.”
Skeptically Danilo retreated. Regis finished drying himself and clambered into the unfamiliar clothing. His hands were shaking almost too hard to tie the knots of his tunic. What’s the matter with me, he asked himself why didn’t I want Dani to help he dress? He looked at his hands in cold shock, as if they belonged to someone else. I didn’t want him to touch me!
Even to him that sounded incongruous. They had lived together in the rough intimacy of the barracks room for months. They had been close-linked, even thinking one another’s thoughts.
This was different.
Irresistibly his mind was drawn back to that night in the barracks, when he had reached out to Danilo, torn by an almost frenzied desire to share his misery, the spasm of loathing and horror with which Danilo had flung him away. . . .
And then, shaken and shamed and terrified, Regis knew what had prompted that touch, and why he was suddenly shy of Danilo now. The knowledge struck him motionless, his bare feet cold through the wolfskin rug on the tile floor.
To touch him. Not to comfort Dani, but to comfort his own need, his own loneliness, his own hunger. . . .
He moved deliberately, afraid if he remained motionless another instant the threshold sickness would surge up over him again. He knelt on the wolfskin, drawing fur-lined stockings up over his knees and deliberately tying the thongs into intricate knots. On the surface of his mind he thought that fur clothing was life-saving here in the mountains. It felt wonderful.
But, relentless, the memory he had barricaded since his twelfth year burst open like a bleeding wound; the memory he had let himself lose consciousness before recovering on the northward trail: Lew’s face, alight with fire, his barriers down in the last extremity of exhaustion and pain and fear.
And Regis had shared it all with him, there were no barriers between them. None. Regis had known what Lew wanted and would not ask, was too proud and too shy to ask. Something Re
gis had never felt before, that Lew thought he was too young to feel or to understand. But Regis had known and had shared it.
And afterward, perhaps because Lew had never spoken of it, Regis was too ashamed to remember. And he had never dared open his mind again. Why? Why? Out of fear, out of shame? Out of . . . longing?
Until Danilo, without even trying, broke that barricade.
And now Regis knew why it was Dani who could break it . . .
He doesn’t know, Regis thought, and then with a bleak and spartan pride, He must never know.
He stood up, felt the splitting pain at his forehead again. He knew a frightened moment of disquiet. How could he keep this from him? Dani was a telepath too!
Lew had said it was like living with your skin off. Well, his skin was off and he was doubly naked. Taking a grip on himself, he walked out into the other room, decided his boots weren’t dry. Inside he felt cold and trembly, but physically he was quite warm and calm.
How could he face Lew again, knowing this? Coldly, Regis told himself not to be a fool. Lew had always known. He wasn’t a coward, he didn’t lie to himself! Lew remembered, so no wonder he was astonished when Regis had said he did not have laran!
Lew had asked him why he could not bear to remember. . . .
“You should have gone straight to bed and let me bring you supper there,” Danilo said behind him, and Regis, firmly taking mastery of his face, looked around. Danilo was looking at him with friendly concern, and Regis remembered, with a shock, that Danilo knew nothing, nothing of the memory and awareness that had flooded him in the scant few minutes they had been parted. He said aloud, trying for a casual neutral tone, “I collapsed before I saw anything of the suite but this room. I have no idea where I’m going to be sleeping.”
“And I’ve had days with nothing to do but explore. Come, I’ll show you the way. I told the servant to bring your supper in here. How does it feel to be quartered in a royal suite, after the student dormitory at Nevarsin?”
There was room enough for a regent and all his entourage in this guest suite: enormous bedrooms, servants quarters in plenty, a great hall, even a small octagonal presence chamber with a throne and footstools for petitioners. It was more elaborate than his grandfather’s suite in Thendara. Danilo had chosed the smallest and least elaborate bedroom, but it looked like a royal favorite’s chamber. There was a huge bed on a dais which would, Regis thought irreverently, have held a Dry-Towner, three of his wives and six of his concubines. The servant he had seen before was warming the sheets with a long-handled warming pan, and there was a fire in the fireplace. He let Danilo help him into the big bed, put a tray of hot food beside him. Danilo sent the man away, saying gravely, “It is my privilege to wait on my lord with my own hands.” Regis would have laughed at the solemn, formal words, but knew even a smile would hurt Danilo unspeakably. He kept his composure, until the man was out of earshot, then said, “I hope you’re not going to take that formal my-lord tone all the time now, bredu.”
There was relief in Danilo’s eyes too. “Only in front of strangers, Regis.” He came and lifted covers off steaming bowls of food, clambered up on the bed and poured hot soup from a jug. He said, “The food’s good. I had to ask for cider instead of wine the first day, that’s all. I see they brought both tonight, and the cider’s hot.”
Regis drank the soup and the hot cider thirstily; but although it was his first hot meal in days, he found it almost too hard to chew and swallow.
“Now tell me how you found me here, Regis.”
Regis’ hand went to the matrix on the thong around his neck. Danilo shrank a little. “I thought such things were to be used only by technicians, with proper safeguards. Isn’t it dangerous?”
“I knew no other way.”
Danilo looked at him, visibly moved. “And you took that risk for me, bredu?”
Regis deliberately withdrew from the moment of emotion. “Take that last cutlet, won’t you? I’m not hungry. . . . I’m here and alive, aren’t I? I expect I’ll have trouble with my kinfolk; I got away from Gabriel and my escort by a trick. I was supposed to be on my way to Neskaya Tower.”
The diversion worked. Danilo asked with a faint revulsion, “Are you to be a matrix mechanic, now they know you have laran?”
“God forbid! But I have to learn to safeguard myself.”
Danilo had made a long mental leap. “Is this—using a matrix, untrained—why you have been having threshold sickness?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps. It couldn’t help.”
Danilo said, “I should have sent for Lew Alton, instead of the healer-woman. He’s tower-trained, he’d know what to do for it.”
Regis flinched. He didn’t want to face Lew just yet. Not till he had his own thoughts in order. “Don’t disturb him. I’m all right now.”
“Well, if you’re sure,” Danilo said uncertainly. “No doubt, by now, he’s in bed with his girl and wouldn’t thank anyone for disturbing him, but just the same—”
“His girl?”
“Aldaran’s foster-daughter. The guards are lonely and have nothing to do but gossip, and I thought it just as well to learn as much as I could about what’s going on here. They say Lew’s madly in love with her, and old Kermiac’s arranging a marriage.”
Well, Regis thought, that made good sense. Lew had never been happy in the lowlands and he was lonely. If he took a wife from his mountain kinsmen, that was a good thing.
Danilo said, “There’s wine, if you want it,” but Regis firmly shook his head. He might sleep better for it, but he dared not risk anything that might break down his defenses. He took a handful of sugared nuts and began nibbling them.
“Now, Dani, tell me all about it. Old Kermiac did not know why they had brought you here, and I had no chance to ask Lew alone.” He wondered suddenly which of the women in the fireside room was Lew’s sweetheart. The hard-faced girl with the harp? Or the delicate remote, younger one in blue?
“But you must have known all about it,” said Danilo, “or how could you have come after me? I tried . . . I tried to reach out for you with my mind, but I was afraid. I could feel them. I was afraid they’d use that somehow . . .” Regis sensed he was almost crying. “It’s terrible! Laran is terrible! I don’t want it, Regis! I don’t want it!”
Impulsively Regis reached out to lay a steadying hand on his wrist, stopped himself. Oh no. Not that. Not so easy an excuse to . . . to touch him. He said, keeping his voice detached, “It seems we have no choice, Dani. It has come to us both.”
“It’s like—like lightning! It hits people who don’t want it, hits them at random—” Danilo’s voice shook.
Regis wondered how anyone lived with it. He said, “I don’t much want it either, now that I’ve got it. No more than I want to be heir to Comyn.” He sighed. “But we have no choice. Or the only choice we have is to misuse it—like Dyan—or to meet it like men, and honorably.” He knew he was not talking only of laran now. “Laran cannot be all evil. It helped me find you.”
“And if I’ve brought you into danger of death . . .”
“That’s enough of that!” The words were a sharp rebuke; Danilo shrank as if Regis had slapped him, but Regis felt he dared not face another emotional outburst. “Lord Kermiac has called me guest. Among mountain people that is a sacred obligation. Neither of us is in danger.”
“Not from old Kermiac perhaps. But Beltran wants to use my laran to awaken other telepaths, and what’s he going to do with them when he’s got them awakened? Whatever they’re doing . . .” He stared right through Regis and whispered, “It’s wrong. I can feel it, reaching for me even in my sleep!”
“Surely Lew wouldn’t be a party to anything dishonorable?”
“Not knowingly, maybe. But he’s very angry with the Comyn, and wholly committed to Beltran now,” Danilo said. “This is what he told me.”
He began to explain Beltran’s plan for revival of the old matrix technology, bringing Darkover from a non-industrial, non-technologi
cal culture into a position of strength in a galactic empire. As he spoke of star-travel Regis’ eyes brightened, recalling his own dreams. Suppose he need not desert his world and his heritage to go out among the stars, but could serve his people and still be part of a great star-spanning culture . . . it seemed too good to be true.
“Surely if it could have been done at all, it would have been done at the height of the strength of the towers. They must have tried this.”
“I don’t know,” said Danilo humbly, “I’m not as well-educated as you, Regis.”
And Regis knew so little!
“Let’s not sit and make guesses about what they’re doing,” Regis said. “Let’s wait till tomorrow and ask them.” He yawned deliberately. “I haven’t slept in a bed for a dozen nights. I think I’ll try this one out.” Danilo was taking away the mugs and bowls; Regis beckoned him back.
“I hope you have no foolish notion of standing guard while I sleep, or sleeping on the floor across my doorway?”
“Only if you want me to,” said Dani, but he sounded hurt, and with that unwelcome sensitivity Regis knew he’d have liked to. The picture that had haunted him for days now returned, Dani’s brother shielding his father with his body. Did Dani really want to die for him? The thought shocked him speechless.
He said curtly, “Sleep where you damn please, but get some sleep. And if you really like having me give you orders, Dani, that’s an order.” He didn’t wait to see where Dani chose. He slid down into the great bed and dropped into a bottomless pit of sleep.
At first, exhaustion taking its toll of his aching body and overstrained emotions, he was too weary even to dream. Then he began to drift in and out of dreams: the sound of horses’ hooves on a road, galloping . . . the armory in Comyn Castle, struggling weakly against Dyan, armed and fresh against an aching lassitude that would not let Regis lift his sword . . . a great form swooping down, touching Castle Aldaran with a finger of fire, flames rising skyward. By the firelight he saw Lew’s face alight with terror, and reached out to him, feeling the strange and unfamiliar emotions and sensations, but this time he knew what he was doing. This time he was not a child, his child’s body responding half-aware to the most innocent of caresses; this time he knew and accepted it all, and suddenly it was Danilo in his arms, and Danilo was struggling, trying to push him away in pain and terror. Regis, gripped by need and blind cruelty, gripped him more and more tightly, fighting to hold him, subdue him, and then, with a gasp, cried aloud, “No! Oh, no!” and flung him away, pulling himself upright in the great bed.
Heritage and Exile Page 34
