Heritage and Exile

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Saint-Valentine-of-the-Snows, saint or no, had nearly destroyed Regis . Perhaps, if he had been less obedient, less scrupulous . . .

  He said, “Just the same, I must speak the truth to you, Dani. I am sorry if it hurts you, but I cannot hurt myself again by lying, to you or myself. I am like Dyan. Now, at least. I will not do what he has done, but I feel as he felt, and I think I must have known it for a long time. If you cannot accept this, you need not call me lord or even friend, but please believe I did not know it myself.”

  “But I know you’ve been honest with me,” Danilo gasped. “I tried to keep it from you—I was so ashamed—I wanted to die for you, it would have been easier. Don’t you think I can tell the difference?” he demanded. Tears were streaming down his face. “Like Dyan? You? Dyan, who cared nothing for me, who found his pleasure in tormenting me and drank in my fear and loathing as his own joy—” He drew a deep, gasping breath, as if there were not enough air anywhere to breathe. “And you. You’ve gone on like this, day after day, torturing yourself, letting yourself come almost to the edge of death, just to keep from frightening me—do you think I am afraid of you? Of anything you could say or . . . or do?” The lines of light around him were blazing now, and Regis wondered if Danilo, in the surge of emotion blurring them both, really knew what he was saying.

  He stretched both hands to Danilo and said, very gently, “Part of the sickness, I think, was trying to hide from each other. We’ve come close to destroying each other because of it. It’s simpler than that. We don’t have to talk about it and try to find words. Dani—bredu—will you speak to me, now, in the way we cannot misunderstand?”

  Danilo hesitated for a moment and Regis, frightened with the old agonizing fear of a rebuff, felt as if he could not breathe. Then, although Regis could feel the last aching instant of fear, reluctance, shame as if it were in himself, Danilo reached out his hands and laid them, palm to palm, guided by a sure instinct, against Regis’ own hands. He said, “I will, bredu.”

  The touch was that small but definite electric shock. Regis felt the energy pulses blazing up in him like live lightning for an instant. He felt the current, then, running through them both, from Danilo into him, into his whole body—the centers in the head, the base of the throat, beneath the heart, down deep inside his whole body—and back again through Danilo. The muddied, swirling eddies in the currents began to clear, to run like a smooth pulse, a swift current. For the first time in months, it seemed, he could see clearly, without the crawling sickness and dizziness, as the energy channels began to flow in a straightforward circuit. For a moment this shared life energy was all either of them could feel and, under the relief of it, Regis drew what seemed his first clear breath in a long time.

  Then, very slowly, his thoughts began to merge with Danilo’s. Clear, together, as if they were a single mind, a single being, joined in an ineffable warmth and closeness.

  This was the real need. To reach out to someone, this way, to feel this togetherness, this blending. Living with your skin off. This is what laran is.

  In the peace and comfort of that magical blending, Regis was still aware of the tension and clawing need in his body, but that was less important. But why should either of us be afraid of that now?

  This, Regis knew, was what had twisted his vital forces into knots, blockading the vital energy flows until he was near death. Sexuality was only part of it; the real trouble was the unwillingness to face and acknowledge what was within him. He knew without words that the clearing of these channels had freed him to be what he was, and what he would be.

  Some day he would know the trick of directing those currents without making them flow through his body. But now this is what he needed, and only someone who could accept him entirely, all of him, mind and body and emotions, could have given it to him. And it was a closer brotherhood than blood. Living with your skin off.

  And suddenly he knew that he need not go to a tower. What he had learned now was a simpler way of what he would have been taught there. He knew he could use laran now, any way he needed to. He could use his matrix without getting sick again, he could reach anyone he needed to reach, send the message that had to be sent.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  (Lew Alton’s narrative)

  For the ninth or tenth time in an hour I tiptoed to the door, unfastened the leather latch and peered out. The outside world was nothing but swirling, murky grayness. I backed away from it, wiping snow from my eyes, then saw in the dim light that Marjorie was awake. She sat up and wiped the rest of the snow from my face with her silk kerchief.

  “It’s early in the season for so heavy a storm.”

  “We have a saying in the hills, darling. Put no faith in a drunkard’s prophecy, another man’s dog, or the weather at any season.”

  “Just the same,” she said, struggling to put my own thoughts into words, “I know these mountains. There’s something in this storm that frightens me. The wind doesn’t rage as it should. The snow is too wet for this season. It’s wrong somehow. Storms, yes. But not like this.”

  “Wrong or right, I only wish it would stop.” But for the moment we were helpless against it. We might as well enjoy what small good there was in being snowbound together. I buried my face in her breast; she said, laughing, “You are not at all sorry to be here with me.”

  “I would rather be with you at Arilinn,” I said. “We would have a finer bridal chamber.”

  She put her arms around me. It was so dark we could not see one another’s faces, but we needed no light. She whispered, “I am happy with you wherever we are.”

  We were exaggeratedly gentle with one another now. I hoped a time might come, some day, when we could come into one another’s arms without fear. I knew I would never forget, not while I lived, that terrifying madness that had gripped us both, nor those dreadful hours, after Marjorie had cried herself into a stunned, exhausted sleep, while I lay restless, aching with the fear she might never trust or love me again.

  That fear had vanished a few hours later, when she opened her eyes, still dark and bruised in her tear-stained face, and impulsively reached for me, with a caress that healed my fears. But one fear remained: could it seize us again? Could anyone, ever, be sane, after the touch of Sharra?

  But for now we were without fear. Later Marjorie slept; I hoped this prolonged rest would help her recover her strength after long traveling. I moved restlessly away, peering into the storm again. Later, I knew, I must brave the outdoors to give the last of our grain and fodder to the horses.

  There was something very wrong with the storm. It made me think of Thyra’s trick with the waterfall. No, that was foolish. No sane person would meddle with the weather for some private end.

  But I said it myself: Could anyone be sane, after the touch of Sharra?

  I dared not even look into my matrix, check what, if anything, was behind the undiminished strangeness of the storm. While Sharra was out and raging, seeking to draw us back, my matrix was useless—worse than useless, dangerous, deadly.

  I fed the horses, came back inside to find Marjorie still sleeping and knelt to kindle a fire with a little of our remaining wood supply. Food was running low, but a few days of fasting would not hurt us. Worse was the shortage of fodder for the horses. As I put some grain to cook for porridge, I wondered if I had yet made Marjorie pregnant. I hoped so, of course, then caught myself with a breath of consternation. Evanda and Avarra, not yet, not yet! This journey was hard enough on her already. I felt torn, ambivalent. With a deep instinct I hoped she was already bearing my child, yet I was afraid of what I most desired.

  I knew what to do, of course. Celibacy is impossible in the tower circles, except for the Keepers, and it takes an unimaginable toll of them. Yet pregnancy is dangerous for the women working in the relays, and we cannot risk interruption of their term. I suspected Marjorie would be shocked and indignant if I tried to protect her this way. I would not have had her feel otherwise. But what were we to do? At least we
should talk about it, honestly and openly. It would have to be her own choice, either way.

  Behind me Marjorie stirred restlessly in her sleep, cried out “No! No! Thyra, no—” and sat bolt upright, holding her hands to her head as if in wild terror. I ran to her. She was sobbing with fright, but when I got her fully awake she could not tell me what she had seen or dreamed.

  Was Thyra doing this to her? I didn’t doubt she was capable of it, and now I had no faith in her scruples. Nor in Kadarin’s. I braced myself against the hurt of that. We had been friends. What had changed them?

  Sharra? If the fires of Sharra could break through the discipline of years at Arilinn, what would it do to a wild telepath without it?

  Marjorie said, a little wistfully, “You were a little in love with Thyra, weren’t you?”

  “I desired her,” I said quietly, facing it. “That kind of thing is unavoidable in a close circle of that sort. It might have happened with any woman who could reach my mind. But she did not want it; she tried to fight against it. I, at least, knew it could happen. Thyra was trying very hard not to be aware of it.”

  How much had that battle with herself damaged and disrupted her? Had I failed Thyra, too? I should have tried harder to help her confront it, face it in full awareness. I should have made us all—all—be honest with one another, as my training demanded, especially when I saw where our undisciplined emotions were leading us—to rage and violence and hate.

  We could never have controlled Sharra. But if I had known sooner what was happening among us all, I might have seen the way we were being warped, distorted.

  I had failed them all, my kinsmen, my friends, by loving them too much, not wanting to hurt them with what they were.

  The experiment, noble as Beltran’s dream had been, lay in ruins. Now, whatever the cost, the Sharra matrix must be monitored, then destroyed. But again, what of those who had been sealed to Sharra?

  The snow continued to fall all that day and night, and was still falling when we woke the next morning, drifting high around the stone buildings. I felt we should try to pass on, nevertheless, but knew it was insanity. The horses could never force their way through those drifts. Yet if we were trapped here much longer, without food for them, they would not be able to travel.

  It must have been the next afternoon—events of that time are blurred in my mind—when I roused from sleep to hear Marjorie cry out in fear. The door burst inward and Kadarin stood in the doorway, half a dozen of Beltran’s guards crowding behind him.

  I snatched up my sword but within seconds I was hopelessly outmatched, and with a horrible sense of infinite repetition, stood struggling, helplessly pinioned between the guards. Marjorie had drawn back into a corner. As Kadarin went toward her I told myself that if he handled her roughly I would kill him, but he only lifted her gently to her feet and draped his own cloak over her shoulders. He said, “Foolish child, didn’t you know we couldn’t let you go like that?” He thrust her into the arms of two of the guards and said, “Take her outside. Don’t hurt her, treat her gently, but don’t let her go or I’ll have your heads!”

  “Do you make war on women? Can’t you settle it with me, man to man?”

  He was still holding my sword; he shrugged, flung it into a corner. “So much for your lowland toys. I learned long ago to fight my battles with sounder weapons. If you think I’d hurt Marjorie, you’re more of a fool than I ever believed you. I’ll die first.”

  “Do you think I’ll ever work with you again? No, damn you, I’ll die first.”

  “Yes, you will,” he said in an almost amiable tone. “There isn’t the slightest use in your heroics, dear boy.”

  “What did you do, find you couldn’t handle Sharra alone? How much did you destroy before you found it out?”

  “I don’t have to account to you,” he said with sudden brutality. I fought momentarily against the men holding me and at the same time lashed out with a murderous mental assault. I had always been told that the unleashed rage of an Alton can kill, had been disciplined never, never to let my anger wholly free. Yet now . . .

  I let my rage go, visualizing hands at Kadarin’s throat, my mind raining hatred and fury on him . . . I felt him wince under the onslaught, saw him go white, sag to his knees . . .

  “Quick,” he gasped in a strangled voice, “knock him—out—”

  A fist connected with my jawbone, darkness crashed through my mind. I felt myself go limp, hang helpless between my captors. Kadarin came and took over the beating himself, his ring-laden hands slashing hard at my face, blow after blow until I went down into a blurred, red-shot darkness. Then I realized they were hauling me out into the snowstorm; the cold sleet on my face revived me a little. Kadarin’s face hung in a red mist before my eyes.

  “I don’t want to kill you, Lew. Come quietly now.”

  I said thickly, through my torn and bleeding mouth, “Better kill me . . . brave man, who beats a man held helpless by . . . a couple of others. . . . Give me two men to hold you and I’ll beat you half dead too . . . dishonored . . .”

  “Oh, save your Domain cant,” he said. “I went beyond all that jabber of honor and dishonor long ago. I’ve no use for you dead. You are coming with me, so choose if you will come quietly, like the sensible lad you always were and will be again, or whether you will be carried, after these fellows beat you senseless? They don’t like beating helpless men, either. Or shall I make it easy and immobilize you?” His hand went out toward the matrix on my neck.

  No! No! Not again! I screamed, a frenzied cry which actually made him step back a pace. Then quietly—there had never been anything in the world as terrible as his low, even voice—he said, “You can’t endure that again, can you? I’ll do it if I must. But why not spare us both the pain?”

  “Better . . . kill me . . . instead.” I spat out the blood filling my mouth. It struck him in the face. Unhurriedly, he wiped it away. His eyes glinted like some bird of prey, mad and inhuman. He said, “I hoped you’d save me the worst threat. Nascar, go and get the girl. Get her marix stone off of her. She carries it in—”

  I cursed him, straining. “You devil, you fiend from hell! Do what you damn please with me, but let her alone!”

  “Will you come, then, with no more of this?”

  Slowly, defeated, I nodded. He smiled, a silky, triumphant smile, and jerked his head at the men to bring me along. I went between them, not protesting. If I, a strong man, could not endure that torment, how could I let them inflict it on Marjorie?

  The men shoved us along through the blinding snow. A couple of hundred feet from the house, past the wall of trees, the snow stopped as if a water faucet had been turned off; the woodland road lay green before us. I stared, unbelieving. Kadarin nodded. “Thyra has always wanted to experiment with storms,” he said, “and it kept you in one place until we were ready for you.”

  My instinct had been right. We should have pressed through it. I should have known. Despair took me. A helicopter was waiting for us; they lifted me into one seat, set Marjorie in another. They had tied her wrists with her silk scarf, but had not otherwise harmed her. I reached out to touch her hand. Kadarin, swiftly coming between us, gripped my wrist with fingers of steel.

  I jerked away from him as if he had been a cold corpse. I tried to meet Marjorie’s eyes. Together we might master him . . .

  “It’s no use, Lew. I cannot fight you and keep threatening you all the way to Aldaran,” Kadarin said tonelessly. He reached into a pocket, brought out a small red vial, uncapped it. “Drink this. And don’t waste time.”

  “No—”

  “I said drink it. Quickly. If you contrive to spill it, I shall have no recourse except to tear off your matrices; first Marjorie’s, then yours. I shall not threaten again.”

  Glancing at those inhuman eyes—Gods! This man had been my friend! Did he even know what he had become?—I knew we were both defenseless in his hands. Defeated, I raised the flask to my lips and swallowed the red liquid.

&nb
sp; The helicopter, the world slid away.

  And did not return.

  I did not know then, what drug he had given me. I am still not entirely sure. Nor have I ever known how much of what I remember from the next few days is dream and how much is underlaid by some curious core of reality.

  For a long time I saw nothing but fire. Forest fire raging in the hills beyond Armida; fire raining down on Caer Donn; the great form of fire, stretching out irresistible arms and breaking the walls of Storn Castle as if they had been made of dough. Fire burning in my own veins, raging in my very blood.

  I stood, once, on the highest point of Castle Aldaran and looked down on a hundred assembled men and felt the fire blazing behind me, sweeping through me with its wild lust and terror. I felt the men’s raw emotions surging up to where I stood, the Sharra sword between my hands, feeding my nerves with crude fear, lust, greed. . . .

  Again, a terrified child, I stood between my father’s hands, docilely awaiting the touch that could give me my heritage or my death. I felt the fury rising in me, raving in me, and I let the fire take him. He went up in flames, burning, burning. . . .

  I saw Regis Hastur, lying in a small dark hut somewhere on the road between Aldaran and Thendara, and knew he had failed. He lay there dying, his body torn with the last dying convulsions, unable to cross that dark threshold, failed, dying, burning. . . .

  I felt Dyan Ardais seize me from behind, felt my arm snap in his hands, felt through his touch the combined cruelty and lust. I turned on him and rained hatred and violence on him, too, and saw him go up under the flame of my hatred, burning, burning. . . .

  Once I heard Marjorie crying helplessly and fought up to consciousness again, and then I was in my room in Castle Aldaran, but I was tied down with enormous weights. Someone wedged my jaws open and poured down another dose of the pungent red drug, and I began to lose myself again in the dreams that were not dreams.

  I stood atop a great flight of stairs, leading down and down and down forever into a great burning pit of hell, and Marjorie stood before me with the Sharra matrix between her hands and her face white and empty, and the matrix gripped in my hands burned me like fire, burned through my hand. Down below, the faces of the men, upturned to me, poured wave upon wave of raw emotion through me again, so that I burned endlessly in a hell-fire of fury and lust, burning, burning. . . .