As Karinn spoke, the unease in Allart clarified, with a sudden sharp vision of this air-car bursting asunder, exploding, falling out of the sky like a stone. Was this only a distant probability or did it truly lie before them? He had no way of knowing.
“I have laran enough to be uneasy at trusting myself to this contraption. Father, we will be attacked. You know that?”
“Dom Allart,” Karinn said, “this contraption, as you call it, is the safest means of transport ever devised by starstone technology. You are vulnerable to attack between here and Hali, should you go a-horse, for three days; in an air-car you will be there before midday and they must place their attackers very precisely. Furthermore, it is easier to defend yourself with laran than against such weapons as they may send against you with armed men. I can see a day coming on Darkover when all the Great Houses will have such weapons and devices to protect themselves against envious rivals or rebellious vassals; and then there will be no more wars, either, for no sane men will risk this kind of death and destruction. Such contraptions as this, vai dom, may be only expensive toys for rich men now, but they will bring us such an age of peace as Darkover has never known!”
He spoke with such conviction and enthusiasm that Allart doubted his own rising vision of dreadful warfare with weapons ever more dreadful. Karinn must be right. Such weapons would surely restrain sane men from making war at all, and so he who invented the most terrible weapens worked the harder for peace.
Taking his seat, Allart said, “Aldones, Lord of Light, grant you speak with true vision, Karinn. And now let us see this miracle.”
I have seen many possible futures which never came to pass. I have found this morning that I love my father well, and I will cling to the belief that I will never lay hands upon him, no more than I would wring the neck of that poor harmless little riyachiya in the night past. I will not fear attack, either, but I will guard against it, while I take pleasure in this new means of travel. He let Karinn show him how to fasten the straps that would hold him in his seat if the air became turbulent, and the device that swiveled his seat behind a magnified pane of glass, giving him instant view of any attackers or menace.
He listened closely as the laranzu, taking his own seat and fastening himself into place, bent his head in alert concentration and the battery-powered turbine began to roar. He had practiced enough in boyhood, in the tiny gliders levitated by small matrixes and soaring on the air currents around the Lake of Hali, to be aware of the elementary principles of heavier-than-air flight, but it was incredible to him that a matrix circle, a group of close-linked telepath minds, could charge a battery strongly enough to power such enormous turbines. Yet laran could be powerful, and a matrix could amplify the electric currents of the brain and body enormously, a hundredfold, a thousandfold. He wondered how many minds with laran it took, operating for how long, to charge such batteries with the tremendous humming power of those roaring turbines. He would have liked to ask Karinn— but would not disturb the laranzu’s concentration—why such a vehicle could not be adapted to ground transit, but quickly realized that for any ground vehicle roads and highways were needed. Someday, perhaps, roads would be practical, but on the rough terrain from the Kilghard Hills north, ground transit would probably always be limited to the feet of men and animals.
Quickly, with the humming power, they skimmed along a level runway surfaced with glassy material which must have been poured there by matrix-power, too; then they were airborne, rising swiftly over treetops and forests, moving into the very clouds with an exhilarating speed that took Allart’s breath away. It was as far beyond the soaring he had done on gliders, as the gliders were above the slow plodding of a chervine! Karinn motioned, and the air-car turned its vast wings southward and flew over the forests to the south.
They had flown for a considerable time. Allart was beginning to feel the straps constricting his body, and wished he might loosen them for a little, when he felt within himself, with a spurt of sudden excitement, alertness and fear.
We are seen, pursued—we will be attacked!
Look to the west, Allart—
Allart squinted his eyes into the light. Small shapes appeared there, one, two, three—were they gliders? If they were, such an air-car could outrun them swiftly. And, indeed, Karinn, with swift motions of his hands, was turning the air-car to evade the pursuers. For a moment it seemed they would not be followed; one of the gliding forms—These are not gliders! Are they hawks?—soared up, up, above them, higher and higher. It was indeed a hawk, but Allart could feel human intelligence, human, awareness, watching them with malevolent will. No natural hawk had ever had eyes which glittered so, like great jewels! No, this is no normal bird! Restless with unease, he watched the soaring flight of the bird as it went higher and higher, winging with long, swift flapping strokes into the sky above them…
Suddenly a narrow, gleaming shape detached itself from the bird and fell down, plummeting, arrowlike, toward the car. Allart’s vision, even before thought, provided him with the knowledge of what would happen if that long, deadly shape, gleaming like glass, should strike the air-car: they would explode into fragments, each fragment coated with the terrible clingfire, which clung to what it touched and went on burning and burning, through metal and glass and flesh and bone.
Allart grasped the matrix he wore about his neck, jerked it with shaking fingers from the protecting silks. There is so little time… Focusing into the depths of the jewel, he altered his awareness of time so that now the glassy shape fell ever more slowly, and he could focus on it, as if taking it between invisible fingers of force… Slowly, slowly, carefully… he must not risk having it break while it could fall into the air-car and fragments of clingfire destroy flesh and car. His slowed awareness spun accelerated futures through his mind—he saw the air-car exploding in fragments, his father slumping over and blazing up with clingfire in his hair, Karinn going up like a torch, and the air-car falling out of control, heavier than a stone… but none of those things would be allowed to happen!
With infinite delicacy, his mind focused into the pulsing lights of his matrix, and his eyes closed, Allart manipulated the glassy shape away from the air-car. He sensed resistance, knew the one guiding the device was fighting him for control of it. He struggled silently, feeling as if his physical hands were trying to keep hold of a greased and wriggling live thing while other hands fought to wrest it away, to fling it at him.
Karinn, quickly, get us higher if you can so that it will break below us…
He felt his body slump against the straps as the air-car angled sharply upward; saw, with a fragment of his mind, his father collapse in his seat, thinking with swift contrition, He is old, frail, his heart cannot take much of this… but the main part of his mind was still in those fingers of force that struggled with the now-writhing device, which seemed to squirm under the control of his mind. They were nearly free of it now—
It exploded with a wild crash that seemed to rock all space and time, and Allart felt sharp burning pain in his hands; swiftly he withdrew his consciousness from the vicinity of the exploded device, but the burning still resonated in his physical hands. Now he opened his eyes and saw that the device had indeed exploded well below them, and fragments of clingfire were falling in a molten shower to set ablaze the forests below. But one fragment of the glassy shell had been flung upward, over the rim of the air-car, and the thin fire was spreading along the edge of the cockpit, reaching fingers of flame toward where his father lay slumped and unconscious.
Allart fought against his first impulse—to lean over and beat out the fire with his hands. Clingfire could not be extinguished that way; any fragment that touched his hands would burn through his clothing and his flesh and through to the bone, as long as there was anything left to be consumed. He focused again into the matrix—there was no time to take out the fire-talisman Karinn had given him, he should have had it ready!—calling his own fire and flaring it out toward the clingfire. Briefly it flamed h
igh, then with a last gutter of light, the clingfire died and was gone.
“Father—” he cried, “are you hurt?”
His father held out shaking hands. The outer edge and the littlest finger were seared, blackened, but there was, as far as Allart could see, no greater hurt. Dom Stephen said in a weak voice, “The gods forgive me that I called your courage into question, Allart. You saved us all. I fear I am too old for such a struggle. But you mastered the fire at once.”
“Is the vai dom wounded?” Karinn called from the controls. “Look! They have fled.” Indeed, low on the horizon, Allart could see the small retreating shapes. Did they put real birds under spell by matrix to carry their vicious weapons? Or were they some monstrous, mutant-bred things, no more birds than the cralmacs were human; or some dreadful matrix-powered mechanical device that had been brought to deliver their deadly weapon? Allart could not guess, and his father’s plight was such that he did not feel free to pursue their attackers even in thought.
“He is shocked and a little burned,” he called anxiously to Karinn. “How long will it be before we are there?”
“But a moment or two, Dom Allart. I can see the gleam of the lake. There, below—”
The air-car circled, and Allart could see the shoreline and the glimmering sands, like jewels, along the shores of Hali… Legend says that the sands where Hastur, son of Light, walked, were jeweled from that day… And there the curious lighter-than-water waves that broke incessantly along the shore. To the north were shining towers, the Great House of Elhalyn, and at the far end of the lake, the Tower of Hali, gleaming faintly blue. As Karinn glided downward, Allart unfastened his restraining straps and clambered to his father’s side, taking the burned hands in his own, focusing into the matrix to look with the eyes of his mind and assess the damage. The wound was minor indeed; his father was only shocked, his heart racing, more frightened than hurt.
Below them, Allart could see servants in the Hastur colors running out on the landing field as the air-car descended, but he held his father’s hands in his own, trying to blot out all that he could foresee. Visions, none of them true… the air-car did not explode in flame… what I see need not come—it is only what may come, borne of my fears….
The air-car touched the ground. Allart called, “Bring my lord’s body-servants! He is hurt; you must carry him within!” He lifted his father in his arms, and lowered him into the waiting arms of the servants, then followed as they carried the frail figure within.
From somewhere a familiar voice, hateful from years ago, said, “What has come to him, Allart? Were you attacked in the air?” and he recognized the voice of his elder brother, Damon-Rafael.
Briefly he described the encounter, and Damon-Rafael said, nodding, “That is the only way to handle such weapons. They used the hawk-things, then? They have sent them upon us only once or twice before, but once they burned an orchard of trees, and nuts were scarce that year.”
“In the name of all the gods, brother, who are these Ridenow? Are they of the blood of Hastur and Cassilda, that they can send such laran weapons upon us?”
“They are upstarts,” Damon-Rafael said. “They were Dry-towns bandits in the beginning, and they moved into Serrais and forced or bullied the old families of Serrais to give them their women as wives. The Serrais had strong laran, some of them, and now you can see the result—they grow stronger. They talk truce, and I think we must make truce with them, for this fighting cannot go on much longer. But their terms will not compromise. They want unquestioned ownership of the Domain of Serrais, and they claim that with their laran they have a right to it… But this is no time to speak of war and politics, brother. How does our father? He seemed not much hurt, but we must get a healer-woman to him at once, come—”
In the Great Hall, Dom Stephen had been laid on a padded bench and a healer-woman was kneeling at his side, smearing ointments on the seared fingers, bandaging them in soft cloths. Another woman held a wine cup to the old lord’s lips. He stretched a hand to his sons as they hurried toward him, and Damon-Rafael knelt at his side. Looking at his brother, Allart thought it was a little like looking into a blurred mirror; seven years his senior, Damon-Rafael was a little taller, a little heavier, like himself fair-haired and gray-eyed as were all the Hasturs of Elhalyn, his face beginning to show signs of the passing years.
“The gods be praised that you are spared to us now, Father!”
“For that you must thank your brother, Damon; it was he who saved us.”
“If only for that, I give him welcome home,” Damon-Rafael said, turning and drawing his brother into a kinsman’s embrace. “Welcome, Allart. I hope you have come back to us in health, and without the sick fancies you had as a boy.”
“Are you hurt, my son?” Dom Stephen asked, looking up at Allart with concern. “I saw you were in pain.”
Allart spread out his hands before him. He had not been touched physically by the fire at all, but with the touch of his mind he had handled the fire-device, and the resonances had vibrated to his physical hands. There were red seared marks all along his palms, spreading up to his wrists, but the pain, though fierce, was dreamlike, nightmarish, of the mind and not of damaged flesh. He focused his awareness on it and the pain receded as the reddish marks began slowly to fade.
Damon-Rafael said, “Let me help you, brother,” and took Allart’s fingers in his own hands, focusing closely on them. Under his touch the red marks paled to white. Lord Elhalyn smiled.
“I am well pleased,” he said. “My younger son has come back to me strong and a warrior, and my sons stand together as brothers. This day’s work has been well done, if it has shown you—”
“Father!” Allart leaped toward him as the voice broke off with shocking suddenness. The healer-woman moved swiftly to his side as the old man fought for breath, his face darkening and congesting; then he slumped again, slid to the floor, and lay without moving.
Damon-Rafael’s face was drawn with horror and grief. “Oh, my father—” he whispered, and Allart, standing in shock and dread at his side, looked up for the first time around the Great Hall, seeing for the first time what he had not seen in the confusion: the green and gold hangings, the great carved chair at the far end of the room.
So it was my father’s Great Hall where he lay dead, and I did not even see till it was too late… My foresight was true, but I mistook its cause… Even knowing the many futures does nothing to avoid them….
Damon-Rafael bent his head, weeping. He said to Allart, holding out his arms, “He is dead; our father has gone into the Light,” and the brothers embraced, Allart trembling with shock at the sudden and unexpected descent of the future he had foreseen.
All around them, one by one, the servants knelt, turning to the brothers; and Damon-Rafael, his face drawn with grief, his breath coming ragged, forced himself to composure as the servants spoke the formula.
“Our Lord is dead. Live long, our Lord,” and kneeling, held out their hands in homage to Damon-Rafael.
Allart knelt and, as was fitting and right under the law, was the first to pledge to the new overlord of Elhalyn, Damon-Rafael.
Chapter Six
Stephen, Lord Elhalyn, was laid to rest in the ancient burying ground by the shores of Hali; and all the Hastur kin of the Lowland Domains, from the Aillards on the plains of Valeron, to the Hasturs of Carcosa, had come to do him honor. King Regis, stooped and old, looking almost too frail to ride, had stood beside the grave of his half-brother, leaning heavily on the arm of his only son.
Prince Felix, heir to the throne of Thendara and the crown of the Domains, had come to embrace Allart and Damon-Rafael, calling them “dear cousins.” Felix was a slight, effeminate young man with gilt hair and colorless eyes, and he had the long, narrow pale face and hands of chieri blood. When the funeral rites were ended there was a great ceremony. Then the old king, pleading age and ill health, was taken home by his courtiers, but Felix remained to do honor to the new Lord of Elhalyn, Damon-Rafael.
Even the Ridenow lord had sent an envoy from far Serrais, proffering an unasked truce for twice forty days.
Allart, welcoming guests in the hall, came suddenly upon a face he knew—though he had never set eyes upon her before. Dark hair, like a cloud of darkness under a blue veil; gray eyes, but so darkly lashed that for a moment the eyes themselves seemed as dark as the eyes of some animal. Allart felt a strange tightening in his chest as he looked upon the face of the dark woman whose face had haunted him for so many days.
“Kinsman,” she said courteously, but he could not lower his eyes as custom demanded before an unmarried woman who was a stranger to him.
I know you well. You have haunted me, dreams and waking, and already I am more than half in love with you… Erotic images attacked him, unfitting for this company, and he struggled with them.
“Kinsman,” she said again, “why do you stare at me in such unseemly fashion?”
Allart felt the blood rising in his face; indeed it was discourtesy, almost indecency, to stare so at a woman who was a stranger to him, and he colored at the thought that she might possess laran, might be aware of the images that tormented him. He finally found a scrap of his voice.
“But I am no stranger to you, damisela. Nor is it discourtesy that a man shall look his handfasted bride directly in the face; I am Allart Hastur, and soon to be your husband.”
She raised her eyes and returned his gaze fairly. But there was tension in her voice. “Why, is it so? Still, I can hardly believe that you have borne my image in your mind since you last looked on my face, when I was an infant girl of four years. And I had heard, Dom Allart, that you had withdrawn yourself to Nevarsin, that you were ill or mad, that you wished to be a monk and renounce your heritage. Was it only idle gossip, then?”
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