The Spell Sword

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Andrew felt the thought—pick up the beat—and wondered exactly how it was done. Could you change your own heartbeat that way? Well, in the Medic and Psych Center he’d been taught on a biofeedback machine to initiate alpha rhythms for sleep or deep relaxation. This wasn’t all that different. He watched, trying to relax, as he tried to feel and sense the exact rhythmic pulse of the stone. It’s like feeling Callista’s heartbeat. He became conscious of his own heartbeat, of the rhythm of the blood in his temples, of all the small interior noises and feelings and rhythms. The pulse of the starstone between his palms quickened and brightened, quickened and brightened, and he was conscious of his own internal rhythms in a definite, out-of-phase counterpoint. I guess what I have to do is match those rhythms. He began breathing deep and slow, trying to match his breathing, at least, to the rhythm of the starstone. Callista’s rhythm? Don’t think. Concentrate. He managed to match his breathing to the exact rhythm of the stone. For an instant it faltered, went ragged, and he felt the spurt of adrenalin through him—Callista?—and realized that Ellemir had drawn a deep breath, audible, almost a gasp. He steeled himself to quiet again, tried to pick up the ragged rhythm, slowly returned it to normal. To his own detached wonder, he saw that as his breathing quieted the pulse in the starstone quieted, too.

  Now breathing and the pulse of the stone were one rhythm, but his heartbeat was a strong counter-rhythm against the matched beat of stone and breath. Concentrate. Pick up the beat. His eyes were aching, and a wave of nausea rippled through him. The stone was spinning— he squeezed his eyes shut, fighting the surging sickness, but the light and the crawling colors persisted through his closed eyelids.

  He moaned aloud, and the sound broke the growing beat to fragments. Damon quickly raised his head, and Ellemir looked up in apprehension.

  “What’s wrong?” Damon asked softly, and Andrew muttered with difficulty, “Seasick.” The room seemed to be swinging in slow circles around him and he held out one hand to brace himself. Ellemir looked pale, too.

  Damon wet his lips and said, “That happens. Damn. You’re too new to this. I wish—Aldones! I wish we had some kirian. Failing that—Ellemir, are you sure there is none here?”

  “I honestly don’t think so.”

  Damon thought, I’m not feeling so good myself. It’s not going to be easy.

  Andrew asked him, “Why should it have that effect?” Then he felt Damon’s surge of impatience: Is this the time for asking foolish questions? His anger, Andrew thought in slow incredulity, looked like a pale red glow around him. “The room’s—ragged,” he said, and leaned back, closing his eyes.

  Damon forced himself to be calm. This was not going to be easy even if they were all in total harmony. If they started arguing, it wasn’t even going to be possible. And he couldn’t expect Andrew, doing a difficult and unexpected thing with total strangers, and struggling against the sickness and pain of having the unused psi centers of his brain forced open, to stay in control. The job of staying in control was strictly up to him. That was a Keeper’s job, holding everyone in rapport. A woman’s job. Well, man or woman, right now it’s my job.

  He forced himself to relax, deliberately quieted his breathing. He said, “I’m sorry, Andrew. Everybody goes through it sometime or other. I’m sorry it’s so rough on you; I wish I could help. You’re feeling sick because, first, you’re using part of your brain that you usually don’t use. And, second, because your eyes, and your balance centers, and all the rest of it, are reacting to your effort to bring some—well, some automatic functions under deliberate, voluntary control. I don’t mean to be irritable. There’s a certain degree of physical irritability I can’t quite control either. Try not to focus your eyes on anything, if you can help it, and lie back against the cushions. The sickness will probably go away in a few minutes. Do the best you can.”

  Andrew stayed still, eyes closed, until the swaying sickness receded a little. He’s trying to help. The physical sensations were like bad side effects of some drug, a nausea that wasn’t even definite enough to be relieved by vomiting, a strange sensation of crawling in his very bowels, strange flashes of light against the inside of his eyes. Well, it wouldn’t kill him; he’d had bad hangovers that were worse. “I’m all right,” he said, and caught Damon’s surprised, grateful glance.

  “Actually it’s a good sign you should be sick at this stage,” he said. “It means something’s actually happening. Ready to try again?”

  Andrew nodded and, without instructions this time, tried to focus on the beat and rhythm within the matrix stone. It was easier now. He realized he did not have to look into the stone; he could sense the pulsation through the tips of his fingers. No, the sensation was not exactly physical; he tried to identify exactly where it came from and lost it again. Did it matter where it came from? The important thing was to stay open to it. He picked it up again (A part of my brain I’ve never used before?) and felt how quickly the breathing went into synchronization with the invisible pulsation. After a short, slow time, during which he felt as if he were groping in the dark for an elusive rhythm, the heartbeat followed.

  He fought in the dark for what seemed a long time against the elusive cross-rhythms which seemed now to be inside him, now outside. No sooner would he tame one rhythm of the multiplex percussion orchestra and subdue it into the pervasive harmony, than another would escape him and start up a rebellious tickety-tock pattern against it; then he had to listen and analyze them and, somehow, delicately, try to fasten on where in his body the alien rhythm was beating, and try to time it, beat by rebellious beat, into the proper harmony. After a long, long time he was conscious of beating all in one pulsation, other rhythms quieted, swaying up and down as if cradled inside the vast ticking heart, swaying in a ceaseless, tideless sea, his body and brain, his flowing pulsing blood, the incessant motion of the cells inside his muscles, the slow gentle pulse inside his sexual organs, all pulsing in rhythm… As if I were inside the jewel, flowing with all the little lights…

  Andrew—the most delicate of whispers, part of the great rhythm.

  Callista? Not a question. No answer needed. As if we lay cradled together in a vast swaying darkness. Yes, that will come too. Cradled like twins in one womb. He had no conscious thoughts at that moment, lying deep below the level of thought where there was only a sort of unfocused awareness. With a small detached level of fragmentary thought, he wondered if this was what was meant by being attuned to someone else’s mind. Not conscious of the answer as a separateness, he knew, yes, he was close in contact with Callista’s mind. For an instant he sensed Ellemir, too, and without really willing it, a thought tangled through his mind, a flash of faintly disturbing intimacy, as if in this pulsating darkness he lay naked, stripped as he had never been, entangled in intimacy that was like a pounding rhythm of sex. He was aware of both women, and it seemed completely natural, a part of reality without surprise or embarrassment. Then he slipped one notch farther up into awareness and knew his body was there again, cold and soaked in sweat. At that moment he was aware of Damon close by, a disturbing intimacy, not wholly welcome because it thrust between his intense emotional closeness to Callista. He didn’t want to be that close to Damon: it wasn’t the same, his texture was different somehow, disturbing. For an instant he struggled and felt himself gasp, almost retching, and it was as if the heart between his hands struggled and beat hard for an instant, and then, abruptly, there was a short bright flare of light and a fusion. (For an instant he saw Damon’s face and it felt terrifyingly like looking into a mirror, a swift touch and grip and flare.) Then, abruptly and without transition, he was fully conscious of his body again and Callista was disappearing.

  Andrew lay back in his chair, aware that he still felt sick. But the acute sickness was gone. Damon was kneeling upright beside him, looking down into his eyes with anxious concern.

  “Andrew, are you all right?”

  “I’m—fine,” he managed to say, feeling a tardy embarrassment. “What the
hell—”

  Ellemir—he realized suddenly that her hand lay in his, and the other hand in Damon’s—gave his fingers a soft little squeeze. She said, “I couldn’t see Callista. But she was there for a moment. Andrew, forgive me for doubting you.”

  Andrew felt strangely embarrassed. He knew perfectly well that he had not moved from the chair, that he had not touched anything except Ellemir’s fingertips, that Damon had not touched him at all, but he had the definite feeling that something profound and almost sexual had happened among all of them, including Callista, who was not there at all. “How much of what I felt was real?” he demanded.

  Damon shrugged. “Define your terms. What’s real? Everything and nothing. Oh, the images,” he said, apparently picking up the texture of Andrew’s embarrassment. “That. Let me put it this way. When the brain—or the mind— has an experience like nothing else it’s ever experienced, it visualizes it in terms of familiar things. I lost contact for a few seconds—but I imagine you felt strong emotion.”

  “Yes,” Andrew said, almost inaudibly.

  “It was an unusual emotion, so your mind instantly associated it with a familiar but equally strong one, which just happened to be sexual. My own image is like walking a tightrope without falling off, and then finding something to hang on to, and brace myself with. But”—he grinned suddenly —“an awful lot of people think in sexual images, so don’t worry about it. I’m used to it and so is anyone who’s ever had to find their way around in direct rapport. Everybody has his own individual set of images; you’ll soon recognize them like individual voices.”

  Ellemir said, almost in a murmur, “I kept hearing voices in different pitches, that suddenly slid in to close harmony and started singing together like an enormous choir.”

  Damon leaned over and touched her cheek lightly with his lips. “So that was the music I heard?” he murmured.

  Andrew realized that somewhere in the back of his mind he too had heard something like far-off voices blending. Musical images, he thought a little wryly, were safer and less revealing than sexual ones. He looked tentatively at Ellemir, sounding out his own feelings, and found he was thinking on two levels at once. On one level he felt an intimacy with Ellemir, as if he had been her lover for a long time, a comprehensive goodwill, a feeling of sympathy and protectiveness. On another level, even clearer, he was perfectly aware that this was a girl unfamiliar to him, that he had never touched more than her fingertips, and had no intention of ever doing any more than that and it confused him.

  How can I feel this almost sexual acceptance of her, and at the same time have no sexual interest in her at all, as a person? Maybe Damon’s right and I’m just visualizing unfamiliar feelings in familiar terms. Because I have that same sort of profound intimacy and acceptance toward Damon, and that’s really confusing and disturbing. It gave him a headache.

  Damon said, “I didn’t see Callista either, and I wasn’t really in touch with her, but I could feel that Carr was.” He sighed, with the weariness of physical fatigue, but his face was peaceful.

  But the peaceful interlude was short-lived. Damon knew that, so far, Callista was well and safe. If anyone harmed her now, Andrew would know. But how long would she remain safe? If her captors had any idea that Callista had reached anyone outside, anyone who could lead rescuers to her—well, there was one obvious way to prevent that Andrew couldn’t reach her if she was dead. And that was so simple, and so obvious, that Damon’s throat squeezed tight in panic. If they caught any hint of what he was trying to do, if they had the faintest notion that rescue was on the way, Callista might not live long enough to be rescued.

  Why had they kept her alive this long? Again Damon reminded himself not to judge the cat-men by human standards. We really know nothing of why they do anything.

  He rose, and swayed where he stood, knowing that after taxing, demanding telepathic work he needed food, sleep, and quiet. The night was far gone. The hideous need for haste beat at him. He braced himself to keep from falling and looked down at Ellemir and Andrew. Now that things have begun moving again, we must be ready to move with them, he thought. If I’m going to act as Keeper, this is my responsibility—to keep them from panicking. I’m in charge, and I’ve got to look after them.

  “We all need food,” he said, “and sleep. And we can’t do a thing until we know how badly Dom Esteban is hurt. Everything, now, depends on that.”

  * * *

  Chapter EIGHT

  « ^ »

  When Damon came down into the Great Hall the next morning, he found Eduin prowling around in front of the doors, his face pale and drawn. To Damon’s question he nodded briefly. “Caradoc’s doing well enough, Lord Damon. But the Lord Istvan—”

  That told Damon all he needed to know. Esteban Lanart had awakened—and was still unable to move. So that was that. Damon felt a sickening sensation as if he stood on quicksand. What now? What now?

  Then it was up to him. He realized, hardening his jaw, that he had really known this all along. From the moment of premonition (You will see him sooner than you think and it will not be well for any of you) he had known that in the end it would be his task. He was still not sure how, but at least he knew he could not let the burden slide onto the stronger shoulders of his kinsman.

  “Does he know, Eduin?”

  Eduin’s hawklike face twisted in a grimace of compassion and he said briefly, “Do you think anyone’d need to tell him? Aye. He knows.”

  And if he didn’t, he’d know the minute he saw me. Damon began to push aside the doors to enter, but Eduin gripped his arm.

  “Can’t you do for his wound what you did for Caradoc’s, Lord Damon?”

  Pityingly, Damon shook his head. “I’m no miracle worker. To stop the flow of blood is nothing. That done, Caradoc would heal. I healed nothing; I did only what Caradoc’s wound would have done of itself if anyone could have reached it. But if the spinal nerve is severed— no power on this world could repair it.”

  Eduin’s eyes closed briefly. “That I feared,” he said. “Lord Damon! Is there news of the Lady Callista?”

  “We know she is safe and well, at this moment,” Damon said, “but there is need for haste. So I must see Dom Esteban at once, and make plans.”

  He pushed the door open. Ellemir was kneeling by her father’s bedside; the other wounded men had evidently been moved out to the Guardroom, except for Caradoc, who lay under blankets far at the back of the Hall, and seemed fast asleep. Esteban Lanart lay flat, his heavy body immobilized in sandbags so that he could not turn from side to side. Ellemir was feeding him, not very expertly, with a child’s spoon. He was a tall, heavy, red-faced man, with the strongly aquiline features of all his clan, his long sideburns and bushy eyebrows graying but his beard still brilliantly red. He looked angry and incongruous with drops of gruel in his beard; his fierce eyes moved to Damon.

  “Good morning, kinsman,” Damon said.

  Dom Esteban retorted, “Good, you say! When I lie here like a tree struck by lightning and my daughter—my daughter—” He raised a clenched fist in rage, struck the spoon, upset more of the gruel, and snarled, “Take that filthy stuff away! It’s not my belly that’s paralyzed, girl!” He saw her stricken face and moved his hand clumsily to pat her arm. “Sorry, chiya. I’ve cause enough for anger. But get me something decent to eat, not that baby-food!”

  Ellemir raised helpless eyes to the healer-woman who stood by; she shrugged, and Damon said, “Give him anything he wants, Ellemir, unless he’s feverish.”

  The girl rose and went out, and Damon came to the bedside. It seemed inconceivable that Dom Esteban would never again rise from that, bed. That harsh face should not lie on a pillow, that powerful body should be up and moving about in its usual brisk military way.

  “I won’t ask you how you feel, kinsman,” Damon said. “But are you in much pain now?”

  “Almost none, strange as it seems,” said the wounded man. “Such a little, little wound to lay me low! Hardly more t
han a scratch. And yet—” His teeth clenched in his lip. “I’ve been told I’ll never walk again.” His gray eyes sought out Damon’s, in an agony of pleading so great that the younger man was embarrassed. “Is it true? Or is the woman as much a fool as she seems?”

  Damon bent his head and did not answer. After a moment the older man moved his head in weary resignation. “Tragedy stalks our family. Coryn dead before his fifteenth year, and Callista, Callista—so I must seek help, humbly, as befits a cripple, from strangers. I have no one of my own blood to help me.”

  Damon knelt on one knee beside the old man. He said deliberately, “The gods forbid you should seek among strangers. I claim that right—father-in-law.”

  The bushy eyebrows went up, almost into the hairline. At last Dom Esteban said, “So the wind blows from that quarter? I had other plans for Ellemir, but—” A brief pause, then, “Nothing goes, I believe, as we plan it, in this imperfect world. Be it so, then. But the road will be no easy one, even if you can find Callista. Ellemir has told me something—a confused tale of Callista and a stranger, a Terran, who has somehow gained rapport with her and has offered his sword, or his services, or some such thing. He must talk of it with you, whoever he is, although it seems strange that one of the Terranan should show proper reverence for a Keeper.” He scowled fiercely. “Curse those beasts! Damon, what has been happening in these hills? Until a few seasons ago the cat-men were timid folk who lived in the hills, and no one thought them wiser than the little people of the trees! Then, as if some evil god had come among them, they attack us like fiends, they stir up the Dry Towns against us—and lands where our people have lived for generations lie under some darkness as if bewitched. I’m a practical man, Damon, and I don’t believe in bewitchments! And now they come invisible out of the air, like wizards from some old fairy tale.”