"They do," said Keral softly, "in the forests—in the sun or moonlight—in ecstasy."
David, as always, sensitive to Keral's moods, thought that Keral was near the edge of ecstasy himself. Although he normally avoided crowds, tonight he had dressed himself in his own garments—a curious long tunic of shimmery fabric which he said was woven of spider's silk—and joined them. The Change was complete in Keral now, and to David he seemed lovelier than Missy had ever been; but tonight there seemed a positive glow, a visible light and shimmer around the chieri.
Behind them, the lighted ballroom was aglow with a thousand sparkles, crowded with men and women in brilliant costumes, hair of every shade of red. There was soft music with quiet, well-marked rhythm, but Regis turned his back on it all and walked across the dark garden. He looked up into the sky at the four floating moons. He looked round again, at the pale gleam of Keral's moonlit hair; at Conner's face, a mere blur against the dark.
Conner said, "You know I have one of those 'out of focus' time things. Watch it, Regis; something's going to go wrong tonight. I was just there for a minute and felt it, but I can't control it."
Regis said slowly, "I don't sense anything, but precognition isn't a Hastur talent. What was it like, Conner?"
He ridged his brow with effort. "I can't completely control it," he said. "I'm not sure. Like—like fireworks."
"Maybe it's the past you sense and not the future. This castle has a long and sometimes a bloody history, my dear friend."
"Maybe." Conner looked troubled though and reached in the darkness for Missy's hand. Regis watched as they moved away. Missy's fantastic beauty had never come back, but from what Keral said about the chieri in general, there was time for that. Much more time than Conner had. Lifetimes. But Conner was content with her as she was.
David, returning to the lighted ballroom, stood at the side—dancing was something he knew little about—watching the intricate patterns: couples, groups, long chains of people, an occasional sudden solo dancer emerging from the group. It was like watching the flight of brilliantly colored birds. Regis and Linnea briefly emerged from the group, dancing entwined, and the love between them was like a palpable awareness. Not that the dance held any note of eroticism, and yet an essence of sexuality wove like a line of light between them, and he sensed that in some curious way they were actually flaunting it. He thought, with some amusement, that since he had come to Darkover he had spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about other people's sex lives. Well, sex was pretty basic. After all, most people spent a lot of time thinking about it. On Darkover—or at least among telepaths—it simply wasn't possible to keep it out of casual conversations and encounters. It made little sense to treat a girl as if you were uninterested when she was just as conscious of your undercover feelings as of her own. He wondered if that was why the telepaths had created what seemed a very elaborate code of almost ritual politeness—for instance, never staring deliberately at a young girl; perhaps a way of emphasizing, "I am a sexual creature and I respond to you, but I emphasize that I await your response and consent." It had evidently, from what he knew of Darkovan manners in general, filtered down to groups which were not telepathic at all, and he wondered what rationalizations they had developed to account for it. He knew that dueling was common on Darkover—to compensate for the inability to conceal hostility? A backlash against painful empathy? Or a way of asserting cock-of-the-walk masculinity?
Keral reached for David's hand, and David clasped it in his own, with the never-failing awareness of response, empathy. Keral seemed even more joyous than usual tonight, the gray eyes seeming mad with merriment, his color higher than David had ever seen it, a positive radiance of glow and joyousness. His silky hair, very long, shoulder length and more, seemed to catch the light breezes and blow in an invisible current no greater than that which made the lights dance and sway. David said, "You look happy, Keral," and realized that the words were inadequate.
"I am. Do you remember what I said to you, the first time we were together—I want to laugh, to sing, to fly?"
"I remember; how could I forget?"
"I am even more happy now. Don't ask me why, not now, not here. I will tell you very soon. But now—here—" He threw back his head and stood there in an attitude of intent, close listening intensity. It seemed that he heard some sound, some voice from nowhere; rapt, ecstatic. Then he raised his arms, stood swaying for a moment like a tall flower stem swayed by the invisible breeze of the music, and began to dance.
David, watching, felt the music drop away into silence, or perhaps he no longer heard it. He was only conscious of Keral, first like a drifting leaf borne on the currents, then whirling into a mad dance of ecstasy. It was the frail and sensitive Linnea who caught the contagion first, breaking away and whirling across the floor behind him; and after her, first by twos and threes and then by tens and dozens, like some mad flight of birds wheeling, dipping, circling and rising. David, his whole awareness swept up into the dance, saw, at the edge of his consciousness, Conner flinging himself into the flooding movement, saw Desideria moving lightly, drifting with her delicate draperies afloat; then his own separate awareness drifted away in a rising tide that broke over his head and swept him out into the moving flood of his own people.
Rise and fall, drift and circle and whirl on the invisible tides of the world the force of flooding spring in the heart and soul. The currents of moonlight, an invisible magnet that drew them, whirling and surging, through the great doors and out into the cool misty garden. David, his feet treading the measure in rhythm with the others, felt the cool air on his face, and in a split second of brief, amazed, sane self-awareness, wondered, what are we all doing; and then the thought was swept away again in the pull of flooding moonlight, shared consciousness, dizzy motion of sheer joy for its own sake. It was vaguely like swimming underwater, with a blind unfocused pressure pulling him along on its own swift current, and he surrendered to it, seeing with scraps of awareness little instantaneous fragments of beauty; Keral's hair silvered by moonlight, his rapt face upturned and almost wholly inhuman; Missy, blown like a circling leaf; Conner, drawn volitionless on a blind tide; Regis, moving slowly with his eyes closed and yet somehow resembling an arrow in flight. And then David was swept away from his friends and into the center of the spinning ecstasy, whirled faster and faster into the rising vortex of awareness. He moved in a dream, but his body was wholly alive and aware of the joyous freedom of motion, the pull of the tides of moons and sea, each separate moon a different living tingle in his nerves. Each star in the luminous sky seemed a separate living thing, exerting its own pull on his brain; and each of the separate dancers in the crowd was a different force, a separate feel. With infinitely extended senses, like long streamers of cobweb brilliance, almost palpable in the thin and scented air, he touched each individual one of them, feeling their uniqueness, their own special joy.
And more. And more. The spring leaves bursting bravely and unseen throughout the ruined land. The mosses unfolding under the snow. The quiet and secret life of birds here in the garden and far away in the hills and forests; the fierce prowling of the nonhuman catmen on the hills, driven by hunger and fear; the rising sap in the blood of beasts driven by tides and currents to race fiercely in mating; everywhere, everywhere, all things reawakening, rising, flooding into spring and rebirth and a new world. Far away in the forests, without knowing how, in a vividness past picturing, David saw them; the old kindred, tall and still and old and wise beyond knowing, with their grave gray beautiful eyes like Keral's, and their long flowing hair, and the ageless sureness in their hearts, resigned to the long slow fall of their last autumn, suddenly sensing the new spring and rebirth and knew that they, too, wheeled and danced in the overwhelming awareness of returning life and spring and a world reborn.
(And somewhere in a high hidden vantage point above the garden, Andrea too saw the madness of the dance whirl through the red-headed ones and even through senses blunted for cen
turies, felt the old madness of surging life and renewal, and stood paralyzed, caught up, anguished, with old throbbings beating through her life and battering at closed and agonizing doors. Caught in an anguish beyond endurance, clamped in fearful agony of remembrance and grief, she stood frozen, her eyes burning in silent and outflooding fury . . . .)
The surging, flooding beat of the invisible music, the very life of the planet, the magnetic currents of the spring itself, beat in them all, wakening them to the total ecstasy of the world. Even the dying felt the call, life struggling and surging to reestablish itself through the prevalence of death and ruin on a planet struggling helplessly for survival. It was Regis in whom the surge of renewed life first reached explosive force of need; sudden, dark and mindless, it surged through him and he reached out, still blinded with the surging life of the gathering dance, and drew the girl at his side into his arms. Together, they sank down into the soft grass.
And then, spun away one by one from the wheeling dance of life, they moved together, sinking down in twos and threes. David, feeling the waves crest within him, breaking over his head, blind and dizzied with the madness of life, felt hands on his body, a whisper, was blindly conscious of an exquisite girl's face surrounded by masses of flaming hair. He felt himself drop out of the dance, sink into her arms. He was almost wholly unaware of movements or how it happened, but within what seemed seconds they were lying close together, naked on the warm moon-flooded grass. It was like madness, with the damp scent of flowers all around them both, and all around them in the night the sounds of love; kisses, murmurs, the final dropping down of the last dancers into silent groups, hot plunging fierceness, cries of supplication, hunger, content. He was caught up unknowing, moving in a blind and deaf need with the delicate strength of the girl's body in his arms.
And yet—blind? deaf? Or more aware than with all of his ordinary senses because he no longer used them? Not me alone, he knew, as for a timelessly brief and yet unending instant he blended into the familiar and intense sweetness of Keral transfigured by love (Again, again, I am here with you, beloved—); and then, as if the last garment had been swept away, leaving him wholly naked for the first time in his life, he found himself blending, swiftly and intensely, into the overwhelming life around him.
He felt, as he had never felt any touch before (although he knew beyond sight that she was at the far end of the garden, lying in Danilo's arms) Linnea's soft lips touch his face; felt yet again the wild sweetness of Keral, so well-known and eternally unfamiliar; sank into a momentary rapport with Jason, as his friend's hands closed violently over the breasts of an unknown girl; and then sank into fierce rapport with Regis (images, blurring even as he sensed them: of crossed swords; the meshing of wrists in the flying grip of aerialists; the violent and intensely sensuous struggle of wrestlers gripped in a hold more ardent than lovers). For an overwhelming and releasing moment, he sensed what it would be to let his own awareness of manhood disappear—had Keral had to face this mingling of grief, joy and humiliation?—as his mind and body melted into that of an unknown girl, and he looked up into Regis' eyes at the very instant of surrender and consummation. Then David was back in his own body, the girl under him soft, pliant, demanding. And there was nothing else . . . and everything else . . . for a blind instant . . . forever . . . heat . . . explosion . . . slow subsiding waves . . . stars that spin and whirled inside and outside, and a world slowly darkening into silence.
The seconds, or three hours later—none of them ever knew—David surfaced slowly, like coming up from a very deep dive. The girl's soft body was still cradled in his arms, her silken hair blinding his eyes. He stroked it softly and kissed it before brushing it away from his face, raised himself on his elbow, and looked into the startled and smiling face of Desideria. There was a moment of shock and amazement and instantaneous rearrangement of awareness, and then the memory of what had brought them together came back and David laughed. What did it matter? Age, or even sex, were at this moment, and to what they were, irrelevant. He saw the backlash of doubt and regret sweep the old woman's face; he laughed and kissed her and saw the fear dissolve. She said softly, in a whisper, "I have heard it said in old stories; what is done under the four joining moons is the will of the gods and outside what men would wish or desire. But I have never known until this moment what was meant."
He smiled at her and clasped her hands. All around them, the garden was quiet with the soft murmurs of returning, separate, ordinary awareness. David reached about for his clothes, for it was chilly even in the spring, and felt like a dog who cocks his ears at a sound no man can hear. It was quiet and peaceful in the garden, but a nag of fright and sudden awareness kept jerking on an invisible nerve. He looked around with sudden apprehension, reached out for Conner:
David? I don't know, I don't like it—fireworks . . . for the first time in my life healed and happy . . . never again to drift alone, but even here, here . . .
Keral screamed suddenly, a wild cry of mingled terror and joy, as a faint burst of light moved in the garden, and eight or ten tall forms appeared out of the tingling air, tall and pale with silvery floating hair and great grave eyes that seemed to gleam of their own light. He ran toward them; moving surefooted through the conjoined couples still lying in the grass, and was caught up in embrace after embrace, while David, staring in amazement, recognized and knew who they must be; the surviving chieri, appeared—as legend told man that they could appear—out of nothingness, come to see their youngest and their beloved in his moment of happiness and returning of life and hope. All around them, the workings of the ordinary world of night were beginning to return, and stirrings of wonder, of joy and amusement, and laughing chagrin, and a shared purpose too deep and real for ordinary words were returning. David knew, at too deep a level for speech (was it Regis who had cast the thought into the invisible net?), that nothing would ever again wholly separate the telepaths of Darkover; they might have separate purposes on the surface, but a potential lost or mislaid for years had returned; and as the chieri had been before them, they were a people at one with themselves and each other.
Keral was still laughing and murmuring with the joyousness of reunion. And yet beneath it all, an undercurrent of fear was beginning to run, like a palpable smell of danger. David felt the hairs on his body bristle. Danilo, putting Linnea gently aside, reached like a cat for his sword; no visible danger, pure instinct. Conner sprang to his feet.
And then, unmistakable, it was Rondo who yelled—or were there words?—a great cry of outrage and anguish:
No! I told you their plans because I wanted to get free of this world, but they have never harmed me, and I want no part in murder—
And a running figure which suddenly froze and rose upward, upward, physically upward through the thickening air, like a flying demon, surrounded with a glare of growing light. He seized something with a strange twisting gesture, in mid-air, and body and glowing thing rocketed upward, upward . . . .
In mid-air, thousands of feet above the castle, it burst like a great shower of fireworks; there was a silent scream of unbelievable pain and dying anguish and there was a ripped out silence, a great gaping toothache hole in the world where Rondo's thoughts and voice and mind had been. And then came the sound of the explosion, muffled by distance, far out in space and harmless, but still it rocked the castle, reverberated—and died away.
And then, in the midst of the chieri and surrounded by their light, stood a woman, wearing drab Empire clothes, struggling against the invisible force that had thrust her out of concealment and into the light; the look of sated and triumphant rage on her face giving way to fear, amazement, and disbelief.
I thought you were all dead. I did not know any of you had survived to return to this world, even to die.
"No." The voice of the eldest of the chieri, a tall and beautiful woman, ageless and beyond everything in man, was like a reverberation in the world. "We live, although not for long. But we cannot give death for death; we mus
t give life for death—"
"Her name is Andrea," said the young, red-haired Free Amazon, rising from the garden darkness, "and I knew she would have destroyed us if she could, but I did not know—"
"No," said the old chieri again, with infinite grief and gentleness, speaking directly to Andrea. "We know you, even over these many, many turns of the years, Narzainye kui, child of the Yellow Forest, who abandoned us in despair during the years of our search. We mourned you as one long, long dead, beloved . . . ."
The face of the woman was drawn with agony and grief. "And I bore a child on one of the outer worlds, to a stranger whose name I never knew, or face I never saw—a child conceived in madness and thrown out to die, in madness, thinking you all dead and gone—"
"The long, long years of madness," Keral whispered, and took Andrea's face between his hands in infinite tenderness. She opened her spasmodically closed eyes and looked up at him, seeing the glow of heightened beauty, the infinite power which lay within Keral, the height of potential life. Keral said quietly:
"All is not ended. I live—and you see what has happened to me. Perhaps even the child you bore lives somewhere; we are hard to kill—" and his eyes briefly sought for Missy in the crowd, in speculation which could be read on the clear features. "But our race lives, Andrea, in these people; I knew even as a babe that our blood survived in them. And as you see—"
Keral's unearthly beauty seemed to shimmer, and for the first (and only) time, David perceived Keral for an instant as the exquisite girl he had at first thought Keral and in instantaneous recognition knew the truth; that the chieri showed the height of the Change, and full feminine awareness (Missy had only mimicked it) in pregnancy. And now he understood Keral's madness of joy, which had swept them all away—and saved them all; and probably saved a world as well.
To Save a World Page 19
