The Sword of Aldones

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

When i woke, I was alone. For several minutes, in the morning sunlight, I wondered if the whole bizarre episode had been a dream; then, as the curtains parted and Dio came in, a grim smile turned up my mouth. In a dream, I would surely have possessed her.

“I’ve brought you another visitor,” she said. I began to protest; I didn’t want to see anyone. But she pulled the curtains aside — and Marja ran into the room.

She stopped, staring — then ran and flung herself on me with a smothering hug.

I loosened her, staring at Dio. “Gently, chiya, gently, you’ll have me on the floor. Dio, how—”

“I learned about her when Hastur first brought her here,” Dio said. “But Ashara’s Tower is no place for her now. Take care of him, Marja mea,” she added, and before I could ask any more questions, she went away again.

Andres reported that there were Terrans still guarding the castle corridors, but no one came near us all day. I resigned myself to inaction, and spent the day playing with Marja and making a few hazy plans. She would not be taken from me again! Andres seemed puzzled, but there was no way to explain without speaking of Marjorie and Thyra, and even to Andres, I could not do that. I told him, simply, that she was my daughter; he gave me a knowing look and, to my relief, left it at that.

I tried to ask Marja a few careful questions, but the answers were vague and meaningless; all one could expect from so young a child. Toward nightfall, since no one had come to reclaim her, I told Andres to put her to bed in a sleeping-cubicle near my own, and when she had fallen asleep I left her there and called Andres.

“How many Terrans are in the castle?”

“Ten, maybe fifteen. Not Spaceforce — even Lawton wouldn’t have that much insolence. They’re-in plain clothes, and they behave themselves.”

I nodded. “None of them would know me by sight, I suppose. Hunt me up a suit of Terran clothes.”

He gave me a bleak grin. “No use trying to stop you, I suppose. I’ll look after the little lass, then. And, I don’t have to be a telepath to know what you’re thinking, vai dom. I’ve lived with your family half my life. If that don’t answer your question, what would?”

There were many doors to the Alton suites, and the Terrans couldn’t guard them all. In the hallways no one paid the slightest attention to me. They were looking after a Darkovan man with one hand; a man in Terran clothing, one hand stuck in a pocket, roused not the slightest curiosity.

I hesitated outside the Hastur apartments, wanting to take counsel with the old Regent; then, regretfully, passed. If he knew our plan, he might forbid me, and a thousand oaths bound me to obey him. Better not chance it.

I found Callina in her own rooms, seated before Linnell’s harp; her head was buried in her arms and I thought she was crying; then with sudden suspicion, I grabbed her and jerked her head up»

She came up stiffly, resisting; her eyes, blank and dead, stared at me without recognition. “Callina!” I shouted, but I might as well have whispered. I dragged her bodily to her feet. Her eyes were fixed in a lifeless, blue-ice stare. “Wake up!” I shouted, and shook her hard. But I had to put her in a chair and slap her before the spark of life suddenly blazed in her eyes and her head went up.

“What do you think you are doing? Let me go!”

“Callina, you were in trance—”

“Oh, no! No!” She threw herself on me, pressing herself to me in desperate appeal. I caught the words, “Ashara” and ” — send — her — out,” but they meant nothing, and I held her away. I dared not touch her until this was over. Gradually, she calmed. “I’m sorry, Lew. I’m — me again.”

“But who are you?” I said at hazard, “Dio? Ashara?”

She smiled, a sorrowful smile. If you don’t know, who does?”

I dared not show tenderness. “We’ve got to act tonight, Callina, while the Terrans think I’m still too weak to do anything Where is Kathie?”

Her face twisted. “It’s like Linnell’s ghost—”

I dreaded it, too, but I said nothing, and finally Callina sighed. “Shall I go to her?”

“Let me,” I said. I walked through two cubicles, finally found the one where we had taken Kathie. She was lying on a couch, almost naked, scanning a set of tiles; but she heard my step and started violently, catching a sort of veil around her. “Get out!” she squeaked. “Oh — it’s you again!”

“Kathie, I haven’t the slightest designs on you, except to ask you to dress and come with us. Can you ride?”

“Yes. Why?” She paused. “I think I know why. Something strange happened to me, I think, when Linnell was killed.”

I couldn’t discuss that. I reached to the dressing panel, rummaged among the forcebars and racks, finally pulled out some garments. I recognized them, with a stab of pain; Linnell’s perfume hung about them; but there was nothing else I could do. I threw the armful in her lap. “Put these on,” I said, and sank down to wait, but her angry stare made me recall, suddenly, the Terran taboos›I rose, actually reddening. How could Terran women be so immodest out of doors and so prudish within? “I forgot. Call me when you are ready.”

A queer sound made me turn back. She was staring helplessly at the clothes.

“I’ve no idea how to get into these things!”

“After what you were just thinking at me,” I said, “I’m certainly not going to offer to help you.”

It was her turn to blush. “Besides — how can I ride in skirts?”

“Zandru, girl,” I exploded, genuinely shocked now. “What else?"-

“I’ve ridden all my life, but I never tried it in a skirt, and I’m not going to start. If you want me to ride anywhere, you can certainly get me some decent clothes.”

“These clothes are perfectly decent.”

“Damn it, get me some indecent ones then,” she blazed. I laughed. I had to.

“I’ll see what I can do, Kathie.”

Fortunately, I knew where Dio slept, and no one stopped me. I parted the curtains and looked in. She was asleep, but sat up quickly, blinking. “Are things starting again?”

They had never stopped; we had simply been flung out of them. I explained what I wanted; she giggled, then the laughter broke off. “I know it isn’t really funny, Lew. I just can’t help it. All right, then. I think my things will fit Kathie.”

“And can you find Regis, and tell him to slip out and find horses for ns?”

She nodded. “I can come and go pretty much as I please. Most of the Terrans know me. Lerrys—” she stopped, biting her lip. There was nothing I could say; I’d hated her brothers and she knew it. Dio was as alone, now, as I/was.

Seeing Dio made me remember something else. I slipped back to my rooms and got Rafe’s pistol. There were still bullets in the chamber. I still abhorred these coward’s weapons — but tonight I might be fighting men without honor or conscience.

When I went back to Kathie’s rooms, Dio and Callina were already there, and the Terran girl had been dressed in the sleeveless tunic and close-fitting breeches which Dio had worn for riding on Vainwal. Callina, more conventionally dressed, looked on with mild disfavor.

“Fine, but how are we going to get out?”

I laughed. I was not Kennard Alton’s son for nothing. The Altons, aeons ago, had designed the Comyn castle, and their knowledge was handed down, son to son. “Don’t you know your own rooms, Callina?” I went into the central room of the suite, and stepped into certain imprints of the flooring. I cautioned them to stand back, then frowned; my father had told me of this doorway, but had never bothered to teach me the pattern; nor did I have a sounder to test the matrix lock. I tried two or three of the standard patterns, but they did not respond; then turned to Callina.

“Can you sound a fourth-level without equipment?”

Her face took on concentrated seriousness; after a minute a section of flooring dropped out of sight, revealing deep, dusty stairs that led away downward.

“Stay close to me,” I warned, motioning them ahead. “I’ve never been down here before.” Behind us the square of light revolved, spun — and we were in darkness.

“I wish that old great-grandfather of mine had provided a light! It’s dark as Zandru’s pockets!”

Callina raised her hand — and the tips began to glow. Light spread — sparkled — radiated from those twelve slender finger-tips! “Don’t touch me,” she warned softly. The passage was long and dark, with steep steps, and in spite of the ghost-light, dark and dangerous. Once Kathie slipped on the strangely slippery surfaces, and fell jarringly a step or two before I could catch her; and twice my outstretched hand broke sticky invisible webs. There was no rail and I found it hard to balance, but Callina picked her way securely and delicately, never stumbling, as if the way were perfectly well known to her.

Down, and down. Finally a door slid back and we stood in the semilight of Thendara under three waning moons. I looked around. We were in a disorderly section of the city, where the Terrans probably never came twice in fifteen years. Down the dark street was a place where horses were shod and swords and tools mended; here Regis was to meet me, if my message had reached him.

It had. He was there, standing in the shadow of several horses, in the deserted street.

“Lew, take me with you? Leave the women here.”

“We need Kathie. And someone has to stay here, Regis. This is our only chance. If we don’t make it, you’ll have to make what terms you can. I think, as a last resort, you might be able to trust Lawton.” I stopped, then shrugged, without finishing what I had started to say. There was no point in farewells and we made none.

Out through the streets of Thendara; into the open country. We passed a few houses and deserted farmsteads; they grew wider apart and finally ceased. No one rode this path now; on the Forbidden Road, radioactivity was still virulent, in spots, from the Years of Desolation. The road itself was safe now, but the fear lingered; too many men, in past days, had died. Hairless, toothless, their blood turned to water, because they had taken this path. The Comyn had fostered that fear, with tricks and traps; and now it was useful, because we could ride unseen. Only Dyan knew those tricks and traps as well as I.

We skirted the site of the ancient spaceships, their huge bulk still glowing feebly with the poisonous radiance. Then we were on the Forbidden Road itself; — the canyon, nature’s own roadway, which stretches from the highest point in the Hellers down to the Sea of Dalereuth a thousand miles away. Just wide enough for six horses to ride abreast, thirty feet below the surface of the plain, and nearly a thousand miles long, the Forbidden Road runs all across the continent as if some giant or some God, in the lost years, had reached out and scratched the molten land with a titan fingernail, cutting across mountains, foothills, plains.

Legend had it the Forbidden Road was the track where the Gods walked, ages ago, when they spread their terror on the land and the children of the Comyn were born with their minds awry with the strange Comyn Gifts. A barren land, seared of growth, the track of something that had marred the land to freakishness, creating the Comyn. Mutation? The children of Gods? I did not know or care.

Two of the moons had set, leaving a single pallid face on the horizon, when we turned aside from the Road and saw the rhu fead, a white, dim, gleaming pile, rising above the thinly gleaming shore of the lake of Hali. We reined in our horses near the brink. Mist curled up whitely along the shore, where the sparse pink grass thinned out on the rocks. I kicked a pebble loose and it dropped into the glimmering cloud-waves, sinking without a splash, slowly, visible for a long time. Kathie stared at the strangely-surfaced lake. “That isn’t water, is it?”

I shook my head. No living being, save those of Comyn blood, had ever set foot on the shores of Hali.

She said confusedly, “But I’ve been here before—”

“No. You have some of my memories, that’s all.” I patted her wrist clumsily, as if she were Linnell. “Don’t be afraid.” Twin pillars rose white, a rainbow mist sparkling like a veil between them. I frowned at the trembling rainbow. “Even blocked, it would strip your mind. I’ll have to do what I did before; hold your mind completely under mine.” She shuddered, and I warned tonelessly, “I must. The veil is a force-field attuned to the Comyn brain. It won’t hurt us but it would kill you.”

She glanced at Callina. “Why not you?”

Callina shook her head. “It has something to do with polarity. I’m a Keeper. If I tried to submerge your mind for more than a second or two, it would destroy you — permanently.” A curious horror showed in her mind. “Ashara showed me — once.”

I picked Kathie up bodily. When she protested, I scowled. “You fainted once, and went into hysterics the second time I touched you,” I reminded her grimly. “If you do that again, inside the Veil, I want to make sure you’ll get out the other side.”

This time, however, she was barriered against me, by my own bypass circuit. It was easy to damp out the alien brainwaves. We got through the shimmering, bunding rainbow, with blurred eyes; I set her down and withdrew as gently as I could.

The rhu fead stretched bare before us, dim and cool. There were doors and long passages, filled with chilly curls of mist. Kathie made a sudden turn into one passage and began to walk forward into the dimness.

“Lew, I know! How do I know where to go?”

The passage angled into an open space of white stone and curtained crimson. A dais, set back into the wall and paneled in iridescent webs, held a blue crystal coffer. I set my foot on the first step—

I could not pass. This was the inner barrier; the barrier no Comyn could penetrate. I leaned on an invisible wall; Callina, curious, put out her hands and saw them jerk back of themselves. Kathie asked, “Are you still blocking my mind?”

“A little.”

“Then don’t. That bit of you is what holds me back.”

I nodded and withdrew the blocking circuit. Kathie smiled at me, less like Linnell than she had ever looked; then walked through the invisible barrier.

She disappeared into a blue of darkening cloud. A blaze of fire seared up; I wanted to shout at her not to be afraid, it was only an illusion — but even my voice would not pass the barrier reared against the Comyn. A dim silhouette, she vanished; the flames swallowed her. Then a wild glare swept up to the roof and a burst of thunder rolled and rocked the floor.

Kathie darted back to us; and in her hand she held a sheathed sword.