A World Divided (54 page)

Later he heard Rannirl’s voice at his door.

“Jeff? Will you come down?”

“Give me just a minute,” Jeff said, and Rannirl went away. Left alone, Kerwin fought to apply all the techniques of control that he had been taught, steadying his breathing, forcing himself to relax; and when he knew that he could face them all without revealing his pain or his guilt, he went downstairs.

The circle of Arilinn was gathered before the fire, but Kerwin had eyes only for Elorie. She had put on again the filmy gown embroidered with cherries, anchored at her throat with a single crystal; her copper hair was twisted up in an elaborate coiffure of looped braids, caught with a blue flower dusted with gold; the
kireseth
flower, colloqually called the golden bell—
cleindori
. Was she testing his control? Or, he wondered suddenly, her own?

She raised her eyes, and he remembered how to breathe. For her smile was gentle, aloof, indifferent.

Had she felt nothing, then. Had he imagined it all? Had her reaction to him been no more than fear, then, as if he had reawakened the old fear
—he remembered Neyrissa’s story; one of her mad father’s drinking-companions had laid rude hands on the girl, and her brother had brought her here for safety and refuge.

Kennard laid his hand gently on Jeff’s shoulder; somehow, through the touch, an unspoken awareness passed through them both.
The Keepers are trained, in ways you could hardly guess at, to keep themselves free of all emotion.
Somehow, in those three days of seclusion, Elorie had managed to bring herself back to remote calm, untouched peace. Her smile was almost exactly as it had always been.
Almost
. Kerwin sensed that it was brittle, wary, a thin skin of control over panic; and with a surge of compassion and pain, he thought,
I must do nothing, nothing to trouble her. She wants it this way. I must not infringe on her control even with a thought.

She said quietly, “We have arranged the separating operation for tonight; and Rannirl tells me that the trap matrix is ready for you, Auster.”

“I’m ready,” Auster said. “Unless Jeff wants to back out.”

“I said I’d abide any test you gave me. But what the hell is a trap matrix?”

Elorie made one of her childish faces. “It’s a filthy perversion of an honest science,” she said.

“Not necessarily,” Kennard protested. “There are valid ones. The Veil outside Arilinn is one kind of trap matrix; it keeps out everyone not accepted as Comyn and blood-related. And there are others in the
rhu fead
, the holy place of Comyn. What kind is yours, Auster?”

“Trap set on the barrier,” Auster said. “When we put up the group barrier around our circle, I’ll set the trap matrix in synch with it. Then, if anyone is picking a mind within the circle, it will hold him and immobilize him, and we can get a look at him afterward in the monitor.”

“Believe me,” said Kerwin, “if anyone’s spying through
my
mind, I’m as anxious to find it out as you are!”

“We’ll start then.” She hesitated, bit her lip and moved to the cupboard where the drinks were kept. “I want some
kirian
.” At Kennard’s disapproving look she brushed past him, poured it for herself. “Anyone else who doesn’t trust himself tonight? Auster? Jeff? Stop looking at me like that, Neyrissa, I know what I’m doing, and you’re not my mother!”

Rannirl said roughly, “Lori, if you’re not feeling ready for the clearing operation, we could delay it a few days—”

“We’ve already delayed three days, and I am as ready as I shall ever be,” she said, and lifted the
kirian
to her lips. But she glanced at Jeff when she thought he did not see her, and her eyes struck Kerwin to the heart.

So it was that way for her, too. He had thought himself hurt that she could set it all aside, that she had been able to forget or ignore what had been between them. Now, seeing the hurt in her eyes, Kerwin wished with all his heart that Elorie had been truly untouched by what had happened. He could endure the suffering, if he must. But he did not know if he could endure what it had done to Elorie.

He could, because he must. He watched her finish the
kirian
liqueur, and went, with the others, upstairs to the matrix chamber.

They were placed as before, Taniquel monitoring, Neyrissa within the circle, Auster holding the group barrier, Elorie at the center, holding in her slender hands the forces that could tap the magnetic field of a planet, gathering up all their joined minds and directing their mingled forces into the matrix lattice designed for this operation.

Kerwin felt the waiting like a pain, bracing himself for control against the moment when Elorie’s grey eyes, turned on him, would pull him into the rapport of the circle. He felt it taking shape around him; Auster, strong and protective; the intangible strength that was Kennard, so at odds with the man’s crippled body; Neyrissa, kindly and detached; Corus a flood of tumbling images.

Elorie.

He felt her firm, directing presence guiding him into the layers of the crystal lattice that somehow, was also the map lying before Kennard and the countryside of the Domains, extending his awareness beyond time and space, sending him out to travel, deep in the core of the world....

He came out of it hours later, coming slowly up to consciousness to see dawn light in the room and the faces of the Tower circle around him. And Auster; drawn, hostile—triumphant. Wordless, he gestured them around him.

Kerwin had never seen a trap matrix before. It looked like a bit of strangely shiny metal, studded with crystals here and there, the glassy surface enlaced with little ribbons of gleaming light deep inside. Auster said, “Tired, Elorie? Take the monitor screen for a minute, Corus, let’s see what we have in here.” He pointed a finger at the beautiful, deadly thing in his lap. “I set it for anyone who tried to work through the group barrier; and I felt the trap sprung. Whoever it was, he’s immobilized here, and we can get a good look at him.”

Fastidiously, as if he touched something dirty, Corus picked up the trap matrix. He moved a calibration on the big monitor screen, and lights began to blink inside it. Then, in the glassy surface, a picture slowly formed. It hovered over the city of Arilinn; passed landmark after landmark. Then, gradually, it centered upon a small, mean room, almost bare, and the figure of a man, bent in soundless concentration, motionless as death.

“Whoever he is, we’ve got him in stasis,” Auster said. “Can you get his face, Corus?”

The picture focused; and Jeff cried out as he recognized the face.

Of course. The little bitter man from the spaceport gutters, who had all but admitted being a Terran spy, who had dogged Jeff’s footsteps and taught him to use a matrix and pushed him at every step.

Who else could it have been?

Suddenly he was swept by a great, calm, icy rage. Some atavistic thing in him, all Darkovan, shook loose everything but his wrath and injured pride at having been manipulated like this, is his mind picked. Ancient words sprang without thought to his mind.

“Com’ii,
this man’s life is mine!
When, how, and as I can, I claim his life, one to one, and who takes it before I do, answers to me!”

Auster—braced, Kerwin knew, to fling new challenges and charges, stopped cold, his eyes wide and shocked.

Kennard met his eyes. He said “
Comyn
Kerwin-Aillard, as your nearest kinsman and Warden here, I hear your claim and allot this life to you; to claim or spare as you will. Seek it, take it, or give your own.”

Jeff heard the ritual words almost without understanding. His hands literally ached to tear Ragan limb from limb. He said tersely, gesturing the picture off the screen, “Can that thing hold him long enough for me to get to him, Auster?”

Auster nodded, the trap matrix still held between his hands. Taniquel broke into the silence, her voice shrill.

“You can’t let him do this! It’s murder; Jeff has no idea how to use a sword, and do you think that—that
sharug
, that cat-spawn, will even fight fair?”

“I may not be able to handle a sword,” Jeff said tautly, “but I’m damn good with a knife. Kinsman, give me a dagger, and I can take him,” he added, turning to Kennard, who had acknowledged him.

But it was Rannirl who unbuckled the knife he wore at his waist. He said slowly, “Brother, I’m with you. Your foes are mine; let there never be a knife drawn between us.” He held the knife out, hilt first, to Kerwin. Kerwin took it in a daze. From somewhere he remembered that on Darkover this had a very serious meaning. He didn’t know the ritual words, but he remembered that this exchange had the ritual force of an oath of brotherhood, and even through his all-encompassing rage he was warmed by it. He caught Rannirl into a quick embrace. All he could think of to say was, “Thank you—brother. Against my foes—and yours.” It must have been the right thing to say, or something near to it, for Rannirl turned his head and, somewhat to Jeff’s embarrassment, kissed him on the cheek.

“Come on,” he said, “I’ll see fair play done in your name, Kennard. If you doubt it, Auster, come along.”

Kerwin took the knife, balancing it in his hands. He had no doubt in his ability to handle himself. There had been a couple of fights on other worlds; he had found that inside himself there was a roughneck buried, and he was glad, now, to know it. The code of his childhood, the code of blood-feud, seemed to fill him to the roots of his whole being.

Ragan was going to get a damned big surprise.

And then he was going to get very, very dead.

They came out of the Tower, through the Veil, into dim red sunlight, the Bloody Sun rising over the foothills far away to the east. Jeff walked with his hand on his knife, feeling strange and cold. At this hour the streets of Arilinn were deserted; only a few startled onlookers in the street saw the three redheads, moving shoulder to shoulder, armed and ready for a fight; and those who did, suddenly discovered that they had urgent business in a couple of other directions.

They went through the outlying district, through the market where in a happier day Jeff had chosen a pair of boots, and into a crowded and dirty suburb. Auster, his hands still on the trap matrix, said in a low voice, “This won’t hold him much longer.”

Kerwin’s grin stretched his mouth, mirthless. “Hold him long enough for me to
find
him, and then let him go any damn time you please.”

They went through a narrow alley, a filthy courtyard cluttered with rubbish, a stable with a couple of ill-kept animals. A half-witted stableman in rags, his mouth hanging open, watched them briefly, then turned and fled. Auster pointed up a steep, crazy flight of stairs to an outside gallery with a couple of rooms opening off it. As they climbed the stairs, a girl in a torn skirt and scarf came out on the gallery, her mouth a wide O of astonishment. Rannirl made an angry, abrupt gesture, and she bolted back into one of the rooms and slammed the door.

Auster stopped outside the other door. He said, “Now,” and his bony hands did something to the trap matrix that Jeff didn’t see. From inside the room came a long cry of rage and despair as Kerwin, leaping forward, kicked the door open and burst in.

Ragan, still in the held-fast posture of the trap matrix, suddenly broke free and whirled on them like a trapped cat, knife flashing from his boot. He backed off and faced them, naked steel between them, baring his teeth with a snarl. “Three against one,
vai dom’yn?
”

“Just one!” Kerwin rasped, and with his free arm, motioned Rannirl and Auster to stand back. In the next moment he reeled under the impact of Ragan’s body crashing into his. He felt the slash of the point along his arm as he whipped his knife up, but it had only torn his sleeve. He countered with a fast thrust, shoving Ragan off balance; then they were locked into a deadly clinch, and he was struggling to keep Ragan’s knife from his ribs. He felt his own knife rip leather; it came away red. Ragan grunted, struggled, made a sudden swift feint—

Auster, watching like a cat at a mousehole, suddenly flung himself against them. He knocked Jeff off balance, and Kerwin, hardly believing that this was really happening—
he should have known he couldn’t trust Auster!
—felt Ragan’s knife rip along his arm and go in a few inches below the armpit. Numbness, then burning pain, spread in him; the knife dropped from his left hand and he snatched it up with the other, fighting Auster’s death grip, dragging his arm down. Kerwin swore, brutally, kicking out with booted feet.

“Get away, damn you—is this your notion of a fair fight?” And Rannirl ran to fling his arms around Auster from behind, grab him and drag him away, taking a slash from Ragan’s knife that tore along his forearm and down the back of his hand. He was swearing.

“Man, are you crazy?” he panted.

Ragan wrenched loose. There was a crash, the sound of running feet on the staircase, the clatter of rubbish kicked loose on the staircase. Auster and Rannirl fell, still struggling, to the ground. Auster, somehow, had Ragan’s knife. Rannirl panted, “Jeff! Get the knife!”

Kerwin dropped his own knife, flung himself on the struggling bodies, and forced Auster’s hand back. Auster struggled briefly, then his hand relaxed and he dropped it, sanity coming slowly back to his eyes. There was a long slash on his cheek—Kerwin didn’t know from which knife—and his eye was darkening, blood streaming from his nose, where Jeff’s elbow had smashed at him.

Rannirl picked himself up, wiping the blood from his forearm. The knife had not gone into him at all; it was a cut less than skin deep. He stared down at Auster in shock and horror. Auster started to get up and Kerwin made a menacing gesture. For two cents he’d have kicked Auster’s ribs right in. “Stay right where you are, damn you.”

Auster wiped blood from his nose and mouth, and stayed where he was. Kerwin went to the window and looked into the dirty courtyard. Ragan, of course, was gone. There wasn’t a chance they’d find him again.