Heritage and Exile (44 page)

And he knew it. His voice, when he turned to me, was truculent.

“Now that you've put the child to bed—”

“Don't mock the lad, cousin,” I said. “He's young, but he was man enough to cross the Hellers alone. I wouldn't.”

Beltran said, “I've had that already from Father; he had nothing but praise for the boy's courage and good manner! I don't need it from you, too!” And he turned his back on me again. Well, I had little sympathy for him. He might well have lost us any chance of Danilo's friendship or help; and Danilo's help, as I saw it now, was all that could save this circle. If Beltran's
laran
could be fully opened, if with Danilo's aid we could discover and open up a few more latent telepaths, there was a chance, a bare chance but one I was willing to take, that we might somehow control the Sharra matrix. Without that it seemed hopeless.

Marjorie smiled and said, “Your friend wouldn't speak to me or look at me. But I would like to know him.”

“He's a valley man, love, he'd think it rude and boorish to stare at a maiden. But he is my good friend.”

Kadarin's lip curled in amusement. “Yet it wasn't for
your
sake he crossed the mountains, but for the Syrtis boy.”

“I came here of my free will, and Regis knew it,” I retorted, then laughed heartily. “By my probably nonexistent forefathers, Bob, do you think I am jealous? I am no lover of boys, but Regis was put in my charge when he was a little lad. He's dearer to me that my own brother born.”

Marjorie smiled her heart-stopping smile and said, “Then I shall love him, too.”

Thyra looked up and taunted, through the chords of her harp, “Come, Marjorie, you're a Keeper! If a man touches you you'll go up in smoke or something!”

Icy shudders suddenly racked me.
Marjorie, burning in Sharra's flame
. . . . I took one stride toward the fire, wrenched the harp from Thyra's hands, then caught myself, still rigid. What had I been about to do? Fling the harp across the room, bring it down crashing across that mocking face? Slowly, deliberately, forcing my shaking muscles to relax, I brought the harp down and laid it on the bench.

“Breda,”
I said, using the word for sister, not the ordinary one but the intimate word which could also mean darling, “such mockery is unworthy of you. If I had thought it possible, or if I had had the training of you from the first, don't you think I would have chosen you rather than Marjorie? Don't you think I would rather have had Marjorie free?” I put my arm around her. For a moment she was defiant, gazing angrily up at me.

“Would you really have trusted me to keep your rule of chastity?” she flung at me. I was too shocked to answer. At last I said, “
Breda,
it isn't you I don't trust, it's your training.”

She had been rigid in my arms; suddenly she went limp against me, her arms clinging around my neck. I thought she would cry. I said, still trembling with that mixture of fury and tenderness, “And don't make jests about the fires! Evanda have mercy, Thyra! You were never at Arilinn, you have never seen the memorial, but have you, who are a singer of ballads, never heard the tale of Marelie Hastur? I have no voice for singing, but I shall tell it you, if you need reminding that there is no jesting about such matters!” I had to break off. My voice was trembling.

Kadarin said quietly, “We all saw Marjorie in the fire, but it was an illusion. You weren't hurt, were you, Margie?”

“No. No, I wasn't. No, Lew. Don't, please don't. Thyra didn't mean anything,” Marjorie said, shaking. I ached to reach out for her, take her in my arms, keep her safe. Yet that would place her in more danger than anything else I could possibly do.

I had been a fool to touch Thyra.

She was still clinging to me, warm and close and vital. I wanted to thrust her violently away, but at the same time I wanted—and she knew it, damn it, she knew it!—I wanted what I would have had as a matter of course from any woman of my own circle who was not a Keeper. What would have dispelled this hostility and tension. Any woman tower-trained would have sensed the state I was in and felt responsible. . . .

I forced myself to be calm, to release myself from Thyra's arms. It wasn't Thyra's fault, any more than it was Marjorie's. It wasn't Thyra's fault that Marjorie, and not herself, had been forced by lack of any other to be Keeper. It wasn't Thyra who had roused me this way. It wasn't Thyra's fault, either, that she had not been trained to the customs of a tower circle, where the intimacy and awareness is closer than any blood tie, closer than love, where the need of one evokes a real responsibility in the others.

I could impose the laws of a tower circle on this group only so far as was needed for their own safety. I could not ask more than this. Their own bonds and ties went far back, beyond my coming. Thyra had nothing but contempt for Arilinn. And to come between Thyra and Kadarin was not possible.

Gently, so she would not feel wounded by an abrupt withdrawal, I moved away from her. Beltran, staring into the fire as if hypnotized by the darting flames, said in a low voice, “Marelie Hastur. I know the tale. She was a Keeper at Arilinn who was taken by mountain raiders in the Kilghard Hills, ravaged and thrown out to die by the city wall. Yet from pride, or fear of pity, she concealed what had been done to her and went into the matrix screens in spite of the law of the Keepers. . . . And she died, a blackened corpse like one lightning-struck.”

Marjorie shrank, and I damned Beltran. Why did he have to tell that story in Marjorie's hearing? It seemed a piece of gratuitous cruelty, very unlike Beltran.

Yes. And I had been about to tell it to Thyra, and I had come near to breaking her own harp across her head. That was very unlike me, too.

What in all the Gods had come to us!

Kadarin said harshly, “A lying tale. A pious fraud to scare Keepers into keeping their virginity, a bogeyman to frighten babies and girl-children!”

I thrust out my scarred hand. “Bob,
this
is no pious fraud!”

“Nor can I believe it had anything to do with your virginity,” he retorted, laughing, and laid a kind hand on my shoulder. “You're giving yourself nightmares, Lew. For your Marelie Hastur I give you Cleindori Aillard, who was kinswoman to your own father, and who married and bore a son, losing no iota of her powers as Keeper. Have you forgotten they butchered her to keep
that
secret? That alone should give the lie to all this superstitious drivel about chastity.”

I saw Marjorie's face lose a little of its tension and was grateful to him, even if not wholly convinced. We were working here without elementary safeguards, and I was not yet willing to disregard this oldest and simplest of precautions.

Kadarin said, “If you and Marjorie feel safer to lie apart until this work is well underway, it's your own choice. But don't give yourselves nightmares either. She's well in control. I feel safe with her.” He bent down, kissing her lightly on the forehead, a kiss completely without passion but altogether loving. He put a free arm around me, drew me against him, smiling. I thought for a moment he would kiss me too, but he laughed. “We're both too old for that,” he said, but without mockery. For a moment we were all close together again, with no hint of the terrible violence and disharmony that had thrust us apart. I began to feel hope again.

Thyra asked softly, “How is it with our father, Beltran?” I had forgotten that Thyra was his daughter too.

“He is very weak,” Beltran said, “but don't fret, little sister, he'll outlive all of us.”

I said, “Shall I go to him, Beltran? I've had long experience treating shock from matrix overload—”

“And so have I, Lew,” Kadarin said kindly, releasing me. “
All
the knowledge of matrix technology is not locked up at Arilinn,
bredu
. I can do better without sleep than you young people.”

I knew I should insist, but I did not have the heart to face down another of Thyra's taunts about Arilinn. And it was true that Kermiac had been training technicians in these hills before any of us were born. And my own weariness betrayed me. I swayed a little where I stood, and Kadarin caught and steadied me.

“Go and rest, Lew. Look, Rafe's asleep on the rug. Thyra, call someone to carry him to bed. Off with you now, all of you!”

“Yes,” said Beltran, “tomorrow we have work to do, we've delayed long enough. Now that we have a catalyst telepath—”

I said somberly, “It may take a long time now to persuade him to trust you, Beltran. And you cannot use force on him. You know that, don't you?”

Beltran looked angry. “I won't hurt a hair of his precious little head, kinsman. But you'd better be damned good at persuading. Without his help, I don't know what we'll do.”

I didn't either. We needed Danilo so terribly. We separated quietly, all of us sobered. I had a terrible feeling of weight on my heart. Thyra walked beside the burly servant who was carrying Rafe to bed. Kadarin and Beltran, I knew, were going to watch beside Kermiac. I should have shared that vigil. I loved the old man and I was responsible for the moment's lack of control which had struck him down.

I was about to leave Marjorie at the foot of her tower stairway, but she clung hard to my hand.

“Please, Lew. Stay with me. As you did the other day.”

I started to agree, then realized something else.

I didn't trust myself.

Whether it was the brief disturbing physical contact with Thyra, whether it was the upsetting force of the quarrel, or the old songs and ballads . . . I didn't trust myself!

Even now, it took all my painfully acquired discipline, all of it, to keep from taking her into my arms, kissing her senseless, carrying her up those stairs and into her room, to the bed we had shared so chastely . . .

I stopped myself right there. But we were deeply in contact; she had seen, felt,
shared
that awareness with me. She was blushing, but she did not turn her eyes from mine. She said at last, quietly, “You told me that when we were working like this, nothing could happen that would harm or . . . or endanger me.”

I shook my head in bewilderment. “I don't understand it either, Marjorie. Normally, at this stage,” and here I laughed, a short unmirthful sound, “you and I could lie down naked together and sleep like brothers or unweaned babies. I don't know what's happened, Marjorie, but I don't dare. Gods above!” I almost shouted at her. “Don't you think I
want
to?”

Now she did avert her eyes for a moment. She said in a whisper, “Kadarin says it's only a superstition. I'll . . . I'll risk it if you want to, Lew. If you need to.”

Now I really felt ashamed. I was better disciplined than this. I made myself take a long breath, unclench my hands from the railings of the stair. “No, beloved. Perhaps I can find out what's gone wrong. But I have to be alone.”

I heard her plea, not aloud but straight to my mind, straight to my heart:
Don't leave me! Don't go, Lew, don't
. . . I broke the contact harshly, cutting her off, shutting her out. It hurt horribly, but I knew that if this went on I would never be able to leave her, and I knew where it would end. And her discipline held. She closed her eyes, drawing a deep breath. I saw that curious look of distance, withdrawnness, isolation, slip down over her features. The look Callina had had, that Festival Night. The look I had seen so often on Janna's face, my last season at Arilinn. She had known I loved her, wanted her. It hurt, but I felt relieved, too. Marjorie said quietly, “I understand, Lew. Go and sleep, my darling.” She turned and went away from me, up the long stairs, and I went away, blind with pain.

I passed the closed door of the suite where Regis and Danilo had been lodged. I knew I should speak to Regis. He was ill, exhausted. But my own misery made me shrink from the task. He had made it clear he did not want my solicitude. He was reunited with his friend, why should I disturb them now? He would be asleep, I hoped, resting after that terrible journey alone through the Hellers.

I went to my own room and threw myself down without bothering to undress.

Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong.

I had felt a disruption like this once before, like a vortex of fury, lust, rage, destruction, surging up through us all. It should not be like this. It
could
not be like this!

Normally, matrix work left the workers drained, spent, without anything left over for any violent emotion. Above all, I had grown accustomed to the fact that there was nothing left over for sexuality. It wasn't that way now.

I had been angry with Thyra at first, not aroused by her. I had been angry when it seemed she mocked Marjorie, and then suddenly I'd been so overcome by my own need that it would have been easy for me to tear off her clothes and take her there before the fire!

And Marjorie. A Keeper. I shouldn't have been capable even of
thinking
about her this way. Yet I
had
thought about it. Damn it, I still ached with wanting her. And she had wanted me to stay with her! Was she weeping now, alone in her room, the tears she had been too proud to shed before me? Should I have risked it? Sanity, prudence, long habit, told me no; no, I had done the only thing it was safe to do.

I glanced briefly at the wrapped bundle of the matrix and felt the faintest thrill of awareness along my nerves. Insulated like that, it should have been wholly dormant. Damn it, I trained at Arilinn and any first-year telepath learns to insulate a matrix! What I insulate stays insulated! I must be dreaming, imagining. I was living on my nerves and by now they were raw, hypersensitive.