Heritage and Exile (51 page)

If this had—unimaginably—happened in Arilinn, I would have been given
kirian
or one of the other psi-activator drugs and helped by a psi monitor and my own Keeper. Now I had to master it alone. I myself had made it impossible and dangerous for Marjorie to help me.

At last, my head splitting, I managed to focus the lights in the stone. Quickly, while I still had the strength, I reached out through the gray and formless spaces that we call the underworld, looking for the light-landmark that was the relay-circle at Arilinn.

For a moment I had it. Then, within the stone, there was a wild flaring flame, a rush of savage awareness, a too-familiar surge of fiery violence . . . flames rising, the great form of fire blotting out consciousness . . . a woman, dark and vital, bearing a living flame, a great circle of faces pouring out raw emotion. . . .

I heard Marjorie gasp, fought to break the raport.
Sharra! Sharra! We had been sealed to it, we were caught and drawn to the fires of destruction. . . .

“No!
No!
” Marjorie cried aloud, and I saw the fires thin out and vanish. They had never been there. They were reflected in the dying coals of our ritual marriage-fire; the eerie edge of light around Marjorie's face was only the last firelight there. She whispered, trembling, “Lew, what was it?”

“You know,” I hesitated to say the name aloud, “Kadarin. And Thyra. Working directly with the sword. Zandru's hells, Marjorie, they are trying to use it the old way, not with a Keeper-controlled circle of telepaths in an orderly energon ring—and it's uncontrollable even that way, as we found out—but with a single telepath, focusing raw emotion from a group of untrained followers.”

“Isn't that terribly dangerous?”

“Dangerous! The word's inadequate! Would you kindle a forest fire to cook your supper? Would you chain a dragonfire to roast your chops or dry your boots? I wish I thought they would only kill
themselves
!”

I strode up and down by the dead fire, restlessly listening to the battering of the storm outside. “And I can't even warn them at Arilinn!”

“Why not, Lew?”

“So close to—to Sharra—my own matrix won't work,” I said, and tried to explain how Sharra evidently blanked out smaller matrices.

“How far will that effect reach, Lew?”

“Who knows? Planet-wide, maybe. I've never worked with anything that strong. There aren't any precedents.”

“Then, if it reached all the way to Arilinn, won't the telepaths there know that
something
is wrong?”

I brightened. That might be our only hope. I staggered suddenly and she caught at my arm.

“Lew! You're worn out. Rest here by me, darling.” I flung myself down at her side, dizzy and despairing. I had not even spoken of my other fears, that if I used my personal matrix, I, who had been sealed to Sharra, might be drawn back into that vortex, that savage fire, that corner of hell. . . .

She knew, without my saying it. She whispered, “I can feel it reaching for us. . . . Can it draw us back, back into itself?” She clung to me in terror; I rolled over and took her to me, holding her with savage strength, fighting an almost uncontrollable desire. And that frightened hell out of me. I should be drained, spent, exhausted, incapable of the slightest sexual impulse. That was frustrating, but it was normal, and I had long since come to terms with it.

But this wild lust—and it was pure lust, a hateful dark animal thing with no hint of love or warmth—set my pulses racing, made me gasp and fight against it. It was too strong; I let it surge up and overwhelm me, feeling the fire burn up in my veins as if some scalding ichor had replaced the blood in my body. I smothered her mouth under mine, felt her weakly struggling to fight me away. Then the fire took us both.

It is the one memory I have of Marjorie which is not all joy. I took her savagely, without tenderness, trying to slake the burning need in me. She met me with equal violence, hating it equally, both of us gripped with that uncontrollable savage desperation. It was fierce and animal—no! Not animal! Animals meet cleanly, driven only by the life-force in them, knowing nothing of this kind of dark lust. There was no innocence in this, no love, only raw violence, insatiable, a bottomless pit of hell. It
was
hell, all the hell either of us would ever need to know. I heard her sobbing helplessly and knew I was weeping, too, with shame and self-hatred. Afterward we did not sleep.

Even at Nevarsin, Regis thought, it had never snowed so hard, or so persistently. His pony picked its way deliberately along, following in the steps of Danilo's mount, as mountain horses were trained to do. It was snowing again.

He wouldn't mind any of it, he thought, the riding, the cold or the lack of sleep, if he could see properly, or keep the world straight under him.

The threshold sickness had continued off and on, more on than off in the last day or so. He tried to ignore Danilo's anxious looks, his concern for him. There wasn't anything Danilo could do for him, so the less said about it, the better.

But it was intensely unpleasant. The world kept thinning away at irregular intervals and dissolving. He had had no attacks as bad as the one he'd had at Thendara or on the way north, but he seemed to live in mild chronic disorientation all the time. He didn't know which was worse, but suspected it was whichever form he happened to have at the time.

Danilo waited for him to draw even on the path. “Snowing already, and it's hardly midafternoon. At this rate it will take us a full twelve days to reach Thendara, and we'll lose the long start we had.”

The more quickly they reached Thendara, the better. He knew a message
must
get through, even if Lew and Marjorie were recaptured. So far there was no sign of pursuit. But Regis knew, cursing his own weakness, that he could not take much more of the constant exertion, the long hours in the saddle and the constant sickness.

Earlier that day they had passed through a small village, where they had bought food and grain for the horses. Perhaps they could risk a fire tonight—if they could find a place to build it!

“Anything but a hay-barn,” Danilo agreed. The last night they had slept in a barn, sharing warmth with several cows and horses and plenty of dry hay. The animals had made it a warm place to sleep, but they could not risk a fire or even a light, with the tinder-dry hay, so they had eaten nothing but hard strips of cured meat and a handful of nuts.

“We're in luck,” Danilo said, pointing. Away to the side of the road was one of the travel-shelters built generations ago, when Aldaran had been the seventh Domain and this road had been regularly traveled in all seasons. The inns had all been abandoned, but the travel-shelters, built to stand for centuries, were still habitable, small stone cabins with attached sheds for horses and proper amenities for travelers.

They dismounted and stabled their horses, hardly speaking, Regis from weariness, Danilo from reluctance to intrude on him. Dani thought he was angry, Regis sensed; he knew he should tell his friend he was not angry, just tired. But he was reluctant to show weakness. He was Hastur: it was for him to lead, to take responsibility. So he drove himself relentlessly, the effort making his words few and sharp, his voice harsh. It only made it worse to know that if he had given Danilo the slightest encouragement, Dani would have waited on him hand and foot and done it with pleasure. He wasn't going to take advantage of Danilo's hero-worship.

The Comyn had done too much of that. . . .

The horses settled for the night, Danilo carried the saddle-bags inside. Pausing on the threshold, he said, “This is the interesting time, every night. When we see what the years have left of whatever place we've found to stay.”

“It's interesting, all right,” Regis said dryly. “We never know what we'll find, or who'll share our beds with us.” One night they had had to sleep in the stables, because a nest of deadly scorpion-ants had invaded the shelter itself.

“Um, yes, a scorpion-ant is a lower form of life than I care to go to bed with,” Danilo said lightly, “but tonight we seem to be in luck.” The interior was bare and smelled dusty and unaired, but there was an intact fireplace, a pair of benches to sit on and a heavy shelf built into the wall so they need not sleep on the floor at the mercy of spiders or rodents. Danilo dumped the saddlebags on a bench. “I saw some dead branches in the lee of the stable. The snow won't have soaked them through yet. There may not be enough to keep a fire all night, but we can certainly cook some hot food.”

Regis sighed. “I'll come and help you get them in.” He opened the door again on the snow-swept twilight; the world toppled dizzily around him and he clung to the door.

“Regis, let me go, you're ill again.”

“I can manage.”

“Damn it!” Suddenly Danilo was angry. “Will you stop pretending and playing hero with me? How the hell will I manage if you fall down and can't get up again? It's a lot easier to drag a couple of armfuls of dry branches in, than try to carry
you
through the snow! Just stay in here, will you?”

Pretending. Playing hero. Was that how Danilo saw his attempt to carry his own weight? Regis said stiffly, “I wouldn't want to make things harder for you. Go ahead.”

Danilo started to speak but didn't. He set his chin and strode, stiff-necked, into the snowy darkness. Regis started to unload the saddlebags but became so violently dizzy that he had to sit down on one of the stone benches, holding on with both hands.

He was a dead weight on Danilo, he thought. Good for nothing but to hold him back. He wondered how Lew was faring in the mountains. He'd hoped to draw pursuit away from him, that hadn't worked either. He felt like huddling on the bench, giving way to the surges of sickness, but remembered Javanne's advice: move around, fight it. He hauled himself to his feet, got his flint-and-steel and the wisps of dry hay they had kept for tinder, and knelt before the fireplace, clearing away the remnants of the last travelers' fire. How many years ago was that one built? he wondered.

Wind, and cold slashes of snow blew through the open doorway; Danilo, laden with branches, staggered inside, shoved them near the fireplace, went quickly out again. Regis tried to separate the driest branches to lay a fire, but could not steady his hands enough to manipulate the small mechanical flint-and-steel, fed with resinous oil, which kept the spark alive. He laid the device on the bench and sat with his head in his hands, feeling completely useless, until Danilo, bent under another load of branches, came in and kicked the door shut behind him.

“My father calls that a lazy man's load,” he said cheerfully, “carrying too much because you're too lazy to go back for another. It ought to keep the cold out awhile. Anyway, I'd rather be cold here than warm in Aldaran's royal suite, damn him.” He strode to where Regis had laid the fire, kneeling to spark it alight with Regis's lighter. “Bless the man who invented this gadget. Lucky you have one.”

It had been part of Gabriel's camping-kit that Javanne had given him, along with the small cooking pots they carried. Dani looked at Regis, huddled motionless and shivering on the bench. He said, “Are you very angry with me?”

Silently, Regis shook his head.

Danilo said haltingly, “I don't want to . . . to offend you. But I'm your paxman and I have to do what's best for you. Even if it's not always what you want.”

“It's all right, Dani. I was wrong and you were right,” Regis said. “I couldn't even light the fire.”

“Well, I don't mind lighting it. Certainly not with that gadget of yours. There's water piped in the corner, there, if the pipes aren't frozen. If they are, we'll have to melt snow. Now, what shall we cook?”

The last thing Regis cared about at that moment was food, but he forced himself to join in a discussion about whether soup made from dried meat and beans, or crushed-grain porridge, would be better. When it was bubbling over the fire, Danilo came and sat beside him. He said, “Regis, I don't want to make you angry again. But we've got to have this out. You're no better. Do you think I can't see that you can hardly ride?”

“What do you want me to say to you, Dani? I'm doing the best I can.”

“You're doing
more
than you can,” said Danilo. The light of the blazing fire made him look very young and very troubled. “Do you think I'm blaming you? But you must let me help you more.” Suddenly he flared out, “What am I to say to them in Thendara, if the heir to Hastur dies in my hands?”

“You're making too much of this,” Regis said. “I never heard that anyone died of threshold sickness.”

Yet Javanne had looked genuinely frightened . . .

“Maybe not,” Danilo said skeptically, “but if you cannot sit your horse, and fall and break your skull, that's fatal, too. Or if you exhaust yourself and take a chill, and die of it. And you are the last Hastur.”

“No I'm not,” Regis said, at the end of endurance. “Didn't you hear me tell Lew? I have an heir. Before I ever came on this trip I faced the fact that I might die, so I named one of my sister's sons as my heir. Legally.” Danilo sat back on his heels, stunned, wide open, and his thought was as clear as if he had spoken aloud,
For my sake?
Regis forcibly stopped himself from saying anything more. He could not face the naked emotion in Danilo's eyes. This was the time of danger, the forced intimacy of these evenings, when he must barricade himself continually against revealing what he felt. It would be all too easy to cling to Danilo for strength, to take advantage of Danilo's emotional response to him.