The Shadow Matrix (25 page)

wild telepath. This was very much on her mind, because she had been just that for

some time. She had never suspected, for instance, that she had the ability to use her

voice to command people, until she had inadvertently sent young Donal Alar into the

over-world. Marguerida still got the shivers, he knew, when she remembered that, and

thought of all the times she could have injured someone.

The only conclusion that had come out of these talks was that, since
laran
on Darkover

was a fact of life, the Towers were necessary. Since he knew how much she loathed the

very existence of the great relays, that the stones themselves sent her into anguish, he

knew this was a difficult admission.

But until that moment, Mikhail had never considered that Vincent was misusing his

untrained
laran
on his siblings because he himself would not have done so. He had

been stupid, assuming that this pack of wild children functioned with the same rules he

did. He began to wonder if Priscilla Elhalyn was more than merely eccentric, because

he could not imagine any other explanation for her bizarre behavior.

"I think it is time Vincent learns he cannot do just as he pleases," Mikhail said quietly.

"But he can!" Emun blurted out the words, then looked as if he wished he had bitten

his tongue.

"Go on."

The boy looked helplessly at his sisters. No one spoke for several minutes, and the

only sound in the room was the crackling of the fireplace and the noise of spoons and

knives hitting plates and bowls. Daryll and Mathias continued to eat, appearing deaf,

though Mikhail knew that Mathias would speak to him later. The older Guardsman was

gruff, but he was also wise, and during the weeks, Mikhail had come to depend on his

opinions and observations.

Finally Miralys spoke. "It does not matter what he does

to us, because we are all going away, and he is going to be king. We all know that.

And, truthfully, it cannot be too soon."

"Going away? Where are you going?"

"We are not allowed to talk about it." Val mumbled the words, looking as if she wanted

to say more, but was afraid to.

For the first time in his life, Mikhail Hastur wished he had the Alton Gift of forced

rapport. He was shocked at himself. He had never wanted to invade the thoughts of

another. The very idea told him that he was totally out of his depth, that he needed

help, experienced help. He had a wild telepath on his hands—two, if he counted* the

enigmatic Emelda.

As he tried to think what to do, he felt his mind begin to cloud. It was a subtle thing, a

feeling of passivity and weakness, but he noticed it almost at once. Anger surged in his

blood, and he felt himself tremble with rage.

A moment later he heard a faint shriek from the back of the house, and outside the

dining room window, the hoarse caw of a crow. Then his mind was clear again.

"Look! It has begun to snow!" Valenta pointed toward the window as she spoke,

sounding relieved to find something to say that was innocuous and safe.

"So it has," he answered, clinging to the clarity of his mind stubbornly.
I have to get

some help, and quickly. But from whom? I don't really know the folk at Dalereuth, and

it is such a small Tower. Besides, if it is snowing here, they are already up to their

knees in the stuff. Why didn't I understand sooner? And why won't I ask Regis? I can't.

Who, then? What a dunce I am!
Liriel!
Of course!

9

By the time he got to his room, Mikhail was feeling the strains of his recent exercise—

and the fatigue, too. His hamstrings were aching, and he had the start of a serious

headache. All he wanted was his bed and unbroken sleep for a change. There was

something he had intended to do, but for the life of him, he couldn't think what it was.

He undressed, automatically checked the room for mischief, and settled into the bed. It

smelled slightly musty, and he found himself longing for the clean scent of the sheets

at Armida. Mikhail had come to hate Halyn House over the days, and focused his ill-

feeling on it, rather than hating Emelda or Priscilla. He would rather be almost

anywhere else. No, that was not true. He wanted to be at Neskaya, with Marguerida,

even though he knew that winter had already arrived there. His cousin had complained

of it during their most recent late evening communication. When was that? He couldn't

remember when he had last spoken to her.

The thought of Neskaya seemed to enlarge in his mind, filling him with longing.

Mikhail wanted to abandon the house, the Elhalyn children, everything. He wished he

were an ordinary man, or that Marguerida were an ordinary woman, and that their

destinies were of no importance to Darkover. Of course, if that were the case, he would

not be huddling under the blankets in a house that remained drafty even after all the

repairs he had had done. No ordinary man would have been saddled with this

unmanageable task.

Mikhail Hastur sighed softly, snuggled down against the pillow, and let his eyelids

close. He wanted so much to talk to Marguerida, but he didn't have the energy to

concen-

trate, to take out his matrix stone and send his thoughts to her. All he wanted was sleep.

If only he could remember. ...

In a few moments, he was sound asleep, dreaming of Marguerida Alton. They were

walking through a summery field, their hands linked. He could smell the flowers and

the dry earth beneath their feet. She turned her face toward him, lifting her lips for a

kiss. Mikhail brought his mouth down to hers and . . .

A scream yanked him from sleep like a faceful of ice water. It was a terrible sound, a

wail of terror bubbling from a throat. Mikhail got gooseflesh just listening, even

though he knew it was one of the children having a nightmare.

Still muzzy with sleep, he shoved his feet into fur-lined slippers and put on a thick

robe. Mikhail pushed his fingers through his hair, yanking a tangle so hard it hurt. He

glimpsed himself in the shadowed glass and grimaced. For a moment he stared at his

reflection. He was haggard and gaunt with weight loss. There were dark circles under

his eyes, and he looked haunted. When had he lost so much weight?

Mathias was sitting up outside the door, rubbing his eyes. With a quick glance, Mikhail

realized that his man did not appear a great deal better than himself. The older

Guardsman had lost weight also, and the hair on his head looked brittle and dry in the

light of the lampions. Why hadn't he noticed that earlier?

He stifled another sigh and trudged down the long corridor toward the sound of the

screaming.

Either

Emun

or

Alain was having a bad dream. He was not sure which.

Vincent never seemed to have nightmares. Mikhail stopped

abruptly at this idea. It was important, but the thought

wriggled out of his focus and faded before he could examine it.

,

He could hear the sound of one of the old nurses coming from her bed, complaining as

usual. They had not done that when he first came, but had just let the children scream

and cry. Only at Mikhail's insistence had they grudgingly begun to come during these

all too frequent scenes. When he had asked them why they did not attend to the

youngsters, Becca had peered at him with eyes that were clouded

with the start of cataracts and announced, "They have to grow out of it—pampering

won't help!"

At the time he had thought that an odd answer, and since the two ancient women had

been Priscilla's nurses years before, he had wondered if they had ignored her in the

same manner when she was a girl. That would certainly explain Priscilla's peculiarities.

Having had the attention of loving and concerned servants all his own childhood,

Mikhail was hard pressed to imagine the neglect he suspected.

He heard muttering, and knew it must be Becca. Wena was almost always silent, while

Becca never seemed to stop talking. Both were really past their work, and should have

been given retirement long since. With the refusal of the villagers to stay at Halyn

House, though, he was glad of their presence, as little help as they actually were.

They claimed to have been nurses to Alanna Elhalyn, who had been dead for over half

a century. Mikhail guessed they were almost eighty, though neither of them would

admit it. And they possessed all the irritating habits of old retainers—treating everyone

as if they were quite young and a little slow, insisting that they knew best, and refusing

to change their ways.

His admiration for his mother, Javanne Hastur, increased as he had tried to cope with

this unlikely bunch of youngsters. He had taken a spare moment to write her to that

effect, and shipped the letter off with a messenger, but he had received no reply. She

was either still sulking up at Armida, feeling betrayed by both her brother Regis and by

Mikhail himself, or already in Thendara, fomenting intrigue. Sternly, he set his

thoughts aside and followed the howling sound which he recognized all too well now.

Emun was sitting in the middle of his bed, clutching the bedclothes, his head thrown

back, a thin, terrible noise emanating from his slender neck. He was a skinny boy, all

knees and elbows and eyes too large in a narrow face. The pale reddish hair, tangled

and matted now from thrashing in the bed, looked dirty, and he had bitten his lower lip

until it bled. There were deep circles under his blue eyes, and Mikhail knew he had

torn the palms of his hands with his short fingernails.

Emun was showing signs of threshold sickness, but he had not yet begun to manifest

the actual disease. This had

puzzled Mikhail more than a little, when he had the energy to think. The onset of
laran

was usually accompanied by this illness, sometimes violently and sometimes

otherwise. In Mikhail's case, it had been a fairly mild event, but he remembered how

sick Marguerida had been the previous summer at Ardais Castle, and, despite what he

had learned at Arilinn, he remained doubtful of his ability to deal with it.

Tonight, his mind almost clear for a change, he found himself wondering why it had

not either arrived in full force, or remained in abeyance. Mikhail had been told at

Arilinn, and knew from his own experience, that when it began, it came all at once.

Emun's apparent false starts were puzzling, and while he was grateful that he was not

having to deal with the full-blown problem, he was worried that when it arrived, he

would not really be capable of handling it.

It was, he felt, as if something was preventing Emun from coming into whatever
laran

he would possess as an adult, if these nightmares did not kill him first. That was

impossible, of course, unless either Priscilla or Emelda were interfering with the lad's

channels in some manner. To Mikhail, such an action was unthinkable, but he knew

that Ashara Alton had overshadowed not only Marguerida, but numerous other women

during the centuries since her death. So, while he might find the idea horrifying,

clearly there were people who were not governed by his own ethics.

Liriel would know the answer to many of his questions.
Liriel!
That was what he had

been trying to remember when he went to bed! As a matrix technician, she was superb,

though her innate modesty prevented her from realizing her potential. And she could

test the girls, he realized, which was something it would be quite inappropriate for him

to do. They were young enough to be his daughters, and that put them out of bounds

for him. Now, if he could just keep a thought in his head long enough to do something!

As soon as Mikhail formed this idea, he felt the familiar sense of mental exhaustion,

passivity, and despair. He struggled with it, the subtle feeling of loss, unworthiness

and fear that gnawed at him during every waking hour. He had no time for his own

concerns now.

Mikhail sat down on the edge of Emun's bed and took one small shaking hand in his

own. The other boys were asleep in the big bed, or pretending to be. Emun's night

terrors were so frequent an occurrence that his screams rarely roused them.

He studied the child. The pupils of the boy's eyes were pinpricks in the flickering light

of a bedside candle, and he stared at Mikhail without recognition. Tears streaked his

cheeks, and he was clammy with sweat. Becca, grumbling audibly, shuffled into the

room. She grunted and put a small log on the little fire that was banked in the hearth.

Then she set a pot on it, and began to heat some water for tea.

"Emun, what is it?"

The boy did not answer immediately. He looked at the corners of the room, into the

deep shadows, and seemed to be expecting something to jump out at him. His hand

clamped on Mikhail's, as if holding on for his life. Finally, Emun's eyes dilated toward

normalcy, and his thin shoulders relaxed. "I don't know. Something bad was in here."

Mikhail waited. All the younger children were convinced the house had ghosts. He had