Two to Conquer (43 page)

Bard did not know that he was on the floor, writhing, that he screamed aloud, in the depth of this violation, as Carlina had not screamed, feeling his teeth bite into his lip, a beaten, battered, outraged thing. The world was darkness and his own sobs as he felt with Carlina the horror of being taken again, used again, that
he
had dared to find pleasure in this horror… stillness and self-contempt that she deserved only this and no more…

But that was not all. Somehow, the flood of
laran
had wakened, and he felt other memories, other awarenesses flood through him. He saw himself from Lisarda’s eyes, naked, monstrous, bewildering, dealing pain and violation… saw himself through Melisendra’s eyes, hateful compulsion and a pleasure that created self-contempt, the dread of being humiliated and despoiled for the Sight, her terror of punishment and the scornful tongue of Lady Jerana, and worse, Melora’s pity—

He stood again on the shore of the Lake of Silence, and a priestess in a dark robe cursed him, and then the faces of all those he had killed and despoiled drifted in and gnawed at his soul, and he writhed and howled in the grip of self-knowledge so deep that there was nothing left; he saw himself a small sick shameful thing…
what a miserable excuse for a man you really are
… and knew it to be true. He had looked deep into his own soul, and found it wanting; and with all his heart he longed for death as it went on… and on… and on…

At last it was over, and he lay curled into withdrawal, exhausted, on the floor of the chamber.

Somewhere, a million miles away, farther than the moons, the avenging Avarra thrust a matrix out of sight and the world went into merciful darkness.

Hours later, the world began to clear. Bard stirred, hearing a single voice through the torment of hatred and accusation and self-contempt which was all he could hear.

Bard, I think you are two men
…
and that other, I shall never cease to love
.…

Melora, who had loved him and valued him. Melora, the only woman in whose eyes he had never

destroyed himself.

Even my brother, even Alaric, if he knew what I have done, would hate me. But Melora knows the worst
of me and she does not hate me. Melora, Melora…

Like a man in a daze, he dressed himself, looking across where Carlina lay, flung in deep exhaustion across the bed. She had been too weary even to pull her black mantle across her body; she still wore the torn, blood-stained chemise, and her eyes were raw with crying, sunk deep into her face. He looked at her with a terrible fear and dread, and thought,
Carlie, Carlie, I never wanted to hurt you, what have I
done
? Tiptoeing for fear she should wake and look at him again with those terrible eyes, he went out into the hallway.
Melora
! Only one thought was in his mind, to get to Melora, Melora who alone could heal his hurts… Yet before all else Bard was a soldier, and even as he longed to hurl himself down the stairs and to his horse, he forced himself to take the alternate path, along the hall to his own suite of rooms.

Paul looked up in dismay as Bard came in. He started to say, good God, man, I thought you spent the night with your wife, and you look as if you’d been chasing demons in one of the hells… but he held his peace at the look in Bard’s eyes. What had
happened
to him? He saw Bard look at Melisendra, wearing a green chamber-robe, her hair tied loosely up, fresh from her bath, and then look away, in torment.

“Bard,” she said, in her sweet, musical voice, “what has come to you, my dear? Are you ill?”

He shook his head. “I have no right—no right to ask—” and Paul was amazed and shocked at the

hoarseness of his voice. “Yet—in the name of Avarra—you are a woman. I beg you to go to Carlina; I would not—not let her be humbled further by—by her own serving-maids seeing her in this condition.

I—” his voice broke. “I have destroyed her. And she has destroyed me.” He raised his hand, refusing her ready questions, and Melisendra knew that the man was at the very end of his endurance.

He turned to Paul, summoning a final remnant of his old manner.

“Until I return—until I return, you are Lord General of the Army of Asturias,” he said. “It has come sooner than we thought, that is all.”

Paul opened his mouth in protest, but before he could speak, Bard had plunged out of the room.

As the sound of his booted feet died away, Paul turned to Melisendra, in astonishment and dismay.

“What in hell has happened to
him
! He looks like the wrath of God!”

“No,” said Melisendra gently, “of the Goddess. I think that he has come face to face with the wrath of Avarra; and that she has not been gentle with him.” She put Paul’s hand aside. “I must go to the Lady Carlina; he asked it of me in the name of the Goddess, and that request no woman, and no priestess, may ever refuse.”

Chapter Six

All the long road to Neskaya, Bard, clinging to his galloping horse, riding alone, could barely sit in his saddle. He was sick and exhausted, pain and despair pounding in him with the hoofbeats on the road; the agonizing awareness of humiliation, he was not sure whether it was his own or Carlina’s, the ache of a violated body and a shame that went searingly deep into his very soul. He felt her pain, her self-contempt, and marveled at it… Why should she hate herself for what
I
did to her? Yet he knew that she blamed herself for not letting him kill her first. Searing more deeply yet was the memory of

Melisendra’s gentle voice as she said,
Bard, what has come to you, my dear? Are you ill
? How could she be so forgiving when he had done to her no less than to Carlina? And yet it was genuine, she felt real care and concern for him; was it only that be had fathered her son? Or did she have some source of comfort unknown to him?
When I had need of the comfort of the Goddess, I was younger and more
ignorant than you could possibly imagine
, she had said once to him. She had outlived her pain, or at least survived it, but in Carlina it was all fresh and raw, the memory of the moment when she had cried out to the Goddess and realized that her Goddess could not, or would not intervene to save her.
Yet the
Goddess struck through Carlina and avenged her
—
her and all the other women I have ill-used. But
why did Carlina have to suffer so that the Goddess should strike me
?

Am I going mad?

He rode all day, and when the night came, since already he could see the Tower of Neskaya over the hills, he rode on by moonlight. He had not stopped for food or rest, or for anything except to give his horse a few minutes of rest. Now remembering that he had neither eaten nor drunk all day, and had had little sleep, he dismounted for a few moments and gave his horse some grain. His heavy cloak kept out the evening drizzle well enough, but as he watched the sky cleared and the green face of Idriel peered palely through ragged flaps of cloud.

She is watching me. It is the face of the Goddess watching me.

Yes. Surely, surely, she is going mad. No, it is I who am going mad
. But a sane little voice beneath his despair remarked that he was not going mad, that there was no such merciful escape from the pain of self-knowledge.

You dare not go mad. You must somehow pull yourself together so that you can make amends… though
nothing, nothing can wipe out what I have done…

How did I have enough
laran
to see all that
?

Melisendra. She is a catalyst telepath.

Why did Melisendra never show me what Carlina showed me? She had the power. Was it pity for me
that stayed her hand? And why should she pity me after what I did to her?

Melora, Melora. If he had had any sense at all, he would have known—a thousand little things should have told him—that Carlina did not want him as a husband, and that he did not want her for a wife. He had wanted to marry the king’s daughter in order that he would be secure in his place as the king’s sonin-law. But why had he felt so little self-confidence and pride?
I always thought that, if anything, I was
too proud; yet all I did, I did because I felt I was never good enough
.

But he was the king’s
nedestro
nephew; King Ardrin was his father’s brother and bastardy never counted for all that much against his skills at war and strategy. He could have had a good career and achieved honor and position as the king’s champion and banner bearer… but he hadn’t believed in

himself enough to be sure of it, he had had to force himself on Carlina.

And if King Ardrin had indeed had his heart set on it, he and Carlina could have enjoyed a formal marriage no worse than that of many other couples at the court. But after that successful campaign with the clingfire he should have had enough confidence to know that the king would value him even

without that marriage. He should have freed Carlina, and asked leave of Master Gareth to pay his addresses to Melora.
If she would have had me; I think I knew then that I was not good enough for her
!

Melora was the only person who had ever loved him. His mother had given him up for fostering by his father, as far as he knew, without a moment’s hesitation. Had his father ever loved him, or had he seen Bard only as a tool to his own ambition? His little brother Alaric had loved him…
but Alaric never
knew me, and if he had known what I really was he would not love me… he would have hated me, held
me in contempt
. He had never had a woman to love him.
I put compulsion on them to come to my bed
because I felt none of them would want me, of their own free will
.

His foster brothers had loved him—and he had lamed one for life, and made an enemy of the other, then killed him…

And why did Beltran become my enemy? Because I mocked him… and I mocked him because he

exposed to me my fears about my own manhood. Because he was not ashamed to admit his weakness
or his wish to reassure himself with the old pledge we had made when we were boys… but I was afraid
he would find me less manly than himself!

And when I reach Neskaya, no doubt Melora will reveal to me what a fool I was to think that she could
care for me… but perhaps she will take pity on me. She is a
leronis,
and perhaps she will know what I
must do to put my life right again. Not that what I have done can be wiped out, but I must try. Perhaps
I can appease the Goddess
....

Is it too late?

His horse was now very tired and went slowly, but Bard was weary too, weary beyond telling, and

pulled his cloak around him in a way that reminded him intolerably, with that new raw awareness, of the way Carlina had bundled herself into her black mantle. And he had stripped from her even that rag of weak protection… Bard felt he could not live with this awareness, that he would die if it went on much longer, and yet he knew, on a deep level, that it would never really cease. No matter what amends he made, he would live the rest of his life this way, agonizingly aware of what torment he wrought to others. He would live forever knowing what he had done to those he loved.

Loved. For in his own bewildered way, he had loved Carlina. His love was selfish and gross, but it had been real love, too, love for the shy little girl who had been his playmate. And he had loved Geremy, and Beltran too, and they had forever gone beyond his reach, and all the punishment for their loss was to know that he had himself driven them away, Geremy to alienation, Beltran to death. And he loved Erlend, and he knew he would never deserve his son’s affection or regard. If he had it nevertheless, somehow (for children loved without reason) he would always know that he had it because of Erlend’s goodness and not his own, that if Erlend knew his depths Erlend would hate him too, as Alaric would hate him, as his father would hate him… as Melora, who was so good and honest, would certainly hate him when she knew. And he must tell her.

And then he knew of the pain it would give her when he told, and wondered how he could possibly lay this burden upon Melora, how he could possibly seek to ease his own heart at the cost of weighing hers with his pain. He wondered if he ought to kill himself at once, so that he could never again hurt another person. And then he knew that that, too, would hurt others. It might burden Carlina’s guilt, already overweighed with shame and humiliation, beyond recovery. It would hurt Erlend, who loved him and needed him, and it would hurt Alaric, in whose fragile hands the kingdom rested—but only with Bard’s strong help. And beyond all these it would hurt Melora; and so he knew he could not do it. He rode into the courtyard of Neskaya and asked the sleepy guard there if he might manage to speak to the
leronis
Melora MacAran.

The man lifted his eyes a little, but apparently at the Tower of Neskaya the arrival of a solitary night rider was not all that strange an event. He sent someone to tell Melora she was wanted, and meanwhile, seeing Bard’s exhaustion, brought him inside the lower floor and offered him some biscuits and wine.

Bard ate the biscuits greedily, but did not touch the wine, knowing that if he drank half a cupful in his starved and exhausted state he would be drunk at once. Much as he might have welcomed the oblivion of that drunkenness, he knew there was now no such easy escape for him.

He heard Melora’s voice before he saw her. “But I haven’t the faintest idea who could come here

wanting me at this God-forgotten hour, Lorill.” And then Melora stood in the door. At first glance he could only see that she was heavier of body and rounder of face than ever, standing in the light of a lamp in her hand; but he could see the sheen of her red hair through the modest veil she had thrown over it. She had evidently been disturbed as she was about to retire, and was wearing a loose pale chamber robe through which, dimly silhouetted, he could see the outline of her body.

“Bard?” she said, looking at him in question and surprise, and then, with that new and terrible