His grandfather’s eyes met his briefly, a momentary anchor over a swaying darkness where he hung. He heard his grandfather’s voice, deep and compassionate, saying firmly, “The honor of the Comyn has been safe in my hands for ninety years, Regis. You can leave it to me now.”

Regis let them lay him, nearly senseless, on the stone bench.

He let himself slip away into unconsciousness like a little death.

previous | Table of Contents | next

previous | Table of Contents | next

Chapter FOURTEEN

(Lew Alton’s narrative)

For three days a blizzard had raged in the Hellers. On the fourth day I woke to sunshine and the peaks behind Castle Aldaran gleaming under their burden of snow. I dressed and went down into the gardens behind the castle, standing atop the terraces and looking down on the spaceport below where great machines were already moving about, as tiny at this distance as creeping bugs, to shift the heavy layers of snow. No wonder the Terrans didn’t want to move their main port here!

Yet, unlike Thendara, here spaceport and castle seemed part of a single conjoined whole, not warring giants, striding toward battle.

“You’re out early, cousin,” said a light voice behind me. I turned to see Marjorie Scott, warmly wrapped in a hooded cloak with fur framing her face. I made her a formal bow.

“ Damisela.”

She smiled and stretched her hand to me. “I like to be out early when the sun’s shining. It was so dark during the storm!”

As we walked down the terraces she grasped my cold hand and drew it under her cloak. I had to tell myself that this freedom did not imply what it would mean in the lowlands, but was innocent and unaware. It was hard to remember that with my hand lying between her warm breasts. But damn it, the girl was a telepath, she had to know.

As we went along the path, she pointed out the hardy winter flowers, already thrusting their stalks up through the snow, seeking the sun, and the sheltered fruits casting their snow-pods. We came to a marble-railed space where a waterfall tumbled, storm-swollen, away into the valley.

“This stream carries water from the highest peaks down into Caer Donn, for their drinking water. The dam above here, which makes the waterfall, serves to generate power for the lights, here and down in the spaceport, too.”

“Indeed, damisela?We have nothing like this in Thendara.” I found it hard to keep my attention on the stream. Suddenly she turned to face me, swift as a cat, her eyes flashing gold. Her cheeks were flushed and she snatched her hand away from mine. She said, with a stiffness that concealed anger, “Forgive me, DomLewis. I presumed on our kinship,” and turned to go. My hand, in the cold again, felt as chilled and icy as my heart at her sudden wrath.

Without thinking, I reached out and clasped her wrist.

“Lady, how have I offended you? Please don’t go!”

She stood quite still with my hand clasping her wrist She said in a small voice, “Are all you valley men so queer and formal? I am not used to being called damisela, except by servants. Do you … dislike me … Lew?”

Our hands were still clasped. Suddenly she colored and tried to withdraw her wrist from my fingers. I tightened them, saying, “I feared to be burned … too near the fire. I am very ignorant of your mountain ways. How should I address you, cousin?”

“Would a woman of your valley lands be thought too bold if she called you by name, Lew?”

“Marjorie,” I said, caressing the name with my voice. “Marjorie.” Her small fingers felt fragile and live, like some small quivering animal that had taken refuge with me. Never, not even at Arilinn, had I known such warmth, such acceptance. She said my hands were cold and drew them under her cloak again. All she was telling me seemed wonderful. I knew something of electric power generators—in the Kilghard Hills great windmills harnessed the steady winds—but her voice made it all new to me, and I pretended less knowledge so she would go on speaking.

She said, “At one time matrix-powered generators provided lights for the castle. That technique is lost.”

“It is known at Arilinn,” I said, “but we rarely use it; the cost is high in human terms and there is some danger.” Just the same, I thought, in the mountains they must need more energy against the crueler climate. Easy enough to give up a luxury, but here it might make the difference between civilized life and a brutal struggle for existence.

“Have you been taught to use a matrix, Marjorie?”

“Only a little. Kermiac is too old to show us the techniques. Thyra is stronger than I because she and Kadarin can link together a little, but not for long. The techniques of making the links are what we do not know.”

“That is simple enough,” I said, hesitating because I did not like to think of working in linked circles outside the safety of the tower force-fields. “Marjorie, who is Kadarin, where does he come from?”

“I know no more than he told you,” she said. “He has traveled on many worlds. There are times when he speaks as if he were older than my guardian, yet he seems no older than Thyra. Even she knows not much more than I, yet they have been together for a long time. He is a strange man, Lew, but I love him and I want you to love him too.”

I had warmed to Kadarin, sensing the sincerity behind his angry intensity. Here was a man who met life without self-deception, without the lies and compromises I had lived with so long. I had not seen him for days; he had gone away before the blizzard on unexplained business.

I glanced at the strengthening sun. “The morning’s well on. Will anyone be expecting us?”

“I’m usually expected at breakfast, but Thyra likes to sleep late and no one else will care.” She looked shyly up into my face and said, “I’d rather stay with you.”

I said, with a leaping joy, “Who needs breakfast?”

“We could walk into Caer Donn and find something at a food-stall. The food will not be as good as at my guardian’s table … ”

She led the way down a side path, going by a flight of steep steps that were roofed against the spray from the waterfall. There was frost underfoot, but the roofing had kept the stairway free of ice. The roaring of the waterfall made so much noise that we left off trying to talk and let our clasped hands speak for us. At last the steps came out on a lower terrace leading gently downslope to the city. I looked up and said, “I don’t relish the thought of climbing back!”

“Well, we can go around by the horse-path,” she said. “You came up that way with your escort. Or there’s a lift on the far side of the waterfall; the Terrans built it for us, with chains and pulleys, in return for the use of our water power.”

A little way inside the city gates Marjorie led the way to a food-stall. We ate freshly baked bread and drank hot spiced cider, while I pondered what she had said about matrices for generating power. Yes, they had been used in the past, and misused, too, so that now it was illegal to construct them. Most of them had been destroyed, not all. If Kadarin wanted to try reviving one there was, in theory at least, no limit to what he could do with it.

If, that was, he wasn’t afraid of the risks. Fear seemed to have no part in that curious enigmatic personality. But ordinary prudence?

“You’re lost somewhere again Lew. What is it?”

“If Kadarin wants to do these things he must know of a matrix capable of handling that kind of power. What and where?”

“I can only tell you that not on any of the monitor screens in the towers. It was used in the old days by the forge-folk to bring their metals from the ground. Then it was kept at Aldaran for centuries, until one of Kermiac’s wards, trained by him, used it to break the siege of Storn Castle.”