Dyan Ardais had heard him out, a faint smile playing ironically over his lips, as if he could sense how Regis hated this… the necessity that he, Regis, should come as a suppliant, begging favors of Dyan. Regis had concluded, angrily, “Do you want to see them do this to Kennard?”
Dyan had frowned, then, and made him go all over it again. “What exactly are they intending to do?”
“At the first session of Council, this year, they are going to declare Kennard’s estates forfeit because he has abandoned Darkover; and they are going to give Armida into the hands of Gabriel Lanart-Hastur! Just because he commands the Guards and because he’s married to my sister!”
“I don’t see what choice they have.”
“Kennard mustcome home,” Regis said angrily. “They shouldn’t do this behind his back! He should have a chance to protest this! And Kennard has another son!”
After a long silence, Dyan had said, “I’ll make certain that Kennard knows, at least. Then, if he chooses not to return and press his claim—well, I suppose the law must take its course. Leave it to me, Regis. You’ve done all you can.”
And now, weeks later, hurrying to join Marius, Regis wondered about that. Even if Kennard had returned, he would not be fool enough to bring the Sharra matrix back to Darkover, would he?
Perhaps, he thought, perhaps it is only nightmare…perhaps it is not the frightening coincidence I think. Perhaps Rafe’s nightmare reached out to the one person in Thendara who had been touched by Sharra and so I, too, dreamed—
He slung his cloak about his shoulders and said to Marius, “Let’s go. Erril, call my bodyguard.” He didn’t want the man; but he also knew, even at this hour, he could not walk the streets of Thendara wholly unattended; and even if he could, he had been forced to promise his grandfather that he would not.
I am past twenty and a grown man. Yet as my grandfather’s Heir, the Heir to Hastur, I am forced to do his will— He waited for the man in Guardsman’s uniform to come, and went down through the hallways of Comyn Castle and down into the empty streets of Thendara, Marius moving quietly at his side.
It had been many years since Regis had entered Kennard Alton’s Thendara town house. It stood at the edge of a wide cobbled square, and tonight it was all dark except for a single light at the back. Marius led him to a side door; Regis said to the Guardsman, “Wait here.” The man argued a little in an undertone—the Vai Domshould be careful, it might be a trap—but Regis said wrathfully that such a statement was an offense to his kinsman, and the Guardsman, who had, after all, known Kennard as his Commander, and probably Lew too as cadet and officer, growled and subsided.
But after he had left them Regis thought he would have been glad of the man’s company after all. He tended to trust Marius, but Rafe Scott was a Terran, and they were noted for their indifference to codes of honor. And Rafe was also blood kin somehow, to that arch-traitor Kadarin, who had been Lew’s sworn friend, but had betrayed him, beaten and tortured him, drugged him and forced him, unwilling, to serve Sharra…
From inside the darkened house rose a cry, a scream, a howl of terror, as if no human throat could quite compass that cry. For a moment, behind Regis’s eyes he felt the blaze of fire—the primal terror of the fire-form, raging, ravening…then he shut it out, knowing it was the terror in the other’s mind that he picked up and read. He managed to barrier his mind, and turned to Marius, white with dread, at his side. He wondered if the younger man had enough laranto pick up the image, or whether it was Rafe’s distress that troubled him.
Kennard had proved to the Council that Lew had the Alton gift and they had accepted him. They had not accepted Marius; did that mean that Kennard’s younger son was wholly withoutlaran?
“Remember, Marius, I don’t know if I can do anything at all for him. But I ought to see him.”
Marius nodded, and led the way into an inner room. A frightened servant stood shaking by the door, afraid to go in. “There hasn’t been any change, domMarius. Andres is with him.”
Regis just flicked the barest glance of recognition at the burly, graying man in Darkovan clothing—though Regis knew he was a Terran—who had been chief coridom, or steward, at Armida when Regis was there as a child. Rafe Scott was sitting bolt upright, staring at nothing Regis could see, and as Regis came into the room, again there was that infernal, animal howl of terror and dread. Even through his strong barriers, Regis could sense the blaze of heat, fire, torment… a woman, locks of fiery hair blazing, tossing—
Regis felt the hair on his forearms, every separate hair on his body bristling and standing upright; like some animal in the presence of a primordial enemy. Marius had asked Andres something in a low, concerned tone, and the man shook his head. “All I could do was hold him so he wouldn’t hurt himself.”
“I wish Lerrys was in the city,” Marius said. “The Ridenow are trained to deal with alien intelligences—presences that aren’t on this dimension at all.”
Regis looked at the terrified face of the young man before him. He had seen Rafe only once, and that briefly; he remembered him best as a child, a boy of thirteen, at Aldaran. He had thought, then, that the boy was young to be admitted into one of the matrix circles. He must be nineteen or twenty now—
Not a boy, then. A young man. But, living among Terrans, he has not had the training which would teach him to cope with such things.
… but Lew was trained at Arilinn, and the best they could do could not keep him unburned by the fires of Sharra—
It would do no good to send for an ordinary matrix technician. They could do many things—unfasten locks without a key, trace lost objects through clairvoyance matrix-amplified, set truthspell for business dealings where ordinary trust would not serve, diagnose obscure complaints, even perform simple surgery without knife or blood. But Sharra would be beyond their knowledge or their competence. For better or for worse, Regis, who knew little, knew as much of Sharra as anyone.
He felt the most terrible revulsion against touching that horror; but he reached out, steadying his mind by gripping the matrix around his neck, and tried to make a light contact with Rafe’s mind. At the strange touch, Rafe convulsed all over, as if in the grip of horror again, and cried out, “No! No, Thyra! Sister, don’t—”
For just a fraction of a second Regis saw and recognized the picture in Rafe’s mind, a woman, not the flamehaired horror that was Sharra, but a woman, red-haired, red-lipped, with eyes of a curious golden color…
And then Rafe blinked and in the twinkling of an eye it was gone and he looked at Regis with intelligence in his eyes. Regis noted, with mild surprise, that his eyes too were golden, like the woman he had seen. Rafe said, “What’s the matter, why are you staring at me? What are you doing here—” He blinked again and looked round him wildly. “Marius, what happened?”
“You tell methat,” said Marius angrily. “All I know is that you wakened the whole house screaming and raving of—of—” Again the hesitation and Rafe finally, matter-of-factly, supplied the word. He said “Sharra,” and Regis was relieved, obscurely, as if a deadlock had been broken.
Marius said, “I couldn’t make you hear me; you didn’t know me.”
Rafe frowned and said, “I’m sorry for having disturbed you—in hell’s name, did you go and fetch the Hastur out of bed at this hour of the night?” He looked at Regis in apology and dismay. “I’m sorry. It must have been a bad dream, no more.”