“I protest!” I shouted again, leaping down until I stood at the center of the open space, facing him.
Hastur said mildly, “We have not yet called for a formal challenge. You must state the reasons for your protest.”
I fought to steady my voice. Whatever my own hate—and I felt that it would rise and swallow me—I must speak now calmly. Hysteria would only harm my cause; no matter what protests, incoherent accusations, were tumbling over one another in my mind, I must plead my cause with quiet rationality. I grasped at the presence in my mind, the alien memories I carried; how would my father have spoken? He had usually been able to make them do his will.
“I declare—” I began, trying to steady my voice against the flood, “I declare—the existence—of an unsettled blood feud.” Blood feud was held, everywhere in the Domains, to be an obligation surmounting every other consideration. “His life is—is mine; I have claimed it.”
To this moment our eyes had not met; now he raised his head, and looked at me, skeptical, concerned. I turned my own away. I did not want to remember that once I had called this man cousin and friend. Gods above, how could the man stand there and look me calmly in the eye and say, as he was saying now, “I did not know you felt that way, Lew. Do you blame me for everything then? How can I make amends? Certainly I was not aware of any such quarrel as that.”
Amends! I clenched the stump of my arm with my good hand, wanting to shout, can you make amends for this? Can you give me back six years of my life, can you bring back— Marjorie? For once in my life I was grateful for the presence of the telepathic dampers without which all this would have blasted through the room with the full force of the hyper-developed Alton rapport—but I said doggedly, “Your life is mine; when, where and as I can.”
Beltran spread his hands slightly, as if to say, “What is this all about?” Before the puzzled look in his eyes, I swear that for a moment I doubted my own sanity. Had I dreamed it all? My fingernails clenched in my wrist, and I reminded myself; thiswas no nightmare.
Hastur said sternly, “Your words are nothing here, Lord Armida.” I remembered, after a shocked second; this was myname, not my father’s; I was Lord Armida now.
“You have forgotten,” Hastur went on, “blood feud is forbidden here in Comyn as among equals.” The word was a counterplay on words; the word comynmeant, simply, equals in rank or status.
“And I state,” said Beltran calmly, “that I have no grudge against my cousin of Alton; if he believes there is a blood-feud between us, it must arise from a time in his life when he was—” and I could see everyone in Council saying what he seemed, so kindly, to forbear saying: from a time when he was mad—
The very existence of Comyn, the Seven Domains of the Hastur’s kin, was predicated on an alliance prohibiting blood-feud, Comyn immunity. Which Beltran, damn him, now enjoyed. Zandru send him scorpion whips! Was there no way to stop this farce?
Where I was standing I could not see her; but Callina rose and came forward, her crimson Keeper’s veils fluttering as if in an invisible breeze. I turned as she spoke; she stood there, strange, distant, remote, not at all like the woman I had held in my arms and pledged to support. Her voice, too, sounded faraway and overly distinct, as if it came, not fromher, but somehow throughher.
“My lord Aldaran, as Keeper of Comyn I have the right to ask this of you. Have you sworn allegiance to Compact?”
“When I am pledged Comyn,” Beltran said, “I am ready to swear.”
She gestured and said, “Your army stands out there, bearing Terran weapons, in defiance of Compact. Are we to allow you in Comyn when you have not yet sworn to observe the first law of Comyn, in return for welcoming you among us?”
“When I swear to Comyn,” said Beltran with silken suaveness, “my Honor Guard shall give up those weapons into the hands of my promised wife.”
I saw Callina flinch at the words. There were telepathic dampers all over the room, but still it seemed that I could read her thoughts.
If I do not agree to this marriage, it means war. The last war in the Domains decimated the Comyn. Beltran could wipe us out altogether.
She raised her eyes and looked at him. She said, her words dropping into deathly silence, “Why, then, my lord of Aldaran, if you are content with an unwilling bride—” she hesitated; I knew she did not turn or look at me, but I sensed the trapped despair behind her words—“then I agree. Let the handfasting be held on Festival Night.”
“Be it so,” said Beltran, with that smile that was like a mask over his true feelings, and bowed. I stood, without moving, as if my feet were rooted to the floor of the Crystal Chamber. Were they really going to do this? Were they going to sell Callina to Beltran, to prevent war? Was there no one who could lift a hand against this monstrous injustice?
In a final appeal I cried out, “Will you have him in Council, then? He is sealed to Sharra!”
He turned directly to me, then, and said, “So are you, cousin.”
To that, there was nothing I could say. I felt at that moment like doing what Lerrys had done, and storming out of the Council, cursing them all.
I have never been quite sure what happened next. I know that I made a move to resume my seat, had taken a few steps toward the Alton enclosure, when I heard a cry, in a woman’s voice. For a moment it sounded so like Dio’s that I stood frozen; then Derik cried out, too, and I turned to see Beltran take a step back and thrust out his hands, as if to guard himself.
Then there were cries everywhere, shouts of dread and terror; backing a little away into the enclosure, I saw it, hanging in the air above us, growing, menacing—
The form of a chained woman, hair of flame, tossing, ravening, growing higher, higher, with the crackling sound of forest-fire… Sharra! The fire-form, Sharra— Now I knew it was a nightmare from hell, I backed away, too, from the rising flames licking at us, the smell of burning, the flood of terror, of hate, the corner of hell which had opened up for me six years ago…
I clutched at vanishing self-control before I could cry out again and disgrace myself by screaming like a woman. The Form of Fire was there, yes; it hovered and flickered and trembled above us, the shape of a woman, her head thrown back, three times the height of a tall man, the flames licking at her hair. Marjorie! Marjorie, burning, overshadowed by Sharra… then I caught at vanishing rationality.
No, this was not Sharra as I had known it. My heart was beating fast from fright, but there was no true smell of burning in the room, the curtains of the enclosures did not smolder or catch into flame where the fire touched them… this was illusion, no more, and I stood, clenching the fist of my good hand, feeling the nails cut into the flesh, feeling the old burning pain in the hand that was not there… phantom pain, as this was no more than a phantom, an image of Sharra— I would have known the real thing, I would feel my whole body and soul tied into that monstrous overshadowing…
The Form of Fire thrust out an arm… a woman’s arm lapped in fire… and Beltran broke, backed away… bolted from the Crystal Chamber. Now that I knew what it was, I stood my ground, watching him go, wondering who had done it. Kadarin, wherever he was, drawing the Sword, evoking the Form of Fire? No. I was sealed to Sharra, body and soul; if Kadarin, who had also been sealed to that unholy thing, had summoned, I too would have been consumed in the flame— I gripped my hand hard on the railing, wondering. The Comyn were milling around, crying out in confusion. Two or three others bolted, too, through their private entrances at the back of the enclosures.