“If you’ll be calm, I’ll explain everything,” I said. “I am sorry, I cannot remember your name—”
“Kathie Marshall,” she said.
“Terranan?”
“Yes. But I know we’re not on Terra, nor on Vainwal,” she said, and her voice trembled; but she made no display of fear. I said, “The Terranan call this Cottman’s Star. We call it Darkover. We brought you here because we need your help—”
“You must be crazy,” she said. “How could I help you? And if I could, what makes you think I would, after you’ve kidnapped me?”
That was, I supposed, a fair question. I reached out to try to touch her mind; if she could not understand our language, at least this might reassure her that we meant no harm.
Callina said, “You were brought here because you were twinned in mind with my sister Linnell—”
She backed away. “Twinned minds? That’s ridiculous! Do you think I believe in that kind of thing?”
“If you do not,” said Callina quietly, “how is it that suddenly you can understand what I am saying?”
“Why, you’re speaking Terran… no!” she said, and I saw the terror rise in her mind again. “Why, what language am I speaking—?”
It was reasonable that if she was Linnell’s Cherillys double, she would have laran potential; at least she could understand us now. Callina said, “We hoped we could persuade you to help us; but there will be no compulsion and certainly no force.”
“Where am I, then?”
“In the Comyn Castle in Thendara.”
“But that’s halfway across the Galaxy…” she whispered, and turned frantically to stare out the window, at the red light of the declining sun. I saw her white hands clench on a fold of curtain. “A red sun—” she whispered, “Oh, I have nightmares like this when I can’t wake up…” She was so deathly white I feared she would collapse; Callina put an arm around her, and this time Kathie did not pull away.
“Try to believe us, child,” Callina said. “You are here, on Darkover. We brought you here.”
“And who are you?”
“Callina Aillard. Keeper of Comyn Council.”
“I’ve heard about the Keepers,” Kathie said, then, shakily, “this whole thing is crazy! You can’t take a Terran citizen and pull her halfway across the Galaxy like this! My—my father will tear the planet apart looking for me—” She covered her face with her hands. “I—I want to go home!”
I wished that we had never started this whole thing. I was remembering the aureole of doom, fate, death which I had seen around Linnell… merciful Evanda, was it only last night? I wondered if this had endangered Linnell in some way; what happened when Cherillys duplicates met one another? There was not even a legend to guide me. There was an old legend from the Kilghard Hills, about a mountain chief, or a bandit lord—in those days, I supposed, it would be hard to distinguish between them—who had located his duplicate so that he could command his army by being in two places at once; but I couldn’t remember any more than that, and I had no idea what had happened to the duplicate once his day was done. Possibly the bandit chief let his duplicate be hanged for his own crimes. In any case, I was sure he came to a bad end.
Would this woman’s presence endanger Linnell? There was one precaution I could take; I could put a protective barrier around her mind, so that she would keep her invulnerability, her complete unawareness of these Darkovan forces. I hoped that in touching her mind, to give her knowledge of the language, I had not already breached that unawareness; at least I would make sure no one else did so. In effect, I meant to put a barrier around her mind so that any attempt to make telepathic contact with Kathie, or dominate her mind, would be immediately shunted, through a sort of bypass circuit built into the barrier, to me.
There was no sense in trying to explain what I meant to do. I would have to start by explaining the very nature of the laran Gifts, and since, as Linnell’s exact duplicate, she had laran potential, when I had done explaining, she might be adapted and vulnerable to Darkovan forces. I reached out as gently as I could, and made contact.
It was an instant of screaming pain in every nerve, then it blanked out, and Kathie was sobbing convulsively.
“What did you do? I felt you—it was horrible—but no, that’s crazy—or I’m crazy—what happened?”
“Why couldn’t you wait till she understood?” Callina demanded. But I had done what I had to do, and I had done it now, because I wanted Kathie safely barriered before anyone saw her and guessed. But it hurt to see her cry; I had never been able to stand Linnell’s tears. Callina looked up helplessly, trying to soothe the weeping girl.
“Go away. I’ll handle this.” And as Kathie’s sobs broke out afresh, “Lew, go away!”
Suddenly I was angry. Why didn’t Callina trust me? I bowed elaborately and said, “Su serva, domna,” in my coldest, most ironic voice, turned my back and went out.
And in that moment, when I left Callina in anger, I snapped the trap shut on us all.
As darkness fell, every light in the Comyn Castle began to glow; once in every journey of Darkover around its sun, the Comyn, city folk from Thendara, mountain lords with business in the lowlands, offworld consuls and ambassadors and Terrans from the Trade City, mingled together on Festival Night with a great show of cordiality. Now it involved everyone of any importance on the planet; and Festival opened with a great display of dancing in the great ball-room.
Centuries of tradition made this a masked affair, so that Comyn and commoner might mingle on equal terms. In compliance with custom I wore a narrow half mask, but had made no other attempt at disguise; though I had worn my mechanical hand, simply so that I would not be a marked man. My father, I thought wryly, would have approved. I stood at one end of the hall, talking idly with a couple of Terrans in the space service, and as soon as I decently could, I got away and went to one of the windows, looking out at the four miniature moons that had nearly floated into conjunction.
Behind me the great hall blazed with colors and costumes reflecting every corner of Darkover and much of our history. Derik wore an elaborate and gaudy costume from the Ages of Chaos, but he was not masked—one part of a prince’s duty is simply to be visible to his subjects. I recognized Rafe Scott, too, in the mask and whip of a kifirgh duelist, complete with clawed gloves.
In the corner reserved by tradition for young girls, Linnell’s spangled mask was a travesty of disguise. Her eyes were glowing with happy consciousness of all the eyes on her; as comynara she was known to everyone on Darkover—at least in the Domains—but she rarely saw anyone outside the narrow circle of her cousins and the few selected companions permitted to a lady of the Aillard Domain. Now, masked, she could speak to, or even dance with, complete strangers; the excitement of it was almost too much for her.
Beside her, also masked, I saw Kathie, and wondered if that was another of Callina’s brilliant ideas. Well, there was no harm in it; with the bypass circuit I had put into her brain, she was safely barricaded; and there was hardly a better way of proving to her that she was not a prisoner but an honored guest. They would probably think her a minor noble woman of the Aillard clan.
Linnell laughed up at me as I approached her.
“Lew, I am teaching your cousin from Terra some of our dances. Imagine, she didn’t know them.”
My cousin from Terra. I supposed that was another idea of Callina’s. Well, it explained the faint unfamiliarity with which she spoke Darkovan. Kathie said gently, “I wasn’t taught dancing, Linnell.”
“You weren’t? What did you study, then? Lew, don’t they dance on Terra?”