Rafe Scott, white as death, was there, and Lawton didn’t waste words. He gestured, and Rafe poured it out.
“Kadarin has gone to Hali! I suddenly discovered that I was reading Thyra—I don’t know why—”
Regis did. He could feelSharra, through and around Rafe, a monstrous and obscene flame, unbodied, inchoate… and Rafe was part of that ancient bonding.
Kadarin, bearing the Sword. Thyra. Beltran—
Dyan, who had recklessly flung himself into the volcano.
And Lew, somewhere, somewhere…bound, sealed, doomed…
“Well?” Lawton said crisply, “Will you authorize me to send a helicopter, and men properly armed with blasters, to arrest Kadarin out there? Or are you going to stick to the letter of your Compact, while they work with something which is farther outside of your Compact than a super-planetbusting bomb, let alone a blaster or two?”
Am I going to authorize… who does he think I am? Then, in the sudden humility of power recognized and feared, Regis knew that he could no longer avoid the responsibility. He said, “Yes. I’ll authorize it.” He managed to write his name, though his hand shook, on the form Lawton held out to him. Lawton spoke into some kind of communicator.
“All right; Hastur authorized it. Let the copter go.”
“I want to—” I should go with the copter. Maybe I can still do something for Lew…or his matrix if it’s sealed to Sharra…
Lawton shook his head. “Too late. They’ve taken off. All you can do now is wait.”
They waited, while the sun sank slowly behind the mountain pass. Waited, while time wore away and dragged, and finally Regis saw the helicopter, a tiny black speck hovering over the mountain pass, coming nearer, nearer.
Dio rose and cried out, “He’s hurt! I—I have to go to him—” and dashed for the lift. Lawton simultaneously answered some kind of blinking light, listened, and his face changed.
“Well,” he said grimly to Regis, “I waited too long, or you did, or somebody. They’ve got Kadarin, yes, but it looks as if he’s managed to commit another murder while everybody stood by and watched. They’re going to take him down to Medic. You’d better come along.”
Regis followed, through the sterile white walls of the Medical division. An elevator whined softly to a stop and Spaceforce men hauled out prisoners. Dio had eyes only for Lew, carried between two of the uniformed men. Regis could not tell whether he was alive or dead; his face was ghastly, his head lolled lifeless, and the whole front of his shirt was covered in blood.
Bredu! Regis felt shock and grief surging over him. Dio was clinging to Lew’s lax hand, crying now without trying to hide it. Behind, Kadarin moved manacled between two guards. Regis barely recognized him, he was so much older, so much more haggard, as if something were consuming him from within. Thyra, too, was handcuffed. Kathie looked pale and frightened, and one of the guards was carrying Callina, who appeared to have fainted; they set her in a chair and gestured to someone to bring smelling-salts, and after a minute Callina opened her eyes; but she swayed, holding to the chair. Kathie went swiftly to her and held her up. One of the Medic personnel said something and she frowned and said, “I’m a nurse; I’ll look after her. You’d better look after Mr. Montray-Alton; the woman stabbed him, and it looks as if it may have finished him—he was still alive when the helicopter landed, but that’s not saying much.”
But Regis looked at the long sword Kathie had let slide to the floor; and something inside him, something in his blood, suddenly awoke and shouted inside his veins.
THIS IS MINE!
He went and picked it up; it felt warm and rightin his hands. Callina opened her eyes, staring, a strange, cold, blue gaze.
The moment Regis had the sword in his hands, looking at the curling letters written on the scabbard, all at once he seemed to be everywhere, not just where his body was, but as if the edges of his body had spread out to encompass everything in the room. He touchedCallina and saw her with a strange double sight, the woman he knew, the plain quiet Keeper, still and prim and gentle, and at the same time she was overlaid with something else, cold and blue and watchful, like ice, strange and cold as stone. He touchedDio and felt the flood of her love and concern and dread; he touchedKadarin and drew back, THIS IS THE ENEMY, THIS IS THE BATTLE… NOT YET, NOT YET! He touchedLew.
Pain. Cold. Silence. Fear and the consuming flame…
Pain. Pain at the heart, stabbing pain… Regis spread out into the pain, that was the only way to explain it, felt the broken torn cells, the bleeding out of the life— NO! I WILL NOT HAVE IT SO! The trickling silence that was Lew was suddenly flooded with terrible pain, and then with heat and life and then Lew opened his eyes, and sat up, staring at Regis. His lips barely moved and he whispered, “What—what are you?”
And Regis heard himself say, from a great distance, “Hastur.”
And the word meant nothing to him. But the gaping wound had closed, and all around him the Terran medics were standing and staring; and in his hand was this sword which seemed, now, to be more than half of himself.
And suddenly Regis was terrified and he slid the sword back into its sheath, and suddenly the world was all in one piece again and he was back in his body. He was shaking so hard that he could hardly stand.
“Lew! Bredu—you’re alive!”
CHAPTER FOUR
« ^ »
Lew Alton’s narrative, concluded
Ihave never remembered anything about that helicopter ride to the Terran HQ, or how I got to the Legate’s office; the first awareness was of hellish pain and its sudden cessation.
“Lew! Lew, can you hear me?”
How could I help it? She was shouting right in my ear! I opened my eyes and saw Dio, her face wet with tears.
“Don’t cry, love,” I said, “I’m all right. That hellcat Thyra must have stabbed me, but she seems not to have hurt me much.”
But Kathie motioned Dio back when she would have bent to me, saying with professional crispness, “Just a moment; his pulse was nearly gone.” She took some kind of instrument and cut away my shirt; then I heard her gasp.
Where Thyra’s knife had gone in—perilously near the heart—was only a small, long-healed scar, paler and more perfectly cicatrized than the discolored scars on my face.
“I don’t believe this,” she protested. “I saw it, and stillI don’t believe it.” She took something cold and wet and washed off the still-sticky smears of half-dried blood which still clung to the skin. I looked ruefully at the ruined shirt.
“Get him a uniform shirt, or something,” said Lawton, and they brought me one, made out of paper or some similar unwoven fiber. It had a cold and rather slippery texture which I found unpleasant, but I wasn’t in a position to be picky; besides, the medical smells were driving me out of my mind. I said, “Do we have to stay down here? I’m not hurt—” and only then did I see Regis, the Sword of Aldones belted around his waist, an unbelieving look of awe on his face. Later I learned what he had done; but at the moment—everything was so mad already—I simply took it for granted and was grateful that the Sword had come to the hands of the one person on this world who could handle it. I think, originally, I had supposed that Callina, or perhaps Ashara, would have to take it, as Keeper. Now I saw it in Regis’s custody, and all I could think was, oh, yes, of course, he is Hastur.
“Where is Thyra? Did she get away?”
“Not likely,” said Lawton, grimly, “She’s in a cell downstairs, and there she’ll stay.”