“Why?” Kadarin asked. His voice was calm, and I stared, unable to believe my eyes; on the shores of Hali he had appeared to me as something very far from human; now, curiously, he looked like the man I had first known, civilized and urbane, even likable. “On what charges?”
“Attempted murder of Lew Alton here!”
“It would be hard to make a charge like that stick,” Kadarin said. “Where is the alleged wound?”
Lawton stared irritably at the blood-soaked shirt which had been cut from me. He said, “We’ve got eyewitnesses to the attempt. Meanwhile we’ll hold her for—oh, hell!—breaking and entering, trespass, carrying concealed weapons, indecent language in a public place—indecent exposure if we have to! The main thing is that we’re holding her, and you too; we need to ask you some questions about a certain murder and the burning of a townhouse in Thendara…”
Kadarin looked directly at me. He said, “Believe what you like, Lew; I did not murder your brother. I did not know your brother by sight; I did not know who he was until afterward, when I heard in the street who it was that had been killed. To me he was simply a young Terran I did not know; and for what it is worth, it was not I who killed him but one of my men. And I am sorry; I gave no orders that anyone should be killed. You know what it was that I came for, and why I had to come.”
I looked at this man and knew that I could not hate him. I too had been compelled to do things I would never have dreamed of doing, not in my right mind; and I knew what had compelled him. It was belted, now, around his waist; but through that I could see the man who had been my friend. I turned my face away. There was too much between us. I had no right to condemn him, not now, not when through my own matrix I could feel the pull, irresistible, of that unholy thing.
Return to me and live forever in undying reviving fire… and behind my eyelids the Form of Fire, between me and what I could see with my physical eyes. Sharra, and I was still a part of it, still damned. I took one step toward him; I do not know even now whether I meant to strike him or to join hands with him on the hilt of the Sharra matrix concealed in its sword.
Hate and love mingled, as they had mingled for my father, whose voice even now pulsed in my mind, Return… return…
Then Kadarin shrugged a little and the spell broke. He said, “If you want to throw me in a cell, that’s all right with me, but it’s only fair to warn you I probably won’t stay there long. I have—” he touched the hilt of the Sharra sword and said lightly, “a pressing engagement elsewhere.”
“Take him away,” Lawton said. “Put him in maximum security, and let him see if he can talk himself out of there.”
Kadarin saved them the trouble of taking him; he rose and went amiably with the guards. One of them said, “I’ll have that sword first, if you please.”
Kadarin said, still with that impeccable grin, “Take it, if you want it.”
Watching, I wanted to cry out a warning to the Spaceforce men; I knew it was not a sword. One of them thrust out his hand… and went flying across the room; he struck his head against the wall and sank down, stunned. The other stood staring at Lawton and turning back to Kadarin; afraid and I didn’t blame him.
“It’s not a sword, Lawton,” I said. “It’s a matrix weapon.”
“Is that—?” Lawton stared, and I nodded. There was no way, short of killing Kadarin first, that they could get it away from him; and I was not even sure that he could be killed while he wore it, not by any ordinary weapon anyhow. I did warn them, “Don’t put him and Thyra in the same cell.”
Not that distance would make any difference, when that sword was drawn. And would I go with them? Just the same, I was glad to have Kadarin, and the Sharra matrix, out of my sight. I started to rise, only to have the young doctor push me down again on a seat.
“You’re not going anywhere, not yet!”
“Am I a prisoner, then?”
The doctor looked at Lawton, who said, scowling, “Hell no! But if you try to walk out of here, you’ll fall flat on your face! Stay put and let Doctor Allison go over you, why don’t you? What’s the hurry?”
I tried to stand up, but for no discernible reason I found myself as weak as a newborn rabbithorn. I could not get my legs under me.
I let the young doctor go over me with his instruments. I hated hospitals, and the smell was getting to me, reviving memories of other hospitals on other worlds, memories I would rather not have to face just now; but there seemed no alternative. I noticed Kathie talking to one of the doctors and, as on Festival Night, I wondered if she would accuse us of kidnapping or worse. Well, if she did, the story was so unlikely on the face of it that probably no one would believe her; Vainwal was half a Galaxy away!
There were times when I didn’t believe it myself…
Before the doctor had finished listening to my heart and checking every function of my body—he even had me unstrap the mechanical hand, looked at it and asked if it was working properly—Regis had come back into the room. He looked grave and remote. At his side was Rafe Scott.
“I’ve seen Thyra,” he said abruptly.
So had I, I thought, and I wish I had not. Even though her attempt to kill me had been thwarted, I found I could not bear to think of her. It was not all her fault; she was Kadarin’s victim as much as I, a more willing victim, perhaps, eager for the power of Sharra. But thinking of the woman made me remember the child, and I saw Regis’s face change. I was not used to this, Regis had never been so sensitive a telepath as that… but I was beginning to realize that this new Regis, with the sudden opening of the Hastur Gift, was a different Regis from the youngster I had known most of my life.
Regis said, “I have bad news for you, Lew; the very worst. Andres—” his voice caught, almost choking, and I knew. During those carefree years at Armida, Andres had been like a father to him, too.
My father, Marius, Linnell… now Andres. Now, more than ever, I was wholly alone. I was afraid to ask, but I asked anyhow.
“Marja?”
“He—defended her with his life,” Regis said. “Beltran— would have taken her into Sharra; she has the Alton Gift. But Dyan…”
I was braced to hear that Dyan had been party to this; I was not prepared for what Regis told me next.
“Somehow—he thrust her out— elsewhere. I could find no trace of her, even telepathically. I do not know where he has her hidden; but somewhere, she is safe from Sharra. And Dyan—did you know he has the Alton Gift, Lew?”
In the confusion I had forgotten. But I should have known, of course. Power to force his will on another mind, even unwilling… and Dyan had Alton blood; he and my father had been first cousins. My father’s mother was own sister to Dyan’s father, and there were other kin-ties, further generations back.
Once, under terrible pressure—I had used a little-known power of the Altons, I had teleported from Aldaran to the Arilinn Tower. Dyan might, for some reason, have done this to Marja—but he could have sent her anywhere on Darkover, from Armida itself to Castle Ardais in the Hellers—or to the Spaceman’s Orphanage in Thendara where she had been brought up.
When there was time, I would have to make a search for her, physical and telepathic; I did not think Dyan could hide her from me permanently, or even that he would want to. But before that, Kadarin held the Sharra matrix, and if he chose to draw it, I knew I could never trust myself again. I tried to warn Regis of this. He touched the Sword of Aldones, and he looked grim. “This is the weapon against Sharra. Since I belted it on… there are many things I know,” he said, strangely, “things I had not learned. I have known for days that I have a strange power over Sharra, and now, with this—” it was as if something spoke behindand throughthe Regis I knew; he looked haggard and worn, years older than he was. But now and then, as I looked into his eyes, the other Regis, the youngster I knew, would peep through; and he looked frightened. I didn’t blame him.