Still, I owed Dio something.
For a Darkovan girl, Dio was not a particularly expert dancer. But she was warm and vibrant; she smiled teasingly up at me, and, resenting that smile which took so much for granted, I whirled her till another girl would have screamed for mercy. But as she came upright she laughed at me; as always, she was scornful of my strength. She was like spring-steel tempered to my touch.
In the last figure of the dance I caught her tighter than the pattern of the dance demanded. This we had come to know well, this sense of being in key, body and mind, a closer touch than any physical intimacy. The beat of the secain throbbed in my blood, and as the music pulsed and pounded to climax, my senses pounded and pulsed, and as the final explosive drum-and-cymbal chord quivered and rang, I kissed her — hard.
The silence was anticlimax. Dio slid from my arms, and under the softening music we passed out under the open sky.
“I’ve been wondering—” teasingly, Dio lowered her voice, “when Hastur told you about your child — did you wonder about me?”
I frowned, displeased. That came too close for comfort. She laughed, but the laugh was sharp and mirthless.
“Thanks. I wasn’t, if that helps any. Lew — do you really want that girl Callina?”
This I would not discuss with Dio.
“Why? Do you care?”
“Not much.” But it didn’t sound convincing. “But I think you’re a fool. After all, she’s not a woman—”
Now I was really shocked. This was not like Dio. I said, angrily, “As much as yourself!”
“That’s almost funny, coming from you!”
I threatened, “Dio, if you make a scene, I will find it a pleasure to break your neck.”
“I know you will!” She was laughing again, but this tune it was high and hysterical. “That’s what I love about you! Your solution for all problems! Kill someone! Break a neck or two! But one thing I know, for sure; Callina’s finished, and Ashara’s going to lose her pawn!”
“What the devil are you talking about?”
She was still laughing that wildly hysterical laughter, “You’ll see! It could have been you, you know, you could have saved them all that trouble! You and your crazy scruples! You cheated yourself, and especially /Callina! Or, should I say, you played Ashara’s game—”
I caught her wrist with the trick hold I’d used on Regis and wrenched her abruptly round. My fingers crushed on her wrist till she writhed, “You brute, you’re breaking my arm! Damn it, Lew, you’re not funny, you’re hurting me!”
“You ought to be hurt,” I said savagely. “You ought to be beaten! What are they going to do to Callina? Tell me, or I swear, Dio, I’ve never used the Gift on a woman before, but I’ll tear it out of you if I have to!”
“You couldn’t!” We were facing each other now in a blaze of fury that obliterated everything outside. “Remember?”
“Damn you!” The truth made me savage. Dio alone of all people was completely and perfectly protected against my Gift, forever — because of what had been between us on Vainwal. It had to be that way.
There are things no telepath, no man, can control. That-touching — in intimacy, is one of them. And Dio was one of the hypersensitive Ridenow. To safeguard her sanity, I had given her certain defenses against me. I could never take more from her, telepathically, than she wanted to give. More was impossible. I could remove that barrier — if I wanted to kill her. No other way.
I swore, impotently. Suddenly Dio flung her arms around my neck, eyes burning at me like green flames. “You blind fool,” she choked, “you can’t see what’s before your very eyes, and you’ll go blundering in again and spoil it all! Can’t you trust me?”
She was very close, and the contact was dizzying. Realizing, what she was doing, I thrust her suddenly and roughly away. “That won’t get you anywhere.”
Her face hardened. “Very well. There is a rumor current — and believed — that only a virgin may hold Callina’s particular powers. There is, shall I say, a certain faction which holds to the belief that we would all be better off if Callina were — let’s say — made suddenly powerless. And since your conduct is above reproach, there is one way to remedy the situation—”
I stared at her, dimly beginning to realize what she meant. But that was horrible! And was there any man on Darkover who would dare — “Dio, if this is your idea of a filthy joke—”
“A joke, but it’s on Ashara,” she said. Suddenly she grew quiet and deadly serious. “Lew, trust me. I can’t explain, but you’ve got to keep out of it. Callina isn’t what you think, not at all. She isn’t—”
I brought my hand back and slapped her, hard. The blow sent her reeling. “You’ve had that coming for a year,” I grated.
Suddenly Regis was close beside me; in an instant he had caught the overflowing of my thought, and his face paled. “Callina!”
Dio stood holding her cheek where I had slapped her, staring open-mouthed; but she threw herself forward on me now. “Wait,” she begged, “Wait, you don’t understand—”
I thrust her aside, swearing. Regis kept pace with me. Finally he breathed, “But who would dare? A Keeper, remember — actually to lay hands on her?”
I stopped. “Dyan,” I said at last, quietly. “What did she say, in council? No man lives to maul me three times. If that were the first—”
We were in light surface contact. Abruptly I stopped him; he looked at me grimly and the touch of his mind fell from mine as clasped hands loosen.
“I thought so,” I said. “When we touch, all the strength drains out of us both. They’ve smuggled some trap-matrix in there, eighth or ninth level, the kind that picks up vital energy—” My jaw fell. “Sharra!”
“Lew, are we feeding that damned thing?”
“We’ll hope not,” I said!"Can you touch Callina?”
I felt Regis, almost instinctively, grope for contact again; quickly, I barricaded myself. “Don’t ever do that!” I commanded. The fumbling touch was raw agony; yet endure it I must, danger or no, at least once more. “Regis, when I say the word, link with me — for about a thousandth of a second. But whatever you do, don’t freeze into rapport with me! If you do, we’ll both burn out. Remember, you’re Hastur and I’m Alton!”
He swallowed, convulsively. “You’d better do the linking. I can’t control it yet.”
For the barest instant, then, we contacted, in a scanning that sifted the whole diameter of the crowd. It was not a hundredth of a second, but even that flung us apart in a shock of blinding pain. A full tenth of a second would have burned out every spark of vital energy in our bodies. To who-ever controlled the hidden matrix, it must have flamed like a starship on a radar screen.
But I knew what I wanted. Somewhere in the castle, a trap-matrix — not Sharra this time — was focused, with obscene intensity, on the weakest link in the Comyn: Derik Elhalyn.
And I had thought him only drunk!
The thick, inarticulate speech; the irritable confusion of brain, the fumbling limbs — all symptoms of a mind under an unmonitored matrix. And whoever set it, had a mind both perverted and sadistic — that this complex revenge on Callina should be carried out by Linnell’s lover!
I reached for Callina, but only emptiness greeted my seeking mind. It is a horrifying thing to feel only an empty place in the fluid mechanism of space, where once there was a living mind. Could even death blank her away so completely?
Regis turned a strained, heartbroken face to me.