Kerwin didn’t waste time wondering how Kennard knew that. He said, “Yes,” and Kennard looked grim. He said, “I thought, at first, that Auster was behind it. But he swore to me that he wasn’t. I had hoped—those old hates, superstitions, fears—I had hoped a generation would quiet them down.” He sighed, turned to Taniquel.
“Let me just say goodnight to the children. Then I’ll be ready to go with you.”
A little airship, buffeted by the treacherous winds and currents of flowing atmosphere above the crags and ridges of the mountains, flew through the reddening dawn. They had left the storm behind; but the rough terrain, a dizzy distance below, was softened by layers of mist.
Kerwin sat with legs folded up uncomfortably beneath him, watching Auster manipulate the unseen controls. He would not have chosen to share the small forward pilot-cabin with Auster, but there was barely room for Kennard and Taniquel in the small rear cabin, and he had not been consulted about his preference. He was still baffled by the speed with which events had moved; almost at once they had hurried him to a small private landing field at the far edge of the city, and put him aboard this plane. At least, he thought wryly, he now knew more than the Terran Legate, who couldn’t imagine what use the Darkovans had for aircraft.
Kerwin still didn’t know what they wanted with him; but he wasn’t frightened. They weren’t exactly friendly; but they somehow—well, they
accepted
him, much as his grandparents had done; it had nothing to do with his character and personality, or whether they liked him—and Auster, at least, definitely
didn’t
—they accepted him, like family. Yes, that was it; like family. Even when Kennard had brusquely cut off his flood of questions with “Later, later!” there had been no offense.
The ship had no visible instruments except for some small calibrator dials. One of those Auster had adjusted when they boarded, apologizing curtly for the discomfort—an unpleasant vibration that made Kerwin’s ears and teeth ache. It was necessary, Auster told him in a few grudging words, to compensate for the presence of an undeveloped telepath inside the aircraft.
Since then Auster had barely leaned forward, now and then, from his folded-up kneeling posture, stirring a hand languidly as if signaling some unseen watcher. Or, thought Kerwin, as if he were shooing away flies. He had asked, once, what powered the ship.
“Matrix crystal,” Auster said briefly.
This made Kerwin purse his lips in a soundless whistle. He had not even remotely guessed that the power of these thought-sensitive crystals could be so enormous. It wasn’t psi power alone. He was sure of that. Kerwin had guessed, from what Ragan had told him and what little he had seen, that matrix technology was one of those sciences that Terrans lumped together under the general name of
non-causative sciences
; cyrillics, electromentry, psychokinetics; and Kerwin knew very little of these. They were usually found on nonhuman worlds.
Kerwin was, despite all his fascination, plainly and unequivocally scared. And yet—he had never thought of himself as Terran except by accident of birth. Darkover was the only home he had ever known, and now he knew that he really belonged here, that he was somehow related to their highest nobility, to the Comyn.
The Comyn. He knew very little about them; just what every Terran assigned to Cottman Four knew, which wasn’t much. They were a hereditary caste who chose to have as little as possible to do with the Terrans, though they had ceded the spaceport lease and allowed the building of the Trade Cities. They were not kings, autocrats, priesthood, or government; he knew more about what they were
not
than what they were. But he had had a taste of the fanatical reverence with which they were treated, these red-haired noblemen.
He tried cautiously to unkink his legs without kicking out a bulkhead. “How much further is this city of yours?” he asked Auster.
Auster did not deign to look at him. He was very thin, with a suggestion of the feline in his shoulders and the curl of his arrogant mouth; but he looked familiar somehow, too, in a way Kerwin couldn’t quite identify. Well, they were all related somehow; Kennard had said they were all his kinsmen. Maybe Auster looked like Kennard.
“We do not speak the Cahuenga here,” Auster said tersely, “and I cannot understand you, or you me, with the telepathic damper adjusted.” He made a small gesture toward the calibrator.
“What’s wrong with Cahuenga? You can speak it all right—I heard you.”
“We are capable of learning any known human tongue,” said Auster, with that unconscious arrogance that irritated Kerwin so much, “but the concepts of our world are expressible only in the nexus of our own semantic symbology, and I have no desire to converse in crocodile with a halfbreed on trivial matters.”
Kerwin fought an impulse to hit him. He was thoroughly tired of his offhand statement about lizard-men, and tireder of having Auster throw it back at him every time he opened his mouth. He’d never known a man quite so easy to dislike as Auster, and if the man was his kinsman, he decided blood relationships didn’t mean as much as they were supposed to mean. He found himself wondering just how closely they were related. Not too closely, he hoped.
The sun was just touching the rim of the mountains when Auster stirred slightly, his satirical face relaxing a little, and pointed between twin mountain peaks.
“It lies there,” he said, “the plains of Arilinn, and the City, and the Arilinn Tower.”
Kerwin moved his cramped shoulders, looking downward at the city of his forefathers. From this altitude it looked like any other city, a pattern of lights, buildings, cleared spaces. The little craft slanted downward in response to one of those shoofly motions of Auster’s hands; Kerwin lost his balance, made a wild grab to recover it, and involuntarily fell against Auster’s side.
He was wholly unprepared for Auster’s reaction. The man forgot the operation of the ship and with a great sweep of his arm, jerked backward, his elbow thrusting out to knock Kerwin away from him, hard. His forearm struck Kerwin a hard blow across the mouth; the aircraft lurched, swerved, and behind them, in the cabin, Taniquel screamed. Auster, recovering himself, made swift controlling movements.
Kerwin’s first impulse—to swat Auster in the teeth and be damned to the consequences—died unacted. He held himself in his seat by an act of will, clenching his fists to keep control. He said in Cahuenga, “Fly the damn ship, you. If you’re spoiling for a fight, wait till we get landed, and it will be my pleasure to oblige you.”
Kennard’s head appeared in the narrow doorway between control and rear cabin; he said something questioning, concerned, in a language Kerwin didn’t know, and Auster snarled, “Then let him keep his crocodile’s paws to himself, damn him!”
Kerwin opened his mouth—it was Auster’s sharp movement that had flung him against the other man—and then shut it again. He hadn’t done anything to apologize for! Kennard said in a conciliating tone, “Kerwin, perhaps you did not know that any random movement can throw the aircraft off course, when it is being operated by matrix control.” He looked at Kerwin thoughtfully, then shrugged. “We’ll be landing in a minute, anyway.”
The little ship came down smoothly on a small landing field where a few lights were blinking. Auster unfastened a door and a swart Darkovan in a leather jerkin and breeches threw up a short ladder.
“Welcome,
vai dom’yn,
” he said, throwing up one hand in a courtly gesture vaguely like a salute. Auster stepped down the ladder, gesturing Kerwin to follow, and they repeated the salute for him. Kennard came down the ladder, fumbling with his feet for the rungs. Kerwin had not realized how excruciatingly lame the older man was; one of the men came, deferentially, to assist Kennard, who accepted the man’s arm with good grace. Only a little tightening of his jaw showed Jeff Kerwin what Kennard really thought of accepting the man’s help. Taniquel scrambled down the ladder, looking sleepy and cross; she said something to Auster with a scowl and they stood talking together in an undertone. Kerwin wondered if they were married, or lovers; they had a sort of easy intimacy that he associated only with long-term couples. Then she looked up at Kerwin, shaking her head.
“There’s blood on your mouth. Have you and Auster been fighting already?”
There was a teasing malice in her voice; she tilted her head to one side, looking first at one of them and then the other. Auster glowered.
“An accident and a misunderstanding,” Kennard said quietly.
“
Terranan
,” Auster muttered.
“How can you expect him to be anything else? And whose fault is it that he knows nothing of our laws?” Kennard asked. Then he pointed, drawing Kerwin’s gaze with the gesture.
“There it lies; the Tower of Arilinn.”
It rose upright, squat, and yet, on closer look, incredibly high, fashioned of some brown and glareless stone. The sight seemed to stir in Kerwin some buried
déjà vu
again, as he looked at the Tower rising against the sky, and he said, his voice shaky, “Have I—have I been here before, sir?”
Kennard shook his head. “No, I don’t think so,” he said. “Perhaps the matrix—I just don’t know. Does it seem so familiar to you?” He laid his hand briefly on Kerwin’s shoulder—a gesture that surprised the younger man, in view of the taboo that seemed to surround a random touch among these people. Kennard withdrew his hand quickly, and said, “It is not the oldest, or even the most powerful of the Comyn Towers. But for a hundred generations and more our Keepers have worked the Arilinn Tower in an unbroken succession of Comyn blood alone.”
“And,” said Auster behind them, “with the hundred and first we bring the son of a Terran and of a renegade
leronis
here!”
Taniquel turned on him fiercely. She said, “Are you going to question the word of Elorie of Arilinn?”
Kerwin swung angrily on Auster. He had taken enough from him already; now the man had started on his parents!
The son of a Terran and a renegade
leronis ...
Kennard’s deep voice was harsh:
“Auster, that’s enough; I said it before we came here, and I will say it for the last time. The man is not responsible for his parents or their fancied sins. And Cleindori, I remind you, was
my
foster-sister, and
my
Keeper, and if you speak of her again in that tone, you will answer, not to her son, but to
me
!”
Auster hung his head and muttered something; it sounded like an apology. Taniquel came to Kerwin’s side and said, “Let’s get inside, not stand around on the airfield all day!”
Kerwin felt curious eyes on him as he crossed the field. The air was damp and cold, and it crossed his mind that it would be pleasant to get under a roof, and get warm, and relax, and that he would very much like a bath, and a drink, and some supper—hell—breakfast! Anyhow, he’d been up all night.
“All in good time,” Kennard said, and Kerwin jumped, realizing he would have to get used to that trick Kennard had of reading his thoughts. “First, I’m afraid, you’ll have to meet the others here; naturally we’re anxious to know all about you, especially those of us who haven’t had a chance to meet you face to face yet.”
Kerwin wiped off the blood still oozing from his lip. He wished they’d let him clean up before thrusting him into the presence of strangers. He had not yet learned that telepaths seldom paid any attention to what a man looked like on the outside. He walked across the bricked-in quadrangle of a building that looked like a barracks, and through a long passageway barred with a wooden gate. A familiar smell told him that horses were stabled nearby. Only as they neared the Tower did he become aware of the way in which the clean sweep of its architecture was marred by the cluster of low buildings around its foot. They went across two more outer courtyards, and finally reached a carven archway across which shimmered a thin, rainbow mist.
Here Kennard paused momentarily, saying to Kerwin, “No living human, except those of pure and unbroken Comyn blood, has ever crossed this Veil.”
Kerwin shrugged. He felt he should be impressed or something, but he was running low on surprise. He was both tired and hungry, he hadn’t slept in forty-eight hours, and it made him nervous to realize that they were all, even Auster, watching to see what he would say or do when faced with this. He said irritably, “What is this, a test? My hat’s fresh out of rabbits, and anyway, you’re writing the script. Do we go this way?”
They kept on waiting, so he braced himself and stepped through the trembling rainbow.
It felt faintly electric, like a thousand pins and needles, as if his whole body were a foot that had gone to sleep, and when he looked back he could not see the others except as the vaguest of shadows. Suddenly he began to shake; had this all been an elaborate build-up to some kind of trap? He stood alone in a tiny windowless cubicle, a cul-de-sac, only the rainbow behind him showing the faintest of lights.
Then Taniquel stepped through the rainbow shimmer, Auster and Kennard following. Kerwin let out a sigh of foolish relief ... if they’d meant him any harm, they wouldn’t have had to bring him this far!
Taniquel made signals with her fingers, not unlike those Auster had used controlling the aircraft, and the cubicle shot upward, with such suddenness that Kerwin swayed and almost fell again. It shivered and stopped and they stepped out through another open archway into a lighted room that opened, in turn, on a broad terrace.
The room was huge, rising to echoing space, yet paradoxically gave an impression of warmth and intimacy. The floor was laid with old tiles worn uneven, as if they had seen many feet walking on them. At the far end of the room was a fire that smelled of fragrant smoke and incense, and something furry and dark and not human crouched there, doing something to the fire with a long, oddly-shaped bellows. As Kerwin came in, it turned large pupilless green eyes on him, fixing him with an intelligent stare of question.