“They rule? Doesn’t the King rule in the lowlands?”
“Oh, yes, there is a King in Thendara, ruling under the Comyn Council. The kingship used to rest with the Hasturs, but they gave it up, a few generations ago, in favor of another Comyn family, the Elhalyns, who are so intermarried with the Hasturs that it doesn’t make much difference. You know all this, damn it, I remember telling you when you were a child, as well as about the Aldarans.”
“I’m sorry, it all seemed very far away.” They sat on blankets and furs inside the dark hut, crouched close to the fire, although to anyone accustomed to the fierce cold of the mountains it was not really cold. Outside, sleety rain whispered thickly along the slats of the hut. “What about the Aldarans? Surely they’re Comyn too?”
“They used to be; they may have some Comyn powers. But they were kicked out of Comyn Council generations ago; the story goes that they did something so horrible nobody knows or remembers what it was. Personally I suspect it was the usual sort of political dog-fight, but I can’t say. No one alive knows, except maybe the Lords of Comyn Council.” He fell silent again. It was not Comyn he feared, but Valdir, specifically, and that too-knowing, all-reading gaze.
Storn did not have to be told how Melitta felt about what he had done. He felt the same way himself. He, too, had been brought up in the reverence of this Darkovan law against interfering with another human mind. Yet he justified himself fiercely, with the desperation of the law-abiding and peaceful man turned renegade.
I don’t care what laws I have broken, it was my sisters and my young brother in the hands of those men, and the village folk who have served my family for generations. Let me see them free and I don’t care if they hang me! What good is an invalid’s life, anyhow? I’ve never been more than half alive, before this!
He was intensely aware of Melitta, half-kneeling before the low fire, close to him on the blankets. Isolated by the conditions of his life, as he had been till now, there had been few women, and none of his own caste, about whom he could care personally. To a developing telepath that had meant much. Habit and low vitality had made him indifferent to this deprivation; but the strange and newly vigorous body, in which he now felt quite at home, was more than marginally aware of the closeness of the girl.
It crossed his mind that Melitta was extraordinarily beautiful, even in the worn and stained riding clothes she had resumed when they left Carthon. She had loosened her hair and removed the outer cloak and tunic; under it was a loose rough linen shift. Some small ornament gleamed at her throat and her feet were bare. Storn, weary from days of riding, was still conscious of the reflex physical stir of awareness and desire. He let himself play at random with the thought, perhaps because all his other thoughts were too disturbing. Sexual liaisons between even full siblings in the mountains were not prohibited, although children born to such couples were thought unfortunate—the isolated mountain people were too aware of the dangers of inbreeding. With the grimmest humor he had yet felt, Storn thought,
In a stranger’s body even that would not be anything to fear!
Then he felt a sudden revulsion. The stranger’s body was that of an alien, an Earthling, a stranger on their world—and he had been thinking of letting such a one share the body of his sister, a Lady of Storn? He set his jaw roughly, reached out and covered the fire.
“It’s late,” he said. “We have far to travel tomorrow. You’d better go to sleep.”
Melitta obeyed without a word, rolling herself in her fur cloak and turning away from him. She was aware of what he was thinking, and intensely sorry for him, but she dared not offer him overt sympathy. Her brother would have rejected it as he had done all her life, and she was still a little afraid of the stranger. It was not the low-keyed throb of his desire, which Melitta could feel almost as a physical presence, which disturbed her, of course. She did not care about that. As with any mountain girl of her caste, she knew that, traveling alone with any man, such a problem would in all probability arise. With Storn’s own person she might not have thought of it, but she was much more aware of the stranger than Storn realized. She had been forced to think about this eventuality and to make up her mind about it. She felt no particular attraction to the stranger, although if his presence had been uncomplicated by the eerie uncanniness of knowing that he was also her brother, she might have found him intriguing; certainly he was handsome, and seemed gentle and from the tones of his voice, likable. But if she had even inadvertently roused desire in him, common decency, by the code of women of her caste, demanded that she give it some release; to refuse this would have been wrong and cruelly whorish. If she had been unalterably opposed to this possibility, she would not have agreed to travel entirely alone with him; no mountain girl would have done so. It would not have been impossible to find a traveling companion in Carthon.
In any case, it seemed that at the moment the matter was not imminent, and Melitta was relieved. It might have been entirely too uncanny;
like lying with a ghost,
she thought, and slept.
It was still dark when Storn’s hand on her shoulder roused her, and when they saddled their horses and began to ride down the dark mountain path, they rode through still-heavy sleet which only after an hour or more of riding turned into the light rain which presaged dawn at this latitude and season. Melitta, cold and shivering, and even a little resentful, did not protest; she simply wrapped her cloak over her face as they rode. Storn turned into an inordinately steep and forsaken path, dismounted and led her horse along the slippery path through the trees until it was safe to ride again. She was thinking,
If it is Comyn on our trail, we may not be able to lose them. but if not, perhaps we can shake off our followers.
“And we may gain two or three days ride on them this way, if they are not accustomed to the mountain roads—they or their horses,” Storn said, out of nothing, and Melitta understood.
All that day and the next they rode through steeper and steeper mountain paths, with storms gathering over the heights, and at night they were too exhausted to do more than swallow a few mouthfuls of food and roll, half asleep already, into their blankets. On the morning of the third day after they had first sensed that they were followed, Melitta woke without any uneasy sense of a presence overshadowing their moves, and sensed that they had lost their followers, at least for the moment.
“We should reach Aldaran today,” said Storn, as they saddled, “and if what I’ve heard is true, perhaps even the Comyn don’t care to come this far into the hills. They may be sacrosanct in the lowlands, but not here.”
As soon as the mist cleared they sighted the castle from a peak, a gray and craggy height enfolded and half invisible in the hills; but it took them the rest of the day to approach the foot of the mountain on which it stood, and as they turned into the road—well-traveled and strongly surfaced—which led upward to the castle, they were intercepted by two cloaked men. They were asked their business with the utmost courtesy but nevertheless entreated to remain until the Lord of Aldaran knew of their coming, with so much insistence that neither Storn nor Melitta wanted to protest.
“Inform the Lord of Aldaran,” said Storn, his voice sounding gray with weariness, “that his far kinsmen of Storn, at High Windward, seek shelter, counsel and hospitality. We have ridden far and are weary and call on him in the name of kin to give us rest here.”
“Rest in safety is yours at the asking,” said the man with exquisite courtesy, and Melitta sighed in relief; they were among people of familiar ways. “Will you wait in the gate house, my lord and
damisela
? I will have your horses looked to. I cannot disturb the Lord of Aldaran without his consent, but if you are his kinfolk, I am sure you need not wait long. I am at your service, and there is food for all travelers if you are in need of it.”
Waiting in the bare, small gate house, Storn smiled briefly at Melitta; “Aldaran keeps the old ways of courtesy to strangers, whatever else may have befallen his household.”
In an almost unbelievably brief time (Storn wondered if some signaling device had been used, for there hardly seemed time for a messenger to come and go to the castle on the heights) the guard returned: “The Lady Desideria bids me conduct you to the main house and make you welcome, Lord and Lady; and when you are rested and refreshed she will receive you.”
Storn murmured to Melitta, as they climbed the path and the steps leading upward, “I have no idea who the Lady Desideria is. Old Kermiac would hardly have married; I suspect it is one of his son’s wives.”
But the young woman who greeted them was no man’s wife. She could hardly have been more than fifteen years old. She was a striking red-haired beauty whose poise and self-confidence made Melitta feel shy, countrified, and ill at ease.
“I am Desideria Leynier,” she said. “My foster mother and my guardian are not at home; they will return tomorrow and give you a proper welcome.” She came and took Melitta’s hands in her own, searching her face with gentle eyes. “Poor child, you look tired almost to death; a night’s sleep before you face your hosts will do you good; and you too, Master, you must rest and not stand on ceremony. The Storns are unknown to me but not to my household. I give you welcome.”
Storn returned thanks, but Melitta was not listening to the formal words. In the presence of this queerly self-possessed child, she sensed something more than poise; an awareness, an inner strength, and the touch of an uncannily developed sensitivity, so far beyond her own as to make her feel like a child. She made a deep reverence. “
Vai leronis
,” she whispered, using the ancient word for a sorceress wise in the old skills.
Desideria smiled merrily. “Why, no,” she said. “Only one, perhaps, who has a little knowledge of the old crafts—and if I read rightly, child, you are no stranger to them! But we can talk of that another time, I wished only to give you welcome in my foster parents’ name.” She summoned a servant to conduct them, and herself went before them along the long halls. It was evidently a busy hour before the evening meal; people went back and forth in the halls, including some tall thin men whose presence and careless regard made Storn draw breath and clamp his fingers hard on Melitta’s arm.
“There are Terrans here—this deep in the mountains,” he whispered, “what in the name of Zandru’s hells is going on here at Aldaran? Have we walked from the trap to the cook pot? I would not believe that any Terran alive had ever come into these mountains. And the girl is a telepath—Melitta, keep your wits about you!”
Desideria turned Storn over to a servant and conducted Melitta into a small room at the top of a tower, one of four tiny pie-shaped rooms on that level. “I am sorry the accommodations are not more luxurious,” she apologized, “but there are a great many of us here. I will send you wash water, and a maid to dress you and although you would be more than welcome in the hall, child, I think you would be better to have dinner here in your room, and go to bed at once; without rest you will be ill.”
Melitta agreed gratefully, glad that she need not face so many strangers tonight. Desideria said, “He is a strange man—your brother,” but the words held no hint of a prying question. She pressed Melitta’s hands and kissed her cheek. “Now rest well,” she said in that oddly adult way, “and don’t be afraid of anything. My sister and I are near you in the rooms across the hallway.” She went away. Left alone, Melitta took off her dirty and cold riding clothes and gratefully accepted the services of the quiet, incurious maid who came to wait on her. After bathing and eating the light, delicious food brought to her, she lay down in the soft bed and for the first time since the alarm bell had pealed Brynat’s presence at the walls of Storn, she felt she could sleep in peace. They were safe.
Where is Storn? Is he, too, enjoying the luxury of safety and rest? Surely he must be mistaken about Terrans here. And it’s surely strange—to find a
vai leronis
deep in the mountains.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Storn woke in the early light, and for a few minutes had no notion of where he might be. Around him were unfamiliar airs and voices, and he lay with his eyes closed, trying to orient himself, hearing footsteps ringing on stone, the sound of animals calling out for food, and strange voices rising and falling. They were peaceful morning sounds, not the sounds of a home in the hands of conquerors, and then memory flooded back and he knew he was in Castle Aldaran. He opened his eyes.
A curious apprehension lay on him, he did not know why. He began to wonder how long he could keep the upper hand over Barron—if it would be long enough to carry through his aims before he lost hold and found himself back in his own body, lying helpless in trance, guarded against personal attack, but still unable to do anything for his family and his people. If that happened, he had no illusions about what would happen, sooner or later. Barron would go his own way, confused by a period of amnesia or perhaps false memories—Storn really did not know what happened to a man in Barron’s position—and Melitta would be left alone without anyone. He would never know what happened to her in that case, he supposed.
And he did not want to return to his own body, blinded and helplessly imprisoned. If he did, what would happen to Barron, an Earthman alone in these strange mountains? For the very sake of his victim, he must maintain hold at all costs.
If there
were
Terrans at Castle Aldaran, what could it mean? Sick with unanswered and unanswerable questions, he flung back the covers and went to the window. Whatever happened in the end, he would enjoy these few days of sight out of a lifetime in darkness. Even if these days were his last.
From the window he looked down at the commotion in the courtyard. Men were going to and fro with an indefinable sense of purposiveness, there were Terrans among them, a few even in the leather dress of the spaceports—
how do I know that when I see it, never having been there?
—and after he had watched a while there was a stir among the men. One man and two uniformed attendants rode through the gate.