Darkover: First Contact (72 page)

“There is no more time,” said Dom Kendral of High Ridge, who Paul knew to be the chief Councillor of the Kingdom of Asturias, “Alaric of Asturias is dead, and his regent with him. That is the objective situation. Valentine, Ardrin’s son, is a child, and we’ll have no Hastur puppets here. The army’s with you, sir, and that’s the important thing. We stand ready to support your claim as king, Bard di Asturien.”

Paul could only stand and stammer, “Good Lord!”

It was sufficiently bizarre that the chief Councillors of the kingdom should stand ready to offer the crown to Bard mac Fianna,
nedestro
outlaw, the Kilghard Wolf.

It was unthinkable that they should offer it to Paul Harrell, exile, rebel, condemned criminal and murderer! Fugitive from the stasis box!

“Time’s the thing, sir. We’re at war, and you know what to do with the army; the army would never accept a child for king, not now. And you’re the Lord General.”

Where the hell,
Paul wondered savagely,
was Bard anyhow ?
What was he doing away at this juncture?

“We have to have a king, sir. If the Hasturs march in on us, there’s nothing we can do about it! We saw how you calmed down the soldiers this morning. You’re the only king I think the people would accept.”

Grimly, Paul knew he had no chance to refuse. Bard had gone, no one knew where, and everyone here believed he was Bard. Bard had said, often enough, that he did not want to be king; but Paul thought that if Bard had been here, in a ruined castle, with a leaderless army and a kingless country, he too would have succumbed to the logic of the situation.

“I suppose I have no choice.”

“That you don’t, sir. There’s really nobody else, you see.” Lord Kendral hesitated. “One thing more, sir. You were handfasted once to Ardrin’s younger daughter, but Ardrin’s line isn’t popular right now. Not since Queen Ariel ran off that way. You’ll have to designate an heir, sir, and since you haven’t any brothers, none living, you’ll have to legitimize your son. Everybody knows who his mother is; it might be a good thing if you married Mistress MacAran—the Lady Melisendra, of course, I mean,
vai dom
. The army would like that.”

And so, by lamplight in the old presence chamber in the undamaged wing of the castle, Paul Harrell, rebel and condemned criminal from the stasis box, was crowned king, and married
di catenas
to Melisendra MacAran,
leronis
. Two thoughts were uppermost in his mind as Master Gareth linked their hands together above the ritual bracelets and said, “May you be forever one.”

One was gratitude for Erlend had been put to bed.

The other was a raging curiosity; just where in the hell was Bard di Asturien, and how would he feel when he found out that his double had usurped the throne . . . and presented him with a queen!

Varzil had had to delay most of the day to find someone who could carry on at Neskaya, and it was not till the next morning that they set out for Asturias. Melora, having her donkey saddled, warned Bard with a laugh that she was no better at riding than she had been years ago, on that faraway campaign. Watching her ride, Bard thought that she still sat her donkey like a sack of meal dumped into a saddle. Strange, Melisendra rode gracefully and well. Why was it that he had never had any interest in Melisendra, beyond her beautiful body, and this one meant so much to him?

I have destroyed everyone I loved. And I have destroyed my own life. And I cannot even die because there are things I must do.
Bard rode through the fresh early-autumn beauty of the Kilghard Hills, but his eyes looked inward to a bleak and barren land, and the taste of ashes was cold in his mouth.

Somehow he must set Asturias in order. There was a war to be won, or at least a peace to be made. Since the burning of Hali, there had not, Bard thought, been much taste for the war remaining among the Hasturs, or anywhere else. He had touched Mirella’s mind for a moment, and Varzil’s, and Melora’s, when they spoke of the burning of Hali, and there was a sickness in him now, when he thought of that kind of strike, with clingfire, or the bonewater dust spread around the Venza mountains, and children dying with their blood thinned and pale . . . this was not war! This was nightmare. Bard resolved that at the very least he would dismiss his sorcerers and
leroni
; and if his father refused to swear the Compact, then he could find some other to command his armies. He, Bard, had earned his porridge as a mercenary soldier, in exile, before this. He could do it again.

He thought, grimly, that if his father was resolved on a great general who would lay all these lands waste, and bring all of the Hundred Kingdoms under the lordship of Asturias, he could get Paul to do it for him.

Paul cannot even see the horrors of
laran
warfare, he is immune to the horrors that get inside a man’s brain and mind and soul....

He knew suddenly that he was prepared to kill Paul. Not as he had been, while they rode together on campaign, because eventually his dark twin would pose a threat to his own power and position; but because Paul was the man he himself had been until a day or two ago, and now he was prepared to kill Paul to save his people from the overlordship of the cruel and ruthless man he had been then. He knew it would hurt Melisendra, and he was prepared to try everything short of murder to persuade Paul to give up that ambition. But Paul had not had the experience he had had, and there was nothing in Paul to halt that pitiless ambition. Paul was still capable, as Bard had once been, of riding roughshod over anyone and anything—even Melisendra—to achieve power and pride.

And then he realized that he had meddled—or rather, his father had meddled—in Paul’s life without reason, and anything Paul did to him in return was just retribution. It all came back to the old knowledge which, he now knew, had lain dormant within him since first he looked upon the face of his dark twin:
A day will come when I will have to kill him, or he will kill me first.

They followed the road west from Neskaya; but when the road turned north to Asturias, Varzil said, grimly, that they must leave the road for a time and continue west.

“Melora is still of child-bearing years, and so, Bard, are you. That land is blighted; any child born to either of you in after years could be damaged, cell-deep. Even coming this close—I am not even sure Neskaya is safe. We do not know everything, yet, about what that stuff does to the cells. The danger of Neskaya we must all bear, but I will not willingly expose either of you to more danger. At my age it does not matter so much. But you two will probably have children some day. Either of you could have, I mean,” he added, and then laughed, spreading his hands as if to say,
That wasn’t what I meant
. . . but Bard, looking at Melora in the bright morning, saw a smile as intimate as a kiss of welcome, a smile that warmed him all through the death inside him. In all his life it had never occurred to him that a woman could look at him and smile at him that way.

So she loved him still. It would not be easy. He had made Carlina his wife by force; the law stated that a handfasting, once consummated, was lawful marriage. No doubt Carlina would be glad enough to be rid of him, and he could not make a
leronis
of Neskaya into his
barragana;
so he had little enough to offer Melora. But perhaps they could find some honorable solution.

Strange. All these years he had dreamed of possessing Carlina, and now that he had her he was trying to work out a way to get rid of her. There was a saying in the hills:
Take care how you beseech the gods, they may answer you.

The worst irony of all, he thought, the worst catastrophe he could envision, would be if Carlina should actually have come to love him, as he had always felt she must do if he once possessed her. He could not restore what he had taken from her, no more than he could make real amends to Melisendra, give her back her virginity and the Sight. But what he could do, he must. If Melisendra wanted Paul, she should have him, even though she might find, in the end, that Paul was no better than himself.

Or was he? He knew no more about Paul than . . . really . . . he knew about himself. Paul and he were the same man at root. Paul was the man he might have been, no more. Perhaps the differences went deeper than he could guess.

The long detour around the blasted lands took time, and the sun was angling downward past noon when Melora cried out in shock and dismay. Varzil pulled his horse to a stop, his face drawn, and seemed to listen for something out of the range of normal hearing. He reached from his seat in the saddle and took Bard’s hand, with an instinctive gesture, as if to offer comfort.

“Alaric!”
Bard whispered in shock, and somewhere, distant, in his mind, felt and saw his brother’s last sight of the roof buckling to admit the sky, his last frantic clutching at his father for support, the instant and merciful darkness.

He did not cry the words aloud in agony; he only thought that he did. Varzil held out his arms and Bard let his head fall on the older man’s shoulder, in voiceless grief, shaking with an anguish too deep for tears.

“I am sorry,” Varzil said in his gentle, muted voice. “He was like a fosterling to me, who have no son, and I cared for him long when he was so very ill.”

And Bard knew that Varzil’s grief was like his own. He said, shaking, “He loved you,
vai dom,
he told me so . . . it is why I could . . . could trust you.”

Varzil’s eyes were filled with tears; Melora was weeping. Varzil said, “Do not call me
vai dom,
Bard, I am your kinsman as I was his . . .” and Bard, tears stinging his own eyes, realized that he had never known what it was to have a kinsman, a peer, an equal, since Beltran died . . . he tightened his throat. He could not cry, not now, or he would weep all the tears he had not shed since he saw Beltran lying dead on his own sword, and said farewell to Geremy whom he had maimed for life, and nevertheless had embraced him and wept. . . .

He straightened in his saddle, looking across at the older man, his face tightening into control.

He said, “I must ride on and see what is happening at my home—cousin,” he said, a little hesitantly. “Please—you must not feel obligated to keep to the pace I set; I must get home as quickly as I can, I will be needed. You may follow at a speed that is comfortable to you. Melora is not a good rider, and you—you are not young.”

Varzil’s face was set, too. “We will keep pace with you. We may well be needed, too. I think it is safe to turn directly toward Asturias, now, and to take the high road.” He wheeled his horse. “If we cut across the fields here, we will be back on the high road within the hour—”

Melora said, “My donkey will not keep up with your horses. We will stop at the first inn where they have staging horses, and I shall leave the donkey there and get a horse that can carry me. I can keep up with you if I must.”

Vaszil started to protest, looked at the taut mouth and didn’t. Bard wondered what knowledge Melora and Varzil shared from which he was excluded. Varzil only said, “It is your choice, Melora. Do what you feel you must do.” They began to ride across the fields.

Within the hour they had exchanged Melora’s donkey, leaving him in the care of the staging inn, and found her a gentle saddle horse and a lady’s saddle. After that, they made better time, and as they rode toward Asturias, Bard found grim pictures in his mind, whether cast up by his own developing
laran
or adrift on the rapport with Varzil and Melora he did not know and did not care, of ruin and chaos at Castle Asturias.
And all over this land, all over the Hundred Kingdoms. . . .

This
laran
warfare must somehow be ended, or there will be no land to conquer and nothing left for the conquerors. Only in the Compact is there hope for all these lands.
Bard felt that this came from Varzil, and not from his own mind, then he was not so sure.

He said once, into the grim silence, “I would that you were king instead of the Hastur lord, sir,” and Varzil shook his head.

“I want nothing to do with kingship. It is too much temptation for me—to feel that I can set all things right with a word. Carolin of Thendara is not a proud man, or an ambitious one, and he does not mind being ruled by his advisers; he was trained to kingcraft, which is just this—to know that you are not king in yourself, but steward for your people. A good king cannot be a good soldier, or a really good statesman—he must be content to know that he can search out the best soldiers and the best statesmen and be advised by them, and be content to be no more than a visible sign of his reign. I would meddle too much in my own reign, if I were a king,” he said with a smile. “As Keeper of Neskaya, I have, perhaps, more power than is good for me. In these times it is useful, perhaps, but maybe it is just as well that I am an old man; times may be coming when a Keeper has not so much power. This, I think, is why I hoped to send Mirella to Arilinn.”