The Spell Sword (16 page)

Andrew lay back in his chair, aware that he still felt sick. But the acute
sickness was gone. Damon was kneeling upright beside him, looking down into his
eyes with anxious concern.

"Andrew, are you all right?"

"I'm-fine," he managed to say, feeling a tardy embarrassment. "What the hell-"

Ellemir-he realized suddenly that her hand lay in his, and the other hand in
Damon's-gave his fingers a soft little squeeze. She said, "I couldn't see
Callista. But she was there for a moment. Andrew, forgive me for doubting you."

Andrew felt strangely embarrassed. He knew perfectly well that he had not moved
from the chair, that he had not touched anything except Ellemir's fingertips,
that Damon had not touched him at all, but he had the definite feeling that
something profound and almost sexual had happened among all of them, including
Callista, who was not there at all. "How much of what I felt was real?" he
demanded.

Damon shrugged. "Define your terms. What's real? Everything and nothing. Oh, the
images," he said, apparently picking up the texture of Andrew's embarrassment.

"That. Let me put it this way. When the brain-or the mind- has an experience
like nothing else it's ever experienced, it visualizes it in terms of familiar
things. I lost contact for a few seconds-but I imagine you felt strong emotion."

"Yes," Andrew said, almost inaudibly.

"It was an unusual emotion, so your mind instantly associated it with a familiar
but equally strong one, which just happened to be sexual. My own image is like
walking a tightrope without falling off, and then finding something to hang on
to, and brace myself with. But"-he grinned suddenly -"an awful lot of people
think in sexual images, so don't worry about it. I'm used to it and so is anyone
who's ever had to find their way around in direct rapport. Everybody has his own
individual set of images; you'll soon recognize them like individual voices."

Ellemir said, almost in a murmur, "I kept hearing voices in different pitches,
that suddenly slid in to close harmony and started singing together like an
enormous choir."

Damon leaned over and touched her cheek lightly with his lips. "So that was the
music I heard?" he murmured.

Andrew realized that somewhere in the back of his mind he too had heard
something like far-off voices blending. Musical images, he thought a little
wryly, were safer and less revealing than sexual ones. He looked tentatively at
Ellemir, sounding out his own feelings, and found he was thinking on two levels
at once. On one level he felt an intimacy with Ellemir, as if he had been her
lover for a long time, a comprehensive goodwill, a feeling of sympathy and
protectiveness. On another level, even clearer, he was perfectly aware that this
was a girl unfamiliar to him, that he had never touched more than her
fingertips, and had no intention of ever doing any more than that and it
confused him.

How can I feel this almost sexual acceptance of her, and at the same time have
no sexual interest in her at all, as a person? Maybe Damon's right and I'm just
visualizing unfamiliar feelings in familiar terms. Because I have that same sort
of profound intimacy and acceptance toward Damon, and that's really confusing
and disturbing. It gave him a headache.

Damon said, "I didn't see Callista either, and I wasn't really in touch with
her, but I could feel that Carr was." He sighed, with the weariness of physical
fatigue, but his face was peaceful.

But the peaceful interlude was short-lived. Damon knew that, so far, Callista
was well and safe. If anyone harmed her now, Andrew would know. But how long
would she remain safe? If her captors had any idea that Callista had reached
anyone outside, anyone who could lead rescuers to her-well, there was one
obvious way to prevent that Andrew couldn't reach her if she was dead. And that
was so simple, and so obvious, that Damon's throat squeezed tight in panic. If
they caught any hint of what he was trying to do, if they had the faintest
notion that rescue was on the way, Callista might not live long enough to be
rescued.

Why had they kept her alive this long? Again Damon reminded himself not to judge
the cat-men by human standards. We really know nothing of why they do anything.

He rose, and swayed where he stood, knowing that after taxing, demanding
telepathic work he needed food, sleep, and quiet. The night was far gone. The
hideous need for haste beat at him. He braced himself to keep from falling and
looked down at Ellemir and Andrew. Now that things have begun moving again, we
must be ready to move with them, he thought. If I'm going to act as Keeper, this
is my responsibility-to keep them from panicking. I'm in charge, and I've got to
look after them.

"We all need food," he said, "and sleep. And we can't do a thing until we know
how badly Dom Esteban is hurt. Everything, now, depends on that."

When Damon came down into the Great Hall the next morning, he found Eduin
prowling around in front of the doors, his face pale and drawn. To Damon's
question he nodded briefly. "Caradoc's doing well enough, Lord Damon. But the
Lord Istvan-"

That told Damon all he needed to know. Esteban Lanart had awakened-and was still
unable to move. So that was that. Damon felt a sickening sensation as if he
stood on quicksand. What now? What now?

Then it was up to him. He realized, hardening his jaw, that he had really known
this all along. From the moment of premonition (You will see him sooner than you
think and it will not be well for any of you) he had known that in the end it
would be his task. He was still not sure how, but at least he knew he could not
let the burden slide onto the stronger shoulders of his kinsman.

"Does he know, Eduin?"

Eduin's hawklike face twisted in a grimace of compassion and he said briefly,
"Do you think anyone'd need to tell him? Aye. He knows."

And if he didn't, he'd know the minute he saw me. Damon began to push aside the
doors to enter, but Eduin gripped his arm.

"Can't you do for his wound what you did for Caradoc's, Lord Damon?"

Pityingly, Damon shook his head. "I'm no miracle worker. To stop the flow of
blood is nothing. That done, Caradoc would heal. I healed nothing; I did only
what Caradoc's wound would have done of itself if anyone could have reached it.

But if the spinal nerve is severed- no power on this world could repair it."

Eduin's eyes closed briefly. "That I feared," he said. "Lord Damon! Is there
news of the Lady Callista?"

"We know she is safe and well, at this moment," Damon said, "but there is need
for haste. So I must see Dom Esteban at once, and make plans."

He pushed the door open. Ellemir was kneeling by her father's bedside; the other
wounded men had evidently been moved out to the Guardroom, except for Caradoc,
who lay under blankets far at the back of the Hall, and seemed fast asleep.

Esteban Lanart lay flat, his heavy body immobilized in sandbags so that he could
not turn from side to side. Ellemir was feeding him, not very expertly, with a
child's spoon. He was a tall, heavy, red-faced man, with the strongly aquiline
features of all his clan, his long sideburns and bushy eyebrows graying but his
beard still brilliantly red. He looked angry and incongruous with drops of gruel
in his beard; his fierce eyes moved to Damon.

"Good morning, kinsman," Damon said.

Dom Esteban retorted, "Good, you say! When I lie here like a tree struck by
lightning and my daughter-my daughter-" He raised a clenched fist in rage,
struck the spoon, upset more of the gruel, and snarled, "Take that filthy stuff
away! It's not my belly that's paralyzed, girl!" He saw her stricken face and
moved his hand clumsily to pat her arm. "Sorry, chiya. I've cause enough for
anger. But get me something decent to eat, not that baby-food!"

Ellemir raised helpless eyes to the healer-woman who stood by; she shrugged, and
Damon said, "Give him anything he wants, Ellemir, unless he's feverish."

The girl rose and went out, and Damon came to the bedside. It seemed
inconceivable that Dom Esteban would never again rise from that, bed. That harsh
face should not lie on a pillow, that powerful body should be up and moving
about in its usual brisk military way.

"I won't ask you how you feel, kinsman," Damon said. "But are you in much pain
now?"

"Almost none, strange as it seems," said the wounded man. "Such a little, little
wound to lay me low! Hardly more than a scratch. And yet-" His teeth clenched in
his lip. "I've been told I'll never walk again." His gray eyes sought out
Damon's, in an agony of pleading so great that the younger man was embarrassed.

"Is it true? Or is the woman as much a fool as she seems?"

Damon bent his head and did not answer. After a moment the older man moved his
head in weary resignation. "Tragedy stalks our family. Coryn dead before his
fifteenth year, and Callista, Callista-so I must seek help, humbly, as befits a
cripple, from strangers. I have no one of my own blood to help me."

Damon knelt on one knee beside the old man. He said deliberately, "The gods
forbid you should seek among strangers. I claim that right-father-in-law."

The bushy eyebrows went up, almost into the hairline. At last Dom Esteban said,
"So the wind blows from that quarter? I had other plans for Ellemir, but-" A
brief pause, then, "Nothing goes, I believe, as we plan it, in this imperfect
world. Be it so, then. But the road will be no easy one, even if you can find
Callista. Ellemir has told me something-a confused tale of Callista and a
stranger, a Terran, who has somehow gained rapport with her and has offered his
sword, or his services, or some such thing. He must talk of it with you, whoever
he is, although it seems strange that one of the Terranan should show proper
reverence for a Keeper." He scowled fiercely. "Curse those beasts! Damon, what
has been happening in these hills? Until a few seasons ago the cat-men were
timid folk who lived in the hills, and no one thought them wiser than the little
people of the trees! Then, as if some evil god had come among them, they attack
us like fiends, they stir up the Dry Towns against us-and lands where our people
have lived for generations lie under some darkness as if bewitched. I'm a
practical man, Damon, and I don't believe in bewitchments! And now they come
invisible out of the air, like wizards from some old fairy tale."

"All too real, I fear," Damon said, and knew his face was grim. "I met them,
crossing the darkening lands, and only too late did I realize that I could have
made them visible with my starstone." His hand sought the leather pouch about
his throat. "They slaughtered my men. Eduin said you saved them, that almost
alone you cut your way out of the ambush. How-?" Damon felt suddenly awkward.

Dom Esteban lifted the long, squarish swordsman's hand from the bed and looked
at it, as if puzzled. "I hardly know," he said slowly, looking at his hand and
moving the fingers back and forth, turning it to look at the palm, and then back
again. "I must have heard the other sword in the air-" He hesitated and an odd
note of wonder crept into his voice as he spoke again. "But I didn't. Not till I
had my sword out and up to guard." He blinked, puzzled. "It's like that
sometimes. It's happened before. You suddenly turn, and block, and there's an
attack coming that you'd never have seen unless you'd found yourself guarding
it." He laughed again, raucously. "Merciful Avarra! Listen to the old man
bragging." Suddenly the fingers knotted into fists. The arm trembled with anger.

"Boast? Why not? What else can a cripple do?"

From the greatest swordsman in the Domains to a helpless invalid-horrible! And
yet, Damon thought reluctantly, there was an element of justice in it. Dom
Esteban had never been tolerant of the slightest physical weakness in anyone
else. It had been in proving his courage to his father, climbing the heights he
feared, that Coryn had fallen to his death.

"Zandru's hells," the old man said after a moment. "The way my joints have
stiffened, these last three winters, the bone-aches would have done it in
another year or so, anyway. Better to have one last terrific fight."

"It won't be forgotten in a hurry," Damon said, and turned quickly away so the
old man would not see the pity in his eyes. "Zandru's hells, how we could use
your sword now against the accursed cat-men!"

The old man laughed mirthlessly. "My sword? That's easy-take it and welcome," he
said with a bitter grimace meant to be a grin. "Afraid you'll have to use it
yourself, though. I can't go along and help."

Damon caught the unspoken contempt-There's no sword ever forged could make a
swordsman of you-but at the moment he felt no anger. Dom Esteban's only
remaining weapon was his tongue. Anyway, Damon had never prided himself on his
skill at arms.

Ellemir was returning with a tray of solid food for her father; she set it down
beside the bed and began cutting up the meat. Dom Esteban said, "Just what are
your plans, Damon? You're not planning to go up against the cat-men?"

He said quietly, "I see no alternative, Father-in-law."

"It will take an army to wipe them out, Damon."

"Time enough for that next year," Damon said. "Just now our first problem is to
get Callista out of their hands, and for that we have no time to raise an army.

What's more, if we came up against them with an army, their first move would be
to kill her. Time presses. Now that we know where she is-"

Dom Esteban stared, forgetting to chew a mouthful of meat and gravy. He
swallowed, choked a little, gestured to Ellemir for a drink, and said, "You
know. Just how did you manage that?"

"The Terranan," said Damon quietly. "No, I don't know how it happened either. I
never knew any of the strangers had anything like our laran. But he has it, and
he is in contact with Callista."

"I don't doubt it," Esteban said. "I met some of them in Thendara when they
negotiated to build the Trade City. They are more like us. I heard a story that
Terra and Darkover are of common stock, far back in history. They rarely leave
their city, though. How did this one come here?"