The Spell Sword (23 page)

It screeched and writhed, screaming, on the sword. The great matrix flared and
spat sparks and great sheets of flame. Then abruptly the lights died and the
cavern was dull and silent, except for the pale glimmer of Callista's starstone.

The three of them were standing close together on the stone floor, Callista
sobbing shakily and clinging to them. On the floor at their feet a burned and
blackened thing lay, scorched and stinking of burning fur, which bore only the
faintest resemblance to a cat-man, or to anything else which had ever been
alive.

The great matrix stood before them in its frame, with a burned, dead, glassy
glimmer. It rolled free, fell with a tinkle to the floor of the cave, and
shattered into nothingness.

So what will happen to the darkening lands now?" Andrew asked, as they rode
slowly back through the dusk toward Armida.

"I'm not sure," Damon said slowly. He was very weary, and drooped in his saddle,
but he felt at peace.

They had found food and wine in the caves-evidently the cat-men had not bothered
to explore the lower levels-and had eaten and drunk well. There had been
clothing there, too, of a sort, including great fur blankets, but Callista had
shuddered away from the touch, saying that nothing would induce her to wear fur
again as long as she lived. In the end Damon had given the fur cloak to Eduin
and wrapped Callista in the swordsman's heavy wool cape.

She rode now on the front of Andrew's saddle, clinging to him, her head against
his shoulder, and he rode with his head lowered so that his cheek lay against
her hair. The sight made Damon lonely for Ellemir, but that could wait. He
wasn't sure Andrew even heard the answer to his question, but he answered,
anyway.

"Now that the matrix is destroyed, the cat-men have no abnormal weapons of fear
or darkness. We can send out soldiers against them and cut them down. The
villagers, most of them, will recover when the darkness is gone and there is no
more fear."

Below them, in the valley, Damon could see the lights of Armida. He wondered if
Ellemir knew he was returning, with Callista safe, and the darkening lands
cleansed. Damon smiled faintly. The old man must be fretting himself sick with
impatience to know what had happened since he lost contact with Damon at the
barrier. Dom Esteban probably believed-he had been contemptuous of Damon for so
long as a weakling-that he, Damon, had been cut down seconds after. Well, it
would be a pleasant surprise for the old man, and Dom Esteban would need a few
pleasant surprises to make up for the inevitable shock he'd get when he found
out about Callista and Andrew. That wasn't going to be pleasant, but the old man
owed them something, and Damon was going to twist his arm until he gave in. He
realized, with a deep and profound pleasure, that he was looking forward to it,
that he wasn't afraid of Dom Esteban anymore. He wasn't afraid of anything
anymore. He smiled, and dropped back to ride by Eduin and Rannan, who shared a
horse's broad back, having given up a mount to Andrew and Callista.

Andrew Carr did not even notice Damon go. Callista was warm in his arms, and his
heart was so full that he could hardly think clearly. He whispered, "Are you
cold, beloved?"

She nestled closely against him. "A little," she said softly. "It's all right."

"It won't be long, and we'll have you where it's warm, and Ellemir will look
after you."

"I'd rather be cold in the clean air, than be warm in those foul, stinking
caves! Oh, the stars!" she said almost ecstatically.

He tightened his arm around her, aware that she was so weary that she might
fall. He could see the lights of Armida, warm and beckoning, below.

She murmured, "It won't be easy. My father will be angry. He thinks of me as a
Keeper, not a woman. And he would be angry if I chose to lay down my post and
marry anyone, anyone at all, and it will be that much harder, since you are a
Terran." But she smiled and curled closer to him. "Well, he'll just have to get
used to the idea. Leonie will be on our side."

They were taking it all for granted, Andrew thought. Somehow, he would have to
send a message to the Trade City that he was alive-that would be easy enough-and
a message that he wouldn't be coming back. That wouldn't be so easy. With this
new ability he had discovered-well, somehow or other he'd have to learn how to
use it. After that-well, who could tell? There must be something he could do, to
hasten the day when Terrans and Darkovans no longer looked on each other as
alien species.

They couldn't be so alien. The names alone must tell him that. Callista. Damon.

Edwin. Caradoc. Esteban. He could buy a lot of coincidence, but that he couldn't
believe in. He wasn't a linguist, but he simply refused to accept that these
people could independently have evolved names so identical with Terran names.

Even Ellemir was not outlandish; the first time he heard it, he'd thought it was
Eleanor. Not only Terran names, but Western European ones, from the days when
those distinctions applied on Terra.

Yet this planet had been discovered by the Terran Empire less than a hundred
years ago, and the Trade City built less than fifty years ago. The little he
knew about this planet showed him that its history was longer than that of the
Empire.

So what was the answer? There were stories of "Lost Ships," taking off from
Terra itself in the days before the Empire, thousands of years ago, disappearing
without trace. Most of them had been believed destroyed-the ships of those days
had been ridiculous contraptions, running on primitive atomic or
matter-antimatter drives. But one of them might somehow have survived. He faced
the fact that he'd probably never know, but he had the rest of his life to find
out. Anyway, did it matter? He knew all he needed to know.

He clasped Callista closer in his arms; she made a small involuntary movement of
protest, then smiled and deliberately moved against him. He thought, I really
know nothing about her. Then, remembering that incredible four-way moment of
fusion and total acceptance, he realized that he knew all he needed to know
about her, too. Already he had noticed that she no longer shrank from a casual
touch. He thought, with great tenderness, that if she had been conditioned
against desire or sensual response, at least the conditioning was not
irrevocable, and they had time enough to wait. Already, he suspected, it had
been breached by days of terror alone in the darkness, and by her hunger for any
other human presence. But they already belonged to one another in the way that
mattered most. The rest would come in time. He was sure of that, and he found
himself wondering, whimsically, if pre-cognition was among the new psi talents
he'd be exploring.

As they rode through the great looming gates of Armida, a light snow had begun
to fall; and Andrew remembered that less than a week ago he had been lying on a
ledge in a howling storm, waiting to die.

Callista shivered-did she remember it too?-and he bent down and murmured
tenderly, "We're almost home, my beloved." And already it did not seem strange
to think of it as home.

He had followed a dream, and it had brought him here.

I am always being asked by those who have read anywhere from three to nine of
the Darkover books to tell them exactly when and where any given book fits,
chronologically, into the series. While I am always grateful for the interest of
my readers, usually the only answer I can give is a shrug. I have always tried
to make each of the Darkover books so complete that each one can be read by
itself, even if the reader has never seen any of the other books before.

I do not really think of them as a "series" but rather of Darkover as a familiar
world about which I like writing novels, and to which the readers seem to like
returning. Where absolute consistency might damage the self-sufficiency of any
given book, I have quite frankly sacrificed consistency. I make no apologies for
this.

Nothing is more frustrating to me than to read the second, or fourth, or sixth
book of a series, and to have the author blandly assume that I have read all his
other books and know the whole background. When readers start nitpicking,
demanding to know (for instance) why two locations are a day's journey apart in
one book, and three days' ride in another, I begin to understand why Conan Doyle
attempted to throw Sherlock Holmes over the Reichenbach falls, and why Sax
Rohmer repeatedly tried to burn, drown, or dismember Fu Manchu so thoroughly
that even the publishers could not resurrect him for another book.

But for those who have followed, or tried to follow, the chronology of the
Terrans on Darkover, I think of this book as coming perhaps thirty years before
STAR OF DANGER while Lorill Hastur still ruled Comyn Council and while Valdir
Alton, a younger brother of Ellemir and Callista, was away at Council. Readers
of the earlier books will remember that Valdir's adolescent son, Kennard, played
an important part in STAR OF DANGER; that Valdir and his Terran foster-son Larry
Montray reappeared in WINDS OF DARKOVER, about four years after the previous
book. Kennard, grown to manhood, was an important character in THE BLOODY SUN.

Lerrys Ridenow-a grandson, perhaps, of the Damon in this book-appeared, with
Regis Hastur, in THE PLANET SAVERS. Regis Hastur appeared again, with Lew Alton,
son of Kennard, in THE SWORD OF ALDONES; and yet again, as a major character, in
WORLD WRECKERS which was, so far, the last in chronology of the novels. Some
general sense of the elapsed time may be gained by the knowledge that Desideria,
who appears in WINDS OF DARKOVER as a girl of sixteen, appears (as a minor
character) in WORLD WRECKERS as a woman of great age, possibly over a hundred
years old.

The books were not written in chronological order. SWORD OF ALDONES, late in the
series, was actually written first. DARKOVER LANDFALL, which dealt with how the
planet was colonized, long before the coming of the Terran Empire, was actually
written after WORLD WRECKERS, which otherwise was the last in the series. I
prefer to think of it as a loosely interrelated group of novels with a common
background-the Terran Empire against the world and culture of Darkover-and a
common theme: the clash of two warring cultures, apparently irreconcilable and
in spite of all, closely akin. If the books have any message at all, which I
personally doubt, it is simply that for a man nothing of mankind is alien.