The Spell Sword (7 page)

"No, Damon. It is not that you have failed, or displeased me. And all of us-I
myself-love you, and value you. But you are too sensitive, you cannot barricade
yourself. Had you been born a woman, in a woman's body," she added, laying a
light hand on his shoulder, "you would have been a Keeper, perhaps one of the
greatest. But as a man"-faintly, she shrugged-"you would destroy yourself, tear
yourself apart. Perhaps, free of the Tower, you may be able to surround yourself
with other things, grow less sensitive, less"-she hesitated, groping for the
exact word-"less vulnerable. It is for your own good that I send you away,
Damon; for your health, for your happiness, perhaps for your very sanity."

Lightly, almost a breath, her lips brushed his forehead. "You know I love you;
for that reason I do not want to destroy you. Go, Damon."

From that there was no appeal, and Damon had gone, cursing the vulnerability,
the Gift he carried like a curse.

He had made a new career for himself in Comyn Council, and although he was no
soldier and no swordsman, had taken his turn at commanding the Guardsmen:
driven, constantly needing to prove himself. He never admitted even to himself
how deeply that hour with Leonie had torn at his manhood. From any work with the
star-stone (although he carried it still, since it had been made a part of him),
he had shied away in horror and panic.

And now he must, though his mind, his nerves, all his senses, were screaming
revolt.

He jolted back to present time as Ellemir said tentatively, "Damon, are you
asleep?"

He shook his head to clear it of the phantoms of past failure and fear. "No, no.

Preparing myself. What have you for me of Callista's?"

She opened her hand; a silver filigree butterfly lay within, daintily starred
with multicolored gemstones. "Callista always wore this in her hair," Ellemir
said, and indeed a strand or two of long, silken hair was still entangled in the
clasp.

"You are sure it is hers? I suppose like all sisters you share your ornaments-my
own sisters used to complain of that."

Ellemir turned to show him the butterfly-shaped clasp at the nape of her own
neck. She said, "Father always had her ornaments fashioned in silver and mine in
gilt, so that we could tell them apart. He had these made for us in Carthon
years ago, and she has worn it in her hair every day since then. She does not
care much for jewelry, so she gave me the bracelet to match it, but the clasp
she always wears."

That sounded circumstantial and convincing. Damon took the silver clasp between
his fingers, closing his eyes, tentatively trying to sense what he could from
it. "Yes, this is Callista's," he said after a moment, and she said, "Can you
really tell?"

Damon shrugged. "Give me yours for a moment," he said, and Ellemir turned and
drew the matching clasp from her own hair, turning modestly aside so that he
caught only the faintest glimpse of her bare neck. He was so sensitized to her
at that moment that even that momentary and fleeting glimpse jerked a string of
sensual awareness and response deep in his body; firmly he put it away on a
deeper level of consciousness. No time for that now. Ellemir laid the gilded
ornament in his hand. It tingled with the feel of her very self. Damon drew a
deep breath and forced the awareness below conscious level again. He said,
"Close your eyes."

Childishly, she screwed them up tight.

"Hold out your hands." Damon laid one of the ornaments in each small pink palm.

"Now, if you cannot tell me which is your own, you are no child of the Alton
Domain."

"I was tested for laran as a child," Ellemir protested, "and told I had none,
compared with Callista-"

"Never compare yourself with anyone," Damon said, with a sudden rough thrust of
anger. "Concentrate, Ellemir."

She said, with a queer strange note of surprise in her voice, "This is mine-I am
sure."

"Look and see."

She opened her blue eyes, and gazed in astonishment at the gilt butterfly clasp
in her hand. "Why, it is! The other one felt strange, this one- How did I do
that?"

Damon shrugged. "This one-yours-has the impress of your personality, your
vibrations, on it," he said. "It would have been simpler still if you and
Callista were not twins, for twins share much in vibration. That was why I
wanted to be quite, quite sure you had never worn hers, since it is difficult
enough to tell twin from twin by their telepathic imprint alone. Of course,
since Callista is a Keeper, her imprint is more definite." He broke off, feeling
a sudden surge of anger. Ellemir had always lived in her twin's shadow. And she
was too good, too gentle and good, to resent it. Why should she be so humble?

Forcibly, he calmed the irrational surge of rage. He said quietly, "I think you
have more laran than you realize, although it is true that, in twins, one seems
always to get more than her fair share of the Gift, and the other rather less.

This is why the best Keepers are often one of a twin-pair, since she has her own
and a part of her sister's share of the psi potentials."

He cupped the starstone between his hands; it winked back at him, blue and
enigmatic, little ribbons of fire crawling in its depth. Fires to burn his soul
to ashes. Damon clamped his teeth against the cold nausea of his dread. "You'll
have to help," he said roughly.

"But how? I know nothing of this."

"Haven't you ever kept watch for Callista when she went out?"

Ellemir shook her head. "She never said anything to me of her training or her
work. She said it was difficult and she would rather forget it when she was
here."

"A pity," Damon said. He settled himself comfortably in his chair. He said,
"Very well, I'll have to teach you now. It would be easier if you were
experienced in this, but you have enough to do what you must. It is simple.

Here. Lay your hands against my wrists, so that I can still see the starstone,
but-yes, there, at the pulse spots. Now-" He reached out, tentatively, trying to
make a light telepathic contact. She flinched physically, and he smiled. "Yes,
that's right, you can perceive the contact. Now all you must do is to keep watch
over my body while I am out of it hunting for Callista. When I first go out, I
will feel cold to your touch, and my heart and pulse will slow slightly. That is
normal; don't be afraid. But if we are interrupted, don't let anyone touch me.

Above all, don't let anyone move me. If my pulse begins to quicken and race, or
if the veins at my temples swell, or my body begins to grow either deathly cold
or very warm, then you must wake me."

"How do I do that?"

"Call my name, and put your whole force behind it," Damon said. "You don't have
to speak aloud, just project your thoughts at me, calling my name. If you cannot
wake me, and it gets worse-for instance, if I show any difficulty in
breathing-wake me at once; don't delay any further. At the last, but only if you
cannot wake me any other way, touch the stone." He winced as he said it. "Only
as a last desperate expedient, though; it is painful and might throw me into
shock." He felt her hands tremble as they gripped his wrists, and felt her fear
and hesitation like a faint fog obscuring the clarity of his own thought.

Poor child. I shouldn't have to do this to her. Damn the luck. If Callista had
to get herself into trouble-He forced himself to be fair, and tried to still his
pounding heart. This wasn't Callista's fault either. He should save his curses
for her kidnappers.

Ellemir said timidly, "Don't be angry, Damon," and he thought, It's a good sign
she can feel that I'm angry. He said aloud, "I'm not angry at you, breda." He
used the intimate word which could mean simply kinswoman or, more closely,
darling. He settled himself as comfortably as he could, sensitizing himself to
the feel of Callista's hair-clasp between his hands, the starstone above it,
pulsing gently in unconscious rhythm with his own nerve currents.

He tried to blur everything else, every other sensation, the feel of Ellemir's
cold hands on his wrists and her warm breath against his throat, the faint
woman-scent of her closeness; he blotted these out, blotted out the flicker of
fire and candle beyond them, dimmed the shadows of the room, let vision sink
into the blue pulsing of the starstone. He sensed, rather than physically felt,
the relaxing of his muscles as his body went insensible. For an instant nothing
existed except the vast blue of the starstone, pulsing with the beating of his
heart, then his heart stopped, or at least he was no longer conscious of
anything except the expanding blueness: a glare, a blue flame, a sea rushing in
to drown him.

With a brief, tingling shock, he was out of his body and standing over it,
looking down from above, with a certain ironic detachment, on the thin, slumped
body in the chair, the frail, frightened-looking girl kneeling and grasping its
wrists. He was not really seeing, but perceiving in some strange, dark way
through closed eyelids.

In the overlight forming around him he cast a swift downward look. The body in
the chair had been wearing a shabby jerkin and leather riding breeches, but as
always when he stepped out he felt taller, stronger, more muscular, moving with
effortless ease as the walls of the great hall thinned and moved away. And this
body, if it could be called a body, was wearing a glimmering tunic of gold and
green that flickered with a faint firelight glow. Leonie had told him once,
"this is how your mind sees itself." He was bare-armed and barefoot, and he felt
an incongruous flicker of amusement. To go out in the blizzard like this? But of
course the blizzard was not here, not at all, although if he listened, he could
hear the faint howl of the wind, and he knew the violence of the storm must be
intense indeed if even its echo could penetrate into the over-world. As he
formulated that thought he felt himself begin to shiver and quickly dismissed
the thought and memory of the blizzard; his consciousness of it could solidify
it on this plane and bring it here.

He moved, gliding, not conscious of separate steps. He was conscious of
Callista's jeweled butterfly still between his hands, fluttering like a live
thing, beating with the impress of her mental "voice." Or rather, since the
jewel itself was in the hands of his body, "down there," the mental counterpart
of the ornament which he bore "here." He tried to sensitize himself to the
special reverberations of that "voice," adding to it his call, a shout that felt
to him like a commanding bellow.

"Callista!"

There was no answer. He had not really expected an answer; if it had been that
simple, Ellemir would have already made contact with her twin. Around him the
over-world was as still as death, and he looked around, all the time aware that
the world, and himself, were only comfortable visualizations for some intangible
level of reality. That he saw it as a "world" because it was more convenient to
see and feel it that way than as an intangible mental realm; that he visualized
himself as a body, striding across a great barren empty plain, because it was
easier and less disconcerting than visualizing himself as a bodiless point of
thought adrift in other thoughts. At the moment it looked to him like an
enormous flat horizon, stretching away dim and bare and silent into endless
spaces and skies. In the far distance shadows drifted, and as his curiosity was
roused about them, he moved rapidly, without the need to take steps, in their
direction.

As he came nearer, they became clearer, human forms which looked oddly gray and
unfocused. He knew that if he spoke to them, they would immediately vanish-if
they had nothing to do with him or his quest-or immediately come into sharp
focus. The overworld was never empty: there were always minds out on the astral
for one reason or another, even if they were only sleepers out of their bodies,
their minds crossing his in the formless realm of thought. He saw a few faces,
dimly, like reflections in water, of people he vaguely recognized. He knew that
these were kinsmen and acquaintances of his who were sleeping or deep in
meditation, and that he had somehow come into their thoughts; that some of them
would wake with a memory of having seen him in a dream. He passed them without
any attempt to speak. None of them could have any bearing on his search.

Far in the distance he saw a great shining structure which he recognized from
previous visits to this world, and knew it was the Tower where he had been
trained, years before. Usually he bypassed it, in such journeys, without passing
near; now he felt himself drifting nearer and nearer to it. As he came closer it
took on form and solidity. Generations of telepaths had been trained here,
exploring the overworld from this base and background. No wonder the Tower stood
firm as a landmark in the overworld. Surely Callista would have come here, if
she was out on the planes and was free, he thought.

Now he stood on the plain, just below the looming structure of the Tower. Grass,
trees, and flowers had begun to formulate around him, his own memory and the
joint visualizations of everyone who came into the overworld from the Tower
keeping them relatively solid here. He walked amid the familiar trees and
scented flowers now with an aching sense of loss, of nostalgia, almost of
homesickness. He passed through the dimly shining gateway, and stood briefly on
the remembered stones. Suddenly, before him, stood a veiled woman, but even
through her veils he knew her: Leonie, the sorceress-Keeper of the Tower during
his years there. Her face was a little blurred: half, he knew, the face he
remembered; half, the face she wore now.

"Leonie," he said, and the dim figure solidified, took on more definite and
clear form, even to the twin copper bracelets, formed like serpents, which she
always wore. "Damon," she said, with gentle reproach, "what are you doing out
here on this plane tonight?"