Sharra's Exile d-21 Read online

  “Lerrys,” Geremy appealed, “Can’t you reason with her?”

  But Lerrys stood regarding his sister with admiration. “That’s the spirit, Dio! What is the good of being on an alien planet in a civilized Empire, if you keep the provincial spirit and customs of your backwater? Do what you like, Dio. Geremy, let her alone!”

  Geremy shook his head, angry, but he was laughing too. “You too! Always one in mind, as if you had been born twins!”

  “Certainly,” said Lerrys. “Why, do you think, am I a lover of men? Because, to my ill-fortune, the only woman I have ever known with a man’s spirit and a man’s strength is my own sister!” He kissed her, laughing. “Enjoy yourself, breda, but don’t get hurt. He may have been on his good behavior last night, or even in a romantic mood, but I suspect he could be savage.”

  “No.” Suddenly Geremy was sober. “This is no joke. I don’t want you to see him again, Diotima. One evening, perhaps, to do courtesy to our kinsmen; I grant you that, and I am sorry if I implied it was more than courtesy. But no more, Dio, not again. Lerrys said as much last night, when he wasn’t devilling me! If you don’t think I have your good at heart, certainly you know Lerrys does. Listen to me, sister; there are enough men on this planet to dance with, flirt with, hunt with—yes, damn it, and to lie with too, if that’s your pleasure! But let Kennard Alton’s half-caste bastard alone—do you hear me? I tell you, Dio, if you disobey me, I shall make you regret it!”

  “Now,” said Lerrys, still laughing, as Dio tossed her head in defiance, “you have made it certain, Geremy; you have all but spread the bridal bed for them! Don’t you know that no man alive can forbid Dio to do anything?”

  In the hunting preserve next day, they chose horses, and the great hawks not unlike the verrin hawks of the Kilghard Hills. Lew was smiling, good-natured, but she felt he was a little shocked, too, at her riding breeches and boots. “So you are the Free Amazon you said you were not, after all,” he teased.

  She smiled back at him and said, “No. I told you why I could never be that.” And the more I see him, she thought, the more sure I am of it. “But when I ride in the riding-skirts I would wear on Darkover, I feel like a housecat in leather mittens! I like to feel free when I ride, if not, why not stay on the ground and embroider cushions?”

  “Why not, indeed?” he asked, smiling, and in his mind, painless for once, she saw, reflected, a quick memory of a laughing woman, red-headed, riding bareback and free over the hills…The picture slammed shut; was gone. Dio wondered who the woman had been and felt a faint, quick envy of her.

  Lew was a good rider, though the lifeless artificial hand seemed to be very much in his way; he could use it, after a fashion, but so clumsily that she wondered if, after all, he could not have managed better one-handed. She would have thought that even a functional metal hook would have been more use to him. But perhaps he was too proud for that, or feared she would think it ugly. He carried the hawk on a special saddleblock, as women on Darkover did, instead of holding it on his wrist as most hillmen did; when she looked at it, he colored and turned angrily away, swearing under his breath. Again Dio thought, with that sudden anger which Lew seemed able to rouse in her so quickly, why is he so sensitive, so defensive, so self-indulgent about it? Does he think most people know or care whether he has two hands, or one, or three?

  The hunting preserve had been carefully landscaped and terraformed to beautiful and varied scenery, low hills which did not strain the horses, smooth plains, a variety of wild life, colorful vegetation from a dozen worlds. But as they rode she heard him sigh a little. He said, just loud enough for her to hear, “It is beautiful here. But the sun here—is wrong, somehow. I wish—” and he closed off the words, the way he could close off his mind, sharp and swift, brutally shutting her out.

  “Are you homesick, Lew?” she asked.

  He tightened his mouth. “Yes. Sometimes,” he said, but he had warned her off again, and Dio turned her attention to the hawk on her saddle.

  “These birds are very well trained.”

  He made some noncommittal remark, but she managed to catch the thought that birds which were well enough trained to be used by all comers were like whores, not at all interesting. All he said aloud was, “I would rather train my own.”

  “I like to hunt,” she said, “but I am not sure I could train a bird from the beginning. It must be very difficult.”

  “Not difficult for anyone with the Ridenow gift, I should think,” Lew said. “Most of your clan have sensitivity to all animals and birds, as well as the gift you were bred for, to sense and make contact with alien intelligences—”

  She smiled and shrugged. “In these days there is little of that. The Ridenow gift, in its original form—well, I think it must be extinct. Though Lerrys says it would be very useful in the Terran Empire, to make communication possible with non-humans. Is it very difficult to train hawks?”

  “It is certainly not easy,” said Lew. “It takes time and patience. And somehow you must put your mind into touch with the bird’s mind, and that is frightening; they are wild, and savage. But I have done it, at Arilinn; so did some of the women. Janna Lindir is a fine hawk trainer, and I have heard it is easier for women… though my foster-sister Linnell would never learn it, she was frightened of the birds. I suppose it is like breaking horses, which my father used to do… before he was so lame. He tried to teach me that, a little, a long time ago.” Talking easily of these things, Dio thought, Lew was transformed.

  The preserve was stocked with a variety of game, large and small. After a time they let their hawks loose, and Dio watched in delight as hers soared high, wheeled in midair and set off on long, strong wings after a flight of small white birds, directly overhead. Lew’s hawk came after, swiftly stooping, seizing one of the small birds in midair. The white bird struggled pitiably, with a long, eerie scream. Dio had hunted with hawks all her life; she watched with interest, but as drops of blood fell from the dying bird, spattering them, she realized that Lew was staring upward, his face white and drawn with horror. He looked paralyzed.

  “Lew, what is the matter?”

  He said, his voice strained and hoarse, “That sound—I cannot bear it—” and flung up his two arms over his eyes. The black-gloved artificial hand struck his face awkwardly; swearing, he wrenched it off his wrist and flung it to the ground under the horse’s hoofs.

  “No, it’s not pretty,” he mocked, in a rage, “like blood, and death, and the screams of dying things. If you take pleasure in them, so much the worse for you, my lady! Take pleasure, then, in this!” He held up the hideously scarred bare stump, shaking it at her in fury; then wheeled his horse, jerking at the reins with his good hand, and riding off as if all the devils in all the hells were chasing him.

  Dio stared in dismay; then, forgetting the hawks, set after him at a breakneck gallop. After a time they came abreast; he was fighting the reins one-handed, struggling to rein in the mount; but, as she watched in horror, he lost control and was tossed out of the saddle, falling heavily to the ground, where he lay without moving.

  Dio slid from her horse and knelt at his side. He had been knocked unconscious, but even as she was trying to decide whether she should go to bring help, he opened his eyes and looked at her without recognition.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “The horse threw you. Can you sit up?”

  He did so, awkwardly, as if the stump pained him; he saw her looking, flinched and tried to thrust it into a fold of his riding cloak, out of sight. He turned his face away from her, and the tight scar tissue drew up his mouth into an ugly grimace, as if he were about to cry.

  “Gods! I’m sorry, domna, I didn’t mean—” he muttered, almost inaudibly.

  “What was it, Lew? Why did you lose your temper and rush off like that? What did I do to make you angry?”

  “Nothing, nothing—” Dazed, he shook his head. “I—I cannot bear the sight of blood, now, or the thought of some small helpless thing dying for my plea
sure—” he said, and his voice sounded exhausted. “I have hunted all my life, without ever thinking of it, but when I saw that little white bird crying out and saw the blood, suddenly it all came over me again and I remembered—oh, Avarra have mercy on me, I remembered— Dio, just go away, don’t, in the name of the merciful Avarra, Dio—”

  His face twisted again and then he was crying, great hoarse painful sobs, his face ugly and crumpled, trying to turn away so that she would not see. “I have seen… too much pain… Dio, don’t—go away, go away, don’t touch me—”

  She put out her arms, folded him in them, drawing him against her breast. For a moment he resisted frantically, then let her draw him close. She was crying too.

  “ I never thought,” she whispered. “Death in hunting—I am so used to it, it never seemed quite real to me. Lew, what was it, who died, what did it make you remember?”

  “Marjorie,” he said hoarsely. “My wife. She died, she died, died horribly in Sharra’s fire—Dio, don’t touch me, somehow I hurt everyone I touch, go away before I hurt you too, I don’t want you to be hurt—”

  “It’s too late for that,” she said, holding him, feeling his pain all through her. He raised his one hand to her face, touching her wet eyes, and she felt him slam down his defenses again; but this time she knew it was not rejection, only the defenses of a man unbearably hurt, who could bear no more.

  “Were you hurt, Dio?” he asked, his hand lingering on her cheek. “There’s blood on your face.”

  “It’s the bird’s blood. It’s on you too,” she said, and wiped it away. He took her hand in his and pressed the fingertips to his lips. Somehow the gesture made her want to cry again. She asked, “Were you hurt when you fell?”

  “Not much,” he said, testing his muscles cautiously. “They taught me, in the Empire hospital on Terra, how to fall without hurting myself, when I was—before this healed.” Uneasily he moved the stump. “I can’t get used to the damned hand. I do better one-handed.”

  She had thought he might. “Why do you wear it, then? If it’s only for looks, why do you think I would care?”

  His face was bleak. “Father would care. He thinks, when I wear the empty sleeve, I am—flaunting my mutilation. Making a show of it. He hates his own lameness so much, I would rather not—not flaunt mine in his face.”

  Dio thought swiftly, then decided what she could say. “You are a grown man, and so is he. He has one way of coping with his own lameness, and you have another; it is easy to see that you are very different. Would it really make him angry if you chose another way to deal with what has happened to you?”

  “I don’t know,” Lew said, “but he has been so good to me, never reproached me for these years of exile, nor for the way in which I have brought all his plans to nothing. I do not want to distress him further.” He rose, went to collect the grotesque lifeless thing in its black glove, looked at it for a moment, then put it away in his saddlebag. He fumbled one-handed to pin his empty sleeve over the stump; she started to offer, matter-of-factly, to help him, and decided it was too soon. He looked into the sky. “I suppose the hawks are gone beyond recall, and we will be charged for losing them.”

  “No.” She blew the silver whistle around her neck. “They are birds with brains modified so they cannot choose but come to the whistle—see?” She pointed as two distant flecks appeared in the sky, growing larger and larger; spiraling down, then landing on the saddle blocks where they sat patiently, awaiting their hoods. “Their instinct for freedom has been burnt out.”

  “They are like some men I know,” said Lew, slipping the hood on his bird. Dio followed suit, but neither of them moved to mount. Dio hesitated, then decided he had probably had far too much of politely averted eyes and pretenses of courteous unawareness.

  “Do you need help to mount? Can I help you, or shall I fetch someone who can?”

  “Thank you, but I can manage, though it looks awkward.” Again, suddenly, he smiled and his ugly scarred face seemed handsome again to her. “How did you know it would do me good to hear that?”

  “I have never been really hurt,” she said, “but one year I had a fever, and lost all my hair, and it did not grow in for half a year; and I felt so ugly you couldn’t imagine. And the one thing that bothered me worse was when everyone would say how nice I looked, tell me how pretty my dress or sash or kerchief looked, and pretend nothing at all was wrong with me. So I felt so bad about how miserable I was, as if I was making a dreadful fuss about nothing at all. So if I was—was really lamed or crippled, I think I would hate it if people made me go on acting as if nothing at all was wrong and there was nothing the matter with me. Please don’t ever think you have to pretend with me”

  He drew a deep breath. “Father flies into a rage if anyone seems to notice him limping, and once or twice when I have tried to offer him my arm, he has nearly knocked me down.”

  Yet, Dio thought, Kennard used his lameness, last night, to manipulate me into dancing with Lew. Why? She said, “That is the way he manages his life and his lameness. You are not your father.”

  Suddenly he started shaking. He said, “Sometimes—sometimes it is hard to be sure of that,” and she remembered that the Alton gift was forced rapport. Kennard’s intense closeness to his son, his deep ambition for him, was well-known on Darkover; that closeness must become torture sometimes, make it hard for Lew to distinguish his own feelings and emotions. “It must be difficult for you; he is such a powerful telepath—”

  “In all fairness,” said Lew, “it must be difficult for him too; to share everything I have lived through in these years, and there was a time when my barriers were not as strong as they are now. It must have been hell for him. But that does not make it less difficult for me.”

  And if Kennard will not accept any weakness in Lew… but Dio did not pursue that. “I’m not trying to pry. If you don’t want to answer, just say so, but… Geremy lost three fingers in a duel. The Terran medics regrew them for him, as good as new. Why did they not try to do that with your hand?”

  “They did,” he said. “Twice.” His voice was flat, emotionless. “Then I could bear no more. Somehow, the pattern of the cells—you are not a matrix technician, are you? It would be easier to explain this if you knew something about cell division. I wonder if you can understand—the pattern of the cells, the knowledge in the cells, that makes a hand a hand, and not an eye, or a toenail, or a wing, or a hoof, had been damaged beyond renewing. What grew at the end of my wrist was—” he drew a deep breath and she saw the horror in his eyes. “It was not a hand,” he said flatly, “I am not sure just what it was, and I do not want to know. They made a mistake with the drugs, once, and I woke and saw it. They tell me I screamed my throat raw. I do not remember. My voice has never been right since. For half a year I could not speak above a whisper.” His harsh voice was completely emotionless. “I was not myself for years. I can live with it now, because— because I must. I can face the knowledge that I am—am maimed. What I cannot face,” he said, with sudden violence, “is my father’s need to pretend that I am—am whole!”

  Dio felt the surge of violent anger and was not even sure whether it was her own, or that of the man before her. She had never been so wholly aware of her own laran; the Ridenow gift, which was a sharing of emotions, full empathy, even with nonhumans, aliens— She had never had much experience with it before. Now it seemed to shake her to the core. Her voice was unsteady. “Never pretend with me, Lew. I can face you as you are—exactly as you are, always, all of you.”

  He seized her in a rough grip, dragged her close. It was hardly an embrace. “Girl, do you know what you’re saying? You can’t know.”

  She felt as if her own boundaries were dissolving, as if somehow she was melting into the man who stood before her. “If you can endure what you have endured, I can endure to know what it is that you have had to endure. Lew, let me prove it to you.”

  In the back of her mind she wondered, why am I doing this? But she knew tha
t when they had come into each other’s arms on the dancing floor last night, even behind the barriers of Lew’s locked defenses, their bodies had somehow made a pact. Barricade themselves from the other as they would, something in each of them had reached out to the other and accepted what the other was, wholly and forever.

  She raised her face to him. His arms went round her in grateful surprise, and he murmured, still holding back, “But you are so young, chiya, you can’t know— I should be horsewhipped for this… but it has been so long, so long—” and she knew he was not speaking of the most obvious thing. She felt herself dissolve in that total awareness of him, the receding barricades… the memory of pain and horror, the starved sexuality, the ordeals which had gone on past human endurance… the black encompassing horror of guilt, of a loved one dead, self-knowledge, self-blame, mutilation almost gladly accepted as atonement for living on when she was dead—

  In a desperate, hungering embrace she clasped him close, knowing it was this for which he had longed most; someone who knew all this, and could still accept him without pretense, love him nevertheless. Love; was this love, the knowledge that she would gladly take on herself all this suffering, to spare him another moment of suffering or guilt… ?

  For an instant she saw herself as she was, reflected in his mind, hardly recognizing herself, warm, glowing, woman, and for a moment loved herself for what she had become to him; then the rapport broke and receded like a tide, leaving her awed and shaken, leaving tears and tenderness that could never grow less. Only then did he lower his lips to hers and kiss her; and as she laughed and accepted the kiss, she said in a whisper, “Geremy was right.”

  “What, Dio?”

  “Nothing, my love,” she said, lighthearted with relief. “Come, Lew, the hawks are restless, we must get them back to the mews. We will have our fee refunded because we have claimed no kill, but I, for one, have had full value for my hunt. I have what I most wanted—”