The Sword of Aldones by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Author:Marion Zimmer Bradley [Bradley, Marion Zimmer]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General, Science Fiction, Usernet, C429, Kat, Extratorrents
ISBN: 9789997506863
Publisher: Orion
Published: 1962-06-15T07:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER EIGHT

The Aillard rooms were spacious and brilliant; shimmering walls diffused delicate colors over Callina, who knelt on the floor, playing with a little striped beast from the rainforests. It leaped on her shoulder, purring, and flickering two-toed claws in and out of her silk sleeves.

Linnell was seated near her, a harp laid flat across her knees, and Regis standing beside Linnell; but they all sensed my presence at once. Linnell put the harp aside and Callina rose hastily, putting the kitten-thing on the floor and pulling at her skirts; but I went to her and took her in my arms. She would never know how precious she had made herself to me by that glimpse of a self less guarded, less aloof. I held her a moment, then the old frustration slipped back, thrusting like an unsheathed sword between us. Careful.

She evaded me by speaking of Linnell. “Poor child, I’m afraid she and Derik have quarreled. She loves him—”

“It’s who you love that interests me!” I interrupted.

She said, “I am Keeper—and comynara!”

“Comynara!” I suppose I sounded as bitter as I felt. “The Comyn would write your death warrant as soon as your marriage, if it would serve any cause!”

“If it would serve any cause, I would write my own,” she said steadily. My arms strained about her.

“Are you going to let them sell you?” I flung the words at her like a curse. “What do we owe the Comyn? They’ve played hell with our lives since we were born!”

“Lew, I don’t think you understand. I was mad, to let you think we could ever belong to each other. We can’t. Not ever.” Her hands went out, blindly, to push me away. “I can marry Beltran—and still keep my power to aid you, and the Comyn—because—because only because I do not love him. Do you understand?”

I did. I let her go and stood back, looking at her in consternation. Matrix work, for a man, has its frustrating aspects. But I had never stopped to think—more accurately I had never cared a damn—what particular refinements of. hellish-ness it might have for a woman. But before I could break out with the outrage I felt, she turned to Regis.

“Ashara has sent for us. Are you coming?”

“Not now,” he said. Regis had changed, in only a few hours; he seemed older, hardened somehow. He smiled in the old easy way, but I was not wholly comfortable in his presence. It hurt to realize that Regis was keeping himself barriered from me, but in a way it was a relief.

A servant folded Callina in a wrap like a gray shadow. As we went out, and down the staircase, Linnell stood between the panels of curtain, watching us, smiling. The colored lights, spilling over her pale dress, made her a rainbow statuette in a golden aureole; suddenly, for an-instant, vague unrest crystallized and fell together into one of those flashes of prevision which touch a telepath in moments of stress.

Linnell was doomed!

“Lew, what’s the matter?”

I blinked.

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