Darkover: First Contact (26 page)

Maybe this was Valhalla, or something. There were old legends about a perfect place for warriors who met a hero’s end. And he had certainly gone down fighting; at his trial, they said he had killed eight policemen and crippled another for life. He’d gone out like a man, not a brainwashed conformist; he hadn’t cringed and whimpered and begged for a chance to crawl around on his knees a while longer in a world with no respect for anyone who’d rather die on his feet!

Anyway, he was out of the box, that was a good place to start. But he was naked, just the way he’d gone into the box. His hair was still clipped short, as when he’d gone into the box. . . no. They’d shaved it then, so he’d been in there a month or two, anyhow, because he could feel the thick soft nap of it. He looked at the room around him. The room had a stone floor with a few thick fur and skin rugs. There was no furniture except the bed and a heavy chest carved richly of some dark wood.

And now, through the pain that still pounded in his head, he remembered something else; flaring pain, blue lightnings around him, a circle of faces, falling as if from a great height—pain, and then a man. A man with his own face, and his own voice asking,
Who are you? You’re not the devil, by any chance?
Old legends. If you met a man with your own face, your double, your
doppelganger,
your fetch, it was either the devil or a warning of death. But he had died, for all practical purposes, when they put him into the stasis box, so what more could anyone do to him? Anyway, that had been a dream. Hadn’t it? Or, when he went into the box, had they cloned him and brainwashed the clone into being the good respectable, conformist citizen they’d always wanted
him
to be?

Somehow, something had brought him here. But who, and when, and how? And above all, why?

And then the door opened, and the man with his face came in.

Not a close resemblance, as of brothers or twins.
Himself.

Like himself, the man had blond hair; only on the strange man, it was thick and long and twisted into a tight braid, wrapped with a red cord. Paul had never known a man who wore his hair that way.

He had never seen a man dressed as the man with his face was dressed, either, in garments of heavy wool and leather; a laced leather jerkin, a thick tunic under it of unbleached wool, leather breeches, high boots. Now that Paul was part way out from under the covers, he realized it was cold enough in the room for that kind of clothing to make sense; and now, through the windows, he saw that snow lay thickly on the ground. Well, he already knew he wasn’t on Alpha; if he’d had any doubts, the faint purple shadows on the snow, and the great red sun, would have told him.

But beyond all that, the man with his face. Not just a close resemblance. Not a likeness which would fade at close range. Not even the image he would have seen in a mirror, reversed, but the face he had seen, watching taped video of himself, at his trial.

A clone, if anyone except rich eccentrics could have afforded such a thing. An absolute, identical replica of himself, down to the cleft chin and the small brown birthmark on his left thumb.
What the hell was going on here?

He demanded, “Who the hell are you?”

The man in the leather jerkin said, “I was coming here to ask the same question of you.”

Paul heard the strangeness of the syllables. They sounded a little like Old Spanish—a language of which Paul knew only a few words. But he could clearly understand the stranger’s meaning, and that frightened him worse than anything else that had happened yet. They were reading each other’s thoughts.

“Hell,” he blurted out. “You’re
me!”

“Not quite,” said the other man, “but near enough. And that is why we brought you here.”

“Here,” Paul said, fastening on that. “Where is
here?
What world is this? What sun is that? And how did I get here? And who are you?”

The man shook his head, and again Paul had the eerie sense that he was watching himself.

“The sun is the sun,” he said, “and we are in what they call the Hundred Kingdoms; this is the Kingdom of Asturias. As for what world this is, it is called Darkover, and it is the only world I know. When I was a boy they told me some fable about the other stars being suns like our own, with a million million other worlds circling them like ours, and perhaps men like ours on them, but I always thought that was a story to frighten babes and girl children! But I have seen stranger things, and heard stranger things than that, in the last night. My father’s sorcery brought you here, and if you wish to know why, you must ask him. But we mean you no harm.”

Paul hardly heard the explanation. He was staring at the man with his face, his body, his own hands, and trying to understand what he felt about the man.

His brother. Himself. He’d understand me.
Those thoughts flickered through his mind. And at the same time, crowding them, a sudden raging anger:
How does he dare to go around wearing my face?
And then, in total confusion,
if he’s me, who in hell am I?

And the other man spoke his question aloud. “If you are me,” he said, and his fists clenched, “then who am I?”

Paul said, with a harsh half-laugh, “Maybe you’re the devil after all. What’s your name?”

“Bard,” said the man, “but they call me
Wolf.
Bard di Asturien, the Kilghard Wolf. And you?”

“My name is Paul Harrell,” he said, and swayed. Was this all a bizarre dream of the stasis box? Had he died and wound up in Valhalla?

None of it made sense to him. None at all.

Light blazed from every window and embrasure of Castle Asturias; on this night King Ardrin of Asturias held high festival, for he was handfasting his daughter Carlina to his foster son and nephew, Bard di Asturien, son of his brother, Dom Rafael of High Fens. Most of the nobles of Asturias, and a few from the neighboring kingdoms, had come to do honor to the handfasting and to the king’s daughter, and the courtyard was ablaze with brilliance; strange horses and riding beasts to be stabled, nobles richly dressed, commoners crowding in to spy what they could from outside the gates and accept the dole of food and wine and sweets given out from the kitchens to all comers, servants running here or there on real or invented errands.

High in the secluded chambers of the women, Carlina di Asturien looked with distaste on the embroidered veils and the blue velvet over-gown, set with pearls from Temora, that she would wear for the handfasting ceremony. She was fourteen years old; a slender, pale, young woman, with long dark braids looped below her ears, and wide gray eyes which were the only good feature in a face too thin and thoughtful for beauty. Her face was reddened around the eyelids; she had been crying for a long time.

“Come, now, come, now,” her nurse, Ysabet, urged. “You mustn’t cry like this,
chiya.
Look at the pretty gown, you will never have one so fine again. And Bard is so handsome and brave; just think, your father made him banner bearer on the field for bravery in the battle of Snow Glen. And, after all, dear child, it is not as if you would be marrying a stranger; Bard is your foster brother, reared here in the king’s house since he was ten years old. Why, when you were children, you were always playing together, I thought you loved him well!”

“And so I do—as a brother,” Carlina said in a whisper. “But to marry Bard—no, Nurse, I don’t want to. I don’t want to marry at all—”

“Now that is folly,” said the older woman, clucking, and she held up the pearl-broidered overdress to help her nursling into it. Carlina submitted like a doll being dressed, knowing that resistance would do her no good.

“Why don’t you want to marry Bard, then? He is handsome, and brave—how many young men have distinguished themselves before reaching their sixteenth year?” Ysabet demanded. “One day, I have no doubt, he will be general of all your father’s armies! You are not holding it against him that he is
nedestro,
are you? The poor lad did not choose to be born to one of his father’s fancy-women instead of to his lawful wife!”

Carlina smiled faintly at the thought of anyone calling Bard “poor lad.”

Her nurse pinched her cheek. She said, “Now, that is the right way to go to your handfasting, with a smile! Let me do up these laces properly.” She tugged at the lacings, then tucked in the ribbons. “Sit here, my pretty, while I do up your sandals. Look how dainty, your mother had them made to match the gown, blue leather with pearls! How pretty you are, Carlie, like a blue flower! Let me fasten the ribbons here in your hair. I do not think there is a prettier bride anywhere in nine kingdoms this night! And Bard handsome enough, surely, to be worthy of you, so fair where you are so dark. . . .”

“What a pity,” Carlina said dryly, “that he cannot marry you, Nurse, since you like him so much.”

“Oh, come now, he wouldn’t want me, old and withered as I am,” said Ysabet, bridling. “A handsome young warrior like Bard must have a young and beautiful bride, and so your father has ordained it. . . I cannot imagine why the wedding is not on this night as well, and the bedding too!”

“Because,” Carlina said, “I begged my mother, and she spoke for me to my father and my lord; and he consented that I should not be married until I had completed my fifteenth year. The wedding will be a year from tonight, at Midsummer Festival.”

“How can you bear to wait so long? Evanda bless you, child, if I had a handsome young lover like Bard, I could not wait so long. . . . ” She saw Carlina flinch and spoke more gently. “Are you afraid of the marriage bed, child? No woman ever died of it, and I have no doubt you will find it pleasurable; but it will be less frightening to you at first, since your husband is playfellow and foster brother as well.”

Carlina shook her head. “No, it is not
that,
Nurse, though, as I told you, I have no mind to marriage; I would rather spend my life in chastity and good works among the priestesses of Avarra.”

“Heavens protect us!” The woman made a shocked gesture. “Your father would never allow it!”

“I know that, Nurse. The Goddess knows, I besought him to spare me this marriage and let me go, but he reminded me that I was a princess and that it was my duty to marry, to bring strong powerful alliances to his throne. As my sister Amalie has already been sent to wed with King Lorill of Scathfell. Beyond the Kadarin, poor girl, alone in those northern mountains, and my sister Marilla married south to Dalereuth. . . .”

“Are you angry that they were wedded to princes and kings, and you, only, to your father’s brother’s bastard son?”

Carlina shook her head. “No, no,” she said impatiently. “I know what is in father’s mind; he wishes to bind Bard to him with a strong tie, so that one day Bard will be his strongest champion and protector. There was no thought for me, or for Bard; it is only one of my father’s maneuvers to protect the throne and the kingdom!”

“Well,” said the nurse, “most marriages are made for reasons less worthy than that.”

“But it is not necessary,” Carlina said, impatiently. “Bard would be content with any woman, and my father could have found some woman of noble rank who would satisfy Bard’s ambition! Why should I be forced to spend my life with a man who does not care whether it is me, Carlina, or another, provided she is high-born enough to satisfy his ambition, and has a pretty face and a willing body! Avarra have mercy, do you think I do not know that every servant girl in the castle has shared his bed? They brag of it after!”

“As for that,” said Ysabet, “he is no better and no worse than any of your brothers or foster brothers. You cannot blame a young man for wenching, and at least you know from their bragging that he is neither maimed nor a lover of men! When he is wedded to you, you must simply give him enough to do in your bed to keep him out of others!”

Carlina gestured displeasure at the vulgarity. “They are welcome to Bard and to his bed,” she said, “and I will not dispute their place there. But I have heard worse, that he will not hear a refusal; that if a girl answers him
no,
or if he has reason to think she might give him a
no,
his pride is so great that he will put a compulsion on her, a glamour, so that she cannot refuse, but will go to his bed will-less, without the power to help herself—”

“I have heard of men who have that
laran
,” Ysabet grinned. “It is a useful thing, even if a young man is handsome and hearty; but I never put much stock in such tales of spellbinding. What young woman needs to be spelled to go to a young man’s bed? No doubt they use that old tale to excuse themselves if they are found big-bellied out of season—”

“No, Nurse,” Carlina said. “At least once, I know, it is true, for my own maid Lisarda, she is a good girl, and she told me that she could not help herself—”

Ysabet said with a coarse laugh, “Any slut says afterward that she could not help herself!”

“But no,” Carlina interrupted angrily, “Lisarda is scarce twelve years old; she is motherless and hardly knew what he wanted of her, only that she could not choose but to do as he would. Poor child, she was hardly come into womanhood, and she cried, after, in my arms, and I was hard put to it to explain why a man could want a woman
that
way—”

Ysabet frowned. She said, “I wondered what had happened to Lisarda—”

“I find it hard to forgive Bard, that he could do that to a young girl who had never harmed him!” Carlina said, still angry.

“Well, well,” said the nurse, sighing, “men do such things now and again, and women are expected to accept them.”

“I don’t see why!”

“It is the way of the world,” Ysabet said, then started, and looked at the timepiece on the wall. “Come, Carlina, my pet, you must not be late to your own handfasting!”