The Spell Sword (8 page)

He held out the silver butterfly clasp, and felt it cold and solid between his
fingers. He said, and heard his own voice strangely thinned, "I am looking for
Callista. She is gone, and her twin cannot find her anywhere. Have you seen her
here?"

Leonie looked troubled. She said, "No, my dear. We, too, have searched, and she
is nowhere on any plane we can reach. From time to time I can feel her
somewhere, her living presence, but no matter where I look I cannot come to
her."

Damon felt deeply disquieted. Leonie was a powerful, trained telepath, and all
the accessible levels of the over-world were known to her. She walked in that
world as readily as in the solid world of the body. The fact that Callista's
distress was known to her, and that she herself could not locate her pupil and
friend, was ominous. Where, in any world, was Callista hiding?

"Perhaps you can find her where I cannot," said Leonie gently. "Blood kin is a
deep tie, and may link kindred when friendship or affinity fails. Somehow I
think she is there." Leonie raised a shadowy arm and pointed. Damon turned in
the direction indicated, and saw only a thick, foggy darkness.

"The darkness is new on this plane," Leonie said, "and none of us can breach it,
at least not yet. When we move in that direction we are flung back, as if by
force. I do not know what new minds move on this level, but they have not come
here by our leave."

"And you think Callista may have strayed into that level and be held there,
unable to penetrate that shadow with her mind?"

"I fear so," Leonie said. "If she were kept drugged, or entranced; or if her
starstone had been taken from her, or she had been so ill-treated that her mind
had been darkened by madness; then it might appear to us, on this level, as if
she were imprisoned in a great and impenetrable darkness."

Quickly, with the swiftness of thought, Damon told Leonie what he knew of the
abduction of Callista, from her very bed at Armida.

"I do not like it," Leonie said. "What you tell me frightens me. I have heard
that there are strange men from another world, at Thendara, and that they have
come there by permission of the Hasturs. Now and again one of them strays in a
dream on to the overworld, but their forms and their minds are strange and
mostly they vanish if one speaks to them. They are only shadows here, but they
seem harmless enough, men like any others, without much skill at moving in the
realms of the mind. I find it hard to believe that these Terrans-that is what
they call themselves-can have had any part in what has happened to Callista.

What reason could they have had? And since they are on our world by sufferance,
why would they antagonize us by such conduct? No; there seems more purpose to it
than that."

Damon became conscious that he was cold again, and shivering. The plain seemed
to tremble under his feet. He knew that if he wished to remain in the overworld,
he must move on. Speaking to Leonie had been a comfort, but he must not linger
here if he hoped to carry on his search for Callista. Leonie seemed to follow
his resolution, and said, "Search, then. Take my blessing." Even as she raised
her hand in the ritual gesture, her form faded and Damon discovered that he had
receded a great distance and was no longer standing on the familiar courtyard
stones of the Tower, but had come a long way over the gray plain toward the
darkness.

The cold grew and he shuddered with the recurrent blasts, like icy winds, that
beat out from that dark place. The darkening lands, he thought grimly, and
against the cold he quickly visualized himself dressed in a thick gold and green
cloak. The cold lessened, but only slightly, and his motion toward the darkness
grew ever slower, as if some pressure from that darkness were flowing out,
pushing him backward, backward. He struggled against it, calling out Callista's
name again. If she's anywhere out on the planes, she'll hear that, he thought.

But if Leonie had sought in vain, how could he hope to succeed?

The darkness flowed, like thick boiling cloud, and seemed suddenly peopled with
dark twisted shapes, menacing half-seen faces, threatening gestures made by
bodiless limbs that were seen for a moment in the darkness and vanished again.

Damon felt a spasm of fear, an almost anguished longing for the solid world and
his solid body and the fireplace at Armida. The world seemed full of half-heard
threats and cries. Go back! Go back or you will die!

He slogged painfully onward, forcing his way hard against the pressure.

Callista's butterfly clasp, between his hands, seemed to shine, and flutter, and
vibrate, and he knew that he was coming nearer to her, nearer.

"Callista! Callista!"

For an instant the thick dark cloud thinned, and almost, for a moment, he saw
her, a shadow, a wisp, in a thin, torn nightdress, her hair loose and tangled,
her face dark and bruised with pain or tears. She stretched out her hands to
him, in appeal, and her mouth moved, but he could not hear. Then the darkness
boiled up again, and for a moment he saw flashing sword-blades, curiously
shaped, slashing.

Quickly, Damon shifted ground again, and with a swift thought, transformed the
thick warm cloak into a gleaming coat of armor. None too soon. He heard the
half-visible sword-blades clash against it and a nightmarish stab of pain came
and went, momentarily, near his heart.

The swords retreated into the darkness, and again he tried to press forward.

Then the darkness began to boil up again, like the whirling of a tornado, and
out of the thick bubbling whorl of the maelstrom of cloud came a thin,
malevolent voice.

"Go back. You cannot come here."

Damon stood his ground, working hard to make the feel of the surface beneath his
boots solid, to formulate familiar paving stone so that he and his invisible
antagonist stood on ground of his choosing. But beneath him the surface rippled,
and flowed like water until he felt dizzy, and again the invisible voice spoke,
in tones of command.

"Go, I tell you. Go while you still can."

"By what right do you tell me to go?"

The indifferent voice said thinly, "I know nothing of right. I have the power to
make you go, and I shall do so. Why provoke such a struggle without need?"

Damon stood his ground, although it seemed as if he were swaying in a sickening
up-and-down rhythm, his head pounding with pain. He said, "I will go if my
kinswoman comes with me."

"You will go, at once, and that is all I intend to say," the voice said, and
Damon felt an enormous thrust of power, a great blow that sent his head reeling.

He struggled inside the boiling darkness, and cried out, "Show yourself! Who are
you? By what right do you come here?" The starstone-or its mental
counterpart-was still between his fingers; he swung it over his head, like a
lantern, and the darkness was illuminated by a dazzling blue glare. By that
light he beheld a tall, strangely robed figure, with a savage cat's head, and
great claws.

And at that moment there was another of those savage blows. The darkness
receded, into a great howling, screaming wind, and Damon found himself alone on
what felt like a slippery hillside. Around him was the buffeting wind, the
razor-needles of sleet driving into his face. the thick driving snow, the storm.

He struggled to regain his footing, knowing that out here he had met something
he had never before encountered on this plane. His flesh seemed to crawl, and he
tensed himself, knowing that now he must fight for his sanity, his very life.

The telepaths of Darkover were trained to work with the starstones, which had
the power, assisted by the human mind, of transforming energies directly from
one form to another. In the realms where their minds traveled to encompass this
work, there were strange things, intelligences which were not human, or
material, but came from other realms of existence. Most of them had nothing to
do with humankind at all. Others were prone, when touched by human minds come
seeking in the realms to which they, the alien intelligences belonged, to meddle
with those human minds. A few of them, reached by human minds trained to reach
their levels, remained in contact with the human levels, and were visualized as
demons, or even as gods. The Ridenow Gift, Damon's Gift, had been deliberately
bred into the minds of his family, to allow them to scent and make contact with
these alien presences.

But he'd never seen one who took that form. the great cat.. It was deliberately
malevolent, not just indifferent. It had thrust him here, into the level of the
blizzard.

He forced himself to search for rationality. The blizzard was not real. It was a
thought-blizzard, solidified here by thought, and he could take refuge in other
realms where it did not blow. He visualized warm sunshine, a sunlit
mountainside. for a moment the snow-needles thinned, then began to rage with
renewed force. Someone was projecting it at him. someone or something. The
catmen? Was Callista in their power, then?

The gusts of wind strengthened, forcing his weakening body to its knees. He
struggled, slipped, and fell on rugged ice, which cut him. He felt himself
bleeding, freezing, weakening.

Dying.

He thought, with icy rationality, I've got to get off this level, I've got to
get back to my body. If he was trapped here, out of his body, his body would
live a while, spoonfed and helpless, slowly withering, and finally die.

Ellemir, Ellemir, he sent out the call that sounded like a scream. Wake me,
bring me back, get me out of here! Again and again he shouted, feeling the
howling of the winds carry his cry away into the snow-cut needled darkness. His
face was cut, his hands bleeding as he struggled again and again to get to his
feet in the snow, to raise himself to his knees, to crawl even.

His struggles grew fainter and fainter, and a sense of total hopelessness,
almost of resignation, came over him. I should never have trusted to Ellemir.

She isn't strong enough. I'll never get out. It seemed he had been sliding,
slipping, floundering in the nightmare blizzard for hours, days.

Agony lanced through him, and an icy pain squeezed his head. A glare of blue
fire sprang up wildly around him, there was a shock like a thunderclap, and
Damon, weak and gasping and exhausted, was lying in the armchair in the great
hall at Armida. The fire had long burned down, and the room was icy cold.

Ellemir, pale and terrified, her lips blue and chattering, looked down at him.

"Damon, oh, Damon! Oh, wake up, wake up!"

He gasped, painfully. He said, "I'm here, I'm back." Somehow, she had reached
into the nightmare of the over-world and brought him back. His head and heart
were pounding; and his teeth chattering. He looked around. Daylight was
beginning to steal through the long windows; outside, the courtyard lay quiet
and peaceful in the daybreak; the storm was over, inside and out. He blinked and
shook his head. "The blizzard," he said, dimly.

"Did you find Callista?"

He shook his head. "No, but I found whatever has her, and it nearly took me
too."

"I couldn't wake you-and you were blue and gasping, and moaning so. Finally I
grabbed the starstone," Ellemir confessed. "When I did, I thought you were
having a convulsion. I thought I'd killed you-"

She nearly had, Damon thought. But better that than leaving him to die in the
raging blizzard of the overworld. She had been crying. "Poor girl, I must have
frightened you out of your wits," he said tenderly, and drew her down to him.

She lay across his knees, still trembling; he became aware that she was nearly
as cold as he was. He caught up a fur lap-robe that lay across the back of the
settle, and wrapped it around them both. Soon he would mend the fire; just now
it was enough to huddle within its comforting warmth, to feel the girl's icy
stiffness begin to lessen a little and her shivering quiet. "My poor little
love, I frightened you, and you're half dead with cold and fright," he murmured,
holding her tight against him. He kissed her cold, tear-wet cheeks and became
aware that he had been wanting to do that for a long, long time; he let his
kisses move slowly from her wet face to her cold lips, trying to warm them with
his own. "Don't cry, darling. Don't cry."

She stirred a little against him, not in protest but in returning awareness, and
said, almost sleepily, "The servants are still abed. We should make up the fire,
call them-"

"Damn the servants." He didn't want anyone interrupting this new awareness, this
new and beautiful closeness. "I don't want to let you go, Ellemir."

She lifted her lips and kissed him on the mouth. "You don't have to," she said
softly, and they lay quietly, close together in the great fur robe, barely
touching, but warmed by the contact. Damon was conscious of deathly weariness
and of hunger, the terrible depletion of nervous force which was the inevitable
penalty of telepathic work. Rationally he knew he should get up, mend the fire,
have some food brought, or he might pay in hours or days of lassitude and
illness. But he could not bring himself to move, was deeply reluctant to let
Ellemir out of his arms. For a moment, letting the exhaustion have its way, he
lapsed into brief sleep or unconsciousness.

Ellemir was shaking him, and in the bright hall there was a pounding, a sound, a
strange shouting. "Someone is at the door," Elkmir said dazedly. "At this hour?

And the servants. ? What-"

Damon untangled himself from the robe and stood up, going through the hall to
the inner court and through that to the great bolted outer doors. Stiffly, with
unpracticed fingers, he struggled with the bolt and drew it back.

On the doorstep stood a man, wrapped in a great fur coat of an unfamiliar
pattern, clad in ragged and strange clothing. He said, and his accent was
strange and alien, "I am a stranger and lost. I am with the mapping expedition
from the Trade City. Can you give me shelter, and send a message to my people?"