Sharra's Exile

Li

“Lew, who is Kathie really? When I’m near her I feel terribly strange. It’s not so much that she lookslike me—it’s as if she were a part of myself, I know what she’s going to do before she does it… I know, for instance, that she’s going to turn—there, you see? And she’s coming this way…and then I feel, it’s a kind of pain, as if I had to touch her, embrace her. I can’t keep away from her! But when I actually do touch her, I have to pull away, I can’t endure it…” Li

Well, I was about to see, whatever it was. As Kathie ended the dance she moved toward Li

Li

“There is Callina,” she said.

The Keeper, aloof in her starry draperies, threaded her way through the maze of dancers seeking new partners, moving toward the refreshment tables.

“Where have you been, Callina?” Li

“Oh, Derik drew me off to listen to some long drunken tale—I thought you told me he never drinks, Li

“Am I to come with you then?”

Callina said, still with that icy indifference, “I will not give this farce any of the trappings of a wedding, Li

“Oh, Callina—” Li

“Don’t pity me, Li

I don’t know what I would have said or done at that moment, if she had turned to me; but she drew herself apart from us; her eyes brooded, blue ice like Ashara’s, past me into silence. Bitter and helpless, I watched her move away through the crowds in that dress that was a reminder of death, doom, shadows.

I should have guessed everything, then, when she left us without a word or a touch, silent and remote as Ashara’s self, making a lonely island of her tragedy and shutting us all away from her. I watched Beltran, at Hastur’s side, advance to greet her, and saw that she gave him only a formal bow and not an embrace; listened as the bracelets were locked on their wrists.

“Parted in flesh, may you never be so in spirit; may you be forever one,” Hastur said, and all over the room, wives reached for husbands, and lover for lover, to exchange the ritual kiss. Callina was Beltran’s consort, the marriage a legal fact, from the moment Hastur released her hand. I did not turn to see if Dio was near me. The truth of the matter is, I had, at that moment, forgotten her existence, I was so caught up into Callina’s anguish.

The next dance after a handfasting was always, by tradition, a dance for married or pledged couples. Callina, with the privilege of the bride, led Beltran onto the dance floor; but they moved with nothing touching but their fingertips. I saw Java

“Regis,” Li

“Better disappoint them now than later, kinswoman,” said Regis, smiling. “And I notice you are not dancing—where is our royal cousin?”

“He is ill—someone gave him some punch which had more to it than he knew,” Li

“Forgive me, Li

“Look, even Dyan is dancing with the widow of the old arms-master,” Li

Regis said, bowing to Li

“No, I would rather not,” she said, a hand on his arm, “but you may stay and talk with me for this dance… Lew, do you know the man there in the harlequin costume? Who is the woman with him?”

For a moment I could not see the harlequin I had noticed before; then I saw him, dancing with a tall woman with dark-copper hair, wonderful thick curls that cascaded halfway down her back. The whirling movement of the dance suddenly turned them toward me, and—although the woman was masked—suddenly I knew her, knew them both, even behind the hideous harlequin mask.

Thyra! No mask could have concealed her from me… for a moment it seemed that the matrix at my throat burned as with Sharra’s very fire. I stood shocked, unable to move, watching my sworn enemy, and wondering with desperate unease what brought them here, into the very heart of Thendara, with a price on Kadarin’s head and the death sentence from Terran and Comyn at once! I gripped the dagger at my waist with my good hand, wishing I had not encumbered myself with the artificial one. Kadarin and Thyra, boldly dancing together here at the Comyn masked ball…

But now at the conclusion of this dance, all masks were coming off; I tore mine away, using the mechanical hand; the other was firmly gripped on my dagger. Did he think that I would not attack him here because it was in the middle of a ball?

And now I saw that Regis had recognized him too. I took a single step; Regis caught urgently at my arm.