Marion Bradley - The Sword of Aldones

Her touch was uncertain, fumbling, raw — an agony. It was desperately hard to keep from flinging her out of my brain; but with grim self-command, I endured it, lowering each barrier as she touched it. How had she come to be Keeper, if she was as clumsy a telepath as this? The bridge was stronger now, but she had not made the decisive move that would snap identity and bring it to completion; and I dared not move.

But it was so close to complete that I grew tense with the unbearable need to, have it done, even if it killed us both. Force flows toward the weaker pole. I, who had chosen the passive part, was overloaded to the limit of endurance. I could neither see nor hear her now. If I made a move to end the torture, I could burn us both out. But if this did not end soon, I must risk it, even to the release of death.

Then the shock, the numbing flare of contact-Regis/

Unbelievably, for a single unendurable moment, we — I — it fused into an impossible triple rapport. The load of emotion was terrible, breaking down every barrier in each brain, and our three minds went into one great glare of force, too vast and too searingly painful to comprehend.-

Groping for sanity, I forced the rapport apart. We were three separate people again. Then, as blinding physical pain forced itself on me, Regis was incredibly there in the room with us, and he caught me as I pitched forward in a dead faint.

“Damn it, this is getting to be a habit,” I said shakily. I was lying on the bed again, Regis and Callina looking down at me anxiously. Regis pressed my hand as I sat up. “You’ve been doing all the hard work,” he said.

“What happened?”

“Don’t you know? How did I get here, anyway?” He swallowed convulsively and turned to Callina. Although we were deep in rapport, our conscious thoughts had dropped apart and I could not tell what they were thinking. But three! Even the Altons could link only two, and that with infinite danger! THREE!

Regis said, “What happened to us? I only know that something exploded in me — then it broke up, and I thought you were dead, Lew. I couldn’t think of anything but to get to you and Dio. I didn’t even know where you were, I was frantic, then all of a sudden I was here, and you pitched off the bed, and I grabbed you,” he finished blankly.

“Callina and I had tried to link minds in focus—”

“Callina?” Regis stared. Callina suddenly stood on tiptoe and put her lips lightly against his. “Regis,” she said softly, “we aren’t resentful. We can — make room for you.”

Regis put his arms around the girl and held her. “Doesn’t he know? Not even now?”

“I’ve always been barricaded,” she said.

Regis let her go, turning abruptly to me. “Now that we’re aware, and guarded, let’s set,up contact again and see what this thing is, and what kind of power we have with it. As far as I know, this is something pretty new, and almost unique.”

Callina reached out and made the linkage; this time there was no hesitation or fumbling, and I glanced at her with a surge of possessive pride. Regis, rather’red about the ears, looked round.

If you two are going to think things like that at each other, his thought twisted humorously into ours, I’d better drop out!

Then the circle of contact was complete. Yet, strangely, the personal barriers were back, intact. We could work as one, at the deep levels; but identity remained inviolate, and privacy. We were three separate personalities; only for the first fusion was there that searing down of emotions, of barricades.

Yet there was a sympathy, a togetherness that was extremely pleasant. It was as if all my Me I had been getting along with a third of my brain.

Three telepaths, though not in rapport, had been needed to handle the Sharra matrix. This deep linkage, made through the living matrix of Aldones, was our weapon. Regis was the sword blade. Mine was the strength behind the sword; the Alton Gift, that hyper-developed psychokinetic nerve, was the hand to direct that striking force. And Callina, locked between hand and blade, was the sword hilt; the necessary insulation.

Yes, there was symbolism in concealing these things in a sword. Regis and I, Hastur and Alton — sword and hand-could never join power to strength without exhaustion, nerve depletion and death — unless Callina were between us. The explanation swam up from somewhere in our linked minds. Comyn race-memory, perhaps, for they were not conscious memories. And Regis himself was the focus, the energy-source, the matrix if you will, through which, by means of the talisman sword, we could tap the energy-source and power of Aldones. Son of Hastur who was the son of Light — we stood close to what my race called a God.

My acquired knowledge knew this was a rational thing, science, mechanical and explainable; but there was a residue I could not explain. The feel of an actual living entity behind the Sword obsessed me.

I had felt the daemon-touch of Sharra. This was not evil — and somehow, that frightened me more. Infinite good is as terrifying as infinite evil.

But I was still physically weak, and Regis (Guard your strength, Lew, you will need it soon!) dissolved the linkage. I almost regretted it; a man’s mind is a fearfully lonely place. Yet I could not have borne much more.

Regis touched Callina’s arm. “Don’t wait too long,” he warned, and went away.

I feared that she, too, would withdraw; but, still tentative, she remained in contact, an immeasurable comfort. Her fingers laced in mine; closer yet was the delicate caress of her thoughts, and as I lay there, my face resting against her knees, I felt again a familiar, cool sweetness. The women tangled again in my thoughts, like the prism facets of a jewel.

How long the interval lasted I have no idea, but with a suddenness terrific in its impact, we both felt Regis, a desperate clamor in our minds, and knew that he had unsheathed the Sword.

And even as that warning rang out, space reeled, and we were flung together into the great courtyard of the Comyn Castle. Before us Regis stood, braced and erect, and in his hand the Sword of Aldones — live, shimmering blue from hilt to point. I caught my breath, and Callina cried out, a strange wordless cry; then she reached out, drew our three hands together on the sword-hilt and we were ONE.

Through my suddenly-extended senses, I made out, at the far end of the court, a wavering black mist through which pulsed strange flame. Sharra’s fires! Hell-fires! I sensed, rather than saw, the other triad there;

Kadarin, Thyra, and Dyan Ardais.

The sight maddened me. For an instant I was one person again, and I leaped at Dyan, pulling out of the linkage. But as I touched him the blue lightning exploded, and we were flung apart; for Kadarin faced Regis, the Sharra sword naked in his hands.

But this time the swords did not short-circuit in flames. I was aware of a luminous mist that surged from the Sword of Aldones; wrapped Regis in a rainbow aurora,,glowed like a cape around Callina’s shoulders, folded me in lucent brilliance. It licked out at the darkness that was Sharra. And in that dark center, like figures of smoke, Kadarin and Dyan and Thyra pulsed with the beating heart of the Thing they had evoked.

Darkness, comet-shot with the lightning that flared from the matrix-swords, crossing and recrossing. It was not Regis and Kadarin fighting with identically forged swords. It was not even matrix warring against spacetwisting matrix, or linked minds against linked minds. No. Something tangible and alive and intelligent fought behind them. Regis and Kadarin were only the poles of their power. The real forces were not warring in this world at all, or the planet would have been torn from its orbit and sent reeling through the dark night of space forever.