Two to Conquer (31 page)

They left the castle that night and rode toward Bard’s old home. Three leroni, two woman and a man, had accompanied them, and Dom Rafael led them to a room Bard had never seen before, in an old

tower room at the end of a broken staircase.

“I have not used any of these things in decades,” he said, “but laran-craft, once learned, is not forgotten.” He turned to the wizards and asked, “Do you know what this is?”

The man looked at the apparatus, and then at his two comrades, and Dom Rafael, in dismay. “I know, my lord. But I thought the use of such things was outlawed outside the safety of a Tower.”

“In Asturias, there is no law but mine! Can you use it?”

The
laranzu
glanced again, uneasily, at the women. He said, “A duplicate under Cherillys’ Law? I suppose so. But of what or whom?”

“Of my son here; the commander of King Alaric’s armies.”

One of the women looked at Bard and he caught the ironic flicker of her thought.
Another of the
Kilghard Wolf? I should think one of him to be more than abundance
! He supposed she was a friend of Melisendra’s. But they shrugged, quickly shielded again, and said, “Yes, my lord, if that is your wish.”

He could sense their surprise, distaste, wonder; but they made no audible protest, making their

preparations, setting seals on the room so that no alien presences could enter and no other
leroni
spy on them from elsewhere.

When all was prepared, Dom Rafael signaled to Bard to take his place before the screen, to remain silent and motionless. He obeyed, kneeling silently. He was so placed that he could not see his father, nor any of the three telepaths, but he sensed them near him. Bard did not think he had much
laran
, and what he did have had never been properly trained. He had always rather despised the art of sorcery, thinking it a skill or craft for women; he felt a little frightened as the almost tangible web of their thoughts tightened around him. He sensed that they were extending their thoughts
into
him, deep into brain and body, seeking out the very pattern of his being; he thought, fancifully, that they were seeking out his very soul, tying it up tight and imprisoning it in that glassy screen there.

He could not move a finger or a foot. He felt a moment of paralyzed panic… no. This was a perfectly ordinary piece of
laran
sorcery, with nothing to fear; his father would not let anything harm him.

He remained motionless, looking at his reflection in the glassy surface. Somehow he knew it was not only the reflected shadow on glass but
himself
there in that multilayered screen, reinforced at all levels with starstone crystals which resonated to the starstones of the
leroni
around him. He felt the combined web of their layered thoughts swing out over vast gulfs of empty space, extending, searching, searching to find something to fit that pattern, fit it
exactly
… something came near, close to touching… near to captive… no. It was not a duplicate, a resemblance, touching perhaps at ninety out of a hundred, but not the exact duplicate which alone could be captured within the screen. He felt the
other
slide away, vanish, as the search swung out again.

(Far away in the Kilghard hills, a man named Gwynn, an outlaw and fatherless—although his mother had told him he had been fathered in the sack of Scathfell by Ansel, son of Ardrin the first of Asturias, thirty years ago—woke from an evil dream in which faces had swung around him, circling, swooping like hawks on their prey, and one of the faces was like his own as twin to twin…)

Again the web swung out, this time over greater gulfs, starless night, a tremendous void beyond space and time, with swirling, nightmarish vortexes of terrible nothingness. Again a shadow formed behind Bard on the screen, shimmered, wavered, twitched, struggled as a sleeper struggles to wake from

nightmare; somewhere a spark flared in Bard’s brain; myself, or the
other
? He did not know, could not guess. It struggled for freedom but they held it, imprisoned in their web, moving from point to point of the pattern encased in the screen… searching to see that every atom, every trifle was congruent, identical…

Now!

Bard saw in his mind before his eyes saw the flare of lightnings in the room, a searing shock as the
other
was torn loose from the shadow in his mind, the pattern doubled and breaking, splitting apart…

terror flamed in him; was it his own fear, or the terror of the
other
, unimaginably hurled across that great gulf of space… He caught a glimpse of a great yellow sun, hurling worlds, stars flaming across the dark void, galaxies spinning and drifting in shock… Lightning crashed through his brain and he lost consciousness.

He stirred, conscious now of savage headaches, pain, confusion. Dom Rafael was lifting him, feeling his pulse. Then he let him go and went past, and Bard, sick and stunned with the lightning, followed with his eyes; and the
leroni
, behind him, watching, looked dazed too. He caught a wisp of thought from one of them,
I don’t believe it. I did it, I was part of it but still I don’t believe it
…

Lying on the floor at the opposite pole of the great screen lay the naked body of a man. And Bard, though he had been prepared intellectually for this, felt a surge of gut-wrenching terror.

For the man lying on the floor was himself.

Not someone very much like him. Not an accidental or close family resemblance.
Himself
.

Broad-shouldered, and halfway between them, the blackish blotch of a birthmark which he had seen only in a mirror. The muscles bunching in his sword arm, the same dark-reddish patch of hair at the loins, the same crooked toe on the left foot

Then he began to see differences. The hair was cut a little shorter, though at the crown of his head there was the same unruly whorl. There was no scar across the knee; the double had not been at the battle of Raven’s Glen and did not have the sword-slash he had taken there. The other did not have the thick callous at the inside of the elbow where the shield strap rested. And these little differences somehow made it worse. The man was not simply a magical duplicate created somehow by the
laran
of the screen; he was a real human being, from
somewhere else
, who was, none the less, precisely and exactly Bard di Asturien.

He didn’t like it. Still less did he like the confusion and fear which the
other
was feeling. Bard, without much
laran
, could still somehow
feel
all that emotion.

He couldn’t stop himself. He got up and went across the room to the naked man lying there. He knelt beside him and put an arm under his head.

“How are you feeling?”

Only after he had spoken did he stop to wonder if the alien
other
could understand his language. That would be luck entirely too good, though he supposed that perhaps his kin somewhere in the Kilghard Hills had probably fathered this duplicate. Could any man be so like without being kin somehow? The strange man’s skin looked darker, as if it had been burned brown by a fiercer sun… No, that was folly, the sun was the sun… but still, the picture was in his mind of spinning galaxies, a world with a single cold white moon, and the frightening thing was that somehow all those images seemed to
belong
in Bard’s mind!

The strange man spoke. He was not speaking Bard’s language; somehow Bard knew that no one else in the room could understand him. But Bard knew what he had said, as if they were linked in the strongest
laran
bond.

“I feel like hell. How do you expect me to feel? What happened, a tornado? Hell—you’re
me
! And that’s not possible! You’re not the devil by any chance?”

Bard shook his head. “I’m not any of the devils, not even nearly,” he said.

“Who are you? What is this? What happened?”

“You’ll find out later,” Bard said, then, feeling him stir urgently, held him unmoving. “No, don’t try to move yet. What’s your name?”

“Paul,” the man said weakly, “Paul Harrell.” And then he fell back, unconscious. Bard moved,

spontaneously, to raise him, support him. He shouted for help. The
laranzu
came and examined the unconscious man.

“He’s all right, but the energy expended in that journey was frightful,” he said.

Dom Rafael said, “Get old Gwynn to help you carry him; I’d trust him with my life, and more.” Bard helped the old
coridom
carry the stranger to his own old rooms, laid him in his bed, locked the door of the suite—not that it was necessary; the
laranzu
assured them that he would not wake for a day and a night, or perhaps more.

He returned, to find that Dom Rafael had ushered the
leroni
into an adjacent chamber, where the old
coridom
had laid ready a hot supper, with plenty of wine. Bard, desperately curious about the stranger, reached for contact with his father, but for some strange reason his father was wholly shielded against him.

Why should his father barricade his mind so strongly?

“Food and drink is prepared for you, my friends. I have been a
laranzu
, I know the terrible hunger and thirst of such work. Come, eat and drink and refresh yourselves. Then I have had rooms made ready for you to sleep, and rest as long as you will.”

The three
leroni
went quickly to the table and began to raise the wine glasses. Bard was thirsty too; he began to pick up a glass, but his father seized his arm in an iron grip, preventing him. At that moment one of the women screamed, a dreadful raw-throated scream, and slithered down lifeless to the floor.

The
laranzu
gulped, spluttered in shock, but it was already too late.

Poisoned
, Bard thought with a thrill of fear, thinking how close he had come to drinking of that same wine. The other
leronis
raised her face in blind appeal, and Bard felt her terror, the dread of certain death; she had swallowed almost none of the wine, and he saw her look around, hunting against hope for a way of escape.

Bard hesitated, for the woman was young, and not without attractiveness. Sensing his confusion, she came and flung herself at his feet. “Oh no! Oh, my lord, don’t kill me, I swear I’ll never say a word—”

“Drink,” said Dom Rafael, and his face was like stone. “Bard. Make her drink.”

Bard’s confusion was gone. His father was right; none of them could let the
leronis
live to tell of this night’s work. Old Gwynn could be trusted with their lives; but a
leronis
whose mind could be read with another’s starstone—no, not possible. Essential to their plan was the knowledge that he should not be known to have a double. The woman was still clutching his knees, babbling in terror. Reluctantly, he bent to his work, but before he could touch her the woman dodged away, springing to her feet, and ran.

He sighed, foreseeing a really nasty chase and the need for cutting her down at the end of it; but she ran around the table, caught up the goblet and drank deeply. Even before the third swallow she gave a small strange cough and fell lifeless across the table, upsetting a tray of bread, which fell with a
clunk
to the floor.

So this was why his father had not brought Melisendra!

Dom Rafael poured out the rest of the poisoned wine on the stone floor.

“There is a wholesome bottle here,” he said. “I knew we would need it. Eat, Bard, the food is

untouched, and we have work to do. Even with Gwynn’s help, it will be a night’s work to bury them all three.”

BOOK THREE

The Dark Twin

Chapter One

If he is me, then who in hell am I?

Paul Harrell was not sure whether the thought so strong in the forefront of his mind was his own thought, or that of the man who stood before him. It was immensely confusing. At the same time, two emotions warred in him:
this man would understand me
, and
I hate him; how dare he be so much what I
am
? It was not his first experience with ambivalence, but it was his most disturbing awareness of it.

The man who had introduced himself as Wolf said his name again. “Paul Harrell. No, that is not one of our names, although the Harryls are among my father’s most loyal men. It would have been too much to ask that you should have been one of them.”

Paul felt his head again, finding, rather to his surprise, that it was all in one piece. Then he thought of the perfect way to test whether this was, after all, a bizarre nightmare of the stasis box.

“Where’s the head?”

He knew that the other man had understood even the slang phrase—how the
hell
did he do that thought-reading trick?—when he pointed. “Across the corridar.”

Paul got up, naked, and went through the indicated door. No locks. He wasn’t a prisoner, whatever they wanted with him, so it had to be an improvement. The corridor was stone, filled with an icy draft, and his feet felt freezing. The room was a reasonably well-appointed bathroom. The fixtures were

somewhat strange in appearance, and he couldn’t even imagine what they were made of, though it

certainly wasn’t porcelain, but it was easy enough to figure out the plumbing; he supposed there were only a few designs among humans. There was hot water—in fact, there was a large sunken tub filled with steaming hot water that looked somewhat like a Japanese bath-house fixture, and from the faint medicinal smell he supposed it came right up from a volcanic spring somewhere. Relieving himself, Paul supposed this was the ultimate reality testing. He caught up a fur-lined rug or blanket from a bench and wrapped it around himself.

Returning to the room, the other looked at Paul in his improvised blanket, and said, “I ought to have thought of that. There’s a bedgown on the chair.”

It looked like an old-fashioned bathrobe, but bulkier, lined with some silky fabric that felt like fur, and fastened tightly up at the neck to keep out draughts. It was very warm; in his own world it would have been good for a topcoat intended for traveling in Siberia. He sat down on the bed, drawing up his bare feet under the warm robe.