“Who are you,” he continued, “or what?”
Roane drew a deep breath. “I am—a woman,” she said, answering his last question first. “Also I am Roane Hume. But I am not of this world—”
Having taken the plunge, she dared not think, but struck out into the current of truth, which not only might sweep her away but could end everything she had been schooled to believe in.
She told him of the Service, of why they had come to Clio, of her chance meeting with the Princess, of the installation, and of what that meant to him and his people. When she had done she was drained, emptied, glad of that warm encirclement of her wrist which linked her to a living world.
“This is a tale beyond belief,” he began and she tried to jerk away from his hold, chilled—frightened that he could not believe. Immediately his hold on her tightened. “Yet,” he continued, “I know that it is true. You say you have no ability to foresee. Perhaps by the reckoning of your people, you do not. But my own House—we have that talent in part. We have also a strange tradition which has been a closely guarded secret for generations. “It is one I would not ordinarily speak of to any, be he even close brother-kin, unless he knew it by right of birth. But because it is akin to what you have told me, I will speak of it now. The Guardians—we worship them after a fashion, and to most they are supernatural beings. But in my House there is a tale that he who founded our line was a direct servant of Guardians—who were not immortals as all believe, but had flesh and substance. And he did certain tasks for them in that far beginning which were connected with the ordering of Reveny life.
“When men awoke here at the Guardians’ bidding and set about living, my forefather retained hazy memories of another time and place. These he kept to himself, speaking of them only to his son, and so it passed through my line. We have in addition other things. There have been soothspeakers of our name. That is how I am sure that the Queen was not what she seemed when she found the Crown and ordered my death.
“Now you make plain she was not being moved by the control of any mind-globe, but that she, the Duke, all of us, are game pieces moved about to fulfill some plan made by men long dead, ones who had no right to set our forefathers into such patterns. But you fear that to destroy these controls would be to destroy us also.”
“My uncle feared that. He wants to bring in the experts of the Service. They would study the installation, make sure—if they came at all.”
“If they came at all!” That was bitter. “Then they would have chosen, had you not broken their pattern, to let us live forever under the domination of chattering metal things! What right have they to allow such slavery? Or are they themselves slaves to other patterns? Is it so from star to star, with no one really free?” He was now echoing one of her own recent thoughts. “And these men of your Service, if they come, would take time, maybe years, to study before they moved. Is that not so?” “Yes.”
“And all that while we would continue to be secretly ruled. Ludorica, who is good, would do evil. Reddick, who wishes to bring war and worse upon Reveny, who would slay even the Queen if by her death he could take the Crown, would continue in power. I— I shall do what I can against him. But if these machines will otherwise, I am defeated before I begin!” “The installation can be destroyed.” “There was Arothner, which lost its crown—” “The Princess told me that story,” Roane admitted. “Then you know what chanced there. To risk that—for Reveny —for all the world!”
“The result may not be the same. A lost crown could differ in effect from a silenced machine.” “But the risk—it is too great!”
“The choice is yours.” She had done what she could. If he said now that Clio must remain in slavery, let it be so.
She turned her wrist again and this time his grasp loosened and fell away. With its going she felt as alone as if he had arisen and walked from her. There was no road back. She was locked in a prison she had built herself stone by stone. Yet she was unable to regret what lay behind.
Roane settled her shoulders against the harsh stone of the wall, raised her knees, and folded her arms across them as a pillow for her head. That emptiness she had earlier welcomed now became a billowing fog of fatigue. She did not care if morning, light, or the need to take up the burden of living ever came again. But tired as she was, sleep did not come. Instead her thoughts twisted and turned as an insomniac might twist and turn upon a bed during a wakeful night. She walked again on other worlds, relived this small fragment of the past and that. It seemed to her that she had always been part of a set pattern, also, imposed upon her by Uncle Offlas, by the life he introduced her to. Was it true as Nelis had said, that even from star to star there was no freedom? Yet the rules of the Service called for no interference, no meddling even for good in the destiny of a troubled world. Pattern upon pattern, tie and bond upon tie and bond, no freedom. Roane stirred and then once more that hand out of the dark reached her, slipping across her shoulders to draw her to rest close to the warmth, the safe anchorage of another body, human, alive, no longer exiled alone in the dark.
“What is it, Roane? Why do you cry?” His voice was a breath warm against her cheek. And she knew then that tears did wet her face and that she wept as she could not ever remember having done since she was a small and lonesome child.
“I think it is because I am alone.” She tried to put that desolation into words.
“But that you are not! Is it because you come from the stars and here find no kin? Would you return to your people? I promise I shall take you to them—” “They will not want me now.”
“Do not think that others believe in that fashion.” The grasp about her shoulders was very comforting. “I have been wondering —why was it, do you think, that you saw the Queen and Reddick in this dream? You were not reaching as a Soothspeaker does to read some peril or fact needful to your life. Yet you saw that which brought you to Hitherhow, to aid in my escape. And such visions are not ordinary. From whence came this one?”
Perhaps he was kindly trying to make her think of something else. But there was certainly a strangeness to that dream.
“I do not know. But I am sure I have no esper powers. My people understand these things, they checked me. It was important that they make sure.”
“Yet you have also said that you have done things on this world which were counter to all your training, to what you were taught was lawful. And I do not believe that you are one who has ever deliberately chosen to break rules and flout authority before. Is that not so?”
“I do not know why, but when I first saw the Princess, in that tower, I had to help her. Uncle Offlas said you were all conditioned. Perhaps when I had left the safeguards of our camp that also influenced me.”
“Yet you could see these machines. The Princess could not. So if there was conditioning, for you it was not complete.”
“What difference does it make now? I broke the Service rules, I—perhaps it was I who started the whole tangle. The Princess would not have known of the Crown had she not gone to the cave. And if she had not found the Crown—”
“Roane, Roane, do not take on yourself guilt for a whole country!”
Fingers touched her cheek gently, exploring, though that arm was still a barrier between her and dark loneliness.
“You are crying once morel I tell you, this is not of your doingl You have brought good, not evil. Had you not taken the Princess from Reddick’s men then, you might have left her to her death. And had you not come to Hitherhow—I might have died, too, and been a long time in doing it.”
“There was the Sergeant, Mattine, the others—”
“Who could well have thrown their lives away and to no avail. Nor would we ever have known of these machines. For had you not taken the Princess there for shelter, would you ever have found them?”