“That makes no difference.” It was my own rage, my own hate, they had used. “Even to save my life, even to save yours, I should never have let them bring us back. I should have made him kill us both.”
There was no hope for either of us now, no escape. Kadarin could drug me again, force me again, and there was no way to resist him. My own unknown hatred had set me at his mercy and there was no escape.
No escape except death.
Marjorie—I looked at her, wrung with anguish. There was no escape for her either. I should have made Kadarin kill her quickly, there in the stone hut. Then she would have died clean, not like this, slowly, forced to kill.
She fumbled at the waist of her dress, and brought out a small, sharp dagger. She said quietly, “I think they forgot I still have this. Is it sharp enough, Lew? Will it do for both of us, do you think?”
That was when I broke down and sobbed, helplessly, against her. There was no hope for either of us, I knew that But that it should come like this, with Marjorie speaking as calmly of a knife to kill us both as she would have asked if her embroidery-threads were the right color—that I could not bear, that was beyond all endurance.
When at last I had quieted a little, I rose from her side, going to the door, I said aloud, “We will lock it from the inside this time. Death, at least, is a private affair.” I drew the bolt. I had no hope that it would hold for long when they came for us, but by that time we would no longer care.
I came back to the bed, hauled off the boots I had found myself putting on for some unknown purpose. I knelt before Marjorie, drawing off her light sandals. I drew the clasps from her hair, laid her in my bed.
I thought I had left the Comyn. And now I was dying in order to leave Darkover in the hands of the Comyn, the only hands that could safeguard our world. I drew Marjorie for a moment into my arms.
I was ready to die. But could I force myself to kill her?
“You must,” she whispered, “or you know what they will make me do. And what the Terrans will do to all our people after that.”
She had never looked so beautiful to me. Her bright flame-colored hair was streaming over her shoulders, faintly edged with light. She broke down then, sobbing. I held her against me, straining her so tightly in my arms I must have been hurting her terribly. She held me with all her strength and whispered, “It’s the only way, Lew. The only way. But I didn’t want to die, Lew, I wanted to live with you, to go with you to the lowlands, I wanted … I wanted to have your children.”
I knew no pain in my life, nothing that would ever equal the agony of that moment, with Marjorie sobbing in my arms, saying she wanted to have my children. I was glad I would not live long to remember this; I hoped the dead did not remember….
Our deaths were all that stood between our world and terrible destruction. I took up the knife. Touching my finger to the edge left a stain of blood, and I was insanely glad to feel its razor sharpness.
I bent down to give her a long, last kiss on the lips. I said in a whisper, “I’ll try not to … to hurt you, my darling….” She closed her eyes and smiled and whispered, “I’m not afraid.”
I paused a moment to steady my hand so that I could do it in a single, swift, painless stroke. I could see the small vein throbbing at the base of her throat. In a few moments we would both be at peace. Then let Kadarin do his worst ….
A spasm of horror convulsed me. When we were dead, the last vestige of control was gone from the matrix. Kadarin would die, of course, in the fires of Sharra. But the fires would never die. Sharra, roused and ravening, would rage on, consume our people, our world, all of Darkover ….