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with cruel words. He felt a need to put distance between
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them, break up this unendurable closeness, keep Dani from looking at him with so much love. If they fought, perhaps Regis would no longer have to be constantly on guard, afraid of doing and saying what he could not even endure to think....
Danilo came with porridge in a small pannikin. He said tentatively, "I don't think this is burned ..."
"Oh, stop being so damned attentive*." Regis flung at him. "Eat your supper and let me alone, damn you, just stop hovering over me! What must I do to make you realize I don't want you, I don't need you? Just let me alone!"
Danilo's face went white. He went and sat on the other bench, his head bent over his own porridge. Hisback to Regis, he said coldly, "Yours is there when you want it, my lord."
Regis could see clearly, as if time had slid out of focus, that searing moment in the barracks, when Danilohad flung him off with an insult. It was clear hi Danilo's mind, too: He has done to me, knowing, what Idid to him, unknowing.
By main force Regis held himself back from immediate apology. The smell of the porridge made him feelviolently sick. He went to the stone shelf and laid himself down, wrapping himself in his riding-cloak andtrying to suppress the racking shudders that shook his whole body. It seemed to him that he could hear Danilo crying, as he had done so often hi the barracks, but Danilo was sitting on the bench, quietly eatinghis supper. Regis lay looking at the fire, until it began to flare up, flame-hallucination. Not forest fire, not Sharry. Just hallucination again. Psi out of control.
Still, it seemed that he could see Lew's face, vividly, by firelight. Suppose, Regis thought, when Ireached up toward him, drew him down beside me, he had flung me off, slapped me? Suppose he hadthought the comfort I offered him a thing too shameful to endure or acknowledge?
I was only a child. I didn't know what I was doing.
He wasn't a child. And he knew.
Unable to endure this train of thought, he let the swaying sickness take him again. It was almost a reliefto let the world slide away, go dim and thin out to nothing. Time vanished. He heard Danilo's voice aftera time, but the words no longer made sense; they were just vibration, sound without sense or relevance. He knew with the last breath of sanity that his only hope of saving himself now was to cry out, get
' up and move around, call out to Danilo, hang on to him as an anchor in this deadly nowhere-
He could not. He could not surrender to this; he would .rather die ... and he heard some curious remotelittle voice fo bis mind say Die, then, if it is so important to you. And he
•felt something like a giant swing to take him, toss him high, '-further out into nowhere with every swooping breath, seeing stars, atoms, strange vibrations, the very rhythm of the universe-or was it his own brain cells vibrating, madly out of control?
He'd done this to himself, he knew. He'd let it happen, too ;,,aouch of a coward to face himself. ":,i
Call out to Dani, that inner voice said. He'll help you, even
•'*tu>w, if you ask him. But you'll have to ask, you've made it
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• .impossible for him to come to you again unless you call him. j.Call quickly, quickly, while you still can.
:! I can't-
^ He felt his breathing begin to come in gasps, as if he hung jf'jomewhere in the far spaces which were all he could see l-jww, with every breath coming for an instant back to that isBtruggling, dimming body lying inert on the shelf. Quickly! out now for help or you will die, here and now with ev-ing left undone because of your pride . . . '?%, With the last of his strength Regis fought for enough voice jito shout, call aloud. It came out as the faintest of stifled gHrhispers.
"Dani ... help me ..."
Too late, he thought, and felt himself slide off into noth-jingness. He wondered, with desperate regret, ifhe was dying |... because he could not bear to be honest with himself, with lis friend....
He swung in darkness, immobile, numb, paralyzed. He felt >anilo, only a dim blue haze through hisclosed eyes, bending ;"over him, fumbling at his tunic-laces. He could not even feel )anilo's hands exceptthat they were at his throat. He f thought insanely, Is he going to kill me? I-*' Without warning his bodyconvulsed in a spasm of the I most hideous pain he had ever known. He was there again, sCDanilo's facevisible through a reddish blood-colored mist, ^ Standing over him, his hand just touching the matrixaround j^Regis' neck. Regis said hoarsely, "No. Not again-" and felt fthe bone-cracking spasm return. Danilo dropped the matrix
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as if it burned him and the hellish pain subsided. Regis lay gasping. It felt as if he had fallen into the fire.
Danilo gasped, "Forgive me-I thought you were dying! I knew no other way to reach your mind... .** Carefully, without touching it, Danilo covered the matrix again. He dropped down on the stone bedbeside Regis, as if his knees were too weak to hold him upright.
"Regis, Regis, I thought you were dying-"
Regis whispered, "I thought so too."
"I told myself, if I let you die because I could not forgive a harsh word, then I was a disgrace to my father and all those who had served Hastur. I am a catalyst telepath, there had to be something I could do to reach you-I shouted and you didn't hear, I slapped and pinched you, I thought you were dead already, but I could feel you calling me...." He was entirely unstrung. Regis whispered, "What was it that you did? I felt you-"
"I touched the matrix-nothing else seemed to reach you, I was so sure you were dying-" He broke down
and sobbed. "I could have killed you! I could have killed you!"
Regis drew Danilo down beside him, holding him tight in his arms. "Bredu, don't cry," he whispered. "See, I'm not dead." He felt suddenly shy again. Danilo's face, wet with tears, was pressed against his
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cheek. Regis patted it clumsily. "Don't cry any more."
"But I hurt you so-I can't bear to hurt you," Danilo said wildly.
"I don't think anything less would have brought me back," Regis said. "It's my life I owe you this time, bredu." He was still dizzy and aching with the aftermath of what he now knew must have been a convulsion. Later he was to learn that this last-resort heroic treatment, gripping a matrix, was used only at the point of death; when stronger telepaths determined that without it, the sufferer might wander endlessly in the corridors of his own brain, cutting off all outside stimuli, until he died. Danilo had done it by pure instinct. Now Regis remembered what Javanne had said. "I've got to get up and move around or it may come back. But you'll have to help me, Dani, I'm too weak to walk alone."
Danilo helped him upright. By the last light of the dying fire Regis could see the tears on his face. He kepthis arm around Regis, steadying him. "I should never have quarreled with you when you were sick."
"It was I who picked the quarrel, Dani. Can you forgive me?"
He was cruel to Dani out of fear, Regis knew, fear of what he was himself. Perhaps Dyan, too, turned tocruelty out of fear and came at last to prefer cruelty to fear-or to shame-at knowing himself too well.
Laran was terrible. But they bad no choice, only to meet it with honor.
Danilo said shyly, "I kept your porridge hot for you. Can you try to eat it now?"
Regis took the hot pottery pannikin, burning his fingers a little on the edges. The thought of food madehim feel sick, but obediently he chewed a few mouthfuls and discovered that he was actually very hungry. He ate the hot unsweetened stuff, saying after a time, "Well, it's no worse than what we got in barracks. If you ever find yourself a masterless man, Dani, well get you a job as an army cook."
"God forbid I should be a masterless man while you live, Regis."
Regis reached for Danilo's hand, holding it tight. He felt exhausted and aching, but at peace. He finishedthe porridge and Danilo took the bowl away to rinse it out. Regis lay down on the shelf again. The firewas dying down and it was cold. Danilo came and spread out his own cloak and blanket beside Regis,sat beside him, pulling off his boots.
"I wish I knew more about threshold sickness."
"Be damn glad you don't," Regis said harshly, "it's hell. I hope you never have it."
"Oh, I had it," Dani said. 'T know now that's what it must have been when I began ... reading minds. There was no one to tell me what it was, and I never had it so seriously. The trouble is, I don't know what to do about it. Or I could help you." He looked at Regis hestitantlyMn the dim light and said, "We're still in rapport a little. Let me try."
"Do what you want to," Regis said, "I won't drive you away again. Only be careful. Your last experiment
was painful."
"I did find out one thing," Danilo said. "I could see and feel things. There's a kind of ... of energy. Look." He bent over Regis, running his fingertips lightly above his body, not touching him. "I can feel it this way, without touching you, and certain places it's strong, and others I feel it ought to be
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Marion Zimmer Bradley I don't know how to explain it. Do you feel
and isn't.
itr
Regis remembered the very little the leronis had told him when she tested him, unsuccessfully, for lawn, 'There are certain ... energy centers in the body, which waken with the wakening of laran. Everybody hasthem, but in a telepath they're stronger and more ... perceptible. If that's true, you should have them, too." He reached out toward Danilo, running his hands over his face, feeling the definite, tangible flow ofpower. "Yes, it's like an ... an extra pulsebeat here, just above your brow." He had once been shown adrawing of these currents, but at that time he had no reason to believe it applied to him. Now hestruggled to remember, sensing it must be important. "There's one at the base of the throat."
"Yes, I can see it," Danilo said, touching it lightly with a fingertip. The touch was not painful, but Regis felt it like a faint, definite electric shock. Yet once he was fully aware of the pulse, his perceptions cleared and the dizziness which had been with him for weeks now seemed to clear and shift somehow. He felt that he had discovered something very important, but he didn't know what. Danilo went on, trying to trace out the flows of power with his fingertips. *'I don't really have to touch you to feel them. I seem to know-"
"Probably because you've got them yourself," Regis said. "Matrix work needs training, but it must be possible to learn to control laran, or the techniques couldn't have evolved. Unless you want to believe all those old stories about gods and demigods coming down to teach the Comyn how to use them, and I don't." It was very dark, but he could see Danilo clearly, as if his body were outlined with the pale, pulsing energy flows. Danilo said, "Then maybe we can find out how to keep you from going into that kind of ... of crisis again."
Regis said, "I seem to be in your hands, Dani. Quite literally. I don't know if I could live through anotherattack like that one." He knew that the physical shock Danilo had given him by touching his matrix hadrevived him, but that he was drained, dangerously weak. "You had threshold sickness? And got over it?"
"Yes. Though, as I say, I had no idea what it was. But finding out about these energy currents helped. I could make them flow smoothly, most of the time, and it seemed that I could use that energy. I'm not saying this very well, am I? I don't know the right words."
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Regis smiled ruefully and said, "Maybe there aren't any." He lay watching the energy flows in Danilo'sbody and had the strange sensation that, although they were both heavily clothed against the cold, theywere both, somehow, naked, a different kind of naked. Maybe this is what Lew meant: living with yourskin off. He could feel the energy flows in Danilo, too, pulsing, moving smoothly and steadily with theforces of life. Danilo went on, gently searching out the flows, not touching him; even so, the touch thatwas not a touch stirred physical awareness again. Regis had not heard Lew explain how the samecurrents carried telepathic force and sexual energy, but he sensed just enough to be self-conscious aboutit. He gently reached out and held Danilo's hand away from him.
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"No," he said, not angry now, but honestly, facing it-they could not lie to each other now. "You don't
want to stir that up, do you, Dani?"
There was a frozen instant while Danilo almost stopped breathing. Then he said, in a smothered whisper,
"I didn't think you knew."
"So when you called me names-you were nearer right than you knew yourself, Dani. I didn't know it
then, either. But I would rather not ... approach you as Dyan did. So take care, Dani."
He was not touching Danilo now, but just the same he felt the steady currents of energy in Danilo beginto halt, the pulse go ragged and uneven, like an eddy and whirlpool in a smooth-running river. He didn'tknow what it meant, but he sensed without knowing why that it was important, that he had discoveredsomething else that he really needed to know, something on which his very life might depend.