Heritage and Exile by Marion Zimmer Bradley Read Free Book Online

I’d already exceeded them. I could only hope desperately that the kirian would make him sleepy, or wear off with fatigue, and he would come back to rest or make his way to the Hastur apartments and sleep there.
    I waited for hours and saw the sun rise, blood-red in the mists hanging over the Terran spaceport, before, cramped and cold, I fell asleep on the stone bench by the fireplace.
    But Regis did not return.

CHAPTER THREE
    Regis ran down the corridor, dazed and confused, the small points of color still flashing behind his eyes, racked with the interior crawling nausea. One thought was tearing at him:
    Failed. I’ve failed. Even Lew, tower-trained and with all his skill, couldn’t help me. There’s nothing there. When he said what he did about potential, he was humoring me, comforting a child.
    He reeled, feeling sick again, clung momentarily to the wall and ran on.
    The Comyn castle was a labyrinth, and Regis had not been inside it in years. Before long, in his wild rush to get away from the scene of his humiliation, he was well and truly lost. His senses, kirian -blurred, retained vague memories of stone cul-de-sacs, blind corners, archways, endless stairs up which he toiled and down which he blundered and sometimes fell, courtyards filled with rushing wind and blinding rain, hour after hour. To the end of his life he retained an impression of the Comyn Castle which he could summon at will to overlay his real memories of it: a vast stone maze, a trap through which he wandered alone for centuries, with no human form to be seen. Once, around a corner, he heard Lew calling his name. He flattened himself in a niche and hid for a few thousand years until, long after, the sound was gone.
    After an indeterminate time of wandering and stumbling and hallucinating, he became aware that it had been a long time since he had fallen down a flight of stairs; that the corridors were long, but not miles and miles long; and that they were no longer filled with uncanny crawling colors and silent sounds. When he came out at last on to a high balcony at the uppermost level, he knew where he was.
    Dawn was breaking over the city below him. Once before, during the night, he had stood against a high parapet like this, thinking that his life was no good to anyone, not to the Hasturs, not to himself, that he should throw himself down and be done with it. This time the thought was remote, nightmarish, like one of those terrible real dreams which wakes you shaking and crying out, but a few seconds later is gone in dissolving fragments.
    He drew a long, weary sigh. Now what?
    He should go and make himself presentable for his grandfather, who would certainly send for him soon. He should get some food and sleep; kirian, he’d been told, expended so much physical and nervous energy that it was essential to compensate with extra food and rest. He should go back and apologize to Lew Alton, who had only very reluctantly done what Regis himself had begged him to do. . . . But he was sick to death of hearing what he should do!
    He looked across the city that lay spread out below him. Thendara, the old town, the Trade City, the Terran headquarters and the spaceport. And the great ships, waiting, ready to take off for some unguessable destination. All he really wanted to do now was go to the spaceport and watch, at close range, one of those great ships.
    Quickly he hardened his resolve. He was not dressed for out-of-doors at all, still wearing felt-soled indoor boots, but in his present mood it mattered less than nothing. He was unarmed. So what? Terrans carried no sidearms. He went down long flights of stairs, losing his way, but knowing, now that he had his wits about him, that all he had to do was keep going down till he reached ground level. Comyn Castle was no fortress. Built for ceremony rather than defense, the building had many gates, and it was easy to slip out one of them unobserved.
    He found himself in a dim, dawnlit street