Free Sharra's Exile by Marion Zimmer Bradley Page A

tight scar tissue drew up his mouth into an ugly grimace, as if he were about to cry.
    “Gods! I’m sorry, domna , I didn’t mean—” he muttered, almost inaudibly.
    “What was it, Lew? Why did you lose your temper and rush off like that? What did I do to make you angry?”
    “Nothing, nothing—” Dazed, he shook his head. “I—I cannot bear the sight of blood, now, or the thought of some small helpless thing dying for my pleasure—” he said, and his voice sounded
    exhausted. “I have hunted all my life, without ever thinking of it, but when I saw that little white bird crying out and saw the blood, suddenly it all came over me again and I remembered—oh, Avarra have mercy on me, I remembered— Dio, just go away, don’t, in the name of the merciful Avarra, Dio—”
    His face twisted again and then he was crying, great hoarse painful sobs, his face ugly and crumpled, trying to turn away so that she would not see. “I have seen… too much pain… Dio, don’t—go away, go away, don’t touch me—”
    She put out her arms, folded him in them, drawing him against her breast. For a moment he resisted frantically, then let her draw him close. She was crying too.
    “ I never thought,” she whispered. “Death in hunting—I am so used to it, it never seemed quite real to me. Lew, what was it, who died, what did it make you remember?”
    “Marjorie,” he said hoarsely. “My wife. She died, she died, died horribly in Sharra’s fire—Dio, don’t touch me, somehow I hurt everyone I touch, go away before I hurt you too, I don’t want you to be hurt
    —”
    “It’s too late for that,” she said, holding him, feeling his pain all through her. He raised his one hand to her face, touching her wet eyes, and she felt him slam down his defenses again; but this time she knew it was not rejection, only the defenses of a man unbearably hurt, who could bear no more.
    “Were you hurt, Dio?” he asked, his hand lingering on her cheek. “There’s blood on your face.”
    “It’s the bird’s blood. It’s on you too,” she said, and wiped it away. He took her hand in his and pressed the fingertips to his lips. Somehow the gesture made her want to cry again. She asked, “Were you hurt when you fell?”
    “Not much,” he said, testing his muscles cautiously. “They taught me, in the Empire hospital on Terra, how to fall without hurting myself, when I was—before this healed.” Uneasily he moved the stump. “I can’t get used to the damned hand. I do better one-handed.”
    She had thought he might. “Why do you wear it, then? If it’s only for looks, why do you think I would care?”
    His face was bleak. “Father would care. He thinks, when I wear the empty sleeve, I am—flaunting my mutilation. Making a show of it. He hates his own lameness so much, I would rather not—not flaunt mine in his face.”
    Dio thought swiftly, then decided what she could say. “You are a grown man, and so is he. He has one way of coping with his own lameness, and you have another; it is easy to see that you are very different. Would it really make him angry if you chose another way to deal with what has happened to you?”
    “I don’t know,” Lew said, “but he has been so good to me, never reproached me for these years of exile, nor for the way in which I have brought all his plans to nothing. I do not want to distress him further.” He rose, went to collect the grotesque lifeless thing in its black glove, looked at it for a moment, then put it away in his saddlebag. He fumbled one-handed to pin his empty sleeve over the stump; she started to offer, matter-of-factly, to help him, and decided it was too soon. He looked into the sky. “I suppose the hawks are gone beyond recall, and we will be charged for losing them.”
    “No.” She blew the silver whistle around her neck. “They are birds with brains modified so they cannot choose but come to the whistle—see?” She pointed as two distant flecks appeared in