Reading Darkover in the 21st Century: The Spell Sword

[patrick_morris_miller]

The Spell Sword

First publication in 1974 by DAW Books (DAW Collectors #119)

Read from DAW omnibus The Forbidden Circle (DAW Collectors #1239)

Time period: Against the Terrans - The First Age (Recontact)

Terran Andrew Carr and the astral projection of Callista Lanart-Alton fall in love at first sight, complicated by Andrew's near death in a flyer crash and Callista's captivity in hands unknown. At the same time, Damon Ridenow, cousin of Callista and her sister Ellemir, rides to the Alton seat of Armida, where he and Ellemir plot Callista's rescue. Will Andrew's unexpected link to Callista give them the edge to succeed?

Andrew's flyer crashes on a mapping flight over the Hellers; he is the sole survivor. He would surely have died had not Callista, a Keeper at Arilinn Tower, appeared to him and guided him through the Hellers to Armida. That she is able to do this comes as two surprises to Callista; the Terran Andrew should not have the telepathic ability that lets him perceive her. More so, Callista has recently been kidnapped.

Callista is all but helpless: she does not have a starstone to amplify her powers; she is being held in darkness, in a place unknown to her, so she cannot teleport to safety; and something is blocking her from contacting other telepaths, even her twin Ellemir. She cannot even access the parts of the Overworld that other humans can perceive, except the offworlder Andrew.

Damon Ridenow rides through danger. The invasion of the cat-men was foiled but now a shadow is growing over the Kilghard Hills - figuratively and literally. Clouds and fog block off the sun, causing crops to fail, and the folk of the land are becoming lethargic and dull. And those who investigate often return mad, or not at all. The darkening lands, people are calling it. Damon and his armsmen skirt the dark on the way to Armida, and are waylaid by invisible swordsmen. One is killed.

Andrew and Damon converge at Armida, where Ellemir tells her cousin that Callista has been taken from her own bed. Damon reasons that Callista's hopes for rescue may depend on this unexpected Terran, clearly a latent telepath. But can Damon, strong and Tower-trained though he is, train Andrew's laran by himself?

Then returns Dom Esteban, Lord Alton, Callista and Ellemir's father and a great swordsman... now paralyzed in a cat-men attack. And Damon's laran determines the darkened lands, and Callista's kidnapping, are the works of a cat-man who has acquired a matrix weapon from the Ages of Chaos. Damon's powers, Andrew's impossible telepathic rapport, and Dom Esteban's sword arm might make a rescue effort possible... except Dom Esteban can no longer fight.

Unless matrix technology can allow Damon to wield Dom Esteban's sword skills...

Continuity

Not for the last time we learn that the skies over the Hellers are deadly dangerous. Jay Allison's father should have learned from Andrew's example.

As a Keeper, Callista is vowed to virginity, and apparently with cause: we are told of Lady Mirella Hastur, a Keeper at Arilinn in wartime; Arilinn's besiegers captured and raped her, believing that would destroy her powers. Nonetheless she used the matrix screens to rain fire on the invaders, killing them to a man, then herself falling dead, burned by the energies she could no longer safely wield.

Leonie Hastur, a great Keeper of this epoch, claims her grandmother was at Arilinn and saw Mirella die. This suggests that only recently there have been wars in which the Compact was broken and laran used as a weapon... or perhaps Leonie's grandmother lived during the Ages of Chaos. Are Tower workers incredibly long-lived? Or maybe Bradley dropped a stitch; she never cared much about firm chronologies.

In The Winds of Darkover we meet a Keeper at Aldaran who says that a Keeper need not be chaste, if she knows how to be cautious. And Andrew thinks to himself 'it has always been like that' is no reason for this custom. Much more about this in just a few novels.

Here and now, the Compact holds with such force that Damon is horrified when Andrew wishes he had a Terran blaster. It won't always be in Aldaran, as seen in The Winds of Darkover.

(Does the spell sword itself violate the Compact? Damon puts himself in danger wielding it, but Dom Esteban, whose skill it channels, does not.)

Like many Comyn men, Damon was schooled at Nevarsin Monastery; when he thinks of his growing attraction to Ellemir he recites Nevarsin's Creed of Chastity - likely a legacy of Father Valentine, and one adhered to by men working in Towers.

The Great Cat's high level matrix is thought to be of world-shattering potential - not the last such we'll see. And there were many matrix weapons in Darkover's past, such as the legendary Sword of Hastur, or the Sword of Aldones. Remember that last one.

A Guardsman compares the mental devastation of those in the darkening lands to the trailmen's fever, still part of Darkover if much powered down from Bradley's initial conception in The Planet Savers.

Andrew states that many worlds have human or near human indigenes, and it is generally thought all were settled by a common ancestor millions of years ago. In later works we'll meet a character who pieced together dissociated knowledge from Terran archives and identified the colony ship from Darkover Landfall as the source of Darkover's human population.

Similarly, humans mating with chieri is now an ancient legend. We've seen novels set after The Spell Sword that affirm the legend.

Leonie Hastur discharged Damon from Arilinn Tower for being "too sensitive", but says that were he a woman he could have been a Keeper and possibly a great one. The concept that only women can be Keepers did not always exist, and is about to get squarely challenged.

Here the Ridenow Gift is stated to be sensing and communicating with nonhuman intelligences, which is key to Damon unveiling the Great Cat; other texts state the Gift is empathy. The Darkover Concordance by Walter Breen (yeah, ick) does some special pleading to call these aspects of the same ability.

Leonie Hastur reports stories of "strange men from another world at Thendara". Later it is established that the Terrans built their first starport at Caer Donn; apparently Leonie doesn't read newspapers from Aldaran.

(In Rediscovery, a young Leonie has direct dealings with the first Terrans to come to Darkover since the first landing. This is far from the only issue with that novel, which I don't expect to mention again much if at all.)

Consent issues

While it does not occur in the story, it's discussed how a Keeper's abilities hinge on the Power of Virginity, and not only does that turn rape into a weapon against Keepers, it even denies Keepers consensual sex. This whole theme was unpleasant in Witch World and it's no less so here.

The book ends with a double pairing, Andrew with Callista and Ellemir with Damon. All fine, if a little formulaic. But Damon muses that "they might never be able to get free of one another ... they would probably have to marry". Whether they want to or not. Fortunately they do want to do what laran may in fact be forcing them to do.

And like Melitta in The Winds of Darkover, Callista tells Andrew that if she were physically with him and not astrally, "you would have every right to expect-" for arousing him. The Free Amazons could teach her healthier - and wittier - rejoinders.

After all of that, the kidnap and rescue of Callista hardly wants analyzing past 'stock story element'.

Collected miscellanea

The plot of the novel - Callista is kidnapped, complications to her rescue develop, she is rescued anyway, roll credits - is, again, stock plot. Here, it's scaffolding; the meat is Damon teaching Andrew (and the reader) about laran, and Towers and Keepers, and matrixes.

Lacking an unkeyed starstone of suitable size, Damon takes the unusual step of teaching Andrew on Callista's personal matrix, which she left under her pillow. Ordinarily it is painful for someone else to touch one's keyed starstone, but Andrew and Callista are linked both through unexpected destiny and love at first sight. He is able to find where the cat-men have imprisoned her, then at the climax of the story, teleport to her despite being essentially untrained. And, of course, this use of her matrix just strengthens their bond.

Dom Esteban arrives at Armida critically injured, and Damon must use his laran to stabilize him; his focus of his awareness "to the molecular level and beyond" is reminiscent of Jessica Atreides changing the Water of Life in Dune.

Callista's captors keep her in the dark to prevent her from teleporting to freedom. Apparently they have read The Stars My Destination.

As Andrew learns to synchronize with Callista's stone he remembers being trained in biofeedback by Terran psychs. Last time I heard that word, I think disco was still a going concern.

The Ridenow Gift was bred for the purpose of dealing with intellects from 'other realms of existence'. Some of these become known to humans as demons or gods. Later novels suggest Sharra might be such a being - or not.

Concluding thoughts

Here we have a kidnap and rescue narrative, a double romance... and a more subjective experience of wielding laran than we've had yet. And without intending it at the time, here Bradley lays the foundation for a later novel that will see our heroes challenge their era's assumptions about matrix technology.