The Heritage Of Hastur

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....

What would we care for that? The dead are at peace!

And for a painless death for ourselves, would we let our world be destroyed in the fires of Sharra?

The dagger dropped from my hand. It lay on the sheets beside us, but for me it was as far away as if it were on one of the moons. I regretted bitterly that I could not give Marjone, at least, that swift and painless death. She had suffered enough. It was right that I should live long enough to expiate my treason hi suffering. It was cruel, unfair, to make Marjorie share that suffering. Yet, without her Keeper's training, I would not live long enough to do what I must.

She opened her eyes and said tremulously, "Don't wait, Lew. Do it now."

Slowly, I shook my head.

'We cannot take such an easy way, beloved. Oh, we will die. But we must use our deaths. We must close the gateway into Sharra before we die and destroy the matrix if we can. We have to go into it. There's no chance‑you know there's no chance at all‑that we will live through it. But there is a chance that we will live long enough to close the gateway and save our world from being ravaged by Sharra's fire."

She lay looking at me, her eyes wide with shock and dread. She said in a whisper, "I would rather die."

"So would I," I said, "but such an easy way is not for us, my precious."

We had sacrificed that right. I looked with longing at the little dagger and its razor sharpness. Slowly, Mariorie nodded in agreement. She picked up die little dagger, looked at it regretfully, then rose from the bed, went to the window and flung it through the narrow window‑slit. She came back, slipped down beside me. She said, trying to steady her voice, "Now I cannot lose my courage again." Then, though her eyes were still wet, her voice held just a hint of the old laughter. "At least we will spend one night together in a proper bed."

Can a night last a lifetime?

Perhaps, If you know your lifetime is measured in a single night.

I said hoarsely, drawing her into my arms again, "Let's not waste any of it."

Neither of us was strong enough for much physical love‑making. Most of that night we spent resting in each other's arms, sometimes talking a little, more often caressing one another in silence. From long training at disciplining unwelcome or dangerous thoughts, I was able to put away almost completely all thought of what awaited us tomorrow. Strangely enough, my worst regret was not for death, but for the long, quiet years of living together which we would never know, for the poignant knowledge that Mariorie would never know the hills near Armida, that she would never come there as a bride. Toward morning Marjorie cried a little for the child she would not live long enough to bear. Finally, cradled in my arms, she fell into a restless sleep. I lay awake, thinking of my father and of my unborn son, that too‑fragile spark of life, barely kindled and already extinguished. I wished Marjorie had been spared that knowledge, at least. No, it was right that someone should weep for it, and I was beyond tears.

Another death to my account...

At last, when the rising sun was already staining the distant peaks with crimson, I slept too. It was like a final grace of some unknown goddess that there were no evil dreams, no nightmares of fire, only a merciful darkness, the dark robe of Avarra covering our sleep.

I woke still clasped hi Marjorie's arms. The room was full of sunlight; her golden eyes were wide, staring at me with fear.

"They will come for us soon," she said.

I kissed her, slowly, deliberately, before I rose. "So much the less time of waiting," I said, and went to draw back the bolt. I dressed myself hi my best, defiantly digging from my packs my finest silk under‑tunic, a jerkin and breeches of gold‑colored dyed leather. A Comyn heir did not go to his death like a common criminal being hanged! Some such emotion must have been in Marjorie yesterday, for she had evidently put on her finest gown, pale‑blue, woven of spider‑silk and cut low across the breasts. Instead of her usual plaits, she coiled her hair high atop her head with a ribbon. She looked beautiful and proud. Keeper, comynara.

Servants brought us some breakfast. I was grateful that she could smile proudly, thanking them in her usual gracious manner. There were no traces in her face of the tears and terror of yesterday; we held our heads high and smiled into each other's eyes. Neither of us dared speak.

As I had known he would, Kadarin came in as we were silently sharing the last of the fruits on the tray. I did not know how my body could contain such hate. I was physically sick with the lust to kill him, to feel my fingers meeting in the flesh of his throat.

And yet‑how can I say this?‑there was nothing left there to hate. I looked up just once and quickly looked away. He was not even a man any more, but something else. A demon? Sharra walking like a man? The real man Kadarin was not there any more. Killing him would not stop the thing that used him.

Another score against Sharra: this man had been my friend. The destruction of Sharra would not only kill him, it would avenge him, too.

He said, "Have you managed to make him see sense, Mar‑jorie? Or must I drug him again?"

Her fingertips touched mine out of his sight. I knew he did not see, though he would always have noticed before. I said, "I will do what you ask me." I could not bring myself to call him Bob or even Kadarin. He was too far from what I had known.

As we walked through the corridors, I looked sidewise at Marjorie. She was very pale; I felt the life hi her flaring fitfully. Sharra had drained her, sapped her life‑forces nearly to the death. One more reason not to go on living. Strange, I was thinking as if I had a choice.

We stepped out onto the high balcony overlooking Caer Donn and the Terran airfield. On a lower level I saw them all assembled, the faces I had seen in my ... what? Dream, drugged nightmare? Or had that part been real? It seemed I knew the faces. Some ragged, some in rich garments, some knowing and sophisticated, some dulled and ignorant, some not even entirely human. But one and all, their eyes gleamed with the same glassy intensity.

Sharra! Their eagerness burned at me, tearing, ravaging.

I looked down at Caer Donn. My breath stuck in my throat. Marjorie had told me, but no words could have prepared me for this kind of destruction, ruin, desolation.

Only after the great forest fire that had ravaged the Kilghard Hills near Armida had I seen anything like this. The city lay blackened; for wide areas not one stone remained upon another. All the old city lay blasted, wasted, the damage spreading far into the Terran Zone.

And I had played a part hi this!

I had thought I knew how dangerous the great matrices could be. Looking down on this wasteland which had been a beautiful city, I knew I had never known anything at all. And all these deaths were on my single account. I could never expiate or atone. But perhaps, perhaps, I might live long enough to end the damage.

Beltran stood on the heights. He looked like death. Rafe was nowhere to be seen. I did not think Kadarin would have hesitated to destroy him now, but I hoped, with a deep‑lying pain, that the boy was alive and safe somewhere well away from this. But I had no hope. If the Sharra matrix was actually smashed, no one who had been sealed into it was likely to live.

Kadarin was unwrapping the long, bundled length of the sword which contained the Sharra matrix. Beyond him I saw Thyra, her eyes burning into mine with an ineradicable hatred. I had hurt her beyond bearing, too. And, unlike Marjorie, she had not even consented to her death. I had loved her, and she would never know.

Kadarin placed the sword in my hand. The matrix, throbbing with power at the junction of hilt and blade, made my burned hand stab blindly with a pain that reached all the way up my arm, made me feel sick. But I must be in physical contact with it, not mental touch alone. I took it from the sword, held it in my hand. I knew my hand would never be usable again after this, but what matter? What did a dead man care for a hand burned from his corpse? I had been trained to endure even such terrible pain, and it could not last long. If I could endure just long enough for what I had to do ...

We know what you are trying to do, Lew. Stand firm and we will help.

I felt my whole body twitch. It was my father's voice!

It was cruel, a stabbing hope. He must be very near or he could never have reached us through the enormous blanking‑out field of the Sharra matrix.

Father! Father! It was a great surge of gratitude. Even if

we all died, perhaps his strength added to mine could help us live long enough to destroy this thing. I locked firmly with Marjorie, made contact through the Sharra matrix, felt the old rapport flame into life: Kadarin's enormous sustaining strength, Thyra like a savage beast, giving the linkage claws, savagery, a wild prowling frenzy. And it all flooded through me....

It was not the way we had used it before, the closed circle of power. As I raised the matrix this time I felt a mighty river of energy flooding through Kadarin, the vast floods of raw emotion from the men standing below: worship, rage, anger, lust, hatred, destruction, the savage power of fire, burning, burning . . .

This was what I had felt before, the dream, the nightmare.

Marjorie was already etched in the aureole of light. Slowly, as the power grew, pouring into my mind through the linked focus, then channeling through me into Marjorie, I saw her begin to change, take on power and height and majesty. The fragile girl hi the blue dress merged, moment by moment, into the great looming goddess, arms tossed to the sky, flames shaking exultantly like tossed tresses, a great fountain of flame ...

Lew, hold steady for me. I cannot do this without your full cooperation. It will hurt, you know it may kill you, but you know what hangs on this, my son. . . .

My father's touch, more familiar than his voice. And almost the same words he had spoken before.

I knew perfectly well where I was, standing in the matrix circle of Sharra on the heights of Castle Aldaran, the great form of fire towering over me. Marjorie, her identity lost, dissolved in the fire and yet controlling it like a torch‑dancer with her torches in her hands, swooped down to touch the old spaceport with a fingertip of fire. Far below us there was a vast booming explosion; one of the starships shattered like a child's toy, vanishing skyward in flames. And yet, though all of me was here, now, still I stood again in my father's room at Armida, waiting, sick with that terrible fear‑and elation! I reached for him with a wild and reckless confidence. Go on! Do it! Finish what you started! Better at your hands than Sharra's!

I felt it then, the deep Alton focused rapport, blazing alive in me, spreading into every corner of my brain and being, filling my veins. It was such agony as I had never known, the

fierce, violent traumatic tearing rapport, a ripping open of every last fiber of my brain. Yet this time I was in control. I was the focus of all this power and I reached out, twisting it life a steel rope in my hand, a blazing rope of fire. The hand was searing with flame but I barely felt it. Kadarin was motionless, arched backward, accepting the stream of emotions from the men below, transforming them into energons, focusing them through me and into Sharra. Marjorie ... Marjorie was there somewhere in the midst of the great fire, but I could see her face, confident, unafraid, laughing. I looked at her for a brief instant, wishing in anguish that I could bring her, even for a fraction of a second, out and free from Sharra, see her again‑no time. No time for that. I saw the goddess pause to strike. I must act now, quickly, before I too was caught up in that mindless fire, that rage for violence and destruction. I looked for a last instant of anguish and atonement into my father's loving eyes.

I braced myself against the terrible throbbing agony in the hand that held the matrix. Just a little more. Just a moment more, I spoke to the screaming agony as if it were a separate living entity, you can bear it just an instant more. I focused on the black and wavering darkness behind the form of fire where, instead of the parapets and towers of Castle Aldaran, a blurring darkness grew, out of focus, a monstrous doorway, a gate of fire, a gate of power, where something hovered, swayed, bulged as if trying to break through that gateway. I gathered all the power of the focused minds, all of them, my father's strength, my own, Kadarin's and all the hundred or so mindless, focused believers behind him pouring out all their raw lust and emotion and strength....

I held all that power, fused like a rope of fire, a twisted cable of force. I focused it all on the matrix in my hand. I smelled burning flesh and knew it was my own hand burning and blackening, as the matrix glowed, flared, flamed, ravened, a fire that filled all the worlds, the gateway between the worlds, the reeling and crashing universes....

I smashed the gateway, pouring all that fire back into it. The form of fire shrank, died, scattered and dimmed. I saw Marjorie, reeling, collapse forward; I leaped to snatch her within the circle of my arm, clinging to the matrix still. I heard her screaming as the fires turned back, flaring, blazing up in her very flesh. I caught her fainting body in my arms

and with a final, great thrust of power, hurled myself between space, into the gray world, elsewhere.

Space reeled under me; the world disappeared. In the formless gray spaces we were bodiless, painless. Was this death? Marjorie's body was still warm in my arms, but she was unconscious. I knew we could remain between worlds only an instant. All the forces of balance tore at me, pulling me back, back to that holocaust and the rain of fire and the ruin at Castle Aldaran, where the men who had spent their powers collapsed and died, blackened and burned, as the fires burned out. Back there, back there to ruin and death? No! No! Some last struggle, some last vitality in me cried out No! and in a great final thrust of focused power, draining myself ruthlessly, I pushed Marjorie and myself through the closing gates and escaped....

My feet struck the floor. It was cool daylight in a curtained, sunlit room; there was hellish pain in my hand, and Marjorie, hanging between my arms, was moaning senselessly. The matrix was still clutched in the blackened, crisped ruin that had been a hand. I knew where I was: in the highest room of the Arilinn Tower, within the safety‑field. A girl in the white draperies of a psi‑monitor was staring at me, her eyes wide. I knew her; she had been in her first year at Arilinn, my last year there. I gasped "Lori! Quick, the Keeper‑"

She vanished from the room and I gratefully let myself fall to the floor, half senseless, next to Marjorie's moaning body.

We were here at Arilinn. Safe. And alive!

I had never been able to teleport before, but for Marjorie's sake I had done it.

Consciousness came and went, wavering like a gray curtain. I saw Callina Aillard looking down at me, her gray eyes reflecting pain and pity. She said softly, "I am Keeper here now, Lew. I will do what I can." Her hand insulated in the gray silk veil, she reached out to take the matrix, thrusting it quickly within the field of a damper. The cessation of the vibration behind the matrix was a moment of almost heavenly comfort, but it also turned off the near‑anesthesia of deep focused effort. I had felt hellish pain in my hand before, but now it felt flayed and dipped anew in molten lead. I don't know how I kept from screaming.

I dragged myself to Marjorie's side. Her face was contorted, but even as I looked, it went slack and peaceful. She had

fainted and I was glad. The fires that had burned my hand to a sickening, charred ruin had struck inward, through her, as the fire of Sharra withdrew back through that opened gateway. I dared not let myself think what she must have suffered, what she must still suffer if she lived. I looked up at Callina with terrible appeal and read there what Callina had been too gentle to tell me in words.

Callina knelt beside us, saying with a gentleness I had never heard in any woman's voice, "We will try to save her for you, Lew." But I could see the faint, blue‑lighted currents of energy pulsing dimmer and dimmer. Callina lifted Marjorie in her arms, kneeling, held her head against her breast. Marjorie's features flickered for a moment in renewed consciousness and renewed pain; then her eyes blazed into mine, golden, triumphant, proud. She smiled, whispered my name, rested her head peacefully on Callina's breast and closed her eyes. Callina bent her head, weeping, and her long dark hair fell like a mourning veil across Marjorie's stilled face.

I let consciousness slip away, let the fire in my hand take my whole body. Maybe I could die too.

But there was not even that much mercy anywhere in the universe.

Epilogue

The Crystal Chamber, high in Comyn Castle, was the most formal of all the meeting places for Comyn Council. An even blue light spilled through the walls; flashes of green, crimson, violet struck through, reflected from the prisms everywhere in the glass. It was like meeting at the heart of a rainbow, Regis thought, wondering if this was in honor of the Terran Legate. Certainly the Legate looked suitably impressed. Not many Terrans had ever been allowed to see the Crystal Chamber.

'*... in conclusion, my lords, I am prepared to explain to you what provisions have been made for enforcing the Compact on a planet‑wide basis," the Legate said, and Regis waited while the interpreter repeated his words hi casta for the benefit of the Comyn and assembled nobles. Regis, who understood Terran Standard and bad heard it the first time around, sat thinking about the young interpreter, Dan Law‑ton, the redheaded half‑Darkovan whom he had met at the spaceport.

Lawton could have been on the other side of the railing, listening to this speech, not interpreting it for the Terrans. Regis wondered if he regretted his choice. It was easy enough to guess: no choice ever went wholly unregretted. Regis was mostly thinking of his own.

There was still time. His grandfather bad made him promise three years. But he knew that for him, time had run out on his choices.

Dan Lawton was finishing up the Legate's speech.

". . . every individual landing at any Trade City, whether at Thendara, Port Chicago or Caer Donn, when Caer Donn can be returned to operation as a Trade City, will be required to sign a formal declaration that there is no contraband in his possession, or to leave all such weapons under bond hi the Terran Zone. Furthermore, all weapons imported

to this planet for legal use by Terrans shall be treated with a small and ineradicable mark of a radioactive substance, so that the whereabouts of such weapons can be traced and they can be recalled."

Regis gave a faint, wry smile. How quickly the Terrans had come around, when they discovered the Compact was not designed to eliminate Terran weapons but the great and dangerous Darkovan ones. They had had enough of Darkovan ones on the night when Caer Donn burned. Now they were all too eager to honor the Compact, hi return for a Darkovan pledge to continue to do so.

So Kadarin accomplished something. And for the Comyn. What irony!

A brief recess was called after the Legate's speech and Regis, going to stretch his legs hi the corridor, met Dan Law‑ton briefly face to face.

"I didn*t recognize you," the young Terran said. "I didn't know you'd taken a seat in Council, Lord Regis."

Regis said, "I'm anticipating the fact by about half an hour, actually.**

"This doesn't mean your grandfather is going to retire?"

"Not for a great many years, I hope."

"I heard a rumor‑" Lawton hesitated. 'Tm not sure it's proper to be talking like this outside of diplomatic channels . . ."

Regis laughed and said, "Let's say Tm not tied down to diplomatic channels for half an hour yet. One of the things I hope to see altered between Terran and Darkovan is this business of doing everything through diplomatic channels. It's your custom, not ours."

"I'm enough of a Darkovan to resent it sometimes. I heard a rumor that there would be war with Aldaran. Any truth to it?"

"None whatever, Tm glad to say. Beltran has enough trouble. The fire at Caer Donn destroyed nearly eighty years of loyalty to Aldaran among the mountain people‑and eighty years of good relations between Aldaran and the Terrans. The last thing he wants is to fight the Domains."

"Rumor for rumor," Lawton said. "The man Kadarin seems to have vanished into thin air. He'd been seen hi the Dry Towns, but he's gone again. We've had a price on his head since he quit Terran intelligence thirty years ago‑"

Regis blinked. He had seen Kadarin only once, but he would have sworn the man was no more than thirty.

"We're watching the ports, and if he tries to leave Darkover well take him. Personally I'd say good riddance. More likely he*ll hide out in the Hellers for the rest of his natural life. If there's anything natural about it, that is."

The recess was over and they began to return to the Crystal Chamber. Regis found himself face to face with Dyan Ardais. Dyan was dressed, not in his Domain colors, but in the drab black of ritual mourning.

"Lord Dyan‑no, Lord Ardais, may I express my condolences."

"They are wasted," Dyan said briefly. "My father has not been in his right senses for years before you were born, Regis. What mourning I made for him was so long ago I have even forgotten what grief I felt. He has been dead more than half of my life; the burial was unduly delayed, that was all." Briefly, grimly, he smiled.

"But formality for formality, Lord Regis. My congratulations." His eyes held a hint of bleak amusement. MI suspect those are wasted too. I know you well enough to know you have no particular delight in taking a seat in Council. But of course we are both too well trained in Comyn formalities to say so." He bowed to Regis and went into the Crystal Chamber.

Perhaps these formalities were a good thing, Regis thought. How could Dyan and he ever exchange a civfl word without them? He felt a great sadness, as if he had lost a friend without ever knowing him at all.

The honor guard, commanded today by Gabriel Lanart‑Hastur, was directing the reseating of the Comyn; as the doors were closed, the Regent called them all to order.

"The next business of this assembly," he said, "is to settle certain heirships within the Comyn. Lord Dyan Ardais, please come forward.**

Dyan, in his somber mourning, came and stood at the center of .the rainbow lights.

"On the death of your father, Kyrfl‑Valentine Ardais of Ardais, I call upon you, Dyan‑Gabriel Ardais, to relinquish the state of Regent‑heir to the Ardais Domain and assume that of Lord Ardais, with wardship and sovereignty over the Domain of Ardais and all those who owe them loyalty and

allegiance. Are you prepared to assume wardship over your people?"

"I am prepared.*"

"Do you solemnly declare that to your knowledge you are fit to assume this responsibility? Is there any man who will challenge your right to this solemn wardship of the people of your Domain, the people of all the Domains, the people of all Darkover?"

How many of them could truly declare themselves fit for mat? Regis wondered. Dyan gave the proper answer.

**I will abide the challenge."

Gabriel, as commander of the Honor Guard, strode to his side and drew Dyan's sword. He called in a loud voice, "Is there any to challenge the worth and rightful wardship of Dyan‑Gabriel, Lord of Ardais?"

There was a long silence. Hypocrisy, Regis thought Meaningless formality. That challenge was not answered twice in a score of years, and even then it had nothing to do with fitness but with disputed inheritance! How long had it been since anyone seriously answered that challenge?

"I challenge the wardship of Ardais," said a harsh and strident old voice from the ranks of the lesser peers. Dom Felix Syrtis rose and slowly made his way toward the center of the room. He took the sword from Gabriel's hand.

Dyan's calm pallor did not alter, but Regis saw that his breathing had quickened. Gabriel said steadily, "Upon what grounds, Dom Felix?"

Regis looked around quickly. As his sworn paxman and bodyguard, Danilo was seated just beside him. Danilo did not meet Regis' eyes, but Regis could see that his fists were clenched. This was what Danilo had feared, if it came to his father's knowledge.

"I challenge him as unfit," Dom Felix said, "on the grounds that he contrived unjustly the disgrace and dishonor of my son, while my son was a cadet in the Castle Guard. I declare blood‑feud and call formal challenge upon him."

Everyone sat silent and stunned. Regis picked up Gabriel tanart‑Hastur's scornful thought, unguarded, that if Dyan had to fight a duel over every episode of that sort he'd be here fighting until the sun came up tomorrow, lucky for him he was the best swordsman in the Domains. But aloud Gabriel only said, "You have heard the challenge, Dyan Ardais,

and you must accept it or refuse. Do you wish to consult with anyone before making your decision?"

"I refuse the challenge," Dyan said steadily.

Unprecedented as the challenge itself had been, the refusal was even more unprecedented. Hastur leaned forward and said, "You must state your grounds for refusing a formal challenge, Lord Dyan."

"I do so," Dyan said, "on the grounds that the charge is justified."

An audible gasp went around the room. A Comyn lord did not admit that sort of thing! Everyone in that room, Regis believed, must know the charge was justified. But everyone also knew that Dyan's next act was to accept the challenge, quickly kill the old man and go on from there.

Dyan had paused only briefly. "The charge is just," he repeated, "and there is no honor to be gamed from the legal murder of an old man. And murder it would be. Whether his cause is just or unjust, a man of Dom Felix* years would have no equitable chance to prove it against my swordsmanship. And finally I state that it is not for him to challenge me. The son on whose behalf he makes this challenge is a man, not a minor child, and it is he, not his father, who should rightly challenge me hi this cause. Does he stand ready to do it?** And he swung around to face Danilo where he sat beside Regis.

Regis heard himself gasp aloud.

Gabriel, too, looked shaken. But, as protocol demanded, he had to ask:

"Dom Danilo Syrtis. Do you stand ready to challenge Lord Dyan Ardais in this cause?"

Dom Felix said harshly, **He does or I will disown him!"

Gabriel rebuked gently, "Your son is a man, Dom Felix, not a chad in your keeping. He must answer for himself."

Danilo stepped into the center of the room. He said, "I am sworn paxman to Lord Regis Hastur. My Lord, have I your leave to make the challenge?" He was as white as a sheet Regis thought desperately that the damned fool was no match for Dyan. He couldnt just sit there and watch Dyan murder him to settle this grudge once and for all.

All his love for Danilo rebelled against this, but before his friend's leveled eyes he knew he had no choice. He could not protect Dani. He said, "You have my leave to do whatever honor demands of you, kinsman. But there is no compulsion

to do so. You are sworn to my service and by law that service takes precedence, so you have also my leave to refuse the challenge with no stain upon your honor."

Regis was giving Dani an honorable escape if he wanted it He could not, by Comyn immunity, fight Dyan in his place. But he could do mis much.

Danflo made Regis a formal bow. He avoided his eyes. He went directly to Dyan, faced him and said, HI call challenge upon you, Lord Dyan."

Dyan drew a deep breath. He was as pale as Danflo himself. He said, **I accept the challenge. But by law, a challenge of this nature may be resolved, at the option of the one challenged, by the offer of honorable amends. Is that not so, my lord Hastur?"

Regis could feel his grandfather's confusion like his own, as the old Regent said slowly, 'The law does indeed give you this option, Lord Dyan."

Regis, watching him closely, could see the almost‑involuntary motion of Dyan's band toward the hilt of his sword. This was the way Dyan had always settled all challenges before. But he steadied his hands, clasping them quietly before him. Regis could feel, like a bitter pain, Dyan's grief and humiliation, but the older man said, in a harsh, steady voice, Then, Danflo‑Felix Syrtis, I offer you here before my peers and my kinsmen a public apology for the wrong done you, in that I did unjustly and wrongfully contrive your disgrace, by provoking you willfulry Into a breach of cadet rules and by a misuse of laran; and I offer you any honorable amends in my power. Win this settle the challenge and the blood‑feud, sir?"

Danilo stood as if turned to stone. His face looked completely stunned.

Why did Dyan do It? Regis wondered. Dyan could have killed him now with impunity, legally, and the matter could never be raised against him againl

And suddenly, whether or not he received the answer directly from Dyan, or his own intuition, he knew: they had all had a lesson in what could happen when Comyn misused their powers. There was disaffection among the subjects and even among themselves, hi their own ranks, their own sons turned against them. It was not only to their subjects that they must restore public trust in thfc integrity of the Comyn. If their own kinsmen lost faith in them they had lost all. And

then, as for an instant Dyan looked directly at him, Regis knew the rest, right from Dyan's mind: I have no son. I thought it did not matter, then, whether I passed on an unsullied name. My father did not care what his son thought of him and 1 had no son to care.

Danilo was still standing motionless and Regis could feel his thoughts, too, troubled, uncertain: I have wanted for so long to kill him. It would be worth dying. But I am sworn to Regis Hastur, and sworn through him to the good of the Comyn. Dani drew a long breath and wet his lips before he could speak. Then he said, "I accept your honorable amends, Lord Dyan. And for myself and my house, I declare no feud remains and the challenge withdrawn‑" Quickly he corrected himself: "The challenge settled."

Dyan's pallor was gradually replaced by a deep, crimson flush. He spoke almost breathlessly. "What amends will you ask, sir? Is it necessary to explain here, before all men, the nature of the injustice and the apology? It is your right..."

Regis thought that Dani could make him crawl. He could have his revenge, after all.

Danilo said quietly, "It is not necessary, Lord Ardais. I have accepted your apology; I leave the amends to your honor."

He turned quietly and returned to his place beside Regis. His hands were shaking. More advantages to the custom of formality, Regis thought wryly. Everyone knew, or guessed, and most of them probably guessed wrong. But now it need never be spoken.

Hastur spoke the formal words which confirmed Dyan's legal status as Lord Ardais and warder of the Ardais Domain. He added: "It is required, Lord Ardais, that you designate an heir. Have you a son?"

Regis could feel, through the very air, his grandfather's regret at the inflexibility of this ritual, which must only inflict more pain on Dyan. Dyan's grief and pain, too, was a knife‑edge to everyone there with laran. He said harshly, "The only son of my body, my legitimate heir, was killed four years ago in a rockslide at Nevarsin."

"By the laws of the Comyn," Hastur instructed him needlessly, "You must then name your choice of near kinsmen as heir‑designate. If you later father a son, that choice may be amended,"

Regis was remembering then‑ long talk hi the tavern and

Dyan's flippancy about his lack of an heir. He was not flippant now. His face had paled to its former impassivity. He said, "My nearest kinsman sits among the Terrans. I must first ask if he is prepared to renounce that allegiance. Daniel Lawton, you are the only son of the eldest of my father's nedesto daughters, Rayna di Asturien, who married the Ter‑ran David Daniel Lawton. Are you prepared to renounce your Empire citizenship and swear allegiance to Comyn?"

Dan Lawton blinked in amazement. He did not answer immediately, but Regis sensed‑and knew, when he spoke a minute later‑that the hesitation had been only a form of courtesy. "No, Lord Ardais,M he said in casta, "I have given my loyalty and will not now renounce it. Nor would you wish it so; the man who is false to his first allegiance will be false to his second."

Dyan bowed and said, with a note of respect, **I honor your choice, kinsman. I ask the Council to bear witness that my nearest kinsman has renounced all claim upon me and mine."

There was a brief murmur of assent.

"Then I turn to my privileged choice," Dyan said. His voice was hard and unyielding. "Second among my near kinsmen was another nedestro daughter of my father; her son has been confirmed by the Keeper at Neskaya to be one who holds the Adrais gift. His mother was Melora Castamir and his father Felix‑Rafael Syrtis, who is of Alton blood. Danilo‑Felix Syrtis," Dyan said, "upon the grounds of Comyn blood and Ardais gift, I call upon you to swear allegiance to Comyn as heir to the Ardais Domain; and I am prepared to defend my choice against any man who cares to challenge me.*' His eyes moved defiantly against them all.

It was like a thunderclap. So these were Dyan's honorable amends! Regis could not tell whether the thought was his own or Danilo's, as Danilo, dazed, moved toward Dyan.

Regis remembered how he'd thought Dani should have a seat on Comyn Council! But like this? Did Kennard engineer this?

Dyan said formally, *'Do you accept the claim, Danilo?"

Danilo was shaking, though he tried to control his voice. "It is ... my duty to accept it, Lord Ardais."

"Then kneel, Danilo, and answer me. Will you swear allegiance to Comyn and this Council, and pledge your life to serve it? Will you swear to defend the honor of Comyn in all

just causes, and to amend all evil ones?" Dyan's speaking voice was rich, strong and musical, but now he hesitated, his voice breaking. "Will you grant to me ... a son's duty ... until such time as a son of my body may replace you?"

Regis thought, suddenly wrung by Dyan's torment, who has taken revenge on whom? He could see that Danilo was crying silently as Dyan's wavering voice went out: "Will you swear to be a ... a loyal son to me, until such time as I yield my Domain through age, unfitness or infirmity, and then serve as my regent under this Council?"

Dani was silent for a moment and Regis, close in rapport with him, knew he was trying to steady his voice. At last, shaking, his voice almost inaudible, he whispered, "I will swear it."

Dyan bent and raised him to his feet. He said steadily, "Bear witness that this is my nedestro heir; that none shall take precedence from him; and that this claim"‑his voice broke again‑"may never be renounced by me nor hi my name by any of my descendants."

Briefly, and with extreme formality, he embraced him. He said quietly, but Regis heard, "You may return for the time to your sworn service, my son. Only in my absence or illness need you take a place among the Ardais. You must attend this Council and all its affairs must be known to you, however, since you may need to assume my place unexpectedly."

As if he were walking in his sleep, Danilo returned to his place beside Regis. Bearing himself with steady pride, he slid into the seat beside him. Then he broke and laid his head on the table before them, his head in his arms, crying. Regis reached his hand to Danilo, clasped his arm above the elbow, but he did not speak or reach out with his thoughts. Some things were too painful even for a sworn brother's touch. He did think* with a curious pain, that Dyan had made them equals, Dani was heir to a Domain; he need be no man's paxman nor vassal, nor seek Regis' protection now. And no one could ever again speak of disgrace or dishonor.

He knew he should rejoice for Danilo, he did rejoice for him. But his friend was no longer dependent on him and he felt unsure and strange.

"Regis‑Rafael Hastur, Regent‑heir of Hastur," Danvan Hastur said. In the shock of Dyan's act, Regis had wholly forgotten that he, too, was to speak before the Council. Danilo lifted his head, nudged him gently and whispered, in a

voice that could be heard two feet away, "That's you, blockhead 1"

For a moment Regis thought he would break into hysterical giggles at this reminder. Lord of Light, he could not! Not at a formal ceremony! He bit his lip hard and would not meet Danilo's eyes, but as he rose and went forward he was no longer worried about what their relationship might become after this. He had been a fool to worry at all.

"Regis‑Rafael," his grandfather said, "vows were made in your name when you were six months old, as heir‑designate of Hastur. Now that you have reached the age of manhood, it is for you to affirm them or reject them, hi full knowledge of what they entail. You have been affirmed by the Keeper of Neskaya Tower as possessing full laran, and you are therefore capable of receiving the Hastur gift at the proper time, Have you an heir?" He hesitated, then said kindly, "The law provides that until your twenty‑fourth year you need not repeat formal vows of allegiance nor name an heir‑designate. And you cannot be legally compelled to marry until that time.'*

He said quietly, "I have a designated heir." He beckoned to Gabriel Lanart‑Hastur, who stepped into the hallway, taking from a nurse's arms the small plump body of Mikhail. Gabriel carried him to Regis, and Regis set the child down in the center of the rainbow lights. He said, "Bear witness that this is my nedestro heir, a child of Hastur blood, known to me. He is the son of my sister Javanne Hastur, who is the daughter of my mother and of my father, and of her lawful consort di catenas, Gabriel Lanart‑Hastur. I have given him the name of Danilo Lanart Hastur. Because of his tender years, it is not yet lawful to ask him for any formal oath. I will ask bun only, as it is my duty to do: Danilo Lanart Hastur, will you be a good son to me?"

The child had been carefully coached for the ceremony but for a moment he did not answer and Regis wondered if he had forgotten. Then he smiled and said, "Yes, I promise."

Regis lifted him and kissed his chubby cheek; the little boy flung his arms around Regis' neck and kissed him heartily. Regis could not help smiling as he handed him back to his father, saying quietly, "Gabriel, will you pledge to foster and rear him as my son and not your own?"

Gabriel's face was solemn. He said, "I swear it on my life and my honor, kinsman."

"Then take him, and rear him as befits the heir to Hastur, and the Gods deal with you as you with my son."

He watched Gabriel carry the child away, thinking soberly that his own life would have been happier if his grandfather had given him entirely up to Kennard to foster, or to some other kinsman with sons and daughters, Regis vowed not to make that mistake with Mikhail.

And yet he knew his grandfather's distant affection, and the harsh discipline at Nevarsin, too, had contributed to what he had become. Kennard was fond of saying, "The world will go as it will, not as you or I would have it." And for aH Regis' struggles to escape from the road laid out before birth for the Hastur heir, it had brought him here, at the appointed time. He turned to the Regent, thinking with pain that he did not have to do this. He was still free. He had promised three years. But after this he would never again be wholly free.

He met Danilo's eyes, felt that somehow their steady, affectionate gaze gave him strength.

He said, "I am ready to repeat my oath, Lord Hastur." Hastur's old face was drawn, tense with emotion. Regis felt his thoughts, unbarriered, but Hastur said, with the control of fifty years in public life, "You have arrived at years of manhood; if it is your free choice, none can deny you that right." "It is my free choice," Regis said. Not his wish. But his will, his choice. His fate. The old Regent left his place, then, came to the center of the prismed lights. "Kneel, then Regis‑Rafael." Regis knelt. He knew he was shaking. "Regis‑Rafael Hastur, will you swear allegiance to Comyn and this Council, pledge your life to serve it? Will you .. .** He went on. Regis heard the words through a wavering mist of pain: never to be free. Never to look at the great ships bound outward to the stars and know that one day he would follow them to those distant worlds. Never to dream again. . . .

",.. pledge yourself to be a loyal son to me until I yield my place through age, unfitness or infirmity, and then to serve as Regent‑heir subject to the will of this Council?"

Regis thought, for a moment, that he would break into

weeping as Danilo had done. He waited, summoning all his

control, until he could lift his head and say, in a clear,

ringing voice, "I swear it on my life and honor."

The old man bent, raised Regis, clasped him in his arms

and kissed him on either cheek. His hands were trembling with emotion, his eyes filled with tears that ran, unheeded, down his face. And Regis knew that for the first time in his life, his grandfather saw him, him alone. No ghost, no shadow of his dead son, stood between them. Not Rafael. Regis, himself.

He felt suddenly, immensely lonely. He wished this council were over. He walked back to his seat. Danilo respected his silence and did not speak or look at him. But he knew Danilo was there and it warmed, a little, the cold shaking loneliness inside him.

Hastur had mastered his emotion. He said, "Kennard, Lord Alton."

Kennard still limped heavily, and he looked weary and worn, but Regis was glad to see him on his feet again. He said, "My lords, I bring you news from Arilinn. It has been determined there that the Sharra matrix can neither be monitored nor destroyed at present. Until such time as a means of completely inactivating it can be devised, it has been decided to send it offworld, where it cannot fall into the wrong hands and cannot raise again its own specific dangers."

Dyan said, "Isn't that dangerous, too, Kennard? If the power of Sharra is raised elsewhere‑"

"After long discussion, we have determined that this is the safest course. It is our opinion that there are no telepaths anywhere in the Empire who are capable of using it. And at interstellar distances, it cannot draw upon the activated spots near Aldaran, which is always a risk while it remains on Darkover. Even the forge‑folk could not hold it inactive now. Offworld, it will probably be dormant until a means of destroying it can be devised."

"It's a risk," Dyan said.

"Everything is a risk, while anything of such power remains active in the universe anywhere," Kennard said. "We can only do the best we can with the tools and techniques we have."

Hastur said, "You are going to take it offworld yourself, then? What of your son? He was at least partly responsible for its use‑"

"No," said Danilo suddenly, and Regis realized that Danilo now had as much right as anyone there to speak in Council, "he refused to have any part in its misuse, and endured torture to try to prevent it!"

"And," Kennard said, "he risked his life and came near to losing it, to bring it to Arilinn and break the circle of destruction. If he and his wife had not risked their lives‑and if the girl had not sacrificed her own‑Sharra would still be raging in the hills and none of us would sit here peacefully deciding who is to sit in Council after us!" Suddenly the Alton rage flared out, lashing them all. "Do you know the price he paid for you Comyn, who had despised him and treated him with contempt, and not one of you, not a damned one of you, have so much as asked whether he will live or die?"

Regis felt flayed raw by Kennard's pain. He was sent to Neskaya, but he knew he should somehow have contrived to send a message.

Kennard said harshly, "I came to ask leave to take him to Terra, where he may regain his health, and perhaps save his reason."

"Kennard, by the laws of the Comyn, you and your heir may not both go offworld at once."

Kennard looked at Hastur in open contempt and said, "The laws of the Comyn be damnedl What have I gained for keeping them, what have my ten years in Council gained me? Try to stop me, damn you. I have another son, but I'm not going through all that rigamarole again. You accepted Lew, and look what it's done for him!" Without the slightest vestige of formal leave‑taking, he turned his back on them all and strode out of the Crystal Chamber.

Regis got hurriedly to his feet and went after him; he knew Danilo followed noiselessly at his heels. He caught up with Kennard in the corridor. Kennard whirled, still hostile, and said, "What the hell‑"

"Uncle, what of Lew? How is he? I have been in Neskaya, I could not‑don't damn me with them, Uncle,"

"How would you expect him to be?" Kennard demanded, still truculent, then his face softened. "Not very well, Regis. You haven't seen him since we brought him from Arilum?" "I didn't know he was well enough to travel." "He isn't. We brought him in a Terran plane from Arilinn. Maybe they can save his hand. It's still not certain." "You're going to Terra?"

"Yes, we leave within the hour. I haven't time to argue with your damned Council and I won't have Lew badgered." Angry as he sounded, Regis knew it was despair, not hostility, behind Kennard's harsh voice. He tried to barricade

himself against the despairing grief. At Nesfcaya he had been taught the basic techniques of closing out the worst of it; he no longer felt wholly naked, wholly stripped. He could face Dyan now, and even with Danilo they need not lower their barriers unless they both wished it

"Uncle, Lew and I have been friends since I was only a little boy. I‑I would like to see him to say farewell."

Kennard regarded him with hostility for some seconds, at last saying, "Come along, then. But don't blame me if he won't speak to you." His voice was not steady either.

Regis could not help recalling the last time he had stood here in the great hall of the Alton rooms, before Kennard and his grandfather. And the time before that. Lew was sitting on a bench before the fireplace. Exactly where he was sitting that night when Regis appealed to him to waken his laran.

Kennard asked gently, "Lew, will you speak to Regis? He came to bid you farewell."

Lew's barriers were down and Regis felt the naked surge of pain, rejection: / don't want anyone, I don't want anyone to see me now. It was like a blow, sending Regis reeling. But he braced himself against it, saying very softly, "Bredu‑"

Lew turned and Regis shrank, almost with horror, from the first sight of that hideously altered face. Lew had aged twenty years in the few short weeks since they had parted. His face was a terrible network of healed and half‑healed scars. Pain had furrowed deep lines there, and the expression in bis eyes was of someone who has looked on horrors past endurance. One hand was bundled in clumsy bandages and braced in a sling. He tried to smile but it was only a grimace.

"Sorry. I keep forgetting, I'm a sight to frighten children into fits."

Regis said, "But Fm not a child, Lew." He managed to block out the other man's pain and misery and said as calmly as he could manage, "I suppose the worst of the scars will heal."

Lew shrugged, as if that was a matter of deadly indifference. Regis still looked uneasily at him; now that they were together he was uncertain why he had come. Lew had gone dead to all human contact and wanted it that way. Any closer contact between them, any attempt to reach him with laran, to revive their old closeness, would simply breach that merciful numbness and revive Lew's active suffering. The

quicker he said goodbye and went away again, the better it would be.

He made a formal bow, resolving to keep it that way, and said, "A good journey, then, cousin, and a safe return." He started to move backward. He bumped into Danflo in his retreat, and Danilo's hand closed over his wrist, the touch opening a blaze of rapport between them. As clearly as if Danilo had spoken aloud, Regis felt the intense surge of his distress:

No, Regist Don't shut it aU out, don't withdraw from himt Can't you see he's dying inside there, locked away from everyone he loves? He's got to know that you know what he's suffering, that you don't shrink from him! I can't reach him, but you can because you've loved him, and you must, before he slams down the last barrier and locks everyone out forever. Ifs his reason at stake, maybe his life!

Regis recofled. Then, torn, agonized, he realized that this, too, was the burden of his heritage: to accept that nothing, nothing in the human mind, was too fearful to face, that what one person could suffer, another could share. He had known that when he was only a chad, before his laran was fully awake. He hadn't been afraid then, or ashamed, because he wasn't thinking of himself then at all, but only of Lew, because he was afraid and in pain.

He let go of Danilo's hand and took a step toward Lew. One day‑it flashed through his mind at random and, it seemed, irrelevantly‑as the telepathic men of his caste had always done, he would go down, with the woman bearing his child, into the depths of agony and the edge of his death, and he would be able, for love, to face it. And for love he could face this, too. He went to Lew. Lew had lowered his head again. Regis said, "Bredu," and stood on tiptoe, embracing his kinsman, and deliberately laying himself open to all of Lew's torment, taking the full shock of rapport between them.

Grief. Bereavement. Guilt. The shock of loss, of mutilation. The memory of torture and terror. And above all, guilt, terrible guilt even at being alive, alive when those he had loved were dead....

For a moment Lew fought to shut away Regis' awareness, to block him out, too. Then he drew a long, shaking breath, raised his uninjured arm and pressed Regis close.

.,. you remember now. I know, I know, you love me, and you have never betrayed that love ...

"Goodbye, bredu," he said, in a sharp aching voice which somehow hurt Regis far less than the calm controlled formality, and kissed Regis on the cheek. "If the Gods will, we shall meg! again. And if not, may they be with you always." He let Regis go, and Regis knew he could not heal him, nor help him much, not now. No one could. But perhaps, Regis thought, perhaps, he had kept a crack open, just enough to let Lew remember that beside grief and guilt and loss and pain, there was love in the world, too.

And then, out of his own forfeited dreams and hope, out of the renunciation he had made, still raw in his mind, he offered the only comfort he could, laying it like a gift before his friend:

"But you have another world, Lew. And you are free to see the stars."

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