The Alton Gift

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “Whatever happens,” he murmured, his voice trembling with effort, “I’ll take care of you. We’ll always be together.”

  Only when the words were spoken and could not be called back did Domenic realize that, as Heir to Hastur and the next Regent of the Comyn, he had no right to make such a promise. Not to Alanna, not to any woman of his own choosing. Moreover, they were blood kin, but what of that? Not so long ago cousins were permitted, even encouraged, to marry.

  There were a hundred reasons why he must not think of Alanna as a lover. In that moment, with the weight of her head resting against him, his body trembling with fire and thirst and things he could not name but that only she could fulfill, he did not care.

  5

  As spring swung into early summer, the weather turned mild, with only a few thin clouds. Danilo Syrtis-Ardais began walking the streets of Thendara. In his late fifties, he still retained the slender, graceful form of a much younger man. His hair, worn longer than was fashionable, was still dark, but shadows haunted his eyes, and the creases around his mouth betokened his deep suffering. He had been handsome as a youth, pretty enough to attract unwanted attention, but time and grief had honed away that beauty, leaving his features stark but no less compelling.

  The lung-fever the previous winter had left him debilitated, but now, with the coming of warmer days and burgeoning green, a new vigor rose in him. Wrapped in his fur-lined cloak, he paced the marketplaces, inhaling the awakening vitality of the city. Turning his face to the brightening sky, he sensed winter loosening its grip from his own heart.

  When Regis died, he could not imagine how he could go on. Now, as that pain began to subside, he discovered new strength.

  Once we have shared love with another human being, he is part of us forever. Danilo could not remember who had said those words, but with each passing day, he felt their truth. It would be years yet before the aching wound within him ceased to haunt his dreams, but that time would come. Perhaps a man never recovered from such a loss; perhaps he should not. But life continued, and so would he.

  Danilo paused at an open-air cookshop, where a woman, her face reddened from bending over a pot of hot water, scooped out steamed dumplings. The next food stall offered leaf-wrapped sausages, baked apples, and skewers of tiny golden onions. A half-grown boy in tattered clothing waited at the back of the shop, and Danilo watched as the woman filled his clay bowl with savory morsels.

  He knew that secret meetings were being held within the Castle, schemes and shifts of power. As yet he had no place there. Here, in the marketplaces, the craft districts, the watering fountains and stable yards, along the poorer residential streets, he would find his true direction. He had already begun reestablishing the network of informants he had created during his years as paxman to Regis—innkeepers, stablemen, Travelers, a smith or two, people who might see and hear things hidden from the Comyn.

  All was not peaceful on the street. Twice now Danilo had come upon groups of rough-garbed men lounging on the corners, who regarded him with frank suspicion. They muttered words like, “Comyn spy!” followed by a curse, before they shuffled away.

  He spotted Domenic at the edge of the market square, shadowed by two uniformed Castle Guards. A hooded cloak covered the boy’s hair, but there was no mistaking his posture, both wary and excited, or those eyes of almost luminous gold-flecked gray. Something in Domenic’s way of moving reminded Danilo of Regis as a young man, the way he held himself a little apart, diffident and intense.

  Danilo had had little contact with Domenic over the last few years, but the boy seemed to have avoided the worst consequences of growing up with two charismatic parents; he was neither a bully nor a self-indulgent child. He’d had an independent spirit as an adolescent. Then he’d studied in a Tower for some three years. After such early freedom, it could not be easy to accept the presence of a protective escort.

  Domenic smiled as Danilo approached and bade him good morning. The Guards bowed to him and retreated a step or two, remaining watchful.

  “It’s a fine day to be abroad,” Danilo said.

  “Yes!” Domenic agreed. “I thought winter would never end.”

  Some impulse led Danilo to say, “Shall we walk together and pretend for a moment that we are just two ordinary men?”

  “If that were only possible!” Domenic rolled his eyes in the direction of the Guards.

  “Some things never change.” Danilo strolled toward the leatherworkers’ stalls, leaving the Guards to follow. “In his day, Regis longed to be accountable only to his own conscience and not the Comyn of all Seven Domains. He dreamed of one day traveling to the stars. Did he ever tell you that?”

  Domenic shook his head, his expression astonished. “Great-Uncle Regis? No, he never said.”

  “Of course, as Heir to Hastur, Regis never had a chance to leave Darkover,” Danilo went on. Anguish surged up in him, for his own loss, for his beloved’s sacrifice. What choice had any of them had? “He often said that he did not choose his parentage wisely.”

  “Mother repeats that saying to me.” Domenic grimaced. “Alas, I am guilty of the same lapse in judgment.”

  “You would exchange your mother and father for some other parents?” Remembering Danvan Hastur, that irascible old tyrant who had been grandfather to Regis, Danilo raised one eyebrow. “Whose?”

  “Anyone’s! No one’s! I don’t know!” Domenic picked up a tooled leather dagger sheath and, seeing the vendor come toward them, hastily replaced it on the table and kept walking. “Don’t misunderstand me, I wouldn’t trade them for the world. I love my parents very much, and they love me. They’re wonderful people. It’s just that…the things they have done, the choices they have made, are not mine.”

  I can’t be them.

  “I doubt they expect you to,” Danilo said mildly, responding to Domenic’s telepathic thought.

  “In another tenday,” Domenic rushed on, “the Council season will begin. Francisco Ridenow will arrive. He’s even bringing his daughter! There’s so much I have to learn yet. Yet here I am, walking the streets—”

  “—getting to know the city that you will rule some day, the people, the rhythms and temper of the street—”

  “—wasting an entire morning.”

  Danilo glanced at the younger man, wondering whether the time and effort of finding one’s own path in life were ever wasted. Some things could not be rushed. This boy clearly needed someone besides his parents to talk to.

  “Have you broken your fast?” Danilo asked.

  Domenic shook his head in a way that indicated he had no interest in food. Danilo frowned, for loss of appetite was a sign of threshold sickness.

  “Let us continue this conversation in my chamber,” Danilo suggested, “but without your escort. You may be able to go without breakfast, but an old man like me cannot.”

  With a nod that might have been either shyness or gratitude, Domenic fell into step beside him. They slipped in through one of the Castle’s side gates, where Domenic dismissed the Guards, and made their way up a back staircase.

  Although he was no longer Warden, Danilo still retained a suite of rooms in the Ardais section of the Castle. The sitting room, with its wide, unadorned hearth, contained several chairs upholstered in worn wine-dark leather with matching footstools, a sideboard, and low serving table. The furniture had already been old when Dyan Ardais gave it to Danilo.

  Once they had settled in Danilo’s chambers, his servant brought in a pot of herbal tisane.

  “I’m supposed to drink this revolting brew twice a day for my lungs,” Danilo said. “Would you like some? I can as easily order jaco or spiced cider if you’d prefer.” He took his usual seat by the fireside and gestured for Domenic to join him.

  “Jaco, please.”

  “Smart choice.” Danilo sipped the bitter tisane. Grimacing, he added a second spoonful of honey.

  “You were the closest friend of Great-Uncle Regis,” Domenic blurted out. “If he were still alive,
I’d go to him, but he isn’t. But if he were still Regent, not my father, everything would be different. As it is…I need to talk to someone.”

  Danilo felt a rush of compassion for the younger man, for too many times in his own early life, he had also needed to talk to someone.

  The servant returned with a loaf of nut bread baked in the country style and still hot from the Castle ovens, a covered bowl of fresh curds and one of cherry jam, and a pottery carafe of unsweetened jaco. Danilo smeared a slice of bread with cheese and handed it to Domenic.

  “First eat this, and then we’ll discuss things.”

  Domenic’s brows tensed, verging on a frown, but he took a tentative bite. Then, as if a floodgate of hunger had broken loose, he devoured the rest of the loaf, three cups of jaco, the cheese, and most of the jam. Color seeped back into his face. He let out a deep sigh.

  “Thank you.” Visibly gathering himself, Domenic said, “I wanted to ask you how I should go about choosing a paxman.”

  “Do you need one?”

  The younger man sat back, looking surprised and a little scandalized. “I’m the heir presumptive to Hastur and the Regency. I can’t perform my duties without a paxman!”

  “On the contrary,” Danilo said, “that is exactly the right thing for you to do. It would certainly be preferable to hire a secretary and let the City Guards continue to watch your back, rather than bind yourself to the wrong man.”

  “Bind myself?” Domenic frowned. “I thought it was the other way around.”

  Danilo leaned forward. The leather of the chair creaked under his weight. “Why exactly do you need a paxman? What would he do for you that some hireling—or you yourself—could not do just as well?”

  Domenic’s eyes, gray flecked with gold, narrowed with understanding; the lad was sharp. “Are you saying it’s not necessary? A relic from the time when every Comyn lord had good reason to fear a dagger in the back? What about you and Great-Uncle Regis? Didn’t you protect and advise him?”

  I did, Danilo thought, all that and more, but none of it from duty.

  Aloud, Danilo murmured, “It was a gift Regis gave to me, not the other way around. We didn’t choose to be lord and paxman. Fate and our hearts made us bredin,” he used the inflection that meant an even deeper intimacy than sworn brothers, “and the rest was a matter of tradition. You can’t force that deep bond, any more than you can choose the form of your laran. If you want my advice, you will wait for the right person to appear—if he ever does—and not fret about it. There are plenty of others who can perform the necessary duties, and just as capably.”

  Domenic sagged in the chair. “It’s all so complicated. I thought you could tell me what to look for in a paxman because you’d been one yourself. You know—the right skills, the right temperament. But that isn’t what having a paxman—or being one—means. It’s about love and loyalty and honor, isn’t it?”

  Danilo heard the hunger in the boy’s voice, the passion and loneliness. Some chord deep within him responded. “We are not a society of impersonal laws, like the Terranan. It is those very things—love and loyalty and honor—that link the Domains together. When we go astray, these principles call us back to ourselves.”

  Domenic nodded. “I’ve been thinking I need a paxman to give me confidence.”

  “No one can give you that. You must find it inside yourself.”

  “I suppose. But my parents expect so much of me!”

  “Do they expect any more of you than they do of themselves?”

  “Well,” Domenic said wryly, “my mother does accomplish more than any five normal people.”

  “That is not so bad,” Danilo said. “Perhaps work is what she needs, a way she can use her knowledge and experience. Domna Marguerida is a highly competent woman—”

  “Don’t I know that!” Domenic burst out, and they both chuckled.

  “What would you rather have her do?” Danilo asked. “Fret herself into hysterics, with nothing more useful to do than counting the holes in the linens? Or carry forth the vision she shares with Mikhail, helping to shape the future of Darkover?”

  “Why does she have to shape me along with it? I never appreciated the custom of fostering out children until now. I always thought Uncle Piedro and Aunt Ariel were shirking their duty in sending Alanna to us. Now, I almost wish I’d gone to live with them in exchange! Why is it so much easier to talk to anyone but my own parents? I don’t suppose you could adopt me?”

  Danilo laughed. “I hardly think so. You’re what, twenty? By all our traditions, you’re no longer a child. A generation ago, you would have a wife and heir by now, and you’d be sitting in the Cortes or managing the family estate.”

  “These times are different,” Domenic said. “There’s so much I have to learn first, not the least of which is how to survive the political intrigue of the Council. I want to find my own way! I don’t want to be like one of those string-puppets down at the marketplace.”

  “Neither did Regis.” Danilo said quietly.

  He remembered all too well that Regis had been under intense pressure to accept his responsibilities to Council and Domain. They both understood that he was expected to marry and father sons, to be everything his formidable grandfather demanded.

  “Yet,” Danilo said aloud, “in the end, Regis made up his own mind. He accepted his heritage and obligations freely, not because Lord Danvan expected it of him. You’ve probably heard stories of what Regis did then—leading the expedition to find a cure for trailmen’s fever, using the Sword of Aldones to vanquish Sharra, standing up to the World Wreckers. None of these were Lord Danvan’s ideas, and none of them had ever been done before. Regis made the position of Regent his own, with his own vision, his own talents. You will, too—”

  Danilo broke off, his telepathic senses alert. There was another person nearby.

  Domenic launched himself from his chair, crossed to the door in two strides, and jerked it open, revealing a beautiful and disconsolate young woman. Danilo recognized Marguerida’s fosterling, though he had seen very little of her in the past years. She wore a mismatched orange skirt and lace-trimmed pink velvet jacket, as if she had thrown on the nearest garments to hand.

  “Alanna!” Domenic cried.

  With a cry, the girl threw herself into Domenic’s arms. Danilo said, “I think you’d better bring her inside.”

  Within a short time, Alanna was seated in one of the leather armchairs, and a second breakfast, with an extra carafe of jaco, had been sent for. Domenic perched beside her on a footstool, chafing her hands between his. She looked pale except for twin spots of hectic color on her cheeks. Her hair curled in damp, unruly tendrils about her face. She had not yet stopped trembling.

  “I know it was wrong to follow you,” she said, between hiccoughs. “I couldn’t help myself.”

  The girl’s emotions, like an invisible turbulence, raked Danilo’s nerves. Their gazes locked for a heartbeat as his mind touched hers. In that moment, Danilo saw her not as a gently reared damisela but as a creature of ice-pale fire. Strands of light, like colorless flames, flowed from her head and hands. She vibrated with their surging currents, wrapped in a confusion of light and motion—

  With a sob, Alanna buried her face in her hands. “Whatever he’s doing, make it stop!”

  “Dom Danilo has done nothing to you, sweetheart—” Domenic said.

  “He’s in my mind, I tell you! He’s putting things there!”

  The girl swayed in her chair. Danilo caught her in his arms before she fell over. Her hands brushed his, her skin chill and damp. The physical contact intensified the telepathic rapport.

  He stood in the middle of a whirlwind, not of ordinary air, but of light and energy. Images overlapped, like reflections from a ripple-touched pool.

  …he saw himself, holding an unconscious girl in his arms; he saw Domenic do the same…

  …he saw the room empty; he saw himself staring into a cold hearth, a husk of grief, holding a dagger to his chest�
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  …he saw Lew Alton burst into the room, the fires of Sharra burning behind his eyes…

  With a soft cry, Alanna sagged in his arms, and the visions disappeared, leaving only a deep shaking in the marrow of his bones. With Domenic’s help, he eased the girl back into the chair.

  A tap on the door announced the arrival of more food. Alanna stirred at the entrance of the servants, and she devoured three fruit-laced spiral buns as if she hadn’t eaten in a tenday.

  “Zandru’s Seven Frozen Hells, Alanna, what was that?” Domenic asked, his expression one of astonishment.

  “You saw it, too?” Alanna whimpered.

  “I think we both did, you were sending telepathic images so strongly,” Domenic said.

  Alanna looked as if she were about to burst into tears. “What is wrong with me? Am I going mad?”

  “Hardly that,” Danilo said, trying to interject a note of rational calm into the conversation, “although it can seem so if you don’t understand what’s happening to you. How long you have had these visions?”

  Alanna sniffed and rubbed her nose with one delicate hand. “Visions? They seem more like streams in a river. Each one takes me to a slightly different time or place. They started around the time of Grandmother Javanne’s funeral.”

  She turned tear-wet eyes toward Domenic. “What is happening to me?”

  The boy took her into his arms in a way no man but her promised husband should do. “It’s all right, my darling.”

  “No,” Alanna wailed, stomping one foot. “It’s not all right! It’s horrible and I want it to stop!”

  “It’s most certainly laran,” Danilo said, although he had never heard of such a Gift. The Aldarans were said to possess precognition, but as far as he knew, Alanna had no Aldaran blood. Moreover, the girl was well past the age at which psychic talents usually manifested themselves.

  “Auntie Liriel tested me when I turned twelve and said I had plenty of laran potential,” Alanna said, frowning. “For a time, I could move small objects and start fires. Then Auntie Marguerida made me go to Arilinn. I hated it there, hated it! Nothing but rules and regulations and voices echoing in my head! After Dom Regis died, I refused to go back. If they’d made me, I would have run away rather than spend my life shut up in that stuffy old Tower, with everyone nagging me to control myself.”