Jeff led me quickly along the corridor; I was glad to get away, for some others of the Comyn and the others in the Crystal Chamber had come out into the hallway. I saw someone wearing Ridenow colors, and the flash of golden and green made me think of Dio.
Was she here, would she confront me at any moment, shrieking Monster! Would she think I had come to force her back as if the Terran ceremony had made her my prisoner?…
Her touch, her understanding…it might even have quieted the shrieking in my mind…yet the love between us had not been strong enough to hold through tragedy. How could I ask it…that horrible thing…no man had any right to do that to a woman…
“Steady,” said Jeff. “There in a minute. Sit down.” He shoved me onto a piece of furniture. It was dreamlike, déjà vu, for I could not remember ever being in the Ardais apartments before. Yet my father had known them well, I supposed, Dyan had been his closest friend when they were young…Zandru’s hells, would I never again be sure which thoughts, feelings, emotions were mine, which my father’s? The forced rapport which had wakened my Alton gift when I was eleven years old had been bad enough, but that last dying death-grip on my mind… I shuddered, and when Dyan thrust a drink into my hand I leaned for a moment against his shoulder, letting him support me. Memories of a younger Dyan flooded me with an affection warm, almost sensual, which shocked me to the bone, and I slammed the barrier shut, straightening up and easing free of his support. I drained the glass without noticing the taste. It was the strong firi cordial of the Kilghard Hills.
“Thanks. I needed that, but some soup would be better, I suppose, or something solid—”
“If I remember rightly,” Dyan said, “your father was allergic to the Terran drugs too.” He used the Terran word “allergic”; there wasn’t one in casta. “I wouldn’t try to eat anything solid for a few hours, if I were you. They’ll bring you something to eat in a few minutes, but you don’t really have that much time. We could call for a day or two delay, if you want.” He looked around, saw Marius hovering, and asked, “Where’s Gabriel?”
Marius said, “He’s honor guard there; he had to go back, he said.”
“Damn.” Jeff scowled. “We need a family conference of some kind.”
Dyan’s lip curled. “Keep Gabriel out of it,” he said. “He’s a Hastur lackey. I’ve always suspected that’s why old Hastur married him to the girl… his granddaughter. I don’t suppose you had sense enough to get yourself married and father a son, did you, Lew?”
With an effort that made me tremble, I slammed down a barrier. It was enough that I would never be free of the memory of that inhuman thing which should have been my son. If it were ever to be shared, it would not be with Dyan. He might have been my father’s chosen friend and confidant; he was not mine. I shrugged off his supporting arm as I rose.
“Let’s see about those clothes. No, I don’t mind wearing Ardais colors…”
But it turned out Marius had sent a servant at a run to the townhouse, with orders to fetch a cloak and Domain colors for me. I glanced in the mirror, saw myself transformed. And I could hide the missing hand in a fold of the cloak, if I wished. Marius gave me my father’s sword and I fastened it at my side, trying not to think of the Sharra matrix.
It wasn’t too far; I could tolerate that much distance…
I had tried, again, to leave it on Vainwal. Had thought, this time, I could be free… and then the burning, the blurring clamor…1 had nearly missed the ship because I had realized I could not abandon it, to abandon it would be death… not that I would have minded death… better dead than enslaved this way…
“At least now you look proper Comyn,” said Jeff. “You have to fight them on their own ground, Lew.”
I hurried with the tunic-laces, making a little extra display of my one-handed skill because I was still damnably sensitive about Marius watching. Dyan’s eyes flicked over the empty sleeve.
“I told Kennard that hand would have to come off,” he said. “They should have had it off at Arilinn. He kept on hoping the Terrans could do something. Terran science was one of the few things he kept on believing in, even after he lost faith in damned near everything else.”
The silence stretched, came to a full stop. Jeff, who had seen the hand at Arilinn, and had tried to save it, would have spoken, but I mentally commanded him to be silent. I might manage to discuss it, some day, with Jeff; but not with Dyan; and not with anyone here, not yet.
Dio had accepted it…I cut off that train of thought, afraid of what it would lead to.
Sooner or later, I supposed, I would see her again, and I would have to make it clear… she was free, not my prisoner or slave, not bound to me—
There was a tentative knock at the door, and one of Hastur’s servants, liveried in blue and silver, came in to convey the Regent’s compliments and request that the Ardais and Alton lords would return to Council.
Dyan said, with a faint curl of his lip, “At least there is now no reason to declare the Domain vacant.”
That was true. At first there had been no rightful claimant; now there were four. I asked Marius, as we went down the hallway toward the Crystal Chamber, “Do you have the Alton Gift?”
Marius had the dark eyes of our Terran mother. I have always thought dark eyes were expressionless, unreadable.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” he said. “What with one thing and another, I’ve been given to understand that it would be… insufferable insolence… to try and find out. I’m fairly sure Gabriel doesn’t, though.”
“The reason I asked,” I said, exasperated, “is that they’ll be badgering me to declare an Heir.” And I knew he could pick up the part of that I did not speak aloud; that I would prefer to assume he had it, without the shock tactics my father had had to use on my own Gift.
“It’s probably irrelevant,” Dyan said. “Everyone knew I didn’t have the Ardais Gift; it didn’t stop them from declaring me as Heir and Regent to my father.” The Ardais gift—catalyst telepathy, the gift of awakening latent laran— had been thought extinct, until it had been discovered in Danilo. That made me think about Regis, and wonder why he had not come to greet me. Well, if there was a plot to take the Alton Domain under Hastur wardship, I wasn’t surprised he didn’t care to face me just yet.
… fight for your brother’s rights… last command…
I shook my head to clear it of the insistent jangling, and, between my kinsmen, walked back into the Crystal Chamber.
Some kind of hurried conference was going on behind the curtained enclosure of the Hastur Domain. For once in my life I was glad of the telepathic dampers, which lessened the jangle in my head to a manageable ache. When they called us to order again, Danvan Hastur rose and said, “From having no rightful claimant to the Alton Domain, we now have four, and the situation must be investigated further. I ask that we delay the formal investiture of Lord Alton for another seven days, until the period of Council mourning for Kennard Alton is finished.”
I could hardly protest it, that they should give my father his due.
Marius had taken a seat beside me in the Alton enclosure; I noticed that Gabriel’s wife, Javanne Hastur, had seated herself among the Hasturs, with a dark, slender boy who looked like Gabriel and was, I supposed, Gabriel’s elder son. Gabriel himself, down with the honor Guard, was thus spared any confusion about whether he should seat himself among Hasturs or Altons, and I supposed he had planned it that way. I had always liked Gabriel; I preferred to think that he meant precisely what he said. My own whereabouts and my father’s being unknown, he had claimed the Domain on Hastur’s orders. I didn’t think I needed to worry about Gabriel. My eyes sought old Hastur, a small squarish unbending figure, graying, upright, like the rock of the castle itself, and just as unchanging. Was this the real enemy I must face?
And why? I know he had never cared much for me, but I had done him the courtesy, before this, to believe it was not personal; I was simply an uncomfortable reminder of my father’s stubbornness in marrying the
wrong woman, and he had acted as if my Terran and Aldaran blood were simply a mistake for which I was not to blame. But now all was in confusion; Hastur was behaving like my enemy, and Dyan, who had always disliked me, as a kinsman and friend. I couldn’t figure it out. Near the back of the Hastur enclosure I saw Regis. He did not seem to have changed much; he was taller, and his shoulders somewhat broader, and the fresh boyish face was now shadowed by faint reddish beard, but he still had the Hastur good looks. The change must have been inside; I would have expected him to come and greet me, and the boy I had known would have done it, even more quickly than Marius. I had, after all, been closer to Regis than to the little brother from whom six years had separated me.
Hastur was calling us all to order again, and I saw Prince Derik, in the Elhalyn enclosure with some people whom I did not know. I supposed they were his elder sisters and their families, or some of the Elhalyn connections: Lindirs, perhaps, Di Asturiens, Dellerays. Mentally I counted on my fingers; why had Derik not been crowned? I remembered that he had been somewhat too immature at sixteen, but now he must be well into his twenties. There was so much I did not know; I was being thrown into Council without any time to find out what had happened! Why, in the name of all the probably nonexistent Gods of the Comyn, had I agreed to come?
— last command—fight for your brother’s rights—despite the dampers, the mental command kept reverberating in my mind till I began seriously to wonder, as I had done several times on the ship which brought me from Vainwal, if there had been damage to the brain! The unbridled anger of an Alton can kill—I had always known that; and my father’s mental Gift was unusually powerful. Now, when he was dead and I should have been free of that dominating voice in my mind, I seemed more bound than ever, more hag-ridden. Would I ever be free of it?
Marius saw the nervous gesture, hand to head, and leaned close to whisper, “What’s wrong, Lew?” But I shook my head restlessly and muttered, “Nothing.” I had that eerie sense of being watched from somewhere. Well, I had always had that, in Council. I tried to pull myself together and focus on what was going on.
Hastur said gravely, “My lord Derik, before the Council was interrupted—” I could hear him saying what he had started to say, disrupted, “—by the arrival of an unexpected Heir to Alton—” at least he admitted I was that—“you had spoken of an alliance which you had made. Will it please you to explain it to us, vai dom?”
“I think I should let Merryl do that,” Prince Derik said, “since it concerns the Aillards.”
Merryl came down slowly from the enclosure; but was stopped by a clear feminine voice.
“I object to this,” said the voice, which I recognized. “Dom Merryl does not speak for the Aillards.” And I looked up and saw my cousin Callina coming slowly down the center of the enclosure. She paused at the rails and waited. That clear voice troubled me; I had heard it last when Marjorie… died. She had died in Callina’s arms. And I… once again it seemed that I could feel the old agony in my wounded hand, tearing through every nerve and finger and nail which had been long gone… This was madness; I caught at vanishing self-control and listened to what Callina was saying.
“In courtesy, Lord Hastur, if something concerns the Domain of the Aillards, I should be asked to give my consent before Dom Merryl speaks.”
She was slight and slender; she wore the ceremonial regalia and the crimson veils of a Keeper in Council, and I, who had spent years on Vainwal seeing women who looked as if they were free and alive, thought that she looked like a prisoner, with the heavy robes, the ceremonial ornaments weighing down her slight body so that she appeared fettered, like a child trying to wear the garments of an adult. Her hair was long and dark as spun black glass, what little I could see of it shining through the veil.
Merryl turned on her, with a look of pure hatred. He said, “I have been left to manage the affairs of the Domain while you were isolated at Neskaya and then at Arilinn, my lady; am I now to turn all these things over to you again at your whim? I think my management of the Domain speaks for my competence; what of yours?”
“I do not question your competence,” she said, and her voice was like molten silver. “But where your arrangements for the Domain alliances concern me, I have a legitimate right to question, and if need be, to veto. Answer what Hastur has asked you, my brother.” She used the most formal and distant mode of that word. “I cannot comment until I know what is being proposed.”
Merryl looked disconcerted. I didn’t know him; I didn’t know most of the younger Aillards, even though Callina’s younger sister Linnell was my foster-sister. Now he stood shifting nervously from foot to foot, glanced at Derik, who was grinning and gave him no help, and finally said, “I have made arrangements that the Lady Callina should consolidate a new alliance by marriage with Dom Beltran of Aldaran.”
I saw shock come over Callina’s face, but I could not keep silent. I burst out, “You people must all have gone mad! Did you say—alliance with Aldaran? Beltran of Aldaran?”
Hastur glanced repressively at me, and Derik Elhalyn said, “I see no reason against it.” He sounded defensive, very young. “The Aldarans are already allied to one major Domain by marriage, as you of all people should know, Dom Lewis. And in this day and age, with the Terrans at our very doorstep, it seems well to me that we should take this opportunity to line up their allegiance with the Comyn.”
He repeated this as a child repeats his lesson. I wondered who had schooled him in that theory. Glancing at Merryl, I decided that the answer was not far to seek.
But—ally with Aldaran? With that damned renegade clan—?
Callina said, “When before this has a Keeper been subjected to the whims of the Council? I am the head of the Aillard Domain in my own right; and not subject to Dom Merryl. I think there need be no further discussion of this—” I could almost hear her sorting through her mind for an inoffensive adjective, and she finally compromised—“this ill-advised plan. I am sorry, my prince; I refuse.”
“You—refuse?” Derik turned to stare at her. “On what grounds, lady?”
She made an impatient gesture; her veil fell back, revealing dark hair braided with gems. She said, “I have no will to marry at this time. And if I should, and when I do, I shall, no doubt, be capable of finding myself a husband who will be suitable. And I do not think I will look for him among the Aldaran Domain. I know more of that Domain than I wish to know, and I tell you, we might as well hand ourselves over here and now to the accursed Terrans than ally with that—” again the mental sorting, the visible search for a word—“with that renegade, exiled Domain.”
Dyan said, “Domna, you have been misinformed.” His voice held that exquisite, indifferent courtesy which he always had when speaking to women. “The Aldaran are no longer in the laps of the Terrans. Beltran has broken that alliance to Terra, and for that reason, if for no other, I do not think we can afford to hold aloof from Aldaran.” He turned to the Council and explained: “Alliance with Aldaran would give us more strength, and that is what we need now, to stand united against the pull of the Terran Empire. Granted, there are those among us who would turn us over to the Terrans—” His eyes moved toward the Ridenow enclosure—“but there are also those who remain loyal to our world and to the old ways. And of these, I am convinced, Beltran of Aldaran is one. Our forefathers—for reasons which seemed good to them, no doubt—cast out the Domain of Aldaran from the Comyn. But there were seven Domains; there should be seven Domains again, and this move, I am sure, would catch the imagination of the common people.”
She said, “I am a Keeper—”
He shrugged and said, “There are others. If Beltran has asked for alliance to the Aillard Domain—”
“Then I say for the Aillards that we will have none of it,” said Callina. And, unexpectedly she turned to me.
“And here sits one who can prove the truth of what I say!”
“You damned, incredible fools!” I heard my own voice, and as Hastur turned to me
, there was first a stir of voices, then a mutter, then a clamor, and I realized that once again I had disrupted Council, that I had jumped head-first into an argument I really knew nothing about. But I had started and I must go on.
“The Terrans are bad enough. But what the Aldarans got us into—” I fought for control. I would not, I would not speak the name of that ravening terror, which had flared and raged in the hills, which had sent Caer Donn up in flames, which had burned away my hand and my sanity—
“You ought to be in favor of this alliance,” said Derik. “After all, if we recognize the Aldarans, there won’t be so much question about whether you are legitimate or not, will there?”
I stared at him, wondering if Derik were really this much of a fool, or whether the statement had a profundity that somehow escaped me; no one else seemed inclined to question it. It was like some nightmare, where perfectly ordinary people said the most outrageous things and they were taken for granted.
Dyan Ardais said bluntly, “There’s no question of legitimacy. Council accepted Kennard’s eldest son, and that’s that. Sit down and listen, Lew. You’ve been away a long time, and when you know what’s been happening while you were away, you may change your mind. It might not change your status, but it could change your brother’s.”
I glanced at Marius. It was certain that the recognition of Aldaran would do a great deal to alter his legitimacy or otherwise. But did Dyan honestly think that would make the rest of the Council overlook his Terran blood? Dyan went on, his rich musical voice persuasive and kind, “I think it’s your hate speaking, not your good sense. Comyn—” he said, looking around, “I think we can all agree that Dom Lewis has reason for prejudice. But it was a long time ago. Listen to what we have to say, won’t you?”
There was a general murmur of approval. I could have dealt with hostility from Dyan, but this—! Damn him! He had hinted—no, he had said right out—that I was to be pitied, a cripple with an old grudge, coming back and trying to take up the old feud where I left off! By skillfully focusing all the unspoken feelings, their pity, the old admiration and friendship for my father, he had given them a good reason to disregard what I said.
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