Kennard said, “But I am not Terran,” and Larry felt his amazed anger. “Larry is the Terran!”
The chieri smiled. “I forgot,” he said gently, “that to your people, the passing of a lifetime is as a sleep and a sleep to our folk. Children of Terra are you both. I was here, a youngling of my people, when the first ship from Terra arrived, a lost ship and broken, and your people were forced to remain here. The time came when they forgot their origins; but the name they gave to this world—Darkover—indeed reflects their speech and their customs.”
It was a strange tale he told, and Kennard and Larry, lying at ease and almost in disbelief, listened while the chieri told his tale.
The Terran ship had been one of the first early starships to cross space. Their crew, some hundred men and women, had been forced to remain, and after dozens of generations—which had seemed like only a little while to the chieri-folk—they had spread over most of the planet.
“There is a tale you spoke of,” the chieri said, “of the lord of Carthon—one of your people, Kennard—who met with a woman of my folk Kierestelli; and she loved him, and bore him a son, and therewith she died, but the blood had mixed. And this son, Hastur, loved a maiden of your people, Cassilda, and from this admixture in their seven sons came the Seven Domains in which you take such pride.”
Interbreeding to produce these new telepathic powers in greater intensity had led to seven pure strains of telepathy, each with its own Domain, or family; and each with its own kind of laran, or psi power.
“The Hasturs. The Aillard. The Ridenow. The Elhalyn. The Altons—your clan, young Kennard. And the Aldaran.”
“The Aldaran,” said Kennard with a trace of bitterness, “were exiled from the Comyn—and they sold our world to the Terrans!”
The chieri’s beautiful face was strange. “You mean, when the Terrans came again, for the second time, the Aldaran first welcomed their long-forgotten brothers to their own people who had forgotten their ancestry,” he said. “Perhaps among the Aldarans, their Terran heritage was never forgotten. But as for you, little son of Darkover and of Terra”—and he looked at Larry with great gentleness—“you are weary; you should sleep. Yet I know very well why you are in haste. Even now—” his face became distant “—Valdir Alton answers for your fate to these new Terrans who have also forgotten that these men of Darkover are their brothers. As, indeed, all folk are brothers, though there are many, many times when they forget it. And because you are both of my people, I will help you—though I would love to speak more to you. For I am old, and of a dying race. Our women bear no more children, and one day the cheiri will be only a memory, living on only in the blood of those, their conquerers.” He sighed. “Beautiful were our forests in those days. Yet time and change come to all men and all worlds, and you are right to speak with reverence of Kierestelli and to call Cassilda blessed, who first mingled blood with blood and thus assured that the chieri would survive in blood if never in memory. But I am old—I talk too much. I should act instead.”
He got to his feet. With those strange gray eyes—eyes like the eyes of Lorill Hastur, Larry realized—he enspelled them both, until nothing but those gray eyes remained; space whirled away and reeled—
Bright hot light struck their eyes. Yellow light. They were standing on a brilliantly tiled floor in a brightly glassed-in room overlooking the spaceport of Darkover, and before them, in attitudes of defiance, stood Valdir Alton, Commander Reade—and Larry’s father.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
They had slept. They were rested and fed and re-clothed, Kennard this time in some spare garments of Larry’s, and once again they sat before Valdir Alton and Wade Montray and Commander Reade, finishing the tale of their adventures.
Valdir said at last, his face very grave, “I have heard of the chieri-folk; but I did not know that any of them still lived, even in the deep woods. And what you tell me of our mixed heritage is strange—and troubling,” he added honestly, his eyes meeting those of Wade Montray with a confused newness in them. “Yet the old chieri spoke only a truth I already knew. Time and change come to all worlds, even to ours. And if our sons could cross the mountains together in harmony—and neither alone could have lived, but both needed the other’s ways—then perhaps our worlds are the same.”
“Father,” said Kennard gravely, “I decided something on the way back. Don’t be angry; it’s something I must do. I will do it with your consent now, or without your consent when I come of age. But I am going to take ship for Terra, and learn all that they can teach me there, in their schools. And after me, there will be others.”
Valdir Alton looked troubled; but finally he nodded.
“You are a man, free to choose,” he said, “and perhaps the choice is wise. Time only will tell. And you, Lerrys,” he added, for Larry had raised his head to speak.
“I want to learn your languages and your history, sir. It’s foolish to live here without learning them—not only for me, but for all Terrans who come here.”
Valdir nodded again, gravely. “Then you shall do it as a son in my house,” he said. “You and my son are bredin; our house is yours.”
“Ah, some day,” Reade said, “a school will be established for sons of both worlds to learn about the other.” He looked wryly at the boys and said, “I appoint you both Special Consultants on the Bureau of Terran-Darkovan Liaison. Hurry up and finish that interplanetary education of yours, boys.”
“One more thing,” Valdir said. “I think we need to learn from Terra about such things as forest fires, and what to do about bandits and banshees. And then, to use the knowledge in our own way.” He looked straight at Wade Montray and said, “Forgive me for intruding, but I am Alton. I think you should tell you son, now, why the chieri could call them both his kindred.”
Wade Montray stood before his son. “You’ve grown,” he said. “You’re a man.” Then he wet his lips.
“Larry, you were born on Darkover,” he said, “of a woman of the high Darkovan caste of the Aldaran, who forsook her people for me, and returned with me to Terra. For years I would not bring you back. I didn’t want you torn apart between two worlds, as I had been. I tried to keep you away from Darkover, but the call was too strong for you. As the call had been too strong for me.” His face worked. “So you’ll be torn between two alien worlds—as I was—”
“But,” Larry said quietly, and he stretched a hand to his father, “Darkovans are not alien. Once they were Earthmen. And Earthmen are akin to Darkovans, even those who have not the chieri blood in their veins. The call is not of alien worlds—but of blood brothers, who want to understand one another again. It won’t be easy. But”—his eyes sought out Kennard’s—“it’s a beginning.”
Wade Montray nodded, slowly and painfully, and Valdir Alton suddenly did a thing unprecedented for a Darkovan aristocrat. Awkwardly, the gesture unpracticed, he held out his hand to Wade Montray, and the two men shook hands, while Commander Reade beamed.
They had, indeed, made a beginning. Trouble would come—as all change brings trouble in its wake. But it was a beginning, and, as with the bringing of fire to the trailmen, the benefits would outweigh the risks.
The first step had been taken.
Larry and Kennard would take the next.
After them, thousands.
The brother worlds were once again reconciled.
THE BLOODY SUN
The stranger who comes home
dos not make himself at home
but makes home strange.
Prologue: Darkover
The Leronis
Leonie Hastur was dead.
The ancient leronis, sorceress of the Comyn, Keeper of Arilinn, telepath, trained with all the powers of the matrix sciences of Darkover, died as she had lived, alone, sequestered high in the Tower of Arilinn.
Not even her priestess-novice-apprentice, Janine Leynier of Storn, knew the hour when death came quietly into the Tower and took her away into one of the other worlds she had learned to w
alk as skillfully as within her own enclosed garden.
She died alone; and she died unmourned. For, although Leonie was feared, revered, worshipped almost as a Goddess throughout all the Domains of Darkover, she was not loved.
Once she had been greatly loved. There had been a time when Leonie Hastur had been a young woman, beautiful and chaste as a distant moon, and poets had written of her glory, comparing her to the exquisitely shining face of Liriel, the great violet moon of Darkover; or to a Goddess come down to live among men. She had been adored by those who lived under her rule at Arilinn Tower. Once, despite the austerity of the vows under which she lived (which would have made it blasphemy unspeakable for any man to touch her fingertips) Leonie had been loved. But that had been long ago.
And now, as the years had passed over her head, leaving her more and more alone, further from humanity, she was loved less; and feared and hated more. The old Regent Lorill Hastur, her twin brother (for Leonie had been born into the royal house of the Hasturs of Hastur, and if she had not chosen the Tower, she would have stood higher than any Queen in the land), was long dead. A nephew she had seen but a few times stood behind the throne of Stefan Hastur-Elhalyn and was the real power in the Domains. But to him Leonie was a whisper, an old tale and a shadow.
And now she was dead and lay, as the custom was, in an unmarked grave within the walls of Arilinn, where no human being save those of Comyn blood might ever come; in death no more secluded than in life. And there were few left alive to weep.
One of the few who wept was Damon Ridenow, who had married years ago into the Domain of Alton, and briefly been Warden of that Domain for the young Heir of Alton, Valdir of Armida.1 When Valdir had come of age and taken a wife, Damon and all his household, which was large, had removed to the estate of Mariposa Lake, which lay in the pleasant upland country in the foothills of the Kilghard Hills. When Leonie was young, and Damon was young, and he a mechanic in the Tower of Arilinn, he had loved Leonie; loved her chastely, with never a touch or a kiss or any thought of breaking the vows that bound her. But he had loved her, nonetheless, with a passion that had given form and color to all his life afterward; and when he heard of her death, he went apart to his own study and there he shed the tears he would not shed before his wife or his wife’s sister, who had once been Leonie’s novice-Keeper at Arilinn, or before any of his household. But if they knew of his grief—and in a household of Comyn telepaths such things could not well be hidden—no one would speak of it; not even his grown sons and daughters asked why their father grieved in secret. Leonie, to them, of course, was only a legend with a name.
And so, when the news spread through the domains, there was much excited speculation, even in this most distant of remote corners in the Domains, about the question that now quickened and burned all over the Domains, from the Hellers to the Plains of Arilinn: Who now will be Keeper of Arilinn?
And to Damon, one day soon after that, in the privacy of his own study, came his youngest daughter Cleindori.
She had been given the old fashioned name, legendary and traditional, of Dorilys: Golden-flower. But as a child her hair had been pale sunny gold, and her eyes so big and blue that her nurses dressed her always in blue frocks and blue ribbons; her foster-mother, Damon’s wife Ellemir, said that she looked like a blue bell of the kireseth flower, covered with its golden pollen. so they had nicknamed her, when she was only a toddler, Cleindori, Golden Bell, which was the common name for the kireseth flower: And as the years passed, most people had all but forgotten that Dorilys Aillard (for her mother had been a nedestro daughter of that powerful Domain) had ever borne any other name but Cleindori.
She had grown into a tall, shy, serious young woman, thirteen years old now, her hair sunny, copper-golden. There was Drytown blood in the Ridenow clan, and her mother’s father, too, had been, it was whispered, a Drytown bandit from Shainsa; but that old scandal had been long forgotten. Damon, looking up at the womanly body and serious eyes of his last-born daughter, felt for the first time in his life that he was approaching old age.
“Have you ridden all the way from Armida today, my child? What had your foster-father to say to that?”
Cleindori smiled and went to kiss her father on the cheek. “He said nothing, for I did not tell him,” she said gaily, “but I was not alone, for my foster-brother Kennard rode here with me.”
Cleindori had been sent to fosterage at nine years old, as the custom was in the Domains, to grow to womanhood under a hand less tender than that of a mother. She had been fostered by Valdir, Lord Alton, whose lady, Lori, had only sons and longed for a daughter to rear. There was a distant understanding that when Cleindori was old enough to marry, she might be wedded to Lord Alton’s elder son, Lewis-Arnad; but as yet, Damon supposed, there was not thought in Cleindori of marriage; she and Lewis and Valdir’s youngest son Kennard were sister and brothers. Damon greeted Kennard, who was a sturdy, broad-shouldered, grey-eyed boy a year younger than Cleindori, with a kinsman’s embrace, and said, “So I see my daughter was well-guarded on her way here. What brings you here, children? Were you hawking and late returning, and chose to ride this way, thinking there would be cakes and sweets for runaways here when there would be only the bread and water of punishment at home?” But he was laughing.
“No,” Kennard said seriously. “Cleindori said she must see you; and my mother gave us leave to ride, but I do not think she knew fully what we asked or what she answered, for there was such hullabaloo at Armida on this day, ever since the news has come.”
“What news?” Damon asked, leaning forward, but already he knew, and felt his heart sink. Cleindori curled herself up on a cushion at his feet, looking up at him. She said, “Dear father, three days ago the Lady Janine of Arilinn came riding to Armida on her search for one to bear the name and dignity of the Lady of Arilinn who is dead; the leronis Leonie.”
“It took her long enough to come to Armida,” Damon commented with a curl of his lip. “No doubt she had tested in all the Domains before this.”
Cleindori nodded. “I think so,” she said, “for after she knew who I was, she looked at me as if she smelled something bad, and said, ‘Since you are from the Forbidden Tower, have you been taught in any of their heresies?’ For when Lady Lori told her my name, she was angry, and I had to tell her that my mother had given me the name of Dorilys. But Janine said, ‘Well, by law I am required to test you for laran. I cannot deny you that.’”
She screwed up her face in imitation of the leronis, and Damon put his hand across the lower part of his face, as if in thought, but actually to conceal a grin; for Cleindori had a knack for mimicry and she had caught the sour tone and disapproving stare of the leronis Janine. Damon said, “Aye. Janine was among those who would have had me burned alive or blinded when I fought with Leonie for the right to use the laran gods had given me as I myself chose, and not only as Arilinn demanded. It would not make her love you, child, that you are my daughter.”
Cleindori smiled again, gaily. “I can live well enough without her love; I can well believe that she has never loved even a pet kitten! But I was trying to tell you, Father, what she said to me and what I said to her ... she seemed pleased when I told her that you had taught me nothing as yet, and that I had been fostered since I was nine at Armida; and so she gave me a matrix and tested me for laran. And when she had done, she said that she wanted me for Arilinn; and then she frowned and told me that she would not have chosen me for this, but that there were few others who could bear the training; and that she wished to train me as Keeper.”
Damon’s breath caught in his throat; but the cry of protest died unspoken, for Cleindori was looking up at him with her eyes shining. “Father, I told her, as I knew I must, that I could not enter a Tower without my father’s consent; and then I rode away here to ask for that consent.”
“Which you shall not have,” said Damon harshly, “not while I am above ground and unburied. Or after, if I can prevent it.”
“But Father—t
o be Keeper of Arilinn! Not even the Queen—”
Damon’s throat tightened. So after all these years the hand of Arilinn was reaching out again toward one that he loved. “Cleindori, no,” he said and reached out, touching her fair curls, which shone with the light of alloyed copper and gold. “You see only the power. You do not know the cruelty of that training. To be Keeper—”
“Janine told me. She said that the training is very long and very cruel and very difficult to bear. She told me something of what I must vow and what I must give up. But she said also that she thought I was capable of it.”
“Child—” Damon swallowed hard. He said, “Human flesh and blood cannot endure it!”
“Now that is foolish,” Cleindori said, “for you endured it, Father. And so did Callista, who was once Leonie’s novice-Keeper at Arilinn.”
“Have you any idea what it cost Callista, child?”
“You made sure I should know, before I was out of childhood,” Cleindori said. “And so, too, did Callista, telling me before I had come to womanhood what a cruel and unnatural life it was. I cut my teeth on that old tale of how you and Callista fought Leonie and all of Arilinn in a duel that lasted nightlong. ...”
“Has the tale grown so much?” Damon interrupted with a laugh. “It was less than a quarter of an hour; though indeed the storm seemed to rage through many days. But we fought Arilinn; and won the right to use laran as we would and not as Arilinn should decree.”
“But I can see, too,” Cleindori argued, “that you, who were trained in Arilinn, and Callista, too, trained in the Way of Arilinn, are superbly skilled; while those who have been taught laran here have fewer skills and are clumsy in the use of their gifts. And I know, too, that all the other Towers in this land still hold to the Way of Arilinn.”
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