After a moment of embarrassed silence, Regis bent over the bed. The boy appeared to be eleven or twelve, with the wiry slenderness of adolescence. Reddish tints shone in his brown hair. Sweat covered his skin, which was pale from growing up beneath the crimson sun. He opened his eyes, and Regis thought he looked simultaneously terrified and unaware of his surroundings.
“Is it threshold sickness?” Dan asked.
Carefully, Regis lowered his laranshields and touched the boy’s mind. Regis had never studied in a Tower, but over the years he had learned not only to master his own psychic powers but to use them in ways no other living Comyn could. To the best of his knowledge, he was the only bearer of the rare and powerful Hastur Gift, that of being a living matrix in himself.
His vision shifted, and he saw not only the white-shrouded form of a pubescent boy but also a tangle of mental energies, streams of color, laransurging through its channels, sometimes flowing freely, sometimes pooling, stagnant and festering. The channels in the boy’s lower body, which normally carried both laranand awakening sexual energy, were dangerously overloaded.
“How long has he been like this?” Regis heard his own words as if whispered from far away.
“He was fine this morning,” Dan responded. “Bright, a bit rebellious, a typical adolescent. I thought the trip to the market would do him good. Could he have been made ill by something he ate there?”
Regis shook his head. “I’m not a trained monitor, but I think it’s rare for the sickness to come on so fast and strong. Danilo, what do you think?”
With a sense of inexpressible relief, Regis felt his bredhyu’smind open to his, a flowing unity that he had never experienced with any other human being. Like Regis, Danilo had not trained in a Tower, and like Regis, he was the sole possessor of a rare gift, that of catalyzing telepathy, of awakening latent talent. Unlike Regis, however, his own passage through the tumult of adolescent threshold sickness had been relatively benign.
Danilo shifted, his mental touch like silk over water, and he said, in a voice that shimmered in Regis’s mind, “Where is his starstone?”
“His—you mean a matrix crystal?” Dan said. “As far as I know, he’s never had one. Where would he get it?”
Danilo looked directly at Regis. “I’d stake my life this boy has keyed into a starstone. That’s why—”
Before he could go further, Felix gave a sudden cry. His body arched upward, straining at the bandages, almost ripping out the needle taped to his arm. Jason sprang into action at the same time Regis did, Danilo a split instant later. Together, the two Darkovans managed to hold the convulsing boy. Regis felt a shock as he touched the boy’s skin with his bare hands. Energy, raw and directionless, surged just beneath the surface.
Deftly, Jason adjusted the intravenous apparatus. Regis could not see exactly what the doctor was doing, nor would he have understood if he could. Instead, he sensed a lessening of the frantic surge of laranpower and a softening of the boy’s muscles. A shudder ran the length of Felix’s body, and he sank back on the bed.
Regis drew his hands back, frowning. This was not a natural end to the spasm. The convulsions had not run their course, nor had the cause been remedied. He glanced at Jason.
“That will hold him for the moment,” Jason said. “I’ve increased the dosage of antiseizure medication to the maximum for his body mass. I dare not give him any more.”
Regis shook his head. “It’s not over.”
“I know, I know.” Sweating visibly, Jason raked his hair back from his forehead. “I don’t know what else to do for him. God help him if he has another attack. He could suffer permanent brain damage. That’s why I sent for you.”
From outside the door came the sound of a woman’s voice, taut with strain, and Tiphani’s frantic sobs.
“You’d best see to your wife.” Regis nodded to Dan, who hurried from the room.
After a few murmured words, footsteps receded down the corridor. The room fell into a hush, the three men and the boy lying so still he seemed to be not breathing.
“Danilo—” Regis began. “You’re sure he has a starstone?”
Danilo nodded. “Can’t you feel the vibrational pattern?”
“Under all that chaotic flow, who can tell anything?” Regis frowned.
“Maybe . . . I’m not nearly as sensitive as you. If you say so, I’ll take your word on it.”
“I know what a starstone looks like,” Jason said, puzzled. “When Felix was admitted, he did not have one on his person or among his possessions. I thought that once a person had keyed into a stone, handling it or taking it away from him could kill him.”
For a long beat, neither Regis nor Danilo breathed an answer. Slowly, Jason nodded. “Oh.”
If they failed to find and restore the psychoactive gem, the boy’s convulsions would get worse. Threshold sickness could be fatal. Regis had lost one of his few remaining nedestrochildren to it.
Regis went to the door. The ebony-skinned nurse, still at his station, pointed toward a room at the end of the corridor. “They went to the chapel.”
The door opened soundlessly at a touch. Unlike the chill, antiseptic furnishings of the rest of the building, this room struck Regis as Darkovan. Panels of chestnut-brown wood alternated with hangings in soft greens and blues. At the far end, light glowed softly behind panels of tinted glass patterned like trees and mountains. Even the air smelled fresher. To one side of the glass panels, a red votive light glimmered on a table set with various articles. Instruments of prayer,the Father Master at St. Valentine’s monastery would have called them. Regis recognized a cristofororosary, a stack of worn prayer books, a glass vessel filled with flower petals, a bell, and a bronze bowl and stick. Dan sat beside his wife on one of the simple wooden benches, his arm around her. Her back was bowed over so that her hair fell like a cascade of glossy curls over her face.
Something in the tenderness of Dan’s posture, the way he stroked Tiphani’s hair, and the sweet rumble of his voice touched Regis unexpectedly. Beneath the fear lay a woman who was deeply loved, a mother grievously worried for her child.
Regis took a seat beside her, beyond casual touch, yet close enough to feel the shimmer of almost- laranemanating from her shuddering form. She was not Comyn, she was not even Darkovan. He had encountered a range of telepathic talents in off-worlders in the last decade, since he had sent out an invitation throughout the Empire as part of Project Telepath. People with true psychic abilities, not parlor-trick charlatans, were rare, often near psychotic. Tiphani seemed sane enough, just distraught as any mother in this situation might be.
The next moment, the awareness vanished. Tiphani’s mind clamped down around her fragmentary gift so completely that she might not have had any telepathic ability at all. In her position as wife to the legate, she must have encountered psychically-Gifted Comyn. Untrained and culturally isolated, she would have had no preparation for contact with other telepaths. The resulting confusion must have fueled discomfort, turning awkwardness into distrust, suspicion into outright hostility.
“I apologize for the intrusion,” Regis said, “but for the sake of your son, I must ask you a few questions, MestraLawton.”
She gave a shuddering sigh and lifted her head. Huge violet eyes turned toward him. Even with her cheeks reddened with weeping, she was beautiful.
“You aren’t a doctor. What can you do?”
“No,” he admitted, “but nonetheless, I am here to help.”
“Dearest,” Dan said, “it won’t hurt to let him try.”
Tiphani’s hands tightened around the object she held; Regis could not see exactly what it was, most likely some religious token. The hectic color drained from her cheeks, leaving her skin as clear as porcelain.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a voice that threatened to break. “I was ungracious when your intentions were kind. I don’t know what I can add to Dr. Allison’s diagnosis.”
“Sometimes, an insignificant detail is the key,” Regis
said. “While your memory is fresh, tell me as much as you can about your son’s activities today. Did he seem in usual health in the morning? What did he buy in the market?”
“You’re not suggesting I deliberately poisoned my own child!” Quivering in indignation, Tiphani gathered herself to spring to her feet. “Or exposed him to—I am a decent, God-fearing woman!”
Regis wondered what fear of any of the gods had to do with a sick child. “Let me understand you clearly, mestra.Neither of you made any purchases? Could the boy have acquired a small item without your knowledge?”
The woman glanced at her husband, her eyes streaked with red, and then at the altar. She slumped back on the bench. “I did my best. Daniel, believe me! I took the filthy thing away from him as soon as I realized.Oh God, it’s all my fault! If only I had not been weak in letting Felix have his way! If only I had watched him more closely—”
She broke off, too distraught to continue. Dan did his best to comfort her. She turned her face against his shoulder.
“You took something away from Felix?” Dan murmured into her hair. “What was it?”
Tiphani fumbled in her breast pocket and drew out a wad of fabric tied with a drawstring, on a long loop made to be worn around the neck. The cloth was a handkerchief, the kind that could be purchased for a few reisin any market. A crude design had been painted on it. With disgust, Regis realized that it was a tourist’s version of the pouches in which many Comyn carried their personal starstones. His own matrix was shielded by triple layers of insulating silk. A piece of blue glass might well have substituted for a genuine matrix stone, which might be offensive but not criminal. Exposed to an unkeyed stone, without guidance or supervision, a latent telepath risked madness or death. Who in their right mind would sell such a thing?
Only a head-b lind fool, who could not tell the difference . . . or someone who intended this to happen.Regis suppressed a twinge of paranoia, for the Comyn had been particular targets of the World Wreckers assassins.
Deliberately not looking at Regis, Tiphani thrust the little bag into her husband’s hand.
“I’d better take it,” Regis said. Handling the bag as if it were a snake that might bite him, Dan passed it over. Regis studied the little bundle for a moment, sensing a pulse of jagged power. The thin cloth provided a barrier to physical touch but none at all to psychic energy.
I’m not a Keeper. I shouldn’t even be holding it.But who else was there? Thendara no longer possessed a working Tower, and Linnea Storn was hundreds of miles away. A tendril of longing brushed his heart. When she had left, after only a few years together, he had not realized how much he would miss her.
He closed his fingers around the bag and said to Tiphani, “When you have recovered, join me in the boy’s room.” He did not dare to say more, to offer even the illusion of hope.
When Regis returned to Felix’s room, the boy’s condition was unchanged. Danilo let out a low whistle as Regis held out the wad of cloth.
“Is that it?” Jason asked.
Regis nodded. “Open one of the boy’s hands. I’ll drop it on his palm. We might need to close his fingers around it, but be careful not to touch the stone.”
The boy’s fingers were thin, yet long and graceful. There were only five of them, Regis noted, but many of the Comyn had only five. Taking a deep breath, he lowered the bundle to the opened hand and drew out his eating knife.
“Careful,” Danilo murmured.
“Pray to your holy saints, Danilo, that he doesn’t have another seizure while I’m doing this.”
The sharp point of the knife slid easily beneath the knotted cord. The fibers parted with only a little resistance. Regis let out his breath. With his fingertips, he drew apart the folds of cloth. The boy moaned and whipped his head from side to side. Danilo grabbed Felix’s forearm to hold it steady.
A flash of blue-white light appeared in the folded cloth. Regis tipped the pouch, sliding the starstone onto Felix’s exposed palm.
Immediately, Regis had to look away. Ribbons of liquid light twisted within the heart of the stone. Nausea rose up in him, mixed with something akin to euphoria. Motes of brightness jigged and danced behind his eyes, as they had when he almost died from threshold sickness.
With a practiced mental gesture, Regis raised his barriers. The sensations ended abruptly. He knew that what he had experienced was only a fraction of what raged through the boy’s mind. He remembered how his older sister, Javanne, had guided him through attuning his starstone to his mind.
As he curled his fingers over Felix’s, closing them around the chip of faceted brilliance, Danilo reached out with one hand and placed it on top.
A shudder ran down the boy’s body, very different from his previous convulsive spasms. This was, Regis sensed, a wave of tissue-deep relief, of being made whole again.
Felix opened his eyes and looked directly at Regis. “Where am I?” he asked in an exhausted, thready voice. “What happened?”
Regis almost laughed aloud. “We’ll explain later. For now, just keep holding on to that stone. Don’t let anyone except your Keeper handle it.”
Especially not your mother,he added silently. It was a miracle the boy had survived. Tiphani must not have known what the pouch contained and saw it only as a barbaric talisman.
With a physician’s deft touch, Jason taped the stone to Felix’s hand. It only took a few moments, but when it was done, the boy drifted into a sound, natural sleep.
Regis felt as if he had just raced from the Wall Around the World to the Dry Towns. Wearily, he said to Jason, “He should be nursed by someone with larantraining. I don’t know of anyone who’s studied in a Tower who is in Thendara at the moment. I believe that some of the Bridge Society Renunciates have skill in these matters.”
Jason nodded. “Yes, we’re fortunate enough to have one or two with that training.”
“They will do for the moment,” Regis said. “It would be better if we had a Keeper to see to him . . .” Out of the corner of his vision, he caught the fleeting spark behind Danilo’s eyes, and knew that his bredhyuwas also thinking of Linnea.
“I very much suspect that because the Renunciate healer is unconnected with me, MestraLawton will regard her with favor,” Regis said in an attempt to divert the awkward moment. “Can she attend him here?”
“I see no reason why not,” Jason said. The three men had reached the doorway. “I won’t release Felix until he’s recovered from the convulsions. You look exhausted, Regis. I’m sorry to have dragged you out of bed at this hour. Danilo, take him home. I’ll speak with the Lawtons.”
Jason bowed to Regis, the slight inclination of his body that betokened personal respect rather than the responsibilities of caste. Regis promised to check the boy’s progress when he could.
4
During the following tenday, Thendara enjoyed an unseasonably rapid transition to spring, as if winter had suddenly opened its fist. Throughout the Lowlands, the bitter edge of winter softened.
Regis felt the turning toward longer days as a rising hope in his own spirit. Sometimes he paused in the middle of the street while hurrying from one conference or another, or he simply stood looking over the ancient city. All things came in their own season, he reminded himself.
Regis had used Lew’s warning as best he could to prepare for the choice that would soon be presented to Darkover. Although the vote in the Empire Senate was not yet official, rumors spread throughout the Terran Zone, spilling over into the city. No formal declaration had yet been made, but that was only a matter of time.
Division on the subject of Federation membership developed much as Regis had expected. His grandfather was not the only one who wanted Darkover to cut off ties with the Terranan.Conservatives like Ruyven Di Asturien and Kyril Eldrin immediately made alliances. They saw the reorganization of the Federation as an opportunity to sever all off-world relations.
On the other side of the question were Valdir Ridenow, Regent of Serrais, the Aldarans, the
Pan Darkovan League, and many citizens of Thendara. The Terrans stationed on Darkover maintained a carefully neutral public face, but Regis needed no laranto tell they were worried.
On one of the visits Regis made to check on Felix Lawton’s progress, Dan made him an unexpected offer of assistance.
“This is completely unofficial, you understand,” Dan said privately, behind closed doors. “As Legate, I cannot be seen to take sides in the debate. Only the citizens of Darkover may determine their course.”
They were alone in Dan Lawton’s private office, with Danilo on guard beside the door. Regis remembered again that Dan had a legitimate stake in the debate, for his parentage was part Comyn. The Domains accepted the notion of citizenshipreluctantly, for the term usually referred to legal rights, rather than the complex web of responsibilities that characterized Darkovan culture. Whatever laranDan possessed was deeply buried and likely to remain so in his Terran role. Yet Regis sensed in the other man a passionate desire to protect the world of his birth.
It was, Regis reflected, not strictly true that Darkover would be allowed to choose without any Terran influence or hint of coercion. If the Terrans decided their own interests were threatened—if, for instance, a disturbance should take place at the spaceport or a Terran patroller should be threatened or injured—then those sympathetic to the Expansionists would seize the excuse to impose martial law. Such a thing had happened on other worlds, according to Lew Alton.
If we do not give them an excuse, they may invent one for themselves.
“I thank you,” Regis said carefully, “but there is nothing I need from you now.”
Dan nodded. “We still have time before a final decision. However, the prospect of full membership in the Federation may cause . . . unrest.”
Dan was saying, in the way he had juxtaposed the offer of help and the warning, Keep your own people in order, and I will keep mine out of your affairs.
Revolted by the intricacies of political schemes, Regis changed the subject. “I’m glad your son is better. That, at least, is one area in which our two peoples can work cooperatively for our mutual benefit.”
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