Heavy rain after midnight had turned to wet snow; the day I was to leave for Aldaran dawned gray and grim, the sun hidden behind clouds still pregnant with unfallen snow. I woke early and lay half asleep, hearing angry voices from my father's room. At first I thought Marius was getting a tongue-lashing for some minor naughtiness, but so early? Then I woke a little further and detected a quality in Father's voice never turned on any of us. All my life I have known him for a harsh, hasty and impatient man, but usually his anger was kept on a leash; the fully-aroused anger of an Alton can kill, but he was tower-disciplined, control normally audible in every syllable he spoke. Hastily I put on a few clothes and went into the central hall.
"Dyan, this isn't worthy of you. Is it so much a matter of personal pride?"
Lord of Light, it happened again! Well, at least, if I knew that note in Father's voice, he wouldn't get off unpunished!
Dyan's voice was a heavy bass, muted to a rumble by the thick walls, but no walls could filter out my father's answering shout; "No, damn it, Dyan, I won't be party to any such monstrous?**
Out in the hall I heard Dyan repeat implacably, "Not personal pride, but the honor of the Comyn and the Guards."
"Honor! You don't know the meaning of?**
"Careful, Kennard, there are some things even you cannot say! As for this?in Zandru's name, Ken, I cannot overlook this. Even if it had been your own son. Or mine, poor lad, had he lived so long. Would you be willing to see a cadet draw steel on an officer and go unpunished? If you cannot
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accept that I am thinking of the honor of the Guards, what of discipline? Would you have condoned such conduct even in your own bastard?"
"Must you draw Lew into every?**
"I'm trying not to, which is why I came directly to you with this. I do not expect him to be sensitive to a point of honor."
My father cut him off again, but they had both lowered their voices. Finally Dyan spoke again, in a tone of inflexible finality. "No, don't speak to me of circumstances. If you let the respect due to the Comyn be eroded away in times like this, in full sight of every insolent little cadet and bastard in Thendara, how can you speak of honor?"
The violent rage was gone from my father's voice now, replaced by a heavy bitterness. He said, "Dyan, you use the truth as other men use a He, to serve your own ends. I've known you since we were boys, and this is the first tune I've come close to hating you. Very well, Dyan. You leave me no choice. Since you bring me this complaint officially, as cadet-master to commander, it shall be done. But I find it hard to believe you couldn't have kept it from coming to this."
Dyan thrust the door open and came striding out into the hall. He gave me a brief contemptuous glance, said, "Still spying on your betters?" and went out.
I went to the door he had left open. My father looked up at me blankly, as if he could not remember my name, then sighed and said, "Go and tell the men to gather after breakfast in the main Guard hall. All duty-lists suspended for the morning."
"What ...?" ?
"Disciplinary assembly." He raised his thick, knotted hands, gnarled and stiff from the joint-disease which has ravaged him since I can remember. "You'll have to stand by. I havent the strength for a sword-breaking any more and I'm damned if I'll leave it to Dyan."
"Father, what happened?"
"You'll have to know," Kennard said. "One of the cadets drew his sword on Dyan."
I felt my face whiten with dismay. That was indeed something which could not be overlooked. Of course I wondered?who wouldn't??what provocation Dyan had given. In my own cadet year, he had dislocated my arm, but even then I had known better than that. Even if two cadets in
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some childish squabble drew their pocketknives, it would have been sufficient to have them both expelled in disgrace.
I was amazed that my father had even tried to interfere. It seemed that for once I had misjudged Dyan.
Even so, I made a quick guess at what had happened. If the MacAran boy had died of his concussion and Damon held Dyan responsible?three different officers had told me of the event and all of them agreed Dyan had been inexcusably rough?then Damon would have held himself honor-bound to avenge his friend. Both boys were mountain-bred and friendship went deep in the Kilghard hills. I did not blame the boy, but I was angry with Dyan. A kinder man would have understood; Dyan, being what he was, might well have shown understanding of the love between them.
Father reminded me that I would need full-dress uniform. I hurried with my tunic-laces, wanting to reach the mess hall while the men were still at breakfast.
The sun had broken through the cloud cover; the melting snow lay in puddles all over the cobblestone court, but it was still gray and threatening to the north. I'd hoped to leave the city shortly after daybreak. If it started snowing again later, I'd have a soggy journey.
Inside the mess room there were sausages for breakfast, their rich spicy smell reminding me that I had not eaten yet I was tempted to ask the orderly for a plate of them, but remembered I was in full-dress uniform. I came to the center of the crowded tables and called for attention.
As I announced the assembly, I glanced at the table where the cadets were seated. To my surprise, Julian MacAran was there, his head heavily bandaged, but there and looking only a little pale. So much for my theory about what had happened! Regis was there, looking so white and sick that for a moment, in dismay, I wondered if he were the disgraced cadet. But no, he would have been under arrest somewhere.
My way back led me past the first-year barracks room and I heard voices there, so I stopped to see if I should repeat my message to anyone. As I approached I heard the voice of old Domenic. He should have been cadet-master, I thought bitterly.
"No, son, there's no need for that. Your sword is an heirloom in your family. Spare your father that, at least. Take this plain one."
I had often, thought during my own cadet years that old
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Domenic was the kindest man I had ever known. Any sword would do for breaking. The answer was soft, indistinguishable, blurred by a pain which, even at this distance, clamped around me like an iron band gripping my forehead.
Hjalmar's deep voice rebuked gently, "None of that now, my lad. I'll not hear a word against Comyn. I warned you once, that your temper would get you into trouble."
I glanced in, then wished I hadn't. Danilo was sitting on his cot, hunched over in misery, and the arms-master and Hjalmar were helping him gather his possessions. Danilo! What in all of Zandru's nine hells could have happened? No wonder Father had been willing to plead with Dyan! Could any sane man make a point of honor against such a child? Well, if he was old enough to be a cadet, he was old enough to bear the consequences of a rash act.
I hardened my conscience and went on without speaking. I too had had such provocation?for some time, while my arm was still in a sling, I'd put myself to sleep nights thinking up ways to kill him?but I had kept my hands off my sword. If Danilo was not capable of self-restraint, the cadet corps was no place for him.
By the lime I came back to the Guard hall the men were gathering. Disciplinary assemblies were not common since minor offenses and punishments were handled by the officers or the cadet-master in private, so there was a good deal of whispered curiosity and muttered questions. I had never seen a cadet formally expelled. Sometimes a cadet dropped out because of illness or family trouble, or was quietly persuaded to resign because he was unable physically or emotionally, to handle the duties or the discipline. Octavien Vallonde's case had been hushed up that way. Damn him, that was Dyan's doing toot
Dyan was already hi place, looking stern and self-righteous. My father came hi, limping worse than I had ever seen him. Di Asturien brought in Danilo. He was as white as the plastered wall, his face taut and controlled, but his hands were shaking. There was an audible murmur of surprise and disma
y. I tried to barrier myself against it Any way you looked at it, this was tragedy, and worse.
My father came forward. He looked as bad as Danilo. He took out a long and formal document?I wondered if Dyan had brought it already drawn up?and unfolded it.
"Danilo-Felix Kennard Lindir-Syrtis, stand forth," he said
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wearily. Danilo looked so pale I thought he would faint and I was glad di Asturien was standing close to him. So he was my father's namesake, as well?
Father began to read the document. It was written hi cos-to. Like most hillsmen, I had been brought up speaking ca-huenga and I followed the legal language only with difficulty, concentrating on evety word. The gist of it I knew already. Danilo Syrtis, cadet, in defiance of all order and discipline and against any and all regulations of the cadet corps, had willfully drawn bared steel against a superior officer, his cadet-master, Dyan-Gabriel, Regent of Ardais. He was therefore dismissed, disgraced, stripped of all honor and privilege and so forth and so on, two or three times over in different phraseology, until I suspected that reading the indictment had taken longer than the offense.
I was trembling myself with the accumulated leakage of emotion I could not entirely barracade in this crowd. Danilo's misery was almost physical pain. Regis looked ready to collapse. Get it over, I thought in anguish, listening to the interminable legal phrases, hearing the words now only through their agonized reverberations in Danilo's mind. Get it over before the poor lad breaks down and has hysterics, or do you want to see that humiliation, too?
**... and shall therefore be stripped of honorable rank and returned to his home hi disgrace ... in token of which ... his sword to be broken before his eyes and in the sight of all the Guardsmen together assembled. ..."
This was my part of the dirty work. Hating it, I went and unfastened his sword. It was a plain Guardsman's sword, and I blessed the kind old man for that much mercy. And besides, I thought sourly, those heirloom swords are of such fine temper you'd need the forge-folk and Sharra's fires to make any impression on one!
I had to touch Danilo's arm. I tried to give him a kindly thought of reassurance, that this wasn't the end of the world, but I knew it wasn't getting through to him. He flinched from my gauntleted hand as if it had been a red-hot branding iron. This would have been a frightful ordeal for any boy who was not a complete clod; for one with laran, possibly a catalyst telepath, I knew it was torture. Could he come through it at all without a complete breakdown? He stood motionless, staring straight forward, eyes half closed, but he kept blinking as
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if to avoid breaking into anguished tears. His hands were clenched into tight fists at his side.
I took Danilo's sword and walked back to the dais. I gripped it between my heavily gauntleted hands and bent it across my knee. It was heavy and harder to bend than I'd realized, and I had time to wonder what I'd do if the damned thing didn't break or if I lost my grip and it went flying across the room. There was a little nervous coughing deep in the room. I strained at the blade, thinking, Break, damn you, break, let's get this filthy business over before we all start
screaming!
It broke, shattered with a sound shockingly like breaking glass. If anything, I'd expected a noisy metallic resonance. One half slithered away to the floor; I let it lie.
Straightening my back I saw Regis' eyes full of tears. I looked across at Dyan.
Dyan. ...
For an Instant his barriers were down. He was not looking at me, or at the sword. He was staring at Danilo with a hateful, intense, mocking, satiated look. A look of horrid, satisfied lust. There was simply no other word for it.
And all at once I knew?I should have known all along? exactly how and why Danilo had been persecuted, until in a moment of helpless desperation he had been goaded into drawing a knife against his persecutor ... or possibly against himself.
Either way, the moment the knife was loose from the sheath, Dyan had him exactly where he wanted him. Or the next best thing.
I don't think Til ever know how I got through the rest of the ceremony. My mind retains only shaken vignettes: Danilo's face as white as his shirt after the full-dress uniform tabard had been cut away. How shabby he looked. And how young! Dyan taking the sword from my hand, smirking. By the time my brain fully cleared again, I was out of the Guard hall and on the stairs to the Alton rooms.
My father was wearily taking off his dress-uniform. He looked drawn and exhausted. He was really ill, I thought, and no wonder. This would make anyone sick. He looked up, saying tiredly, "I have all your safe-conducts arranged. There is an escort ready for you, with pack animals. You can get away before midday, unless you think the snow's likely to be too heavy before nightfall."
He handed me a packet of folded papers. It looked very official, hung with seals and things. For a minute I could hardly remember what he was talking about The trip to Ald-aran had receded very far. I put the papers into my pocket without looking at them.
"Father," I said, "you cannot do this. You cannot ruin a boy's life through Dyan's spite, not again."
**I tried to talk him out of it, Lew. He could have condoned it or handled it privately. But since he made it official, I couldn't pass it over. Even if it had been you, or the Hastur boy."
"And what of Dyan? Is it soldierly to provoke a child?"
"Leave Dyan out of it, son. A cadet must learn to control himself under any and all conditions. He will have the life and death of dozens, of hundreds, of men in his hands some day. If he cannot control his personal feelings ..." My father reached out, laying his hand on my wrist in a rare caress. "My son, do you think I never knew how hard he tried to provoke you to the same thing? But I trusted you, and I was right Fm disappointed in Dani.**
But there was a difference. Though he was perhaps harsher than most people thought an officer should be, Dyan had done nothing to me that was not permitted by the regulations of the cadet corps. I said so, adding, "Do the regulations require that the cadets must endure that from an officer too? Cruelty, even sadistic discipline, is bad enough. But persecution of this kind, the threat of sexual attack?"
"What proof have you of that?"
It was like a deluge of ice water. Proof. I had none. Only the satisfied, triumphant look on Dyan's face, the sickness of shame in Danilo, a telepathic awareness I had had no right to read. Moral certainty, yes, but no proof. I just knew.
"Lew, you're too sensitive. I'm sorry for Dani, too. But if he had reason to complain of Dyan's treatment of him, there is a formal process of appeal?"
"Against the Comyn? He would have heard what happened to the last cadet to try that," I said bitterly. Again, against all reason, Father was standing with the Comyn, with Dyan. I looked at him almost in disbelief. Even now I could not believe he would not right this wrong.
Always. Always I had trusted him utterly, implicitly, certain that he would somehow see justice done. Harsh, yes, demanding, but he was always fair. Now Dyan had done?
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again!?what I had always known Dyan would do, and my father was prepared to gloss it over, let this monstrous injustice remain, let Dyan's corrupt and vicious revenge or whatever prevail against all honor and reason.
And I had trusted him! Trusted him literally with my life. I had known that if he failed in testing me for the Alton gift, I would die a very quick, very painful death. I felt I would burst into a flood of tears that would unman me. Once again time slid out of focus and again, eleven years old, terrified but wholly trusting, I stood trembling before him, awaiting the touch that would bring me into full Comyn birthright ... or kill me! I felt the solemnity of that moment, horribly afraid, yet eager to justify his faith in me, his faith that I was his true-born son who had inherited his gift and his power.
. . .
Power! Something inside me exploded into anguish, an anguish I must have been feeling through all the years since that day, which I had never dared let myself feel.
He hod been willing to kill me! Why had I never seen this before? Cold-blooded, he had been willing to risk my death, against the hope that he would have a tool to power. Power! Like Dyan, he didn't care what torture he inflicted to get it! I could still remember the exploding agony of that first contact. I had been so deathly ill for a long time afterward that, in his attentive love and concern, I had forgotten?more accurately, had buried?the knowledge that he had been willing to risk my death.
Why? Because if I had proved not to have the gift, why, then . . . why, then, my life was of small concern to him, my death no worse than the death of a pet puppy!
He was looking up at me, appalled. He whispered, "No. No, my son, no. Oh, my boy, my boy, it wasn't like that!" But I slammed my mind shut, for the first time deaf to the loving words.
Loving words merely to force his will on me again! And his pain now was for seeing his plans all go awry, when his puppet, his blind tool, his creature, turned in his hand!
He was no better than Dyan then. Honor, justice, reason?all these could be swept aside hi the ruthless hunger for power! Did he even know that Danilo was a catalyst telepath, that most sensitive and powerful of talents, that talent thought to be almost extinct?
For a moment it seemed that would be the last argument
to move him. Danilo was no ordinary cadet, expendable to salve Dyan's bruised pride. He must be saved for the Comyn at all costs!
With the very words on my lips, I stopped. No. If I told Father that, he would find some way to use Danilo too, as a tool in his driving quest for more power! Danilo was well freed of the Comyn and lucky to be beyond our reach!
My father drew back his extended hands. He said coldly, "Well, it's a long road to Aldaran; maybe you'll calm down and see sense before you get there."
I felt like saying Aldaran, hell! Go do your own dirty work this time, Fm still sick from the last job! I don't give a fart in a high wind for all your power politics! Go to Aldaran yourself and be damned to you!
But I didn't. I recalled that I, too, was Aldaran, and Ter-ran. I'd had it flung in my face often enough. They all took it for granted that I would feel enough shame at the disgrace of my origins to do anything, anything, to be accepted as Comyn and my father's heir. He'd kept me subservient, unquestioning, all my life, that way.
But Terran blood, so Linnea had said, was no disgrace in the mountains. It had amazed her that I thought it so. And the Aldarans, too, were kinsmen.
My father had allowed me to think the Terrans and the Aldarans were evil. It had suited his purposes to let me think so.
And maybe that was another lie, a step on his road to power.