The man raised his head and looked at Regis. He said, **Danilo Syrtis is here and unharmed, young Hastur. Beltran's men only exceeded their orders; they were told to invite him here with all courtesy. And we were told he had no reason to love the Comyn; how should we know he was your sworn man?" Regis felt unspoken contempt, And why should -we give a damn? But Kadarin's words were rigidly polite. "He is unharmed, an honored guest."
"I'll have a word with Beltran," Kermiac of Aldaran said. "This isn't the first time his enthusiasm has carried him away. I'm sorry, young Hastur, I didn't know we had anyone of yours here. Kadarin, take him to his friend."
So it was as simple as that? Regis felt vague disquiet Kad-
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arin said, "There's no need for such haste. Lew Alton talked to the Syrtis boy for hours last night, I'm sure he knows now that he's not a prisoner. Lord Regis, would you like to speak with your kinsman?"
"Is Lew still here? Yes, I would like to see him."
Kermiac looked at Regis' travel-stained garments. He said, "But this is a long journey alone for a boy. You are exhausted. Let us take you to a guest chamber, offer you some refreshment?a meal, a bath?"
Both of them sounded almost unendurably attractive, but Regis shook his head. 'Truly, I need nothing now. I am deeply concerned about my friend."
"As you wish, then, lad." He held out a withered old hand, seeming to have trouble moving as he wished. "Damned if I'm going to call a boy your age lord anything! That's half what's wrong with our world!"
Regis bent over it as he would have done over his grandfather's. "If I have misjudged you, Lord Aldaran, I implore your pardon. Let anxiety for my paxman be my excuse."
"Humph," Aldaran said again, "it seems to me that we of Aldaran owe you some apology as well, my boy. Bob, send Beltran to me?at once!"
"Uncle, he is very much occupied with?"
"I don't give a damn what he's occupied with, bring himi And fast!" He released Regis' hand, saying, "I'll see you again soon, lad. You are my guest, remain here in peace, be welcome."
Dismissed and ushered out of Aldaran's presence, Kadarin striding through the halls at his side, Regis felt more confused than ever. What was going on here? What had Lew Alton to do with this? It was warm in the hallway and he wished he had taken off bis riding-cloak; he felt suddenly very tired and hungry. He had not had a hot meal, or slept in a bed, for more days than he could reckon, and during his sickness he had completely lost count.
Kadarin turned into a small room, saying, "I think Lew is here with Beltran." Regis blinked in astonishment, seeing, in the first moment, only the blazing fire, the floor inlaid with the mosaic of white birds! Fantasies spun in his mind. Danilo was not here, as in bis dream, but Lew was standing near the fire, his back to Regis. He was looking down at a woman who had a small harp across her knees. She was playing and singing. Regis had heard the song at Nevarsin; it was immeasurably old, and had a dozen names and a dozen tunes:
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How came this blood, on your right hand,
Brother, tell me, tell me. It is the blood of an old gray wolf Who lurked behind a tree.
The song broke off in mid-chord; Lew turned, and looked at Regis in amazement.
"Regis!" he said, coming quickly toward the door. "What are you doing here?" He held out his arms to embrace him, then, seeing him clearly, took nun by the shoulders, almost holding his upright. He said savagely, "If this is any more of Beltran's?"
Regis drew himself upright. He wanted to let himself collapse into Lew's arms, lean on him, break down with fatigue and long drawn out fear?but not before these strangers. "I came here in search of Danilo; Javanne saw in her crystal that he had been taken by men of Aldaran. Had you any hand in this?"
"God forbid," said Lew. "What do you think I am? It was a mistake, I assure you, only a mistake. Come and sit down, Regis. You look tired and ill. Bob, if he's been mishandled, I'll have someone's head for it!"
"No, no," said Kadarin. "Lord Kermiac welcomed him as his own guest, and sent him to you right away."
Regis let Lew lead him to the bench by the fire. The woman touched the harp again, in soft chords. Another woman, this one very young, with long straight red hair and a pretty, remote face, came and took his cloak, looking at him with bold eyes, straight at him. No girl in the Domains would look at him like that! He had an uncomfortable feeling that she knew what he was thinking and was greatly amused by it Lew said the women's names but Regis was in no condition to pay attention. He was introduced to Beltran of Aldaran, too, who almost immediately left the room. Regis wished they would all go away. Lew sat beside him, saying, "How came you to ride this long road alone, Regis? Only for Danilo's sake?"
"I am sworn to him, we are bredin" Regis said faintly, "He is truly unharmed, not a prisoner?"
"He is housed in luxury, an honored guest. You shall see him as soon as you like."
"But I do not understand all this, Lew. You came on a mission from Comyn, yet I find you here entangled in their affairs. What is this all about?" As soon as their hands
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touched they had fallen into rapport, and Regis found himself wondering, Has Lew turned traitor to Comyn'! In answer Lew said quietly, "I am no traitor. But I have come to believe that perhaps service to Comyn and service to Darkover are not quite the same thing."
The woman had begun the song again, softly.
No wolf would prowl at this hour of the day,
Brother, tell me, tell me! It is the blood of my own brothers twain Who sat at the drink with me.
How came ye fight with your own blood kin,
Brother, tell me, tell me, Your father's sons and your mother's sons Who dwelled in peace with thee.
Lew was still talking, through the sound. "The Comyn has been too often unjust. They threw Danilo aside like a piece of rubbish, for no better reason than that he had offended a wicked and corrupt man who should never have been in power. Danilo is a catalyst telepath. I suggested they bring him here?I had no idea they would take him by force?and his services be enlisted to a larger loyalty. I had it in mind he could serve all our world, not a sick, power-mad clique of aristocrats bent on keeping themselves hi power at whatever cost...."
The mournful harp-chords were very soft, the woman's voice very sweet.
We sat at feast, we fought in jest,
Sister, I vow to thee; A berserker's rage came in my hand, And I slew them shamefully.
Lew said, "Enough of this, you are tired and anxious about Dani, and you must have some rest. When you are well recovered, I want you to know all about what we are doing. Then you will know why those who are really loyal to Darkover may serve us all best by putting some check on the Comyn powers."
Regis could feel Lew's sincerity through the touch on his hand, yet there was some hesitation too. He slid his hand up Lew's arm to touch the tattooed mark there. He said, "You're
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not completely sure of this either, Lew. You are sworn, sealed to Comyn."
Lew took his hand away, saying bitterly, "Sworn? No. Vows in which I had no part were sworn for me when I was five years old. But come, we'll talk of this another time. If you've been imagining Danilo a prisoner it will reassure you to find him in the best guest suite, the only one, I suppose, fit to entertain a Hastur. If he's your sworn man he should be lodged with you."
He turned, briefly making his excuses to the women. In his sensitized state Regis could feel their emotions, too: sharp resentment from the older, the singer. The younger one seemed aware of nothing but Lew. Regis didn't want to be part of these complexities! He was glad when they were alone in the corridor.
"Regis, what's really wrong with you? You're ill!"
Regis tried?he knew he didn't succeed too well?to cut off the rapport entirely. He knew that if he told Lew he had threshold sickness on the road, Lew would be immensely concerned. Even Ja
vanne had treated it as a serious matter. For some reason he was anxious to avoid this. He said, "Nothing much; I'm very tired. I'm not used to mountain riding and I may have a chill." Actively he resisted Lew's solicitude. He could feel his kinsman's anxiety about him, and it made him irritible for some unknown reason. He wasn't a child nowl And he could sense the bafflement with which Lew gently but definitely withdrew.
Lew paused at an ornate double door, scowling at the guard stationed there. "You guard a guest, sir?"
"Safeguard, Dom Lewis. Lord Beltran ordered me to see that no one disturbed him. Everybody's not friendly to the valley folk here. See?" the guard said, thrusting the door open. "He's not locked in."
Lew went in and called, "Danilo?" Regis, following him, took in at a glance the luxurious old-fashioned surroundings. Danilo came from an inner room, stopped short.
Regis felt overwhelming relief. He couldn't speak. Lew smiled. "You see," he said, "alive and well and unharmed."
Danilo flung back his head in an aggressive gesture. He said, "Did you send to have him captured, too?"
"How suspicious you are, Dani," Lew said. "Ask him yourself. I'll send servants to look after you."
He touched Regis lightly on the arm. "My own honor
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pledged on it, no harm shall come to either of you, and you shall depart unharmed when you are able to travel." He added, "Take good care of him, Dani," and withdrew, closing the door.
Chapter EIGHTEEN
When I came back to the fireside room, Thyra was still playing her harp, and I realized how short a time I had been away; she was still singing the ballad of the outlaw berserker.
And when will you come back again,
Brother, tell me, tell me?
When the sun and the moon rise together in the West, And that shall never be.
It must be immeasurably old, I thought, and alien, to speak of one moon instead of four! Beltran had returned and was gazing into the fire, looking angry and remote. He must have gotten the scolding he deserved from Kermiac. Before this, the old man's illness had kept any of us from telling Kermiac what Beltran had done. I was distressed because Beltran was distressed?I couldn't help it, I liked him, I understood what had prompted his rash orders. But what he had done to Danilo was unforgivable, and I was angry with him, too.
And he knew it. His voice, when he turned to me, was truculent.
"Now that you've put the child to bed?"
"Don't mock the lad, cousin," I said. "He's young, but he was man enough to cross the Hellers alone. I wouldn't."
Beltran said, "I've had that already from Father; he had nothing but praise for the boy's courage and good manner! I don't need it from you, too!" And he turned his back on me again. Well, I had little sympathy for him. He might well have lost us any chance of Danilo's friendship or help; and Danilo's help, as I saw it now, was all that could save this circle. If Beltran's laran could be fully opened, if with Danilo's aid we could discover and open up a few more latent telepaths, there was a chance, a bare chance but one I
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was willing to take, that we might somehow control the Sharra matrix. Without that it seemed helpless.
Marjorie smiled and said, "Your friend wouldn't speak to me or look at me. But I would like to know him."
"He's a valley man, love, he'd think it rude and boorish to stare at a maiden. But he is my good friend."
Kadarin's lip curled in amusement. "Yet it wasn't for your sake he crossed the mountains, but for the Syrtis boy."
"I came here of my free will, and Regis knew it," I retorted, then laughed heartily. "By my probably nonexistent forefathers, Bob, do you think I am jealous? I am no lover of boys, but Regis was put in my charge when he was a little lad. He's dearer to me than my own brother born."
Marjorie smiled her heart-stopping smile and said, "Then I shall love him, too."
Thyra looked up and taunted, through the chords of her harp, "Come, Marjorie, you're a Keeper! If a man touches you you'll go up in smoke or something!"
Icy shudders suddenly racked me. Marjorie, burning in Sharra's flame. ... I took one stride toward the fire, wrenched the harp from Thyra's hands, then caught myself, still rigid. What had I been about to do? Fling the harp across the room, bring it down crashing across that mocking face? Slowly, deliberately, forcing my shaking muscles to relax, I brought the harp down and laid it on the bench.
"Breda," I said, using the word for sister, not the ordinary one but the Intimate word which could also mean darling, "such mockery is unworthy of you. If I had thought it possible, or if I had had the training of you from the first, don't you think I would have chosen you rather than Marjorie? Don't you think I would rather have had Marjorie free?" I put my arm around her. For a moment she was defiant, gazing angrily up at me.
"Would you really have trusted me to keep your rate of chastity?" she flung at me. I was too shocked to answer. At last I said, "Breda, it isn't you I don't trust, it's your training."
She had been rigid in my arms; suddenly she went limp against me, her arms clinging around my neck. I thought she would cry. I said, still trembling with that mixture of fury and tenderness, "And don't make jests about the fires! Evanda have mercy, Thyra! You were never at Arilinn, you have never seen the memorial, but have you, who are a singer of ballads, never heard the tale of Marelie Hastur? I
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have no voice for singing, but I shall tell it you, if you need reminding that there is no jesting about such matters!" I had 1 to break off. My voice was trembling.
Kadarin said quietly, "We all saw Marjorie in the fire, but it was an illusion. You weren't hurt, were you, Margie?"
"No. No, I wasn't. No, Lew. Don't, please don't. Thyra didn't mean anything," Marjorie said, shaking. I ached to reach out for her, take her in my arms, keep her safe. Yet that would place her in more danger than anything else I could possibly do.
I had been a fool to touch Thyra.
She was stil! clinging to me, warm and close and vital. I wanted to thrust her violently away, but at the same time I wanted?and she knew it, damn it, she knew it!?I wanted what I would have had as a matter of course from any woman of my own circle who was not a Keeper. What would have dispelled this hostility and tension. Any woman tower-trained would have sensed the state I was in and felt responsible. . . .
I forced myself to be calm, to release myself from Thyra's arms. It wasn't Thyra's fault, any more than it was Marjorie's. It wasn't Thyra's fault that Marjorie, and not her-, self, had been forced by lack of any other to be Keeper. It wasn't Thyra who had roused me this way. It wasn't Thyra's fault, either, that she had not been trained to the customs of a tower circle, where the intimacy and awareness is closer than any blood tie, closer than love, where the need of one evokes a real responsibility in the others.
I could impose the laws of a tower circle on this group only so far as was needed for their own safety. I could not ask more than this. Their own bonds and ties went far back, beyond my coming. Thyra had nothing but contempt for Arilinn. And to come between Thyra and Kadarin was not possible.
Gently, so she would not feel wounded by an abrupt withdrawal, I moved away from her. Beltran, staring into the fire , as if hypnotized by the darting flames, said in a low voice, **MareHe Hastur. I know the tale. She was a Keeper at Ar-flinn who was taken by mountain raiders in the Kilghard Hills, ravaged and thrown out to die by the city wall. Yet from pride, or fear of pity, she concealed what had been done to her and went into the matrix screens in spite of the law of the Keepers. . . . And she died, a blackened corpse like one lightning-struck."
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Marjorie shrank, and I damned Beltran. Why did he have to tell that story in Marjorie's hearing? It seemed a piece of gratuitous cruelty, very unlike Be
ltran.
Yes. And I had been about to tell it to Thyra, and I had come near to breaking her own harp across her head. That was very unlike me, too.
What in all the Gods had come to us!
Kadarin said harshly, "A lying tale. A pious fraud to scare Keepers into keeping their virginity, a bogeyman to frighten babies and girl-children!"
I thrust out my scarred hand. "Bob, this is no pious fraud!"
"Nor can I believe it had anything to do with your virginity," he retorted, laughing, and laid a kind hand on my shoulder. "You're giving yourself nightmares, Lew. For your Marelie Hastur I give you Cleindori Aillard, who was kinswoman to your own father, and who married and bore a son, losing no iota of her powers as Keeper. Have you forgotten they butchered her to keep that secret? That alone should give the lie to all this superstitious drivel about chastity."
I saw Marjorie's face lose a little of its tension and was grateful to him, even if not wholly convinced. We were working here without elementary safeguards, and I was not yet willing to disregard this oldest and simplest of precautions.
Kadarin said, "If you and Marjorie feel safer to lie apart until this work is well underway, it's your own choice. But don't give yourselves nightmares either. She's well in control. I feel safe with her." He bent down, kissing her lightly on the forehead, a kiss completely without passion but altogether loving. He put a free arm around me, drew me against him, smiling. I thought for a moment he would kiss me too, but he laughed. "We're both too old for that," he said, but without mockery. For a moment we were all close together again, with no hint of the terrible violence and disharmony that had thrust us apart. I began to feel hope again.
Thyra asked softly, "How is it with our father, Beltranr I had forgotten that Thyra was his daughter too.
"He is very weak," Beltran said, "but don't fret, little sister, he'll outlive all of us."
I said, "Shall I go to him, Beltran? I've had long experience treating shock from matrix overload?"
"And so have I, Lew," Kadarin said kindly, releasing me.
"AU the knowledge of matrix technology is not locked up at Arilinn, bredu. I can do better without sleep than you young people."
I knew I should insist, but I did not have the heart to face down another of Thyra's taunts about Arilinn. And it was true that Kermiac had been training technicians in these hills before any of us were born. And my own weariness betrayed me. I swayed a little where I stood, and Kadarin caught and Steadied me.
"Go and rest, Lew. Look, Rafe's asleep on the rug. Thyra, call someone to carry him to bed. Off with you now, all of you!"
"Yes," said Beltran, "tomorrow we have work to do, we've delayed long enough. Now that we have a catalyst tele-path?"
I said somberly, "It may take a long time now to persuade Km to trust you, Beltran. And you cannot use force on him. You know that, don't you?"