him to action. He was chilled to the bone, and the sweat on his chest was cold
on his skin.
Inertia seemed to paralyze him briefly, as his mind spun in tangles of fruitless
speculation. Then he made himself stand up, noticing that his knees protested a
little, and cross the common room. He poured himself another half glass of
juice, then put the container back into the cool box. He placed his empty glass
in the rack for the sterilizer, took a deep breath, and prepared to go wake up
Katherine. He would have to rush her, not give her time to think, to ask
questions-or else abandon her and the children, and that was unthinkable. If
only he was not so weary!
1
Marguerida Alton-Hastur sat at her desk and stared out the narrow window,
unsettled for no reason she could put a name to. A glorious early autumn sky,
with several interesting cloud shapes in it, filled the opening. She decided one
resembled a camel, an animal that had never existed on Darkover and was now
alive only in a few wildlife refuges, and remembered how much fun she had had
when the children were little, trying to decide what clouds looked like. Once,
several clouds had seemed to her gaze to be a pod of delfins frolicking in the
seas of Thetis, the planet on which she had grown up. Marguerida had been unable
to explain her sudden flood of tears, nor the nature of the images. Her children
had never seen the sea, let alone bathed in it, and they could not understand
her aching desire for warm oceans and balmy breezes. Funny-she had not thought
of that day in ages. She must be getting old, wallowing in memories.
The children were all much too grown up for cloud-gazing now, even Yllana, the
youngest, at eleven, and she rather missed the innocent game. Last Midsummer,
Domenic, her eldest, had been declared his father's heir designate, despite the
very vocal protects of Javanne Hastur, her difficult mother-in-law. It hardly
seemed possible-the time had passed so quickly. Before long she might become a
mother-in-law herself, and then a grandmother! She hoped that she would like her
yet undiscovered daughter-in-law more than Javanne liked her, that she would be
kinder, or at least more polite. But not too soon, she whispered to herself. As
difficult as being a parent had turned out to be, she was in no hurry to have
her children leave her.
She looked around the small office she kept in her suite of rooms in Comyn
Castle. The hearth was ablaze, and the cozy room was fragrant with the smell of
burning balsam. The paneled walls shone, reflecting the dancing light from the
fire, and the colors in the pattern of the rug on the stone floor pleased her.
The tang of fall penetrated even through the thick walls of Comyn Castle, a
fresh smell that never failed to liven her mind. It had taken a long while to
get used to the weather on Darkover, for Thetis was almost an endless summer.
But now she actually looked forward to changing seasons and the festivals which
punctuated them.
From the next room, she could hear the delightful tinkle of a clavier, where Ida
Davidson was giving Yllana her music lessons. She smiled at the sound. It was
not a syntheclavier of the sort which Ida had used when Marguerida had lived in
her house during her years at the University. Such a device was prohibited on
Darkover, since it used the advanced technologies of the Federation. Instead, it
was a reasonable imitation of the noble ancestor of that instrument, crafted
wholly on Darkover, of native woods and rare Darkovan metals, made from drawings
Marguerida had obtained with great difficulty from the University archives.
There had never been such a keyboard instrument on Darkover before, but now,
after the struggle to create the first one, there were six in Thendara. Members
of the Musicians Guild were writing music specifically for them. Yllana was not
playing any of these home-grown compositions, but one of the Klieg Variations
from the twenty-fourth century-formal, structured and a challenge for ten small
fingers.
There was nothing whatever to disturb the serenity of the moment, as a speedy
mental sweep of Comyn Castle assured her. The Alton Gift, which she had resented
so bitterly when she first discovered she had it, had turned out to have its
uses, one of which was the ability to scan the environment around her. Perhaps
she was just being anxious for no reason. It had been a troubling year, with a
summer that was the warmest in recent memory. The farmers had fretted over the
possibility of drought, and the fire danger in the hills had been very great.
There had been disturbances of another kind as well-some small riots in the
markets of Thendara and reports of an uprising in Shainsa in the Dry Towns. But
the rains had come in from the west at last, the balmy, near-sixty degree
temperatures had vanished, and there had not been any outbreak of large fires.
She really must get down to work! This woolgathering was wasting valuable time,
and her time was at a premium just now. Marguerida looked down at the stack of
pages in front of her. They were staff sheets, covered with musical notation and
accompanying lyrics. After nearly two decades of doubt and hesitation, she had
finally succumbed to her great, secret ambition and written an opera. It had
taken all of her nerve and a great deal of encouragement from Ida to get
started. But once she began, it had been nearly impossible to stop. Mikhail
Hastur, her beloved companion and husband of nearly sixteen years, had
complained that her composing was a greater rival than any living man could be,
and Marguerida knew he was only half joking.
Writing the music had been fairly easy, but finding the time-the peace and quiet
to do so-had been difficult. She had a great many duties, as wife of the heir
designate to Regis Hastur, and the mother of three children. Somewhat
reluctantly, Marguerida had also taken over some of the task of running Comyn
Castle from Lady Linnea Storn-Lanart, Regis' consort. In the years since she had
been married to Mikhail Hastur, she had done so many things she had never
imagined doing when she had been a young career academic. Foremost among these
things, she had learned how to manage her unique and potentially dangerous laran
talents, guided by the Keeper Istvana Ridenow. Her friend and confidant had come
to Thendara from Neskaya to help her and Mikhail right after they were married,
to train them and teach them. Istvana had remained in the city for eleven years,
and they had been wonderful ones for Marguerida. But now she was back in her own
Tower, pursuing her own calling, and Marguerida still had to work hard at not
missing her.
Reflecting for a moment on years past, she decided she had not done so badly in
facing her challenges. She had read ancient texts written in the rounded
alphabet of Darkover with one hand while she cradled a baby at the breast with
the other. She had learned to sit through Comyn Council meetings without losing
her fearsome temper, even in the presence of her mother-in-law, Javanne Hastur,
who remained an enduring thorn in her side. The shadow matrix which was blazed
upon her left ha
nd, the thing she had wrested from a Tower in the overworld,
still remained something of an enigma, but she had found ways to control it so
that she was no longer afraid of it. It remained beyond the considerable
knowledge that had been amassed over the centuries by the leroni of Darkover, a
thing which was both real and unreal at the same time. She could heal with it,
and she could kill as well, and coming to grips with both extremes had been very
difficult. The years had been hard, but she had accomplished things she had
never dreamed of, and she had a deep sense of satisfaction in that.
During those years of study and motherhood, however, there had been no time for
the music which had once defined her life and still remained her ruling passion.
Instead, she had channeled her considerable energies into less personal efforts.
With the help of Thendara House, the Renunciate center in the city, she had
founded a small printing house, and several schools for the children of
tradesmen and crafts people. She had helped the Musicians Guild get permission
to erect a new performance hall much larger than anything which had existed
before, and encouraged the preservation of the fine musical tradition of
Darkover in any way she could.
Marguerida's choices had been neither altruistic nor uncomplicated. When she had
returned to the world of her birth over sixteen years before, there had been a
great vogue for everything concerning the Terran Federation, a condition which
perturbed not only the more conservative rulers of several Domains, but bothered
the craftsmen and tradesmen as well. They feared their way of life would be lost
in a flood of Terran technology, and had gone so far as to petition Regis Hastur
to restore the Comyn Council, which had been disbanded two decades earlier.
Their demand had been unprecedented in the history of Darkover, and Regis had
listened to their arguments, and restored the Council. This had kept Darkover on
a path that satisfied most of its inhabitants.
But a complete return to the pre-Federation past was impossible, although there
were a few members on the Council who sincerely believed otherwise. Javanne, for
instance, seemed consumed with the idea that if everyone would just do things as
she wished, and make a real effort, then somehow the glories of an earlier time
would reappear, and the Federation would cease to trouble their minds. Francisco
Ridenow, the head of the Ridenow Domain, was almost as bad.
Marguerida understood both her mother-in-law's curious nostalgia for a time
which she had never actually known-for the Terrans had arrived four decades
before Javanne had been born-and her almost atavistic fear of change. She also
knew it was much too late to turn back, and that Darkover needed increased
knowledge, not unlettered ignorance, in order to prosper. The Federation was not
going to go away just because Javanne Hastur wished it to, although there seemed
no way to make the woman grasp this fact.
The space madness which had possessed the previous generation of youngsters had
faded, however, and the populace had returned to their normal pursuits, with,
Marguerida was sure, a silent sigh of relief. The number of young men and women
who wanted to learn the intricacies of Federation technologies had diminished,
too, and while there was always a pool of adolescents eager to obtain employment
at Federation Headquarters, they were principally the offspring of Federation
people who had married Darkovans.
The Federation itself was responsible for this. The political body she had been
familiar with during her years at University was gone, replaced by a tangle of
bureaucracies, each jealously guarding its own privileges, and unwilling to
welcome newcomers into its ranks. This reorganization, which had taken place
twelve years before, had brought them Lyle Belfontaine, the Station Chief at
Headquarters. She had never actually met him, but her father had, and Lew Alton
had given her a very poor impression of the man. Belfontaine had made it quite
clear that he regarded the Darkovans as backward and useless. The organizational
shift in the Federation had made him the most powerful Terran on the planet,
superseding even the Planetary Administrator, who, while he still retained his
position, had no voice in the actual running of things. Belfontaine had closed
the old John Reade Orphanage, out of pique at a decision of Regis', and then
closed down the Medical Center to any except Federation employees as well.
Much of this had passed by Marguerida unnoticed until recently. She had been
much too busy rearing her three children, and studying with Istvana. She had
found an unexpected kind of satisfaction in both activities, and had been
happily willing to leave larger matters to her father, Lew, to Regis, and to
Mikhail. It had been enough, with her other more public activities. But now,
finding that she could compose music with the same hand that was her curse and
her blessing, she had discovered a depth of pleasure that nothing else afforded
her.
She had never wanted to participate in the administration of Comyn Castle, but
Lady Linnea had persuaded her that she must. Eventually it would become her job,
in some misty future time when Regis Hastur had gone to his rest, or his consort
was too old to continue. The idea remained unreal in her mind, as if she could
not bear the idea of their inevitable ends.
She had tackled her new duties as she had approached everything else in her
life-by learning everything she could as quickly as possible. It had helped that
she had spent ten years assisting Ivor Davidson, her long-dead mentor, on his
journeys around the backwaters of the Federation in search of indigenous music
history and tradition. More, Marguerida had the advantage of knowing Comyn
Castle in a way that no one else did. She had ancient memories of the building
imprinted in her mind, a leftover from her overshadowing by the long dead
Keeper, Ashara Alton. These ancient memories had cursed her youth and
adolescence, appearing in dreams and nightmares. Only her return to the planet
of her birth had released her from the torment of inexplicable thoughts and
images, although for a time it had given her more problems than she had ever
imagined. She had nearly died from adult-onset threshold sickness-an experience
Marguerida had mercifully almost forgotten.
Ashara had been present at the construction of Comyn Castle, and after she had
died, her shade had remained present in the now ruined Old Tower that stood on
one side of the castle. So there were forgotten byways and unremembered rooms
and passages that were as familiar to Marguerida as her own hand. It was a
disquieting knowledge, one that she had to take pains to conceal because it made
the servants uneasy. Dealing with them had been a real challenge, since she was
more accustomed to doing things herself than to ordering them done. And the
actual administration of Comyn Castle was a much larger project than keeping
travel papers and baggage in order. In many ways the building was a
self-contained small town, with its own brewery, bakery, and even a small
weaving loft. It was a
lways stocked as if for a siege, and one of her duties had
been to keep it ready for any eventuality.
Although she had been born on Darkover forty-two years before, Marguerida had
lived half of her life off that world, and part of her still felt like an
interloper. Her father said he often had the same feeling, and sharing her sense
of alienation with him was a comfort to her. She had been estranged from him for
all her years at University, but when they had met again, soon after her return
to Darkover, Marguerida had found him changed. Now she could not think of life
without him-his ironic sense of humor, his profound insights, and most of all,
his steady affection for her, for Mikhail, and for his grandchildren. He was no
longer the drunken, tortured man who raged in the night, and even the death of
his wife, Diotima Ridenow, ten years ago had miraculously not returned him to
that earlier state.
But despite the understanding presence of her father, Marguerida's sense of
being a stranger had never entirely gone away. Part of this was the result of
her difficult relationship with Javanne Hastur. Mikhail's mother had never
really accepted her into the family, although his father, Dom Gabriel had
finally broken down and welcomed her with genuine affection. Javanne always
managed to convey to Marguerida a sense that there was something wrong with her,
and with Domenic, her oldest child, whose conception had occurred under such
unusual circumstances-during her journey back through time to the Ages of Chaos.
She might even be correct about Nico, although Marguerida would have bitten her
tongue rather than admit it. He was an odd lad, older than his years,
self-contained and remote. But the difference ran deeper than that, and
Marguerida knew it. There was something just a bit eerie about her oldest child,
a quality of stillness that made it seem as if he were listening to some distant
voice. Maybe he was, or perhaps, as Dom Danilo Syrtis-Ardais had once suggested,
half seriously, he was the reincarnation of Varzil Ridenow. She rather hoped he
was not, for her single encounter with that long dead laranzu had not left her
with any desire to meet him in another form, and certainly not as her son.
She tried to accept and come to terms with her mother-in-law's dislike of her.