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far away. At last she sighed and said, "Have you any token of Danilo, Regis?"
Regis took the dagger with the Hastur crest. He said, "We both swore on this, and it was cut from his belt when he was taken."
"Then it should resonate to him," she said, taking it in her hands and laying it lightly against her cheekbone. Then, the dagger resting in her palm, she uncovered the matrix. Regis averted his eyes, but not before he got a glimpse of a blinding blue flash that wrenched at his gut. Javanne was silent for a moment, then said in a faraway voice, "Yes, on the hillside path, four men?strange cloaks?an emblem, two eagles?cut away his dagger, sheath and all?Regisl He was taken away in a Terran helicopter!" She raised her eyes from the matrix and looked at him in amazement.
Regis1 heart felt as if a fist were squeezing it. He said, "Not to Tbendara; the Terrans there would have no use for him. AldaranT
Her voice was shaking. "Yes. The ensign of Aldaran is an eagle, doubled . . . and they would find it easy to beg or borrow Terran aircraft?Grandfather has done it here in urgency. But why?"
The answer was clear enough. Daniio was a catalyst tele-path. There had been a time when Kermiac of Aldaran trained Keepers in his mountains, and no doubt there were ways he could still use a catalyst.
Regis said in a low voice, "He has already borne more than any untrained telepath was meant to bear. If further strain or coercion is put on him his mind may snap. I should have brought him back with me to Thendara instead of leaving him there unguarded. This is my fault."
Bleakly, struggling against a horrible fear, he raised his head. "I must rescue him. I am sworn. Javanne, you must help me key into the matrix. I bave no time to go to Neskaya."
"Regis, is there no other way?"
"None, Grandfather, Kennard, the council?Dani is nothing to them. If it had been Dyan they might have exerted themselves. If Aldaran's men had kidnapped me, they'd have an army on the road! But Danilo? What do you think?"
Javanne said, "That nedestro heir of Kennard's. He was sent to Aldaran and he's kin to them. I wonder if he had a hand in this."
"Lew? He wouldn't."
Javanne looked skeptical. "In your eyes he can do no wrong. As a little boy you were in love with him as I with Dom Rafael; I have no child's passion for him, to blind me to what he is. Kennard forced him on Council with ugly tricks."
"You have no right to say so, Javanne. He is sealed to Comyn and tower-trained!"
She refused to argue. "In any case, I can see why you feel you must go, but you have no training, and it is dangerous. Is there such need for haste?" She looked into bis eyes and said after a moment, "As you will. Show me your matrix,"
His teeth clenched, Regis unwrapped the stone. He drew breath, astonished: faint light glimmered in the depths of the matrix. She nodded. "I can help you key it, then. Without that light, you would not be ready. I'll stay in touch with you. It won't do much good, but if you ... go out and can't get back to your body, ft could help me reach you." She drew a deep breath. For an instant then he felt her touch. She had not moved, her head was lowered over the blue jewel so that he saw only the parting hi her smooth dark hair, but it seemed to Regis that she bent over bim, a slim childish girl still much taller than he. She swung him up, as if he were a tiny child, astride her hip, holding him loosely on her arm. He had not thought of this in years, how she had done this when he was very little. She walked back and forth, back and forth, along the high-arched hall with the blue windows, singing to him in her husky low voice.... He shook his head to clear it of the illusion. She still sat with her head bent over the matrix, an adult again, but her touch was still on him, close, protective, sheltering. For a moment he felt that he would cry and cling to her as he had done then.
Javanne said gently, "Look into the matrix. Don't be afraid, this one isn't keyed to anyone else; mine hurt you because you're out of phase with it. Look into it, bend your thoughts on it, don't move until you see the lights waken inside it..."
He tried deliberately to relax; he realized that he was tensing every muscle against remembered pain. He finally looked into the pale jewel, feeling only a tiny shock of awareness, but something inside the jewel glimmered faintly. He bent his thoughts on it, reached out, reached out ... deep, deep inside. Something stirred, trembled, flared into a living spark.
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Then it was as if he had blown his breath on a coal from the fireplace: the spark was brilliant blue fire, moving, pulsing with the very rhythm of his blood. Excitement crawled in him, an almost sexual thrill.
"Enough!" Javanne said. "Look away quickly or youTl be trapped!"
No, not yet . . . Reluctantly, he wrenched his eyes from the stone. She said, "Start slowly. Look into it only a few minutes at a time until you can master it or it will master you. The most important lesson is that you must always control it, never let it control you."
He gave it a last glance, wrapped it again with a sense of curious regret, feeling Javanne's protective touch/embrace withdraw. She said, "You can do with it what you will, but that is not much, untrained. Be careful. You are not yet immune to threshold sickness and it may return. Can a few days matter so much? Neskaya is only a little more than a day's ride away."
"I don't know how to explain, but I feel that every moment matters. I'm afraid Javanne, afraid for Danilo, afraid for all of us. I must go now, tonight. Can you find me some old riding-clothes of Gabriel's, Javanne? These will attract too much attention in the mountains. And will you have your women make me some food for a few days? I want to avoid towns nearby where I might be recognized."
"I'll do it myself; no need for the women to see and gossip." She left him to his neglected supper while she went to find the clothing. He did not feel hungry, but dutifully stowed away a slice of roast fowl and some bread. When she came back, she had his saddlebags, and an old suit of Gabriel's. She left him by the fire to put them on, then he followed her down the hall to a deserted kitchen. The servants were long gone to bed. She moved around, making up a package of dried meat, hard bread and crackers, dried fruit She put a small cooking-kit into the saddlebags, saying it was one which Gabriel carried on hunting trips. He watched her silently, feeling closer to this little-known sister than he had felt since he was six years old and she left their home to marry. He wished he were still young enough to cling to her skirts as he had then. An ice-cold fear gripped at him, and then the thought: before going into danger, a Comvn heir must himself leave an hen-. He had refused even to think of it, as Dyan had refused, not wanting to be merely a link in a
chain, the son of his father, the father of his sons. Something inside him rebelled, deeply and strongly, at what he must do-Why bother? If he did not return, it would all be the same, one of Javanne's sons named his heir.... He could do nothing, say nothing....
He sighed. It was too late for that, he had gone too far. He said, "One thing more, sister. I go where I may never return. You know what that means. You must give me one of your sons, Javanne, for my heir."
Her face blanched and she gave a low, stricken cry. He felt the pain in it but he did not look away, and finally she said, her voice wavering, "Is there no other way?"
He tried to make it a feeble joke. "I have no time to get one in the usual way, sister, even if I could find some woman to help me at such short notice."
Her laughter was almost hysterical; it cut off in the middle, leaving stark silence. He saw slow acceptance dawning in her eyes. He had known she would agree. She was Hastur, of a family older than royalty. She had of necessity married beneath her, since there was no equal, and she had come to love her husband deeply, but her duty to the Hasturs came first. She only said, her voice no more than a thread, "What shall I say to Gabriel?"
"He has known since the day he took you to wife that this day might come," R
egis said. "I might well have died before coming to manhood."
"Come, then, and choose for yourself." She led the way to the room where her three sons slept in cots side by side. By the candlelight Regis studied their faces, one by one. Rafael, slight and dark, close-cropped curls tousled around his face; Gabriel, sturdy and swarthy and already taller than his brother. Mikhail, who was four, was still pixie-small, fairer than the others, his rosy cheeks framed in light waving locks, almost silvery white. Grandfather must have looked like that as a child, Regis thought. He felt curiously cold and bereft Javanne had given their clan three sons and two daughters. He might never father a son of his own. He shivered at the implications of what he was doing, bent his head, groping through an unaccustomed prayer. "Cassilda, blessed Mother of the Domains, help me choose wisely...."
He moved quietly from cot to cot. Rafael was most like him, he thought. Then, on some irresistible impulse, he bent over Mikhail, lifted the small sleeping form in his arms.
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"This is my son, Javanne."
She nodded, but her eyes were fierce. "And if you do not return he will be Hastur of Hastur; but if you do return, what then? A poor relation at the footstool of Hastur?"
Regis said quietly, "If I do not return, he will be nedestro, sister. I will not pledge you never to take a wife, even in return for this great gift. But this I swear to you: he shall come second only to my first legitimately born son. My second son shall be third to him, and I will take oath no other nedestro heir shall ever displace him. Will this content you, bredaT
Mikhail opened his eyes and stared about him sleepily, but he saw his mother and did not cry. Javanne touched the blond head gently, "It will content me, brother."
Holding the child awkwardly in unpracticed arms, Regis carried him out of the room where his brothers slept "Bring witnesses," he said, "I must be gone soon. You know this is irrevocable, Javanne, that once I take this oath, he is not yours but mine, and must be sealed my heir. You must send him to Grandfather at Thendara."
She nodded. Her throat moved as she swallowed hard, but she did not protest "Go down to the chapel," she said. "I will bring witnesses."
It was an old room in the depths of the house, the four old god-forms painted crudely on the walls, lights burning before them. Regis held Mikhail on his lap, letting the child sleepily twist a button on his tunic, until the witnesses came, four old men and two old women of the household. One of the women had been Javanne's nurse in childhood, and his own.
He took his place solemnly at the altar, Mikhail in his arms.
"I swear before Aldones, Lord of Light and my divine forefather, that Hastur of Hasturs is this child by unbroken blood line, known to me in true descent. And in default of any heir of my body, therefore do I, Regis-Rafael Felix Alar Hastur y Elhalyn, choose and name him my nedestro hen" and swear that none save my first-born son in true marriage shall ever displace him as my heir; and that so long as I live, none shall challenge his right to my hearth, my home or my heritage. Thus I take oath hi the presence of witnesses known to us both. I declare that my son shall be no more called Mikhail Regis Lanart-Hastur, but?" He paused, hesitating among old Comyn names for suitable new names which
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would confirm the ritual. There was no time to search the rolls for names of honor. He would commemorate, then, the desperate need which had driven him to this. "I name him Danilo," he said at last. "He shall be called Danilo Lanart Hastur, and I will so maintain to all challenge, facing my father before me and my sons to follow me, my ancestry and my posterity. And this claim may never be renounced by me while I live, nor in my name by any of the heirs of my body." He bent and kissed his son on the soft baby lips. It was done. They had a strange beginning. He wondered what the end would be. He turned his eyes on his old nurse.
"Foster-mother, I place you hi charge of my son. When the roads are safe, you must take him to the Lord Hastur at Thendara, and see to it that he is given the Sign of Comyn."
Javanne was dropping slow tears, but she said nothing except, "Let me kiss him once more," and allowed the old woman to carry the child away. Regis followed them with his eyes. His son. It was a strange feeling. He wondered if he had laran or the unknown Hastur gift; he wondered if he would ever know, would ever see the child again.
"I must go," he said to his sister. "Send for my horse and someone to open the gates without noise." As they waited together in the gateway, he said, "If I do not return?"
"Speak no ill-omen!" she said quickly.
"Javanne, do you have the Hastur gift?"
"I do not know," she said. "None knows till it is wakened by one who holds it. We had always thought that you had no laran. . . ."
^ He nodded grimly. He had grown up with that, and even now it was too sore a wound to touch.
She said, "A day will came when you must go to Grandfa-} ther. who holds it to waken in his heir, and ask for the gift.
-' Then, and only then, you will know what it is. I do not know
myself," she said. "Only if you had died before you were de-
;; clared a man, or before you had fathered a son, it would
'; have been wakened in me so that, before my own death, I
might pass it to one of my sons."
*? And so it might pass, still. He heard the soft clop-clop-clop j*.. of hooves in the dark. He prepared to mount, turned back a ?- moment and took Javanne briefly in his arms. She was '; crying. He blinked tears from his own eyes. He whispered, '& "Be good to my son, darling." What more could he say? | She kissed him quickly in the dark and said, "Say you'll
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come back, brother. Don't say anything else." Without waiting for another word, she wrenched herself free of him and ran back into the dark house.
The gates of Edelweiss swung shut behind him. Regis was alone The night was dark, fog-shrouded. He fastened his cloak about his throat, touching the small pouch where the matrix lay. Even through the insulation he could feel it, though no other could have, a small live thing, throbbing. . . , He was alone with it, under the small horn of moon lowering behind the distant hills. Soon even that small light would be
braced himself, murmured to his horse, straightened his back and rode away northward, on the first step of his unknown journey.
Chapter SIXTEEN
(Lew Alton98 narrative)
, Until the day I die, I am sure I shall return in dreams to that first joyous time at Aldaran.
In my dreams, everything that came after has been wiped out, all the pain and terror, and I remember only that time when we were all together and I was happy, wholly happy for the first and last time in my life. In those dreams Thyra moves with all her strange wild beauty, but gentle and subdued, as she was during those days, tender and pliant and loving. Beltran is there, too, with his fire and the enthusiasm of the dream from which we had all taken the spark, my friend, almost my brother. Kadarin is always there, and hi my dreams he is always smiling, kind, a rock of strength bearing us all up when we faltered. And Rafe, the son I shall never have, always beside me, his eyes lifted to mine.
And Marjorie.
Marjorie is always with me in those dreams. But there is nothing I can say about Marjorie. Only that we were together and in love, and as yet the fear was only a little, little shadow, like a breath of chill from a glacier not yet in sight. I wanted her, of course, and I resented the fact that I could not touch her even in the most casual way. But it wasn't as bad as I had feared. Psi work uses up so much energy and strength that there's nothing much left. I was with her every waking moment and it was enough. Almost enough. And we could wait for the rest.
I wanted a well-trained team, so I worked with them day by day, trying to shape us all together into a functioning circle which could work together, precisely tuned. As yet we were working with our small matrices; before we joined to-
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gether to open and call forth the power of the big one, we must be absolutely attuned to one another, with no bidden weaknesses. I would have felt safer with a circle of six or eight, as at Arilinn. Five is a small circle, even with Beltran working outside as a psi monitor. But Thyra and Kad-arin were stronger than most of us at Arilinn?I knew they were both stronger than I, though I had more skill and training?and Marjorie was fantastically talented. Even at Arilinn, they would have chosen her the first day as a potential Keeper.
Deep warmth and affection, even love, had sprung up among all of us with the gradual blending of our minds. It was always like this, hi the building of a circle. It was closer than family intimacy, closer than sexual love. It was a sort of blending, as if we all melted into one another, each of us contributing something special, individual and unique, and somehow all of us together becoming more than the sum of us.
But the others were growing impatient. It was Thyra who finally voiced what they were all wanting to know.
"When do we begin to work with the Sharra matrix? We're as ready as we'll ever be."
I demurred. "I'd hoped to find others to work with us; I'm not sure we can operate a ninth-level matrix alone." Rafe asked, "What's a ninth-level matrix?" "In general," I said dryly, "it's a matrix not safe to handle with less than nine workers. And that's with a good, fully trained Keeper."
Kadarin said, "I told you we should have chosen Thyra." "I won't argue with you about it Thyra is a very strong telepath; she is an excellent technician and mechanic. But no Keeper."
Thyra asked, "Exactly how does a Keeper differ from any other telepath?"
I struggled to put it into language she could understand. "A Keeper is the central control in the circle; you've all seen that. She holds together the forces. Do you know what ener-gons are?"
Only Rafe ventured to ask, "Are they the little wavy things that I can't quite see when I look into the matrix?"