The Forbidden Tower

  Damon bowed his head, burying his face in his hands. Callista gently bent and kissed the cold brow, murmuring something Andrew could not hear. A dark form, crouched kneeling beside the bier, suddenly stirred and rose. It was a short, sturdily built young man, disheveled and heavy-eyed, his eyelids reddened with long weeping. Andrew knew who he must be, even before Callista held out her hands.

  “Cathal, dear cousin.”

  He stared at them pitifully for a moment before he found his voice. “Lady Ellemir, my lords…”

  “I am not Ellemir, but Callista, cousin,” she said quietly. “We are grateful that you should have remained with Domenic till we could come. It is right there should be someone near who loved him.”

  “So I felt, and yet I felt guilty, I who was his murderer—” His voice broke. Damon embraced the shaking lad.

  “We all know it was mischance, kinsman. Tell me how it happened.”

  The red-eyed stare was pitiable. “We were in the armory, working with wooden practice swords as we did every day. He was a better swordsman than I,” Cathal said, and his face came apart. He too, Andrew noticed, had Comyn features; “cousin” was not just politeness.

  “I didn’t know I had hit him so hard, truly I didn’t. I thought he was shamming, teasing me, that he would spring up and laugh—he did that so often.” His face twisted. Damon, remembering a thousand pranks during Domenic’s cadet year, wrung Cathal’s hand. “I know, my boy.” Had the lad gone like this, uncomforted, burdened since the death?

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I shook him.” Cathal was white with horror. “I said, ‘Get up, you silly donkey, stop playing the fool.’ And then I took off his mask and I saw he was unconscious. But even then I didn’t think much about it—someone is always getting hurt.”

  “I know, Cathal, I was knocked senseless half a dozen times in my cadet years, and look, my middle finger is still crooked where Coryn broke it with a practice sword. But what did you do then, lad?”

  “I ran off to fetch the hospital officer, Master Nicol.”

  “You left him alone?”

  “No, his brother was with him,” Cathal said. “Dezi was putting cold water on his face, trying to bring him around. But when I came back with Master Nicol he was dead.”

  “Are you sure he was alive when you left him, Cathal?”

  “Yes,” Cathal said positively. “I could hear him breathing, and I felt his heart.”

  Damon shook his head, sighing. “Did you notice his eyes. Were the pupils dilated? Contracted? Did he react to light in any way?”

  “I… I didn’t notice, Lord Damon, I never thought to look.”

  Damon sighed. “No, I suppose not. Well, dear lad, head injuries do not always follow the rules. A Guardsman in my year as hospital officer was knocked against a wall in a street fight, and when they picked him up he seemed quite well, but at supper he went to sleep with his head on the table, and never woke, but died in his sleep.” He stood up, his hand resting on Cathal’s shoulder.

  “Set your mind at rest, Cathal. There was nothing you could have done.”

  “Lord Hastur and some of the others, they questioned and questioned me, as if anyone could ever believe I could hurt Domenic. We were bredin—I loved him.” The boy went and stood before the statue of Cassilda, saying vehemently, “The Lords of Light strike me here if I could ever harm him!” Then he turned and knelt for a moment at Callista’s feet. “Domna, you are a leronis, you can prove at will that I held no malice toward my dear lord, that I would have died myself to shield him, would that my hand had withered first!”

  Tears had begun to flow again. Damon bent and raised him, saying firmly, “We know that, my lad, believe me.”

  Grief and guilt flooded him. The boy was wide open to Damon’s mind, but the guilt was only for the careless blow, there was no guile in Cathal. “Now a time has come when more weeping is only self-indulgence. You must go and rest. You are his paxman; you must ride at his side when he is laid in the earth.”

  Cathal drew a long breath, looking up into Damon’s face. “You do believe me, Lord Damon. Now, now I really think I can sleep.”

  He watched the boy turn away, sighing. Whatever reassurances he might give, Cathal would live the rest of his life with the knowledge that he had slain his kinsman and his sworn friend by evil chance. Poor Cathal. Domenic died quickly and without pain. Cathal would suffer for years.

  Callista was standing before the bier, looking down at Domenic, dressed in the colors of his Domain, his curly hair combed unnaturally smooth, his eyes peacefully closed. She felt at his throat.

  “Where is his matrix? Damon, it should be buried with him.”

  Damon frowned. “Cathal?”

  The boy, at the very threshold of the chapel, stopped. “Sir?”

  “Who laid him out for burial? Why did they take his matrix from his body?”

  “Matrix?” The blue eyes were uncomprehending. “I heard him say often enough that he had no interest in such things. I didn’t know he had one.”

  Callista’s fingers strayed to her throat. “He was given one when he was tested. He had laran, though he used it but seldom. When I last saw him it was around his neck, in a little bag like this.”

  “Now I remember,” Cathal said. “He did have something around his neck, I thought it a lucky charm or some such thing. I never knew what it was. Perhaps whoever laid him out for burial thought it too shabby a trinket to bury with him.”

  Damon let Cathal go. He would ask who had prepared Domenic’s body for burial. Surely it should be buried with him.

  “How could anyone take it?” Andrew asked. “You have told me, and shown me, that it is not safe to touch another’s matrix. When you took Dezi’s, it was nearly as painful for you as for him.”

  “In general, when the owner of a keyed matrix dies, the stone dies with him. After that it is only a dead piece of blue crystal, without light. But it is not suitable that it should remain to be handled.” The chances were overwhelming that some servant had simply thought it, as Cathal said, a shabby trinket not fit to bury with a Comyn heir.

  If Master Nicol, not understanding, had touched it, perhaps loosened it, trying to give Domenic air, that could have killed him, but no, Dezi was there. Dezi would have known, being Arilinn-trained. If Master Nicol had tried to remove the matrix, Dezi, who, as Damon had cause to know, could do a Keeper’s work, would surely have chosen to handle it himself, as he could do so safely.

  But if Dezi had taken it…

  No. He would not believe that. Whatever his faults, Dezi had loved Domenic. Domenic alone in the family, had befriended him, had treated Dezi like a true brother, had insisted on his rights.

  Brother had slain brother, before this, but no. Dezi had loved Domenic, he loved his father. It would have been hard, indeed, not to love Domenic.

  For a moment Damon stood beside the bier of the dead boy. Come what might, this was the end of the old days at Armida. Valdir was so young, and if he must be heir so soon, there would be no time for the usual training of a Comyn son, the years in cadet corps and Guardsmen, the time spent in a Tower if he was fit for it. He and Andrew would do their best to be sons to the aging Lord Alton, but despite their best intentions, they were not Altons steeped in the traditions of the Lanarts of Armida. Whatever happened, it was the end of an era.

  Callista followed Andrew as he went to examine the paintings on the walls. They were very old, done with pigments that glowed like jewels, depicting the legend of Hastur and Cassilda, the great myth of the Comyn. Hastur in his golden robes wandering by the shores of the lake; Cassilda and Camilla at their looms; Camilla surrounded by her doves, bringing him the traditional fruits; Cassilda, a flower in her hand, proffering it to the child of the God. The drawings were ancient and stylized, but she could recognize some of the fruits and flowers. The blue and gold blossom in Cassilda’s hand was the kireseth, the blue starflower of the Kilghard Hills, colloquially called the golden bell. Was this sacred a
ssociation, she wondered, why the kireseth flower was taboo to every Tower circle from Dalereuth to the Hellers? She thought, with a pang of regret, how she had lain in Andrew’s arms, unafraid, during the winter blooming. They used to make jokes about it at weddings, if the bride were reluctant Her eyes stung with tears, but she swallowed them back. While the heir of the Domain, her dearly loved younger brother, lay dead, was this any time to be fretting about her private troubles?

  * * *

  Chapter Eighteen

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  It was a gray morning, the sun hidden behind banks of fog and little spits and drizzles of sleet blowing around the heights, as the funeral procession rode northward from Thendara, bearing the body of Domenic Lanart-Alton to lie beside his forefathers of the Comyn. The rhu fead at Hali, the holy place of the Comyn, lay an hour’s ride northward from the Comyn Castle, and every lord and lady of Comyn blood who could come to the Council in the last three days rode with them to do honor to the heir to Alton, killed by tragic mischance so young.

  All except Esteban Lanart-Alton. Andrew, riding with Cathal Lindir and young Valdir, remembered the scene which had broken out that morning when Ferrika, summoned by the old man to give him something to strengthen him for the journey, had flatly refused.

  “You are not fit to ride, vai dom, not even in a horse-litter. If you follow him to his grave, you will lie there beside him before a tenday is out.” More gently, she had added, “The poor lad is beyond all helping or hurt, Lord Alton. We must think now of your own strength.”

  The old man had flown into such a rage that Callista, hastily summoned, had feared that his very anger would bring on whatever catastrophe Ferrika feared for him. She had tried to mediate, saying tentatively, “Can it harm him as much as this kind of disturbance?”

  “I will hear no woman’s ruling,” Dom Esteban had shouted. “Send for my body-servant and get out of here, both of you! Dezi—” He had turned to the lad for confirmation, and Dezi said, his smooth face flushing with color, “If you will ride, Uncle, I will go with you.”

  But Ferrika had slipped away, and returned in a moment with Master Nicol, the hospital officer of the Guards. He felt the old man’s pulse, turned down his eyelid to look at the small veins there, then said curtly, “My lord, if you ride out today, you are not likely to return. There are others here who can bury the dead. Your heir has not even been formally accepted by Council, and in any case he is but a lad of twelve years. Your task, vai dom, is to save your own strength till that boy is grown to manhood. By a last sentimental service for your dead son, will you risk leaving your living one fatherless?”

  Before these unwelcome truths there was nothing to say. Dismayed, Dom Esteban had allowed Master Nicol to put him back to bed. He clung to Dezi’s hand and the boy remained docilely at his side.

  Now, riding northward to Hali, Andrew recalled the calls of condolence, the long talks with other members of the Council which had taxed Lord Alton’s strength to the utmost. Even if he survived the coming Council season and the homeward journey, could he live until Valdir was declared a man at fifteen? And how could a boy of fifteen possibly cope with the complex policies and politics of the Domain? Certainly not this sheltered, scholarly lad from a monastery!

  Valdir rode at the head of the procession, in drab formal mourning, his face very pale against the dark garments. Beside him rode his sworn friend Valentine Aillard, who had come with him from Nevarsin, a big, sturdy boy with hair so blonde it looked white. Both boys looked solemn, but not deeply grieved. Neither of them had known Domenic well enough for that.

  On the shores of the Lake of Hali, where legend said that Hastur, son of Light, had first come to Darkover, Domenic’s body was laid in an unmarked grave, as the custom demanded. Callista leaned heavily on Andrew as they stood beside the opened grave, and he picked up her thought: It does not matter where he lies, he has gone elsewhere. But it would have comforted my father, if he could rest in Armida soil.

  Andrew looked around the burying ground and shivered. Here beneath his feet lay all that was mortal of countless generations of Comyn, with no sign to tell where they lay except for the irregular mounding of the ground, thrust into heaps by spring thaw and winter snow. Would his own sons and daughters lie here one day? Would he, himself, some day rest here under the strange sun?

  Valdir, as nearest of kin, stepped first to the graveside. His voice was high and childish, and he spoke hesitantly.

  “When I was five years old, my brother Domenic lifted me from my pony and said I should have a horse fit for a man. He took me to the stables, and helped the coridom choose a gentle horse for me. Let that memory lighten grief.”

  He stepped back and Valentine Aillard took his place. “In my first year in Nevarsin I was lonely and miserable, as all the boys are, only more so, because I have neither mother nor father living, and my sister was fostered far away. Domenic had come to visit Valdir. He took me into the town and bought me sweets and gifts so that I would have what the other boys had after a visit from kinfolk. When he sent Valdir gifts at Midwinter festival he sent me a gift too. Let that memory lighten grief.”

  One by one, the members of the funeral party stepped forward, each with some memory or tribute of the one who lay in his grave. Cathal Lindir could only stand silent, swallowing his sobs, and finally he only blurted out, “We were bredin. I loved him,” and stepped back, hiding himself in the crowd, unable even to speak the ritual words. Callista, taking his place at the graveside, said, “He was the only one in my family to whom I was not… not something apart and strange. Even when I dwelt at Arilinn, and all my other kinsfolk treated me as a stranger, Domenic was always the same to me. Let that memory lighten grief.” She wished that Ellemir were here, to hear the tributes to her favorite brother. But Ellemir had chosen to remain with her father. Domenic, she said, was past all help or hurt, but her father needed her.

  Andrew stepped in his turn to the graveside. “I came a stranger to Armida. He stood beside me at my wedding, for I had no kinsman at my side.” As he ended with “Let that memory lighten grief,” he felt saddened that he had had so little time to know his young brother-in-law.

  It seemed that every lord and lady of Comyn who had ridden to Domenic’s grave had searched their memory for some small kindness, some pleasant encounter for the mourners to remember the dead. Lorenz Ridenow, who, Andrew remembered, had schemed to oust Domenic from his command of the Guards on the grounds of his youth, spoke of how modest and competent the boy had been under the authority thrust on him so young. Danvan Hastur, a short, sturdy young man, with silver-gilt hair and gray eyes, cadet-master in the Guards, told how the young commander had interceded for the victim of a cruel prank among the cadets. Damon, who had been Domenic’s cadet-master when he was fourteen and new to the cadets, remembered, and told them, that in spite of Domenic’s perpetual pranks and mischief, he had never heard Domenic make a joke with any malice, or play a prank with anything of cruelty in it. Andrew realized, with a sorrowful pang, how much the boy would be missed. It would be hard on Valdir, to fill the place of a young man so universally liked and respected.

  As they rode home the fog began to lift. Riding through the gap in the hills leading down into Thendara, Andrew looked again across the valley to the buildings which had begun to thrust upward within the enclosed walls of the Terran Zone, the hum of machinery, perceptible even from this distance, for the building there. Once he had been Andrew Carr and dwelt in a compound like that, yellow lights blotting out the color of whatever sun he lived under, and he had not cared what lay beyond. Now he looked indifferently at the small distant shapes of spaceships, the skeleton ribs of the unfinished skyscrapers. All that had nothing to do with him.

  As he turned away he saw the eyes of Lorill Hastur resting on him. Lorill was Regent of Comyn Council, and Callista had explained that he was more powerful than the King, a man of middle age, tall, commanding, with dark-red hair fading to white at the temples. His eyes caught and held Andrew
’s for a moment. The Terran remembered that Lorill was supposed to be a powerful telepath and looked quickly away. He knew that was foolish—if the Hastur lord wished to read his mind, he could do it without looking him in the eye! And he knew enough of the courtesies of telepaths now to know Lorill would not do so uninvited without good reason. Yet he felt ill at ease, knowing he was there under false pretenses. No one knew he was Terran. But he tried to appear indifferent, listening as Callista pointed out the banners of the Domains to him.

  “The silver fir tree on the blue banner is Hastur, of course, you saw it when Leonie came to Armida. And that is the Ridenow banner with the green and gold, where Lorenz is riding. Damon has the right to a banner-bearer, but he seldom bothers with it. The red and gray feathers are the banner of Aillard, and the silver tree and crown belong to the Elhalyn. They were once a sept of the Hasturs.” Prince Duvic, Andrew thought, who had come to honor the heir to Alton, looked less regal than Lorill Hastur, or even young Danvan. Duvic was a spoiled, dissolute-looking youth, foppishly dressed in fur.

  “And that is old Dom Gabriel of Ardais, and his consort Lady Rohana; see the hawk on their banner?”

  “That’s only six counting Armida,” Andrew said, counting. “What is the seventh Domain?”

  “The Domain of Aldaran was exiled long ago. I have heard all kinds of reasons given, but I suspect it was simply that they lived too far away to come to Council every year. Castle Aldaran is far away in the Hellers, and it is difficult to govern folk who live so far in the mountains that no man can tell whether or not they keep the laws. Some say the Aldarans were not exiled but seceded of their free will. Everyone you ask will tell a different tale of why the Aldarans are no longer the seventh Domain. I suppose some day one of the larger Domains will divide again, so that there are seven. The Hasturs did so when the old line of the Elhalyn died out. We are all akin anyway, and many of the minor nobility have Comyn blood. Father spoke once of marrying Ellemir to Cathal…” She was silent and Andrew sighed, thinking of the implications. He had married into an hereditary caste of rulers. Ellemir’s coming child, any child Callista might bear, would inherit an awesome responsibility.