“Lew’s too damned much of a Terran,” Dyan said. “He’s lived in the Empire for years. I wouldn’t trust him, now, to bring up a Comyn Heir.”
“Kinsman,” said Danilo, in the most formal mode; then he paused and walked restlessly to the window. Regis and Danilo were lightly in rapport, and Regis could see, through his friend’s eyes, the view of the high mountain pass above Thendara and the scattered watch-fires of Beltran’s army. Abruptly Danilo swung around and said to Dyan angrily, “You pretend to be afraid of Lew because of his Terran education and because of Sharra! Have you forgotten that Beltran, out there, was part of the Sharra rebellion too? And that’s the man you’re trying to bring into the Comyn as full partner?”
“Beltran’s devoted himself to undoing what his father did. Kermiac was a Terran lackey; but when Beltran became Lord Aldaran, he renounced that—”
“And renounced honor, decency and the laws of hospitality,” said Danilo angrily. “You weren’t there, sir, when he last decided to take action! I saw Caer Donn burning!”
Dyan shrugged slightly. “A Terran city. What a pity he didn’t burn one or two more while he was at it! Don’t you see, Beltran can use Sharra against the Terrans, to give us the upper hand if they continue to—encroach—on our good will and our world.”
Regis and Danilo stared at him in horror. Finally Regis said, “Kinsman, I think you speak this way because you do not know much about Sharra. It cannot be tamed that way, and used as a weapon—”
“We would not have to use it,” Dyan said. “The Terrans, too, remember Caer Donn and the burning of the spaceport there. The threat would be enough.”
Why should we need such a threat against the Terrans? We live in the same world! We cannot destroy them without destroying ourselves!
Dyan asked angrily, “Have you too, Regis, been seduced by the Empire? I never thought to see the day when a Hastur would speak treason!”
“I think what you say is worse than treason, Dyan,” Regis said, struggling for calm. “I cannot believe that you would do what you censured Lew for doing—make compromise with Beltran to bring back all those old terrors out of the Ages of Chaos! I know Beltran. You do not.”
“Don’t I?” asked Dyan, his eyes glinting strangely.
“If you do, and you still wish this alliance—”
“Look here,” said Dyan harshly, interrupting him, “what we face now is the very survival of the Comyn—you know that. We need a strong Comyn, firmly allied against those who would hand us over to the Terrans. The Ridenow have already gone over—or haven’t you heard Lerrys’s favorite speech? Write off the Ridenow. Write off Lew—a cripple, half Terran, with nothing to lose! Write off the Elhalyn—” and as Danilo began a formal protest he gestured him imperatively to silence. “If you don’t know that Derik’s a halfwit, you’re the only one in Council who doesn’t. Forget about the Aillard—Domna Callina is a sheltered woman, a Keeper, a Tower-dweller; she can’t do much, but I do have some influence, praise to Aldones, on Dom Merryl.” His grin was wolfish. “What does that leave? The three of us in this room, Merryl, and your grandfather—who’s over a hundred, and although he’s still sharp-witted enough, he can’t go on forever! In the name of all of Zandru’s frozen hells, Regis, need I say anything more?”
And this is the burden of being a Hastur, Regis thought wearily. This is only the beginning. More and more they will come to me for such decisions.
“You think that means we must make an alliance with Aldaran, even at the cost of betraying the legitimate Heads of two Domains?” he asked.
“Two Domains? Lew would have been exiled six years ago, and it seems to me we are being generous with him,” Dyan said.
“And Domna Callina? Is a Keeper nothing more than a woman to be married off for a political alliance?”
“If she wished to remain a Keeper,” said Dyan savagely, “she should have remained within her Tower and refrained from trying to meddle in Council affairs! Tell me, Regis, will you stand with me in Council, or are you going to side with the Ridenow and hand us over to the Terrans without making a fight for Darkover?”
Regis bent his head. Put starkly like that, it seemed to give him no choice. Dyan had neatly mousetrapped him into seeming to agree, and either way, he betrayed someone. Lew was his sworn friend from childhood. Painfully he remembered the years he had spent at Armida, running about like a puppy at Lew’s heels, wearing his outgrown clothes, riding, hawking, fighting at his side in the fire-lines when the Kilghard Hills went up in flame; remembered a tie even stronger, even older than that with Danilo; the first fierce loyalty of his life. Lew, his sworn friend and foster-brother.
Maybe this was best after all. Lew had said, again and again, that he wants no power in Comyn. Certainly Regis could not allow Dyan to believe that he would side against the Hasturs, and for the Terrans. Regis swallowed hard, trying to weigh loyalties. For all of Dyan’s harshness, he knew that the older man was a shrewd judge of political reality. The thought of Darkover and the Domains in the hands of the Terrans, one more colony in a star-spanning Empire, came hard. But there seemed no middle way.
“I will never compromise with Sharra,” he said wearily. “I draw the line there.”
“If you stand firmly with me,” said Dyan, “we will never need to use it. If we take a firm line, the threat is enough—”
“I don’t believe that,” said Danilo. “Sharra—” he stopped and Regis knew Danilo was seeing what he saw, the monstrous form of fire, blanking every matrix in the vicinity, drawing power even from those who hated it… death, destruction, burning!
Dyan shook his head. “You were children then, both of you, and you had a scare. The Sharra matrix is no more than a weapon— a mighty weapon. But nothing worse. Surely—” he grinned his wolfish grin—“you do not believe that it is a God from some other dimension, or the old legends that Hastur bound Sharra in chains and that she should be loosed only at the end of the world—or maybe you do” Dyan grinned again, “and maybe, Regis, you will have to be the Hastur to bind her this time!”
He is making fun of me, Regis knew it, and yet a terrifying chill made every hair on his body stand again on end.
Hastur the God, father and forefather of all the Hastur-kin, bound Sharra in chains…and I am Hastur. Is this my task?
Shaking his head to clear it, he reached out to pour himself another cup of jaco, and sipped it slowly, hardly tasting the bitter-chocolate fragrance. He told himself angrily not to be superstitious. The Sharra matrix was a matrix, a mechanical means of amplifying psychic powers; it had been made by human minds and hands, and by other human minds and hands it could be contained and made harmless. In Beltran’s hands—and Kadarin’s—it would be a fearful weapon, but then, there was no reason Beltran should be allowed to use it. Kadarin was human; and both Comyn and Terran had put a price on his head. Surely it was not as bad as he feared.
He said steadily to Dyan, “On the word of a Hastur, kinsman, I will never sit by and see our world handed over to the Terrans. We may not agree on the methods taken to avoid this; but we are in agreement otherwise.”
And as he said it, he realized that he was trying to placate Dyan, as if he were still a boy and Dyan his cadet-master.
Dyan and his grandfather were on the same side, aiming at the same goal. Yet he had quarreled with his grandfather; and he was trying hard to agree with Dyan. Why? he wondered. Is it only because Dyan understands and accepts me as I am?
He said abruptly, “Thank you for a fine breakfast, cousin, I must go and get myself into those damnable Council ceremonials, and try to persuade my grandfather that Mikhail is still too young to sit through an entire Council session, Heir to Hastur or no—he is nevertheless only a boy of eleven! Dani, I will see you in the Crystal Chamber,” and he went out of the room.
But it was Lerrys who caught up with him on the threshold of the Crystal Chamber. He was wearing the colors of his Domain, but not the full ceremonial robes, and he looked mockingly at Regis
.
“Full fancy dress, I see. I hope Lew Alton has sense enough to turn up this morning wearing something like Terran clothes.”
“I wouldn’t call that very sensible,” Regis said. “They wouldn’t fit the climate, and it would just offend people without any reason. Why should it matter what we wear to Council?”
“It doesn’t. That’s the point. That’s why it makes me so damnably angry to see a dozen or so grown men and women behaving as if it made a difference whether we wore one kind of dress or another!”
Regis had been thinking something rather like this himself, as he got into the cumbersome and archaic robes, but for some reason it exasperated him to hear Lerrys say it. He said, “In that case, what are you doing wearing your clan colors?”
“I’m a younger son, if you remember,” said Lerrys, “and neither Head nor Heir to Serrais; if I did it, all they’d do would be to send me away for not following custom, like a horrid small boy who’s dressed up for the fun of it. But if you, Heir to Hastur, or Lew, who’s head of Armida by default— there’s literally no one else now—should refuse to follow that custom, you might be able to change things… things which will never be changed unless you, or somebody like you, has the brains and the guts to change them! I heard that Lord Damon, what-do-they-call-him, Jeff, went back to Arilinn. I wish he’d stayed. He’d been brought up on Terra itself, and yet he was telepath enough to become a technician at Arilinn—that would have let some fresh air into Arilinn, and I think it’s time to break a few windows in the Crystal Chamber, too!”
Regis said soberly, ignoring the rest of Lerrys’s long speech, “I wish I were as sure as you that they’d accept Lew by default. Have you heard anything about a rumor that they’ve found a child of one of the Altons and they’re going to set it up, like a figurehead, in Lew’s place?”
“I know there’s supposed to be such a child,” said Lerrys. “I don’t know all the details. Marius knew, but I don’t think he ever got the chance to tell Lew. You got him first, didn’t you?”
Regis stared at him in dismay and anger. “Zandru’s hells! Are you daring to say that I had anything to do with Marius’s death?”
“Not you personally,” said Lerrys, “but I don’t think we’d have to look too far for the murderer, do you? It’s just too convenient for that group of power-mad old freaks in Council.”
Regis shuddered but tried not to let Lerrys see his consternation. “You must be mad,” he said at last. “If my grand-sire—and I suppose it’s Lord Hastur you’re accusing—had intended to send assassins to deal with Marius, why would he have waited this long? He arranged it with the Terrans to have Marius given the best education they could provide, he always knew where Marius was—why in all the hells should he send anyone round to murder him now?”
“You’re not going to tell me a boy Marius’s age had any personal enemies, are you?” Lerrys demanded.
Not in the Comyn—no more than he had any personal friends there, Regis thought, and said stiffly, “That touches the honor of Hastur, Lerrys. I warn you not to repeat that monstrous slander beyond this room, or I will—”
“You’ll what? Whip out your little sword and cut me to pieces with it? Regis, you’re acting like a boy of twelve! Do you honestly believe all this stable-sweepings about the honor of Hastur?” Even through his rage, something in Lerrys’s voice got through to Regis. His hand had gone to his dagger, without being fully aware of it; now he let go the hilt, and said, “Don’t mock that honor, Lerrys, just because you don’t know anything about it.”
“Regis,” said Lerrys, and now his voice was deadly serious, “believe me, I’m not implying that you are personally anything but a model of integrity. But it wouldn’t be the first time that a Hastur had stood by and watched someone murdered, or worse, because that person didn’t fit into the Comyn plan. Ask Jeff sometime who murdered his mother, because she dared to hint that a Comyn Keeper was not a sacrosanct virgin locked up in Arilinn to be worshipped. He himself had two or three narrow escapes from being murdered out of hand because the Council didn’t find him too convenient to their long-range plans. We can’t even blame the Terrans—assassination has been a favorite weapon here on Darkover since the Ages of Chaos. Do you know what the Terrans think of us?”
“Does it matter what the Terrans think of us?” Regis evaded.
“Damn right it matters! Whether you like it or not—” he broke off. “Ah, why should I waste this on you? You’re no better than your grandfather, and why should I give you the full speech I’m going to try to make in Council, if they don’t shut me up first?” He started to push on by Regis, who caught his arm and held him.
“My grandfather may not have mourned very much for Marius,” he said, “but I’d swear with my hand in the fires of Hali that he had nothing to do with his murder! I was there when the Alton’s town house was burned. Marius was killed by men trying to get the Sharra matrix—and they did get it, you know. You don’t think my grandfather had anything to do with that, certainly?”
Lerrys stared at him for a moment; then said contemptuously, “You’re worse than Lew—or you’ve been talking to him. He sees Sharra as the bogeyman under every bed! Damned convenient, isn’t it?” He pushed past Regis and went into the Council Chamber.
Thoughtfully, Regis followed. Most of the Council members were inside their railed enclosures, and his grandfather had already risen for the roll call of the Domains. He scowled at Regis, seeing him enter almost with Lerrys Ridenow, but they parted and went to their separate enclosures.
Was Marius’s death not the accidental death he had thought, killed in defending his father’s house and home against invaders searching for something he did not even know about? Certainly Marius knew nothing about the Sharra matrix except its danger—he thought of the night Marius had come to seek his help for Rafe Scott.
I wonder where he is? Maybe Lew would know. If I were young Scott, I think I would be hiding inside the Terran Zone and never put my nose outside it while Kadarin is loose with the Sharra matrix; and I think if Lew had any sense he would do the same. But Lew is not that kind of person. Terrans are cowards, he thought, his mind sliding over what he had taken for granted all his life; his own father had been killed in a war because some coward had trusted to Terran weapons which kill at a distance; and then he stopped and began to think about that.
They can’t all be cowards, any more than all Comyn lords are honorable and proud— he thought. And, as Derik began to call the roll of the Domains, he thought: I will have to go to the Terran Zone and find out what Rafe Scott knows about the Sharra matrix. Unless he’s joined forces with Kadarin— and that was not the idea I got of Rafe Scott!
One by one, from their enclosures, the Comyn of the Seven Domains answered for their Houses. When “Alton” was called, Regis saw Lew, dressed in the ceremonial robes of his house, step forward, and answer, “I am here for Alton of Armida.” Regis had been braced for a challenge, but it did not come, not even from where Dyan sat beside Danilo beneath the Ardais banner. Was the challenge to be more insidious than this, simply pressure on Lew to remain quietly at Armida and adopt the Alton son they had found somewhere? Were they allowing him to keep the nominal leadership of Alton in return for some other concession? Regis discovered that he could not even guess. And why was Dyan so certain that Lew would have no children?
Even Dyan himself, who is a lover of men, has a son; and he lost another in childhood. I have fathered several children. Why should Lew not marry and have as many children as he wants? He turned to look at Lew, and saw, as Callina Aillard rose to answer for her Domain, that Lew was watching her intently, so intently that it seemed, even through the thick disturbance of the telepathic dampers in the Crystal Chamber, that for an instant he could read Lew’s thoughts.
But Callina is a Keeper. Nevertheless, she would not be the first Keeper to lay down her high office and marry— not the first nor the last. She would have to train her successor first, but Lew is not an impuls
ive boy; he could wait long enough for that. I think they might even be happy. It would be good to see Lew happy again.
They had finished the roll-call of the Domains, without reference to Aldaran. It seemed to Regis that there was someone in that enclosure, behind the curtains, and he wondered at that, but Derik, his task finished, had stepped back, and Hastur was taking his place to preside over the session. Supposedly, this final session of Council was to complete any unfinished matters, anything left unsettled during the Council season. In actuality, Regis knew, any small time-consuming triviality would be brought up, anything to fill time until weariness, or even hunger, brought Council to an end; after which, the matter would be closed till next year. He supposed that was why Hastur had not challenged Lew when he spoke for Armida; the real problem of the Alton heritage would be settled quietly by personal pressures, behind the scenes, not argued out in Council.
He had seen those tactics used before. And now, ignoring Dyan’s signal, Hastur gestured to Lerrys Ridenow, who had risen for recognition.
Lerrys came down into the central space where the rainbows from the prisms in the roof cast colored lights over the pale floor and walls. He bowed, and Regis thought, dispassionately, that the young man was beautiful as a cat; red-haired, slender, lithe, with the delicate chiseled features of the Ridenow; more beautiful, he thought, than any of the women in the Crystal Chamber. He wondered why he was noticing this in this solemn setting.
“My lords,” Lerrys said, “I’ve heard a lot in this Chamber since Council began. All of you—” with one of those quick catlike movements, he swiveled his head to look around the room, “have been talking about such serious matters as marriages, and heritages, and repairs to the Castle roof—oh, not literally, perhaps, but that’s what it amounts to, discussing things seriously which could be settled in three minutes by a little common sense. I want to know when we are going to talk about serious things. For instance—” and this time the sweep of his eyes around the Chamber was hard and challenging, “when are we going to send our proper representative to the Empire Senate? When are we going to appoint a Senator with proper credentials? I want to know when, or if, we are going to launch a real investigation of who murdered Marius Alton and burned the Alton house over his head? And I want to know when we are going to take our part as an equal in the Empire Senate, instead of being under a Terran protectorate as a primitive, barbarian world with a feudal culture which mustn’t be touched, as if we were savages just evolving to the point where we rub two sticks together and worship the god of fire who makes the spark!”