"So you haven't killed anyone?" The boy looked disappointed. "If I knew how, I would. There's a big crow that lives in the trees that I'd like to kill right now. When are you going to start teaching me? I can't very well be king if I can't manage a sword, can, I?"
Mikhail picked up a plate of over baked rolls and took one while he thought. The more he saw of Vincent, the less Mikhail could envision him being even a puppet ruler. He was too headstrong, too arrogant, and too cruel. And he was almost a year older than Danilo Hastur, who would follow Regis. In Mikhail's estimation, Danilo and Vincent were incompatible—a problem he had not even thought of when he had taken on his onerous task. The Hastur boy was not forceful, and so far had shown nothing of Regis' talent for bringing people together, Vincent would bully Danilo into tatters, as likely as not.
He tried to tell himself it was not part of his assignment to decide which of Priscilla's three sons would be best suited to become king, only to find one who was sane enough to sit on the throne. But he felt a deep longing to choose someone with actual qualities of leadership, not just a warm body. Of course, Regis might not have intended that he find such a person—his uncle had been uninformative on the subject—and might have assumed that any Elhalyn, so long as he was not overtly unstable, would suffice. That the real power would remain in Hastur hands was a given, but the more he thought about it, the less Mikhail liked it.
With sudden clarity he realized that if Darkover must have a king, it should be a real job, not a makeshift traditional position to satisfy people like his father. And it should be done by an able person, not a manipulable weakling. Otherwise, why have a king at all?
Looking around the table, he had a sinking feeling. Even without testing for laran and other qualities, he realized
that the only male present who was sane enough and sound enough to do that job was himself, and the way things had been going, he was not that certain of his own mind these days. It gave him a feeling of quiet desperation, that he would be trapped into becoming the Elhalyn king, into being a dummy on a throne which had no real power, only empty respect. He must not leap to any conclusions! If Vincent was unfit, there was still Emun to hope for. And who knew what they would be like once they were away from Priscilla? They might both be better, calmer lads. Then again, they might be worse. The excellent appetite he had worked up at the quintain faded away.
His own sense of duty kept getting in his way! Mechanically, Mikhail took some overcooked roots onto his plate and raged silently. He loved his cousin, Danilo Hastur, but he understood the character of the young man well enough to realize that it was not as strong as his own. Mikhail could not take the Elhalyn throne without doing damage to his cousin's rather tenuous self-esteem. He knew that he would end up trying to run things, and that Dani would resent it. And he cared enormously, he discovered, about Danilo Hastur. It would not be good for Dani, and more, it would not be good for Darkover, to have the balance of authority tilted so badly.
"When are you going to teach me to use a sword?" Vincent yelled, interrupting Mikhail's thoughts. His face was red, as it often was when he did not get his way, and his eyes seemed to swell in his skull. Mikhail could see the girls flinching, although they should be used to the racket by now.
"As soon as you learn to moderate the tone of your voice while you are in the house," he snapped.
Vincent opened his mouth, then appeared to think better of it. He settled for glaring at Mikhail, then pinched Val on the arm so hard she squeaked.
Mikhail was on his feet before he quite knew what he was doing. He swept around the table, grabbed Vincent by his collar, and hauled him out of his chair. The lad was almost as big as he was, and he resisted. But he was so surprised that all he could manage was a flail of flabby arms, and a weak buffet along Mikhail's shoulder.
"Go to your room!"
"I won't! You have no right . . ."
Mikhail did not wait to hear more. He grabbed Vincent by the shoulder and the back of his belt and frog-marched him to the door. Then he shoved him out of the dining room, and closed the door behind him. He could hear Vincent yelling on the other side, screaming with rage, almost incoherent. "How dare you! You can't treat a king like that!"
Mikhail waited to see if Vincent would try to come back, but after a minute of shouting, he heard the heavy sound of enraged adolescent footfalls storming away. He turned around and discovered that the remaining children, as well as his Guardsmen, were looking at him with unfeigned amazement. Emun was almost trembling, his pale cheeks totally colorless, and his eyes very wide.
"I dislike having my meals disrupted with argument," he said, "It upsets my digestion." It was more than that, of course. Mikhail had terrible memories of dinners at Armida, with his parents either shouting at each other, or sitting in a cold, congealing silence that was bad enough almost to ruin a normal adolescent appetite. When he had gone to live at Castle Ardais, he had been relieved to discover that Lady Marilla Aillard, Dyan Ardais' mother, never permitted disputes at the table. It had led to many a tedious evening, but Mikhail preferred that to argument.
"You should not have done that," Miralys said quietly.
Mikhail returned to his chair, and looked at her with interest. The girls kept very quiet most of the time, as if they were trying to hide themselves from something. Val seemed to be the more energetic of the two, for she had a constant twinkle of merriment in her eyes, and Mira the more confident. But the tone of her voice was not at all confident. She sounded frightened, and he knew she was more afraid of her brother than he had realized. Why? It was more than just bullying, but he could not put his finger on it.
He thought about Dom Gabriel and Lady Javanne, then about Regis and Lady Linnea, who were, in many ways, more his real parents than his biological ones were. All of them had been strict, and Dom Gabriel had a tendency to roar when he was thwarted. But Mikhail had never felt really afraid of any of them, and, as far as he could tell,
neither his brothers nor his sisters were genuinely frightened of Dom Gabriel. No one enjoyed his frequent bursts of ill-humor, but if his father had suddenly ceased to express them, Mikhail would have thought him ill.
"Why is that, Mira?"
She did not answer, but pursed her lips and bent her head over her supper. Val looked around the table, shrugged, and replied, "He will take it out on us. He always does."
A finger of unease seemed to run along Mikhail's nape. "What do you mean?"
Valenta looked at him as if he had lost his wits. "My brother likes to hurt people." She said this in a cold, uninflected voice, as if she were stating a known fact, and could not quite understand why he was asking the question.
Mikhail ignored the sinking feeling in his belly, and a sour taste filled his mouth. She was absolutely right; he had known it for weeks. But he had refused to believe it, had kept trying to convince himself that he was misjudging Vincent somehow. And with a great sense of regret, Mikhail realized that he had been avoiding paying real attention to these children, that he had let himself become absorbed in the problems of setting the rackety house in some order because he -did not feel up to the challenge of understanding these strange creatures. He knew that Vincent was cruel, and that the younger children were afraid of him. He just didn't want to face it. Why the devil had Regis given him this job—he wasn't up to it!
"That is going to stop." Mikhail barely believed what he said, but he wanted to reassure the children. Of course—I am going to watch Vincent every second of the day and night! What a dreadful joke.
Val shook her head, sending black curls swirling around her catlike face. "You can't stop Vincent. No one can."
"Why not?"
"Because if he can't get you with his hands, he'll give you the headache or the grippe."
"I see." Mikhail picked up his goblet and took a swig of local cider, sweet and dry at the same time. He did see, for the first time since he arrived, that Vincent had been let run wild, that if he had been sent to a Tower for training
as soon as he showed signs of laran, he might not do the
things he did. He really had to sit down and do the testing he had come to do, and soon.
This was Priscilla's fault, for refusing to let her children be trained, but it was too late to start blaming. They could have gone to Dalereuth, the closest Tower, almost on the sea for which it was named, if she had not let them come to Arilinn. If anyone was to blame, it was Regis himself, for letting things go for so many years.
It all came back to laran, didn't it? Before he had encountered Marguerida Alton, Mikhail had never really given a thought to what a double-edged blade the ability to read minds could be. He had grown up in a telepathic community, where the trait was both anticipated and desired, and because, as his beloved often reminded him, he was inside Darkovan culture, he never saw that there was any liability in it.
Laran was so much a part of Darkovan culture that he rarely thought about it, until Marguerida had pointed out rather angrily that it affected everything. Her position was that it was overvalued, to the point of obsession. And Until his sister Ariel had revealed her enormous pain and self-hatred for her own lack of laran, he had not realized how painful it was for those who did not possess the gift.
During his time at Arilinn, while Marguerida began her own training, Mikhail had found himself forced to examine many things he took quite for granted. The scholarly mind of his beloved was something he had never encountered before, either in man or woman. She was able to argue—and even seemed to revel in dispute—any position, clearly and incisively. This, she informed him, was called sophistry, and was frowned on in academic circles. But during several of their afternoon walks, or their pleasant rides in the meadows and fields around the Tower, she had cheerfully dissected Darkovan culture. It seemed to release something vital in her, for her eyes always sparkled like yellow agates, and he knew she missed her academic life at University more than she ever admitted.
Sometimes she took the position that laran was a good thing, and other times that it was not. Marguerida would make reference to other cultures she knew about, where people bred for strength or intelligence or skin color. Mikhail was fascinated, filled with longing to visit other worlds.
But what had come out of these discussions was a greater understanding on his part that Darkover was not as simple as he had always imagined it to be. She was always fair, but she also always followed her arguments to their logical conclusions, some of which were not very appealing.
One of the matters they had often talked about was the problem of the untrained or wild telepath. This was very much on her mind, because she had been just that for some time. She had never suspected, for instance, that she had the ability to use her voice to command people, until she had inadvertently sent young Donal Alar into the over-world. Marguerida still got the shivers, he knew, when she remembered that, and thought of all the times she could have injured someone.
The only conclusion that had come out of these talks was that, since laran on Darkover was a fact of life, the Towers were necessary. Since he knew how much she loathed the very existence of the great relays, that the stones themselves sent her into anguish, he knew this was a difficult admission.
But until that moment, Mikhail had never considered that Vincent was misusing his untrained laran on his siblings because he himself would not have done so. He had been stupid, assuming that this pack of wild children functioned with the same rules he did. He began to wonder if Priscilla Elhalyn was more than merely eccentric, because he could not imagine any other explanation for her bizarre behavior.
"I think it is time Vincent learns he cannot do just as he pleases," Mikhail said quietly.
"But he can!" Emun blurted out the words, then looked as if he wished he had bitten his tongue.
"Go on."
The boy looked helplessly at his sisters. No one spoke for several minutes, and the only sound in the room was the crackling of the fireplace and the noise of spoons and knives hitting plates and bowls. Daryll and Mathias continued to eat, appearing deaf, though Mikhail knew that Mathias would speak to him later. The older Guardsman was gruff, but he was also wise, and during the weeks, Mikhail had come to depend on his opinions and observations.
Finally Miralys spoke. "It does not matter what he does
to us, because we are all going away, and he is going to be king. We all know that. And, truthfully, it cannot be too soon."
"Going away? Where are you going?"
"We are not allowed to talk about it." Val mumbled the words, looking as if she wanted to say more, but was afraid to.
For the first time in his life, Mikhail Hastur wished he had the Alton Gift of forced rapport. He was shocked at himself. He had never wanted to invade the thoughts of another. The very idea told him that he was totally out of his depth, that he needed help, experienced help. He had a wild telepath on his hands—two, if he counted* the enigmatic Emelda.
As he tried to think what to do, he felt his mind begin to cloud. It was a subtle thing, a feeling of passivity and weakness, but he noticed it almost at once. Anger surged in his blood, and he felt himself tremble with rage.
A moment later he heard a faint shriek from the back of the house, and outside the dining room window, the hoarse caw of a crow. Then his mind was clear again.
"Look! It has begun to snow!" Valenta pointed toward the window as she spoke, sounding relieved to find something to say that was innocuous and safe.
"So it has," he answered, clinging to the clarity of his mind stubbornly. I have to get some help, and quickly. But from whom? I don't really know the folk at Dalereuth, and it is such a small Tower. Besides, if it is snowing here, they are already up to their knees in the stuff. Why didn't I understand sooner? And why won't I ask Regis? I can't. Who, then? What a dunce I am! Liriel! Of course!
9
By the time he got to his room, Mikhail was feeling the strains of his recent exercise—and the fatigue, too. His hamstrings were aching, and he had the start of a serious headache. All he wanted was his bed and unbroken sleep for a change. There was something he had intended to do, but for the life of him, he couldn't think what it was.
He undressed, automatically checked the room for mischief, and settled into the bed. It smelled slightly musty, and he found himself longing for the clean scent of the sheets at Armida. Mikhail had come to hate Halyn House over the days, and focused his ill-feeling on it, rather than hating Emelda or Priscilla. He would rather be almost anywhere else. No, that was not true. He wanted to be at Neskaya, with Marguerida, even though he knew that winter had already arrived there. His cousin had complained of it during their most recent late evening communication. When was that? He couldn't remember when he had last spoken to her.
The thought of Neskaya seemed to enlarge in his mind, filling him with longing. Mikhail wanted to abandon the house, the Elhalyn children, everything. He wished he were an ordinary man, or that Marguerida were an ordinary woman, and that their destinies were of no importance to Darkover. Of course, if that were the case, he would not be huddling under the blankets in a house that remained drafty even after all the repairs he had had done. No ordinary man would have been saddled with this unmanageable task.
Mikhail Hastur sighed softly, snuggled down against the pillow, and let his eyelids close. He wanted so much to talk to Marguerida, but he didn't have the energy to concen-
trate, to take out his matrix stone and send his thoughts to her. All he wanted was sleep. If only he could remember. ...
In a few moments, he was sound asleep, dreaming of Marguerida Alton. They were walking through a summery field, their hands linked. He could smell the flowers and the dry earth beneath their feet. She turned her face toward him, lifting her lips for a kiss. Mikhail brought his mouth down to hers and . . .
A scream yanked him from sleep like a faceful of ice water. It was a terrible sound, a wail of terror bubbling from a throat. Mikhail got gooseflesh just listening, even though he knew it was one of the children havi
ng a nightmare.
Still muzzy with sleep, he shoved his feet into fur-lined slippers and put on a thick robe. Mikhail pushed his fingers through his hair, yanking a tangle so hard it hurt. He glimpsed himself in the shadowed glass and grimaced. For a moment he stared at his reflection. He was haggard and gaunt with weight loss. There were dark circles under his eyes, and he looked haunted. When had he lost so much weight?
Mathias was sitting up outside the door, rubbing his eyes. With a quick glance, Mikhail realized that his man did not appear a great deal better than himself. The older Guardsman had lost weight also, and the hair on his head looked brittle and dry in the light of the lampions. Why hadn't he noticed that earlier?
He stifled another sigh and trudged down the long corridor toward the sound of the screaming. Either Emun or
Alain was having a bad dream. He was not sure which.
Vincent never seemed to have nightmares. Mikhail stopped
abruptly at this idea. It was important, but the thought
wriggled out of his focus and faded before he could examine it. ,
He could hear the sound of one of the old nurses coming from her bed, complaining as usual. They had not done that when he first came, but had just let the children scream and cry. Only at Mikhail's insistence had they grudgingly begun to come during these all too frequent scenes. When he had asked them why they did not attend to the youngsters, Becca had peered at him with eyes that were clouded