Текст книги "Heritage Of Hastur"

Автор книги: Marion Zimmer Bradley

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

I said, “I’m more disturbed than ever about this matrix. The power’s there, yes. But it’s been used as a weapon … ”

“And it wants to destroy,” Rafe said unexpectedly, “like the sword in the fairy tale; when you drew it, it would never go back into the scabbard until it had had its drink of blood.”

I said soberly, “A lot of those old fairy tales were based on garbled memories of the Ages of Chaos. Maybe Rafe’s right and it doeswant blood and destruction.”

Thyra, her eyes brooding, asked, “Don’t all men, just a little? History tells us they do. Darkovans and Terrans too.”

Kadarin laughed. “You were brought up in the Comyn, Lew, so I’ll forgive you for being superstitious.” He put his arm around my shoulders in a warm hug. “I have more faith in the human mind than in forge-folk superstitions.” We were still linked; again I felt the strength that lifted a great weight from my shoulders. I let myself lean against him. He was probably right. My mind had been filled from childhood with these old gods and powers. The science of matrix mechanics had been formulated to get rid of that. I was a skilled technician; why was I letting imagination run away with me?

Kadarin said, “Try again. Now that we know we cancontrol it, it’s all a matter of learning how.”

“It’s always up to the Keeper to decide that,” I said. It troubled me that Marjorie still deferred to me. It was natural enough, for I had trained her, but she must learn that the initiative was hers, to lead, not follow.

She stretched her hand to me, setting up the primary line of force. One by one she brought us into the circle, each of us dropping into his appointed place as if we were scouts on a battlefield. This time I felt her touch Beltran, too, and placehim so that he could maintain rapport just outside the circle. This time the force was easier to carry … chained fire, electricity firmly stored in a battery, a firmly bridled racehorse… I saw the fire leap up around Marjorie, but this time I could see through it. It wasn’t real, just a way of visualizing a force with no physical reality.

We stood linked, holding the pulsing power suspended. If the Terrans will not give us what we need and deserve, we can force them to it, we need not fear their bombs nor their blasters. Do they think we are barbarians armed with swords and pitchforks?

Clearly now, as the form of fire built up, I saw a woman, a sky-tall goddess clothed in flame, restlessly reaching to strike.

… fire raining on Caer Donn, smashing the city into rubble, starships falling like comets out of the sky…

Firmly Marjorie reached for control, like at one of those riding-exhibitions where a single rider controls four horses with one rein, bringing us back to the physical airfield. It shimmered around us, but it was there. The helicopter blades began to hum again, to turn with a clattering roar.

We need more power, more strength.For a moment I clearly saw my father’s face, felt the strong line of rapport. He had awakened my gift; we were never wholly out of touch. I felt the amazement, the fearwith which he felt the matrix touch him, momentarily draw him in … He was gone. Had never been there. Then I felt Thyra reach out with a sure touch and draw Kermiac within the circle as if he had been physically present. For an instant the circle expanded with his strength, burning brilliantly, and the helicopter rose easily from the ground, hung there quivering, rotors spinning with emphasis and force. I saw, I feltKermiac crumple, withdraw. The lines of force went ragged … Kadarin and I locked hard together, supporting Marjorie as she controlled the wavering forces, lowering, lowering … The helicopter bumped, hard, and the sound shattered the link. Pain crashed through me. Marjorie collapsed, sobbing. Beltran had seized Thyra by the shoulders, was shaking her like a dog shaking a rodent. He swung back his hand and slapped her full in the face. I felt—we all felt—the stinging pain of that blow.

“Vicious bitch! Damned she-devil,” Beltran shouted. “How dare you, damn you, how dare you—”

Kadarin grabbed him, pulled him from Thyra by main force. Beltran was still fighting, struggling. Cold terror clutching at me, I reached out for Kermiac. Uncle, have they killed you?After a moment, sick with relief, I felt his presence, a thread of life, weak, collapsed, but alive. Alive, thank God!

Kadarin was still holding Beltran off Thyra; he let him go, flinging him violently to the ground. He said, raging, “Lay a hand on her again, Beltran, and I’ll kill you with my own hands!” He hardly looked human at all now.

Marjorie was crying, trembling so violently I feared she would fall senseless. I caught and supported her. Thyra put a hand to her bruised face. She said, trying to be defiant, “What a fuss about nothing! He’s stronger than any of us!”

My fear for Kermiac had turned to anger almost as great at Beltran’s own. How dared Thyra do this against his will and Marjorie’s judgment? I knew I couldn’t trust her, damned sneaking bitch! I turned on her, still holding Marjorie with one arm; she shrank away as if from a blow. That shocked me back to my senses. Strike a woman? Slowly, lowering my head, I thrust the wadding around the matrix. This rage was ours. It was as dangerous as what Thyra did.

Marjorie could stand alone now. I put the matrix in her hand and went toward Thyra. I said, “I’m not going to hurt you, child. But what possessed you to do such a thing?” One of the strongest laws of every telepath was never to force another’s will or judgment …

The defiance was gone from her face. She fingered the cheek Beltran had struck. “Truly, Lew,” she said, almost in a whisper, “I don’t know. I felt we neededsomeone, and in days past this matrix had known the Aldarans, wanted Kermiac—no, that doesn’t make sense, does it? And I felt that I could and I must because Marjorie wouldn’t … I couldn’t stop myself, I watched myself do it and I was afraid … ” She began to cry helplessly.

I stepped forward and took her into my arms, holding her against me, her face wet on my shoulder. I felt a shaking tenderness. We had all been helpless before that force. My own emotion should have warned me, but I was too distressed to feel alarm. The feel of her warm body in my arms should have warned me, too, at that stage, but I let her cling to me, sobbing, for a minute or two before I patted her shoulders tenderly, wiped her tears away and turned to help Beltran rise. He stood up stiffly, rubbing his hip. I sighed and said, “I know how you feel, Beltran. It was a dangerous thing to do. But you were in the wrong, too, losing your temper. A matrix technician must have control, must at all times.”

Defiance and contrition warred in his face. He fumbled for words. I should have waited for them—I was responsible for this whole circle—but I felt too sick and drained to try. I said curtly, “Better see if any harm was done to the helicopter when it crashed.”

“From three inches off the ground?” He sounded contemptuous now. That also troubled me but I was too tired to care. I said, “Suit yourself. It’s your craft. If this is what comes of having you in the circle, I’ll make damned sure you’re a good long way away from it.” I turned my back on him.

Marjorie was leaning on Rafe. She had stopped crying but her eyes and nose were red. Absurdly I loved her more than ever like that. She said in a small shaking voice, “I’m all right now, Lew. Honestly.”

I looked at the ground at our feet. It was covered with more than an inch of snow. You always lost track of time inside a matrix. It was snowing harder than ever, and the sky was darkening. The shaking of my own hands warned me. I said, “We all need food and rest. Run ahead, Rafe, and ask the servants to have a meal ready for us.”

I heard a familiar clattering roar and looked up. The other helicopter was circling overhead, descending. Beltran was walking away toward it. I started to call after him, summon him—he too would be drained, needing the replenishment of food and sleep. At that moment, though, my only thought was to let him collapse. It would do him good to learn this wasn’t a game! We left him behind.

I’d have an apology to make to Kermiac, too. It didn’t matter that it had been done against my orders. I was operating the matrix. I had trained this circle. I was responsible for everything that happened to it.

Everything.

Everything. Aldones, Lord of Light … everything: Ruin and death, a city in flames and chaos, Marjorie …

I shook myself out of the maelstrom of misery and pain, staring at the quiet path, the dark sky, the gently falling snow. None of it was real. I was hallucinating. Merciful Avarra, if, after three years at Arilinn, any matrix ever built could make me hallucinate, I was in trouble!

Kermiac’s servants had laid a splendid meal for us, though I was so hungry I could as readily have eaten bread and milk. As I ate the drained weakness receded, but the vague, formless guilt remained. Marjorie. Had she been burned by the flare of fire? I kept wanting to touch her and make sure she was there, alive, unhurt. Thyra ate with tears running down her face, the bruise gradually swelling and darkening until her eye was swollen shut. Beltran did not come. I supposed he was with Kermiac. I didn’t give a damn where he was. Marjorie self-consciously thrust aside her third plateful, saying, “I’m ashamed to be so greedy!”

I began to reassure her. Kadarin did it instead. “Eat, child, eat, your nerves are exhausted, you need the energy. Rafe, what’s the matter, child?” The boy was restlessly pushing his food around on his plate. “You haven’t touched a bite.”

“I can’t, Bob. My head aches. I can’t swallow. If I try to swallow anything I’m afraid I’ll be sick.”

Kadarin met my eyes. “I’ll take care of him,” he said. “I know what to do, I went through it when I was his age.” He lifted Rafe in his arms and carried him, like a small child, out of the room. Thyra rose and went after them.

Left alone with Marjorie, I said, “You should rest, too, after all that.”

She said in a very small voice, “I’m afraid to be alone. Don’t leave me alone, Lew.”

I didn’t intend to, not until I was sure she was safe. A Keeper in training has stresses no other matrix mechanic suffers, and I was still responsible for her. Although emotional upheavals were common enough when first keying into one of the really big matrices, such frightful blowups as this between Beltran and Thyra were not common. Fortunately. No wonder we were all literally sick from it.

I had never seen Marjorie’s room before. It was at the top of a small tower, isolated, reached by a winding stair, a wedge-shaped room with wide windows. In clear weather it would have looked out on tremendous mountain ranges. Now it was all a dismal gray, gloomy, with hard beating snow rattling and whining against the glass. Marjorie slipped off her outdoor boots and knelt by the window, looking into the storm. “It’s lucky we came in when we did. I’ve known the snow to come up so quickly you can lose your way a hundred paces from your own doorway. Lew, will Rafe be all right?”

“Of course. Just stress, maybe a touch of threshold sickness. Beltran’s tantrum didn’t help any, but it won’t last long.” Once a telepath gained full control of his matrix, and to do this he must have mastered the nerve channels, recurrences of threshold sickness were not serious. Rafe was probably feeling rotten, but it wouldn’t last.

Marjorie leaned against the window, pressing her temples to the cold glass. “My head aches.”

“Damn Beltran anyway!” I said, with violence that surprised me.

“It was Thyra’s fault, Lew. Not his.”

“What Thyra did is Thyra’s responsibility, but Beltran must bear the responsibility for losing control, too.”

My mind slid back to that strange interval within the matrix—whether it had been a few seconds or an hour I had no way of knowing—when I had sensed my father’s presence. It occurred to me to wonder if at any of the towers, Hali or Arilinn or Neskaya, they had sensed the wakening of this enormous matrix, stirring to life. My father was an extraordinary telepath; he had served in Arilinn under the last of the old-style Keepers. He must have felt Sharra’s wakening.

Did he know what we were doing?

As if following my thoughts Marjorie said, “Lew, what is your father like? My guardian has always spoken well of him.”

“I don’t want to talk about my father, Marjorie.” But my barriers had been breached and that furious parting came back to me, with all the old bitterness. He had been willing to kill me, to have his own way. He cared no more for me than a…

Mariorie said in a low voice, “You’re wrong, Lew. Your father loved you. Loves you. No, I’m not reading your mind. You were … broadcasting. But you are a loving person, a gentle person. To be so loving, you must have been loved. Greatly loved.”

I bent my head. Indeed, indeed, all those years I had been so secure in his love, he could never have lived a lie. Not to me. We had been open to one another. Yet somehow that made it worse. Loving me, to risk me so ruthlessly…

She whispered, “I know you, Lew. You could not have lived—would you have wanted to be without laran? Without the full potential of your gift? He knew your life wouldn’t have been worth living without it. Blind, deaf, crippled … so he let you risk it. To become what he knew you were.”

I laid my head on her knees, blind with pain. She had given me back something I never knew I had lost; she had returned to me the security of my father’s love. I couldn’t look up, couldn’t let her see my face was contorted, that I was crying like a child. She knew anyway. I supposed this was my form of throwing a tantrum. Thyra disobeyed orders. Rafe got threshold sickness, Kadarin and Beltran started slamming each other … I started crying like a child …

After a time I lifted her hand and kissed the slender fingertips. She looked worn and exhausted. I said, “You must rest too, darling.” I was deeply proud of the skill with which she had seized control. She lay back against her pillows. I bent and, as I would have done at Arilinn, ran my fingertips lightly along her body. Not touching her, of course, simply feeling out the energy flows, monitoring the nerve centers. She lay quietly, smiling at the touch that was not a touch. I felt that she was still depleted, drained of energy, but that would not last. The channels were clear. I was glad she had come through this strenous beginning so well, so undamaged.

I was not, at the moment, actively suffering because she was forbidden to me, that even a kiss would have been unthinkable. I was remotely aware of her but there was no sexual element in it. I simply felt an intense and overwhelming love such as I had never known for anyone alive. I didn’t have to speak of it. I knew she shared it.

If I couldn’t have reached Marjorie’s mind I’d have gone mad with wanting her, needing her with every nerve in me. But we had this, and it was enough. Almost enough, and we had the promise of the rest.

I knew the answer, but I wanted to say the words aloud.

“When this is over, you will marry me, Marjorie?”

She said, with a simplicity that made my heart turn over, “I want to. But will the Comyn let you?”

“I won’t ask them. By then the Comyn may have learned it’s not for them to arrange everyone’s life!”

“I wouldn’t want to make trouble, Lew. Marriage doesn’t mean that much to me.”

“It does to me,” I said fiercely. “Do you think I want our children to be bastards? I want them at Armida after me, without the struggle my father had to get it for me … ”

Her laugh was adorable. Quickly, she sobered. “Lew, Lew, I’m not laughing at you, darling. Only it makes me so happy, to think that it means all this to you—not just wanting me, but thinking of all that will come afterward, our children, our children’s children, a household to stand into the future. Yes, Lew. I want to have your children, I’m sorry we have to wait so long for them. Yes, I’ll marry you if you want me to, in the Comyn if they’ll have it, if not, then any way we can, any way you choose.” For a moment, a feather-touch, she laid her lips against the back of my hand.

My heart was so full I could bear no more. I had desired women before, but never with this wholeness, going far beyond any moment of desire, stretching into the future, all our lives. For a moment time went out of focus again …

… I was kneeling beside the cot of a little girl, five or six perhaps, a tiny child with a heart-shaped face and wide eyes fenced in long lashes, golden eyes just the color of Marjorie’s … I felt a strange wonder, pain in my right hand, dismayed, torn with anguish.

Marjorie whispered, “What is it, Lew?”

“A flash of precognition,” I said, coming back to myself, strangely shaken. “I saw—I saw a little girl. With your eyes.” But why had I felt so bewildered, so agonized? I tried to see it again, but as these flashes come unbidden, so they can never be recalled. I felt Marjorie’s thoughts, and hers were wholly joyful: It will be all right then. We will be together as we wish, we will see that child.Her lashes were dropping shut with weariness and, kneeling beside her, I looked into her face again. She thought drowsily, We should have a son first,and I knew she had seen the child’s face in my mind. She smiled with pure happiness and her lids slipped shut. Her hand tightened on my own.

“Don’t leave me,” she whispered, half asleep.

“Never. Sleep, beloved.” I stretched out beside her, holding her fingers in mine, my love encircling her sleep. After a moment, I slept too, in the deepest happiness I had ever known.

Or was ever to know again.

It was dark when I woke, the snow still rattling the windows. Kadarin was standing above us, holding a light. Marjorie was still deeply asleep. His glance at her was filled with a deep tenderness that warmed me to him as nothing else could have done.

And then, for a moment, I felt his face wrenched, contorted with rage … It was gone. He said softly, “Beltran sent to ask if you would come down. Let Margie sleep if you like, she’s very tired.”

I slid from the bed. She stirred, made a faint protesting noise—I thought she had murmured my name. I covered her gently with a shawl, picked up my boots in my hand and noiselessly went out, feeling her sink back into deep sleep.

“Rafe?”

“He’s fine. I gave him a few drops of kirian, got him to drink some hot milk and honey, left him asleep.” Kadarin wore his sad, tender smile on his face. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. After all your warnings, I never expected—it was Thyra who suggested you might be with Marjorie.” He laughed. “But I hadn’t expected to find you in her bed!” I said stiffly, “I assure you—”

“Lew, in the name of all the damned obscene gods of the Dry-Towners, do you think it matters a damn to me?” He was laughing again. “Oh, I believe you, you’re just scrupulous enough, and bound hand and foot with your own idiot superstitions! I think you’re putting a considerable strain on human nature, myself—I wouldn’t trust myself to lie down with a woman I loved and never touch her—but if you happen to enjoy self-torture, that’s your own choice. As the Dry-Towner said to the cralmac… ” And he launched into a long, good-humored and incredibly obscene tale which took my mind off my embarrassment as nothing else could have. Not a word of it was suitable for repeating in polite company, but it was exactly what the situation demanded.

When we reached the fireside room, he said, “You heard the helicopter land this afternoon?”

I was still chuckling at the adventures of the Dry-Towner, the spaceman and the three nonhumans; the sudden gravity of his voice shocked me back to normal.

“I saw it, yes. Has it to do with me?”

“A special guest,” Kadarin said. “Beltran feels you should speak with him. You told us he is a catalyst telepath with no reason to love the Comyn, and Beltran sent to persuade him—”

Seated on one of the stone benches near the fire, his dark hair awry, looking cold and ruffled and angry, was Danilo Syrtis. Beltran said, “Perhaps you can explain that we mean no harm, that he is not a prisoner, but an honored guest.”

Danilo tried to sound defiant, but despite his best efforts I could hear that his voice was shaking. “You carried me off with armed men and my father will be ill with fright! Is this how you mountain men welcome guests, taking them away in infernal Terran machines?” He looked no older than Rafe.

I called “Danilo—” and his mouth dropped open. He sprang up. “They told me you were here, but I thought it was just another of their lies.” The childish face hardened. “Was it by your orders they had me kidnapped? How long will the Comyn persecute me?”

I shook my head. “Not my orders, nor Comyn. Until this moment I had no idea you were here.”

He turned on Beltran in childish triumph. His voice, still unbroken, sounded shrill. “I knew you were lying, when you told me Lew Alton ordered me brought here—”

I swung toward Beltran and said in real anger, “I told you Danilo might be persuadedto join us! Did you take that as license to kidnap him?” I held out both hands to the boy and said, “Dani, forgive me. It is true I told them of you and your laran; I suggested that one day they might seek you out and persuade you to join us in what we are doing.” His hands felt cold. He had been badly frightened. “Don’t be afraid. I swear on my honor, no one will hurt you.”

“I am not afraidof such rabble,” he said scornfully, and I saw Beltran wince. Well, if he was going to behave like some Brynat Scarface or Cyrillon des Trailles, he must expect to be called uncomplimentary names! Danilo added, his voice shaking, “My father is old and feeble. He has already suffered my disgrace. Now to lose me again … he will surely grieve himself to death.”

I said to Beltran, “You fool, you utter fool! Send a message at once, send it through the Terran relays if you must, that Danilo is alive and well, and that someone must inform his family that he is here, an honored guest! Do you want a friend and ally, or a mortal enemy?”

He had the grace to look ashamed. He said, “I gave no orders to hurt or frighten him or his father. Did anyone lay rough hands on either of you, lad?”

“I was certainly issued no polite invitation, Lord Aldaran. Do you disarm all your honored guests?”

I said, “Go and send that message, Beltran. Let me talk to him alone.” Beltran went and I mended the fire, leaving Danilo to recover his composure. At last I asked, “Tell me the truth, Danilo, have you been ill-treated?”

“No, though they were not gentle. We were some days riding, then the sky-machine. I do not know its name … ”

The helicopter. I had seen it land. I knew I should have gone after Beltran. If I had been there when Danilo was brought from it—well, it was done. I said, “A helicopter is safer, in the peaks and crossdrafts of the Hellers, than any ordinary plane. Were you very frightened?”

“Only for a little, when we were forced down by weather. Mostly I feared for my father.”

“Well, a message will be sent. Have you had anything to eat?”

“They offered me something when we first landed,” he said. He did not say he had been too shaken and frightened to eat, but I surmised that. I called a servant and said, “Ask my uncle to excuse me from his table, and say that Lord Beltran will explain. Then send some food here for my guest and myself.” I turned back to the boy. “Dani, am I your enemy?”

“Captain, I—”

“I’ve left the Guards,” I said. “Not captain, now.”

To my amazement he said, “Too bad. You were the only officer everybody liked. No, you’re not my enemy, Lew, and I always thought your father was my friend. It was Lord Dyan—you doknow what happened?”

“More or less,” I said. “Whatever it may have been this time, I know damn well that by the time you drew your dagger he’d given you enough provocation for a dozen duels anywhere else. You don’t have to tell me all the nasty little details. I know Dyan.”

“Why did the Commander—”

“They were children together,” I said. “In his eyes Dyan can do no wrong. I’m not defending him, but didn’t you ever do anything you thought was wrong, for a friend’s sake?”

“Did you?” he asked. I was still trying to think how to answer when our supper was brought. I served Dani, but found I was not hungry and sat nibbling at some fruit while the boy satisfied his appetite. I wondered if they had fed him at all since his capture. No, boys that age were always hungry, that was all.

While he ate I worried what Marjorie would think when she woke and found herself alone. Was Rafe really all right, or should I go and make certain? Had Kermiac suffered any lasting ill-effects from Thyra’s rashness? I didn’t approve of what Beltran had done, but I knew why he had been tempted to do it. We needed someone like Danilo so badly that it terrified me.

I poured Dani a glass of wine when he had finished. He merely tasted it for courtesy’s sake, but at least now he was willing to go through the motions of courtesy again. I took a sip of mine and set it aside.

“Danilo, you know you have laran. You also have one of the rarest and most precious Comyn gifts, one we’ve thought extinct. If Comyn Council finds out, they’ll be ready and willing to make all kinds of amends for the stupid and cruel thing Dyan did to you. They’ll offer you anything you want, up to and including a seat in Comyn Council if you want that, marriage with someone like Linnell Aillard—you name it, you can probably have it. You attended that Council meeting among the Terrans. Are you interested in power of that sort? If so, they’ll be lining up two and three deep to offer it to you. Is that what you want?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “I never thought about it. I expected, after I finished in the cadets, to stay quietly at home and look after my father while he lived.”

“And then?”

“I hadn’t thought about that either. I suppose I thought when that time came, I’d be grown up, and then I’d know what I wanted.”

I smiled wryly. Yes, at fifteen I too had been sure that by the time I was twenty or so my life would have arranged itself in simple patterns.

“That’s not the way it happens when you have laran,” I said. “Among other things, you must be trained. An untrained telepath is a menace to himself and everyone around him.”

He made a grimace of revulsion. “I’ve never wanted to be a matrix technician.”

“Probably not,” I said. “It takes a certain temperament.” I couldn’t see Danilo in a tower; I, on the other hand, had never wanted anything else. I still didn’t. “Even so, you must learn to control what you are and what gifts you have. All too many untrained telepaths end up as madmen.”

“Then whether I’m interested in Comyn Council or not, what choice do I have? Isn’t this training only in the hands of the Comyn and the towers? And they can train me to do whatever they want me to do.”

“That’s true in the Domains,” I said. “They do draw all telepaths to their service there. But you still have a choice.” I began to tell him about Beltran’s plan, and a little about the work we had begun.

He listened without comment until I had finished. “Then,” he said, “it seems I have a choice between taking bribes for the use of my laranfrom the Comyn—or from Aldaran.”

“I wouldn’t put it that way. We’re asking you to come into this of your own free will. If we do achieve what we want, then the Comyn will no longer have the power to demand that all telepaths serve them or be left prey to madness. And there would be an end to the kind of power-hunger that left you at the mercy of a man like Dyan.”

He thought that over, sipping the wine again and making a childish wry face. Then he said, “It seems as if something like that’s always going to be happening to people like me, like us. Someone’s always going to be bribing us to use our gifts for their good, not our own.” He sounded terribly young, terribly bitter.

“No, some of us may have a choice now. Once we are a legitimate part of the Terran Empire—”

“Then I suppose the Empire will find some way to use us,” Danilo said. “The Comyn makes mistakes, but don’t they know more about us and our world than the Terrans ever could?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Are you willing to see them stay in power, controlling all our lives, putting corrupt men like Dyan in charge—”

“No, I’m not,” he said, “nobody would want that. But if people like you and me—you said I could have a seat on the Council if I wanted it—if people like you and me were on the Council, the bad ones like Dyan wouldn’t have everything their own way, would they? Your father’s a good man but, like you said, Dyan can do no wrong in his eyes. But when you take a seat on the Council, you won’t feel that way, will you?”

“What I want,” I said with concealed violence, “is not to be forced to take a seat on the Council, or do all the other damned things the Comyn wants me to do!”

“If good men like you can’t be bothered,” said Danilo, “then who’s left, except the bad ones who shouldn’t!”

There was some truth in that, too. But I said vehemently, “I have other skills and I feel I can serve my people better in other ways. That’s what I’m trying to do now, to benefit everyone on Darkover. I’m not trying to smash the Comyn, Dani, only to give everyone more of a choice. Don’t you think it’s an ambition worth achieving?”

He looked helpless. “I can’t judge,” he said. “I’m not even used to thinking of myself as a telepath yet. I don’t know what I ought to do.”

He looked up at me with that odd, trustful look which made me think somehow, of my brother Marius. If it were Marius standing here before me, gifted with laran, would I try to persuade him to face Sharra? A cold chill iced my spine and I shivered, even though the room was warm. I said, “Can you trust me, then?”

“I’d like to,” he said. “You never lied to me or hurt me. But I don’t think I’d trust any of the Aldarans.”

“Is your mind still full of schoolroom bogeymen?” I asked. “Do you believe they are all wicked renegades because they have an old political quarrel with Comyn? You have reason to distrust the Comyn too, Danilo.”