Heritage and Exile (26 page)

“You may be sure of it, Lord Regis.” He stood staring after Regis as the boy mounted and rode away, and Regis could sense his confusion and gratitude. As he rode slowly down the hill to rejoin his bodyguard, he realized what he had, in substance, pledged himself to do: to restore Danilo's good name and make certain that Dyan could not again misuse power this way. What it meant was that he, who had once sworn to renounce the Comyn, now had to reform it from inside out, single-handedly, before he could enjoy his own freedom.

The hills rise beyond the Kadarin, leading away into the mountains, into the unknown country where the law of the Comyn does not run. In my present state, as soon as I had forded the Kadarin I felt that a weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

In this part of the world, five days' ride north of Thendara, my safe-conducts meant nothing. We slept at night in tents, with a watch set. It was a barren country, long deserted. Only perhaps three or four times in a day's ride did we see some small village, half a dozen poor houses clustered in a clearing, or some small-holding where a hardy farmer wrested a bare living from the stony and perpendicular forest. There were so few travelers here that the children came out to watch us as we passed.

The roads got worse and worse as we went further into the hills, degenerating at times into mere goat-tracks and trails. There are not many good roads on Darkover. My father, who lived on Terra for many years, has told me about the good roads there, but added that there was no way to bring that system here. For roads you needed slave labor or immense numbers of men willing to work for the barest subsistence, or else heavy machinery. And there have never been slaves on Darkover, not even slaves to machinery.

It was, I thought, small wonder that the Terrans were reluctant to move their spaceport into these hills again.

I was the more surprised when, on the ninth day of traveling, we came on to a wide road, well-surfaced and capable of handling wheeled carts and several men riding abreast. My father had also told me that when he last visited the hills near Aldaran, Caer Donn had been little more than a substantial village. Reports had reached him that it was now a good-sized city. But this did not diminish my astonishment when, coming to the top of one of the higher hills, we saw it spread out below us in the valley and along the lower slopes of the next mountain.

It was a clear day, and we could see a long distance. Deep in the lowest part of the valley, where the ground was most even, there was a great fenced-in area, abnormally smooth-surfaced, and even from here I could see the runways and the landing strips. This, I thought, must be the old Terran spaceport, now converted to a landing field for their aircraft and the small rockets which brought messages from Thendara and Port Chicago. There was a similar small landing field near Arilinn. Beyond the airfield lay the city, and as my escort drew to a halt behind me, I heard the men murmuring about it.

“There was no city here when I was a lad! How could it grow so fast?”

“It's like the city which grew up overnight in the old fairy tale!”

I told them a little of what Father had said, about prefabricated construction. Such cities were not built to stand for ages, but could be quickly constructed. They scowled skeptically and one of them said, “I'd hate to be rude about the Commander, sir, but he must have been telling you fairy tales. Even on Terra human hands can't build so quick.”

I laughed. “He also told me of a hot planet where the natives did not believe there was such a thing as snow, and accused him of tale-telling when he spoke of mountains which bore ice all year.”

Another pointed. “Castle Aldaran?”

There was nothing else it could have been, unless we were unimaginably astray: an ancient keep, a fortress of craggy weathered stone. This was the stronghold of the renegade Domain, exiled centuries ago from Comyn—no man alive now knew why. Yet they were the ancient Seventh Domain, of the ancient kin of Hastur and Cassilda.

I felt curiously mingled eagerness and reluctance, as if taking some irrevocable step. Once again the curiously unfocused time-sense of the Altons thrust fingers of dread at me. What was waiting for me in that old stone fortress lying at the far end of the valley of Caer Donn?

With a scowl I brought myself back to the present. It needed no great precognition to sense that in a completely strange part of the world I might meet strangers and that some of them would have a lasting effect on my life. I told myself that crossing that valley, stepping through the gates of Castle Aldaran, was
not
some great and irrevocable division in my life which would cut me off from my past and all my kindred. I was here at my father's bidding, an obedient son, disloyal only in thought and will.

I struggled to get myself back in focus. “Well, we might as well try to reach it while we still have some daylight,” I said, and started down the excellent road.

The ride across Caer Donn was in a strange way dreamlike. I had chosen to travel simply, without the complicated escort of an ambassador, treating this as the family visit it purported to be, and I attracted no particular attention. In a way the city was like myself, I thought, outwardly all Darkovan, but with a subliminal difference somewhere, something that did not quite belong. For all these years I had been content to accept myself as Darkovan; now, looking at the old Terran port as I had never looked at the familiar one at Thendara, I thought that this too was my heritage . . . if I had courage to take it.

I was in a curious mood, feeling a trifle fey, as if, without knowing what shape or form it would take, I could smell a wind that bore my fate.

There were guards at the gates of Aldaran, mountain men, and for the first time I gave my full name, not the one I bore as my father's
nedestro
heir, but the name given before either father or mother had cause to suspect anyone could doubt my legitimacy. “I am Lewis-Kennard Lanart-Montray Alton y Aldaran, son of Kennard, Lord Alton, and Elaine Montray-Aldaran. I have come as envoy of my father, and I ask a kinsman's welcome of Kermiac, Lord Aldaran.”

The guards bowed and one of them, some kind of majordomo or steward, said, “Enter,
dom,
you are welcome and you honor the house of Aldaran. In his name I extend you welcome, until you hear it from his own lips.” My escort was taken away to be housed elsewhere while I was led to a spacious room high in one of the far wings of the castle; my saddle bags were brought and servants sent to me when they found I traveled with no valet. In general they established me in luxury. After a while the steward returned.

“My lord, Kermiac of Aldaran is at dinner and asks, if you are not too weary from travel, that you join him in the hall. If you are trail-wearied, he bids you dine here and rest well, but he bade me say he was eager to welcome his sister's grandson.”

I said I would join him with pleasure. At that moment I was not capable of feeling fatigue; the fey mood of excitement was still on me. I washed off the dust of travel and dressed in my best, a fine tunic of crimson-dyed leather with breeches to match, low velvet boots, a dress cape lined with fur—not vanity, this, but to show honor to my unknown kinsman.

Dusk was falling when the servant returned to conduct me to the great dining hall. Expecting dim torchlight, I was struck amazed by the daylight flood of brilliance. Arc-light, I thought, blinking, arc-light such as the Terrans use in their Trade City. It seemed strange to go at night into a room flooded by such noonday brilliance, strange and disorienting, yet I was glad, for it allowed me to see clearly the faces in the great hall. Evidently, despite his use of the newfangled lights, Kermiac kept to the old ways, for the lower part of his hall was crammed with a motley conglomeration of faces, Guardsmen, servants, mountain people, rich and poor, even some Terrans and a
cristoforo
monk or two in their drab robes.

The servant led me toward the high table at the far end where the nobles sat. At first they were only a blur of faces: a tall man, lean and wolfish, with a great shock of fair hair; a pretty, red-haired girl in a blue dress; a small boy about Marius' age; and at their center, an aging man with a dark reddish beard, old to decrepitude but still straight-backed and keen-eyed. He bent his eyes on me, studying my face intently. This, I knew, must be Kermiac, Lord Aldaran, my kinsman. He wore plain clothes, of a simple cut like those the Terrans wore, and I felt briefly ashamed of my barbarian finery.

He rose and came down from the dais to greet me. His voice, thinned with age, was still strong.

“Welcome, kinsman.” He held out his arms and gave me a kinsman's embrace, his thin dry lips pressing each of my cheeks in turn. He held my shoulders between his hands for a moment. “It warms my heart to see your face at last, Elaine's son. We hear tidings in the Hellers here, even of the
Hali'imyn
.” He used the ancient mountain word, but without offense. “Come, you must be weary and hungry after this long journey. I am glad you felt able to join us. Come and sit beside me, nephew.”

He led me to a place of honor at his side. Servants brought us food. In the Domains the choicest food is served a guest without asking his preference, so that he need not in courtesy choose the simplest; here they made much of asking whether I would have meat, game-bird or fish, whether I would drink the white mountain wine or the red wine of the valleys. It was all cooked well and served to perfection, and I did it justice after days of trail food.

“So, nephew,” he said at last, when I had appeased my hunger and was sipping a glass of white wine and nibbling at some strange and delicious sweets, “I have heard you are tower-trained, a telepath. Here in the mountains it's believed that men tower-trained are half eunuch, but I can see you are a man; you have the look of a soldier. Are you one of their Guardsmen?”

“I have been a captain for three years.”

He nodded. “There is peace in the mountains now, although the Dry-Towners get ideas now and then. Yet I can respect a soldier; in my youth I had to keep Caer Donn by force of arms.”

I said, “In the Domains it is not known that Caer Donn is so great a city.”

He shrugged. “Largely of Terran building. They are good neighbors, or we find them so. Is it otherwise in Thendara?”

I was not yet ready to discuss my feelings about the Terrans, but to my relief he did not pursue that topic. He was studying my face in profile.

“You are not much like your father, nephew. Yet I see nothing of Elaine in you, either.”

“It is my brother Marius who is said to have my mother's face and her eyes.”

“I have never seen him. I last saw your father twelve years ago, when he brought Elaine's body here to rest among her kin. I asked then for the privilege of fostering her sons, but Kennard chose to rear you in his own house.”

I had never known that. I had been told nothing of my mother's people. I was not even sure what degree of kin I was to the old man. I said something of this to him, and he nodded.

“Kennard has had no easy life,” Kermiac said. “I cannot blame him that he never wanted to look back. But if he chose to tell you nothing of your mother's kin, he cannot take offense that I tell you now in my own fashion. Years ago, when the Terrans were mostly stationed at Caer Donn and the ground had just been broken for the fine building at Thendara—I hear it has been finished in this winter past—years ago, then, when I was not much more than a boy, my sister Mariel chose to marry a Terran, Wade Montray. She dwelt with him many years on Terra. I have heard the marriage was not a happy one and they separated, after she had borne him two children. Mariel chose to remain with her daughter Elaine on Terra; Wade Montray came with his son Larry, whom we called Lerrys, back to Darkover. And now you may see how the hand of fate works, for Larry Montray and your father, Kennard, met as boys and swore friendship. I am no great believer in predestination or a fate foretold, but so it came about that Larry Montray remained on Darkover to be fostered at Armida and your father was sent back to Terra, to be fostered as Wade Montray's son, in the hope that these two lads would build again the old bridge between Terra and Darkover. And there, of course, your father met Montray's daughter, who was also the daughter of my sister Mariel. Well, to make a long tale short, Kennard returned to Darkover, was given in marriage to a woman of the Domains, who bore him no child, served in Arilinn Tower—some of this you must have been told. But he bore the memory of Elaine, it seems, ever in his heart, and at last sought her in marriage. As her nearest kinsman, it was I who gave consent. I have always felt such marriages are fortunate, and children of mixed blood the closest road to friendship between people of different worlds. I had no idea, then, that your Comyn kinsmen would not bless the marriage as I had done, and rejoice in it.”

All the more wrong of the Comyn, I thought, since it was by their doing that my father had first gone to Terra. Well, it was all of a piece with their doings since. And another score I bore against them.

Yet my father stood with them!

Kermiac concluded, “When it was clear they would not accept you, I offered to Kennard that you should be fostered here, honored at least as Elaine's son if not as his. He was certain he could force them, at last, to accept you. He must have succeeded, then?”

“After a fashion,” I said slowly. “I am his heir.” I did not want to discuss the costs of that with him. Not yet.

The steward had been trying to attract Lord Kermiac's attention; he saw it and gave a signal for the tables to be cleared. As the great crowd who dined at his table began to disperse, he led me into a small sitting room, dimly lighted, a pleasant room with an open fireplace. He said, “I am old, and old men tire quickly, nephew. But before I go to rest, I want you to know your kinsmen. Nephew, your cousin, my son Beltran.”