Heritage and Exile (30 page)

“My boy! At this hour, so wet and dripping? Marton, take his cloak, dry it at the fire! Child, you were to be with Javanne some days, what has happened?”

“Necessary—” Regis discovered his teeth were chattering so hard he could not speak; he clenched them to get control. “To return at once—”

The Regent shook his head skeptically. “Through a blizzard? Sit down there by the fire.” He picked up the jug on his table, tilted a thick stream of steaming soup into a stoneware mug and held it out to Regis. “Here. Drink this and warm yourself before you say anything.”

Regis started to say he did not want it, but he had to take it to keep it from falling from the old man's hand. The hot fragrant steam was so enticing that he began to sip it, slowly. He felt enraged at his own weakness and angrier at his grandfather for seeing it. His barriers were down and he had a flash of Hastur as a young man, a commander in the field, knowing his men, judging each one's strengths and weaknesses, knowing what each one needed and precisely how and when to get it to him. As the hot soup began to spread warmth through his shivering body he relaxed and began to breathe freely. The heat of the stoneware mug comforted his fingers, which were blue with cold, and even when he had finished the soup he held it between his hands, enjoying the warmth.

“Grandfather, I must talk to you.”

“Well, I'm listening, child. Not even Council would call me out in such weather.”

Regis glanced at the servants moving around the room. “Alone, sir. This concerns the honor of the Hasturs.”

A startled look crossed the old man's face and he waved them from the room. “You're not going to tell me Javanne has managed to disgrace herself!”

Even the thought of his staid and fastidious sister playing the wanton would have made Regis laugh, if he could have laughed. “Indeed not, sir, all at Edelweiss is well and the babies thriving.” He was not cold now, but felt an inner trembling he did not even recognize as fear. He put down the empty mug which had grown chill in his hands, shook his head at the offer of a refill.

“Grandfather. Do you remember Danilo Syrtis?”

“Syrtis. The Syrtis people are old Hastur folk, your father's paxman and bodyguard bore that name, old Dom Felix was my hawk-master. Wait, was there not some shameful thing in the Guards this year, a disgraced cadet, a sword-breaking? What has this to do with the honor of Hastur, Regis?”

Regis knew he must be very calm now, must keep his voice steady. He said, “The Syrtis men are our wards and paxmen, sir. From their years of duty to us, is it not our duty to safeguard them from being attacked and abused, even by Comyn? I have learned . . . Danilo Syrtis was wrongfully attacked and disgraced, sir, and it's worse than that. Danilo is a . . . a catalyst telepath, and Lord Dyan ill-used him, contrived his disgrace for revenge—”

Regis' voice broke. That searing moment of contact with Danilo flooded him again. Hastur looked at him in deep distress.

“Regis, this cannot possibly be true!”

He doesn't believe me! Regis heard his voice crack and break again. “Grandfather, I swear—”

“Child, child, I know you are not lying, I know you better than that!”

“You don't know me at all!” Regis flung at him, almost hysterical.

Hastur rose and came to him, laying a concerned hand on his forehead. “You are ill, Regis, feverish, perhaps delirious.”

Regis shook the hand off. “I know perfectly well what I am saying. I had an attack of threshold sickness at Edelweiss, it's better now.”

The old man looked at him with startled skepticism. “Regis, threshold sickness is nothing to take lightly. One of the symptoms is delusion, hallucination. I cannot accuse Lord Dyan of the wild ravings of a sick child. Let me send for Kennard Alton; he is tower-trained and can deal with this kind of illness.”

“Send to Kennard indeed,” Regis demanded, his voice wavering, “he is the one man in Thendara who will know for a fact that I am neither lying nor raving! This was by his contrivance, too; he stood by and watched Danilo disgraced and the cadet corps shamed!”

Hastur looked deeply troubled. He said, “Can it not wait—” He looked at Regis sharply and said, “No. If you rode through a blizzard at this hour to bring me such news, it certainly cannot wait. But Kennard is very ill, too. Can you possibly manage to go to him, child?”

Regis cut off another angry outburst and only said, with tight control, “I am not ill. I can go to him.”

His grandfather looked at him steadily. “If you are not ill you will soon be so, if you stand there shivering and dripping. Go to your room and change your clothes while I send word to Kennard.”

He was angry at being sent like a child to change his clothes but he obeyed. It seemed the best way to convince his grandfather of his rationality. When he returned, dry-clad and feeling better, his grandfather said shortly, “Kennard is willing to talk to you. Come with me.”

As they went through the long corridors, Regis was aware of his grandfather's bristling disapproval. In the Alton rooms, Kennard was seated in the main hall, before the fire. He rose and took one step toward them and Regis saw with deep compunction that the older man looked terribly ill, his gaunt face flushed, his hands looking hugely swollen and shapeless. But he smiled at Regis with heartfelt welcome and held out the misshapen hand. “My lad, I'm glad to see you.”

Regis touched the swollen fingers with awkward carefulness, unable to blur out Kennard's pain and exhaustion. He felt raw-edged, hypersensitive. Kennard could hardly stand!

“Lord Hastur, you honor me. How may I serve you?”

“My grandson has come to me with a strange and disturbing story. It's his tale, I'll leave him to tell it.”

Regis felt consuming relief. He had feared to be treated like a sick child dragged unwilling to a doctor. For once he was being treated like a man. He felt grateful, a little disarmed.

Kennard said, “I cannot stand like this long. You there—” He gestured to a servant. “An armchair for the Regent. Sit beside me, Regis, tell me what's troubling you.”

“My lord Alton—”

Kennard said kindly, “Am I no longer Uncle, my boy?” Regis knew if he did not resist that fatherly warmth with all his strength, he would sob out his story like a beaten child. He said stiffly, “My lord, this is a serious matter concerning the honor of the Guardsmen. I have visited Danilo Syrtis at his home—”

“That was a kindly thought, nephew. Between ourselves, that was a bad business. I tried to talk Dyan out of it, but he chose to make an example of Dani and the law is the law. I couldn't have done anything if Dani had been my own son.”

“Commander,” Regis said, using the most formal of Kennard's military titles, “on my most solemn word as a cadet and a Hastur, there has been a terrible injustice done. Danilo was, I swear, wrongly accused, and Lord Dyan guilty of something so shameful I hardly dare name it. Is a cadet forced to submit—”

“Now you wait a minute,” Kennard said, turning blazing eyes on him. “I had this already from Lew. I don't know what those three years among the
cristoforos
did to you, but if you're going to come whining to me about the fact that Dyan likes young lads for lovers, and accuse—”

“Uncle!”
Regis protested in shock. “What kind of ninny do you think me? No, Commander. If that had been all—” He stopped, hunting for words, in confusion.

He said, “Commander, he would not accept refusal. He persecuted him day and night, invaded his mind, used
laran
against him. . . .”

Kennard's eyes sharpened. “Lord Hastur, what do you know of this wild tale? The boy looks ill. Is he raving?”

Regis stood up with a surge of violent anger that matched Kennard's own. “Kennard Alton, I am a Hastur
and I do not lie
! Send for Lord Dyan if you will, and question me in his presence!”

Kennard met his eyes, not angry now, but very serious. He said, “Dyan is not in the city tonight. Regis, tell me, how do you know this?”

“From Danilo's own lips, and from rapport with his mind,” Regis said quietly. “You of all men know there is no way to lie to the mind.”

Kennard did not release his eyes. “I did not know you had
laran
.”

Regis held out his hand to Kennard, palm upward, a gesture he had never seen before, yet instinct guided him to it. He said, “
You
have. You will know. See for yourself, sir.”

He saw dawning respect in the older man's gaunt, feverish face in the instant before he felt, with a thrill of fear, the touch on his mind. He heard Lew saying in Kennard's memory,
I've known grown men who dared not face that test
. Then he felt Kennard's touch, the shock of rapport . . . the moment he had stood before Danilo in the orchard, reeling with the shock of Danilo's anger and shame . . . his own liking for Dyan, the moment of half-shamed response to him . . . Kennard's own memories of Dyan blurring his own, a younger Dyan, a slender, eager boy, to be loved and protected and cherished . . . Danilo's sick, stunned terror, the flood of nightmarish dreams and cruelties he had shared with Danilo, the weeping in the dark, the harsh hawklike laughter. . . .

The blur of memories and impressions was gone. Kennard had covered his eyes with his hands. His eyes were dry and blazing, but just the same Regis got the impression that the older man was weeping in dismay. He said in a whisper, “Zandru's hells,
Dyan
!” Regis could feel the knifing anguish in the words. Kennard sank down on the bench again and Regis knew that he would have fallen if he had not, but for the first time Regis felt the iron strength and control with which a tower-trained telepath can control himself when he must. He had a frightening flash of agony, as if Kennard were holding his hand steadily in a fire, but Kennard only drew a deep breath and said, “So Danilo has
laran
. Lew did not tell me, nor did he tell me Dani had awakened you.” A long silence. “That is a crime, and a terrible one—to use
laran
to force the will. I trusted Dyan; I never thought to question him. We were
bredin
. It is my responsibility and I will bear the guilt.”

He looked shattered, dazed. “Aldones, Son of Light! I trusted him with
my
cadets! And Lew tried to warn me and I would not hear. I sent my own son from me in wrath because he tried to make me hear. . . . Hastur, what shall we do?”

Hastur looked grieved. “All the Ardais are unstable,” he said. “Dom Kyril has been mad these twenty years. But you know the law as well as I do. You forced us to name Lew your heir with that same law. There must be one in the direct line, male and healthy, to represent every Domain, and Dyan has appointed no heir. We cannot even dismiss him from Comyn Council, as we did with Kyril when he began to rave. I do not know how we can send him from Council even long enough to heal his mind, if he is truly mad. Is he sane enough even to choose an heir?”

Regis felt angry and bruised. They seemed to care only about Dyan. Dani was nothing to them, no more than he was to Dyan. He said aggressively, “What of Danilo? What of his disgrace and his suffering? He has the rarest of the Comyn gifts, and the way he has been treated dishonors us all!”

Both men turned to look at him as if they had forgotten him. He felt like a noisy rude child intruding on the counsels of his elders, but he stood his ground, watching the torchlight make flickering patterns on the antique swords over the fire, saw Dyan, the sharp foil in hand, plunging it into his breast. . . .

“Amends shall be made,” Hastur said quietly, “but you must leave it to us.”

“I'll leave Dyan to you. But Dani is
my
responsibility! I pledged him my sworn word. I am a Hastur, and the heir to a Domain, and I demand—”

“You demand, do you?” said his grandfather, swinging around to face him. “I deny your right to demand anything! You have told me you wish to renounce that right, to go offworld. It took all I had even to extract your promise to give the minimum duty to the cadets! You have refused, even as Dyan refused, to give an heir to your Domain. By what right do you dare criticize him? You have renounced your heirship to Hastur; by what right do you stand here in front of us and make demands? Sit down and behave yourself or go back to your room and leave these things to your betters!”

“Don't you treat me like a child!”

“You are a child,” said Hastur, his lips pressed tightly together, “a sick, silly child.”

The room was flickering in and out of focus with the firelight. Regis clenched his fists, fighting for words. “An injury to anyone with
laran
. . . dishonors us all.” He turned to Kennard, pleading. “For the honor of the Guards . . . for your own honor . . .”

Kennard's crippled hands touched him gently; Regis could feel pain ripping through those swollen hands as he wrenched them away. He felt himself sliding in and out of his body, unable to bear the jangle and confusion of all their thoughts. He thought with wild longing of being aboard a starship outward bound,
free,
leaving this little world behind with all its intrigue. He stood for a moment in Kennard's memory on the faraway surface of Terra, struggling with the pull of honor and duty against all he longed for, back to the heritage laid out for him before he was born, a path he must walk whether he would or not . . . felt his grandfather's anguish,
Rafael, Rafael, you would not have deserted me like this
. . . heard Dyan's slow cynical voice,
a very special stud animal whose fees are paid to Comyn
. . .

It forced him physically to his knees with the weight of it. Past, present, future spun together, whirling, he saw Dani's hand meet his on the hilt of a gleaming sword, felt it rip his mind open, overshadowing him.
Son of Hastur who is the Son of Light!
He was crying like a child. He whispered, “To the House of Hastur . . . I swear . . .”