Heritage and Exile (41 page)

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
persuaded
to 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
afraid
of 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
do
know 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
laran
from 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.”

“True,” he said. “But can I trust a man who begins by kidnapping me and frightening my father to death? If he had come to me, explained what he wanted to do, and that you and he together thought my gift could be useful, then asked my father to give me leave to visit him . . .”

The hell of it was, Dani was entirely right. What had possessed Beltran to do such a thing? “If he had consulted me, that is exactly how I would have suggested he should do it.”

“Yes, I know,” Dani said. “You're
you
. But if Beltran isn't the kind of man to do it that way, how can you trust him?”

“He's my kinsman,” I said helplessly. “What do you expect me to say? I expect his eagerness got the better of him. He didn't hurt you, did he?”

Dani raged. “You're talking just the way you said your father did about Lord Dyan!”

It wasn't the same, I knew that, but I couldn't expect Danilo to see it. Finally I said, “Can't you look beyond personalities in this, Dani? Beltran was wrong, but what we're trying to do is so enormous that maybe it blinds people to smaller aims and ends. Keep your eyes on what he's doing, and forgive him. Or are you waiting,” and I spoke deliberately, with malice, to make him see how cynical it sounded, “for the Comyn to make a better offer?”

He flushed, stung to the depths. I hadn't overestimated either his intelligence or his sensitivity. He was a boy still, but the man would be well worth knowing, with strong integrity and honor. I hoped with all my heart he would be our ally.

“Danilo,” I said, “we need you. The Comyn cast you out in disgrace, undeserved. What loyalty do you owe them?”

“The Comyn, nothing,” he said quietly. “Yet I am pledged and my service given. Even if I wanted to do what you ask, Lew, and I'm not sure, I am not free.”

“What do you mean?”

Danilo's face was impassive, but I could sense the emotion behind his words. “Regis Hastur sought me out at Syrtis,” he said. “He did not know how or why, but he knew I had been wronged. He pledged himself to set it right.”

“We're trying to set many wrongs right, Dani. Not just yours.”

“Maybe,” he said. “But we swore an oath together and I pledged him my sword and my service. I am his paxman, Lew, so if you want me to help you, you must ask
his
consent. If my lord gives me leave, then I am at your service. Otherwise I am his man: I have sworn.”

I looked at the solemn young face and knew there was nothing I could say to that. I felt a quite irrational anger at Regis because he had forestalled me here. For a moment I wrestled with strong temptation. I could make him see it my way . . .

I recoiled in horror and shame at my own thoughts. The first pledge I had sworn at Arilinn was this: never, never force the will or conscience of another, even for his own good. I could persuade. I could plead. I could use reason, emotion, logic, rhetoric. I could even seek out Regis and beg him for his consent; he too had reason to be disaffected, to rebel against the corruption in the Comyn. But further than this I could not go. I could
not
. That I had even thought of it made me feel a little sick.

“I may indeed ask Regis for your aid, Dani,” I said quietly. “He too is my friend. But I will never force you. I am not Dyan Ardais!”

That made him smile a little. “I never thought you were, Lew. And if my lord gives me leave, then I will trust him, and you. But until that time shall come, Dom Lewis”—he gave me my title very formally, though we had been using the familiar mode before this—“have I your permission to depart and return to my father?”

I gestured at the snow, a white torrent whipping the windows, sending little spits of sleet down the chimney. “In
this,
lad? Let me at least offer you the hospitality of my kinsman's roof until the weather suits! Then you shall be given proper escort and company out of these mountains. You cannot expect me to set you adrift in these mountains, at night and in winter, with a storm blowing up?” I summoned a servant again, and requested that he provide proper lodging for a guest, near my own quarters. Before Danilo went away to his bed, I gave him a kinsman's embrace, which he returned with a childlike friendliness that made me feel better.