Heritage and Exile (77 page)

“Home,” Marius said. “Waiting. I wouldn't let him come with me this morning. Whatever happened, I didn't want him mixed up in it. He's not as young as he used to be.” I caught the unspoken part of that, too. He didn't want it thought that the claimant for the Alton Domain wanted, or needed, a Terran bodyguard. I never thought of Andres as Terran anymore; he'd been a second father to me, and all the father Marius had had during these crucial years between boy and man.

That had been my fault, too.
Then, angrily, I put that thought aside. No law had required our father to spend all his attention on his elder son. It was not my doing, but Marius had been neglected for me, and I wondered, even as we embraced, just how much he resented it. Even now, he might feel that I had turned up just in time to snatch the Domain from his hands.

But there were those in the Comyn who would see nothing in Andres but his Terran background and name. Andres was one of the half dozen or less people here on Darkover that I cared to see.

One of the others was waiting quietly behind Marius until our embrace loosened and we stood back from each other. I said, “Well, Gabriel?”

“Well, Lew?” he replied, in almost the same inflection. “You certainly picked one hell of a moment to walk in!”

“I'm sure you'd have preferred him to wait a day or two, until you had the Domain neatly tied up in your own wallet,” Marius retorted sharply.

“Don't be a fool, youngster,” Gabriel said without heat, and I remembered that Gabriel's oldest son must be close to Marius's own age; a bit younger, perhaps, but not much. “What was I to think, with no word from Kennard? And by the way, Lew, where is the old man? Not well enough to travel?”

I hadn't wanted Marius to find it out that way, but Gabriel picked it up from my mind before I spoke and so did Marius. Gabriel said something shocked and sympathetic, and Marius began to cry. Gabriel put an arm around him as Marius struggled for self-control. He was still young enough to be ashamed of weeping in public. But behind him my other kinsman made no attempt to conceal the tears streaming down his face.

I hadn't seen him since I'd left Arilinn, and there, though everyone knew that he was the son of my father's elder brother and could have been the rightful claimant, before my father or me, to Armida, he had made a great thing, a point of honor, of bearing the name of his Terran foster-father; he was
Lord Damon
only on ceremonial occasions. The rest of the time we knew him—and thought of him—only as Jeff Kerwin. As he looked at me, tears falling down his face, I remembered the close ties among the Arilinn circle. It was the only time, perhaps, I had been truly happy, truly at peace, in my entire life. He asked now, “Did you—did you at least bring him home to rest here on Darkover, cousin?”

I shook my head. “You know the Terran law,” I reminded him. “I came as soon as I had—had buried him.”

Jeff sighed and said, “He was like a father to me, too, or an elder brother.” He turned to Marius, embracing him, and said, “I have not seen you since you were a child—a baby, really.”

“So here we have all four claimants for the Alton Domain,” said a harsh, musical voice behind us. “But instead of disputing manfully for the Domain as one would expect of hillmen, they are indulging in a love-feast! What a touching spectacle, this reunion!”

Marius whirled on him and said, “Listen, you—” His fists clenched, but I touched his arm with my good hand. “Let it go, brother. He doesn't know. Lord Dyan, you were my father's friend, you'll want to know this. He is buried on Vainwal. And on the last day of his life, a few minutes before his death—which was very sudden and unexpected—he spoke kindly of you and said you had been a good friend to my brother.”

But as I spoke of that last day, remembering—my head was ringing.

With that final command still ringing in my mind, drowning out everything else, I was even prepared to be civil to Lord Dyan.

Dyan stared straight ahead, his jaw tight, but I saw the muscles in his throat move. At that moment I came closer to liking Dyan Ardais than ever before, or ever again. Somehow his struggle not to weep, as if he were a boy still young enough to be ashamed of tears, touched me as no display could have done. Jeff actually dared to lay a compassionate hand on Dyan's shoulder. I remembered that Jeff had been married to Dyan's half-sister—I had never seen her; she had died before I came to Arilinn—and watching them, I knew how Jeff had been persuaded to leave Arilinn and come here, when Jeff had about as much interest in the Regency of Alton—or the politics of the Comyn—as he had in the love life of the banshee. Less, really; he might have had some intellectual curiosity about the banshee.

The silence stretched.

Endless, a never-ending loop battering my mind . . .
It seemed, for a moment, impossible that they did not hear. Gabriel said finally, “All my life he's been there; bigger than life. I simply can't believe he's gone.”

“Nor I,” said Jeff. Abruptly he looked at me, and I saw my face mirrored in his mind and was shocked. “Zandru's hells, Lew! Did you come here directly from the spaceport?” I nodded and he asked, “When did you eat last?”

I thought about that and said at last, “I can't remember. They shot me so full of drugs aboard ship . . . I'm still fuzzy.”

. . . My last command . . . go back . . .
it was to drown that unending clamor in my mind, that I put my hand to my head, but Jeff put his hand under my arm. He said, “You can't think straight in this condition, and thinking straight is the first thing you have to be able to do. Besides, you ought not to appear before Council wearing Terran clothes. It made a dramatic point, perhaps, for a few minutes, but it would start people thinking the wrong things. Dyan—?”

The Ardais lord nodded, and Jeff said, “I am guested here in the Ardais quarters—I don't know who, if anyone, is living in the Alton ones—”

“Caretakers,” said Gabriel, with a wry twist of his mouth. “I may be presumptuous, but not
that
presumptuous!”

“Come along,” Jeff said. “We can find you something to eat, and some decent clothes—”

Dyan said, “Yours would go round him twice, Jeff.” He looked me up and down. “You're thinner than you used to be. Tell them to find something of mine for him.”

Jeff led me quickly along the corridor; I was glad to get away, for some others of the Comyn and the others in the Crystal Chamber had come out into the hallway. I saw someone wearing Ridenow colors, and the flash of golden and green made me think of Dio.

Was she here, would she confront me at any moment, shrieking
Monster!
Would she think I had come to force her back as if the Terran ceremony had made her my prisoner? . . .

Her touch, her understanding . . . it might even have quieted the shrieking in my mind . . . yet the love between us had not been strong enough to hold through tragedy. How could I ask it . . . that horrible
thing
. . . no man had any right to do that to a woman . . .

“Steady,” said Jeff. “There in a minute. Sit down.” He shoved me onto a piece of furniture. It was dreamlike,
déjà vu,
for I could not remember ever being in the Ardais apartments before. Yet my father had known them well, I supposed, Dyan had been his closest friend when they were young. . . .
Zandru's hells, would I never again be sure which thoughts, feelings, emotions were mine, which my father's? The forced rapport which had wakened my Alton gift when I was eleven years old had been bad enough, but that last dying death-grip on my mind . . .
I shuddered, and when Dyan thrust a drink into my hand I leaned for a moment against his shoulder, letting him support me. Memories of a younger Dyan flooded me with an affection warm, almost sensual, which shocked me to the bone, and I slammed the barrier shut, straightening up and easing free of his support. I drained the glass without noticing the taste. It was the strong
firi
cordial of the Kilghard Hills.

“Thanks. I needed that, but some soup would be better, I suppose, or something solid—”

“If I remember rightly,” Dyan said, “your father was allergic to the Terran drugs too.” He used the Terran word “allergic”; there wasn't one in
casta.
“I wouldn't try to eat anything solid for a few hours, if I were you. They'll bring you something to eat in a few minutes, but you don't really have that much time. We could call for a day or two delay, if you want.” He looked around, saw Marius hovering, and asked, “Where's Gabriel?”

Marius said, “He's honor guard there; he had to go back, he said.”

“Damn.” Jeff scowled. “We need a family conference of some kind.”

Dyan's lip curled. “Keep Gabriel out of it,” he said. “He's a Hastur lackey. I've always suspected that's why old Hastur married him to the girl . . . his granddaughter. I don't suppose you had sense enough to get yourself married and father a son, did you, Lew?”

With an effort that made me tremble, I slammed down a barrier. It was enough that I would never be free of the memory of that inhuman
thing
which should have been my son. If it were ever to be shared, it would not be with Dyan. He might have been my father's chosen friend and confidant; he was not mine. I shrugged off his supporting arm as I rose.

“Let's see about those clothes. No, I don't mind wearing Ardais colors . . . ”

But it turned out Marius had sent a servant at a run to the townhouse, with orders to fetch a cloak and Domain colors for me. I glanced in the mirror, saw myself transformed. And I could hide the missing hand in a fold of the cloak, if I wished. Marius gave me my father's sword and I fastened it at my side, trying not to think of the Sharra matrix.

“At least now you look proper Comyn,” said Jeff. “You have to fight them on their own ground, Lew.”

I hurried with the tunic-laces, making a little extra display of my one-handed skill because I was still damnably sensitive about Marius watching. Dyan's eyes flicked over the empty sleeve.

“I told Kennard that hand would have to come off,” he said. “They should have had it off at Arilinn. He kept on hoping the Terrans could do something. Terran science was one of the few things he kept on believing in, even after he lost faith in damned near everything else.”

The silence stretched, came to a full stop. Jeff, who had seen the hand at Arilinn, and had tried to save it, would have spoken, but I mentally commanded him to be silent. I might manage to discuss it, some day, with Jeff; but not with Dyan; and not with anyone here, not yet.

Dio had accepted it . . .
I cut off that train of thought, afraid of what it would lead to.

There was a tentative knock at the door, and one of Hastur's servants, liveried in blue and silver, came in to convey the Regent's compliments and request that the Ardais and Alton lords would return to Council.

Dyan said, with a faint curl of his lip, “At least there is now no reason to declare the Domain vacant.”

That was true. At first there had been no rightful claimant; now there were four. I asked Marius, as we went down the hallway toward the Crystal Chamber, “Do you have the Alton Gift?”

Marius had the dark eyes of our Terran mother. I have always thought dark eyes were expressionless, unreadable. “I haven't the faintest idea,” he said. “What with one thing and another, I've been given to understand that it would be . . . insufferable insolence . . . to try and find out. I'm fairly sure Gabriel doesn't, though.”

“The reason I asked,” I said, exasperated, “is that they'll be badgering me to declare an Heir.” And I knew he could pick up the part of that I did not speak aloud; that I would prefer to assume he had it, without the shock tactics my father had had to use on my own Gift.

“It's probably irrelevant,” Dyan said. “Everyone knew I didn't have the Ardais Gift; it didn't stop them from declaring me as Heir and Regent to my father.” The Ardais gift—catalyst telepathy, the gift of awakening latent
laran
—had been thought extinct, until it had been discovered in Danilo. That made me think about Regis, and wonder why he had not come to greet me. Well, if there was a plot to take the Alton Domain under Hastur wardship, I wasn't surprised he didn't care to face me just yet.

I shook my head to clear it of the insistent jangling, and, between my kinsmen, walked back into the Crystal Chamber.

 

Some kind of hurried conference was going on behind the curtained enclosure of the Hastur Domain. For once in my life I was glad of the telepathic dampers, which lessened the jangle in my head to a manageable ache. When they called us to order again, Danvan Hastur rose and said, “From having no rightful claimant to the Alton Domain, we now have four, and the situation must be investigated further. I ask that we delay the formal investiture of Lord Alton for another seven days, until the period of Council mourning for Kennard Alton is finished.”