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And then a flood of love and tenderness and a moment of pure joy.
“Elaine,” he cried out in my mind. Yllana. Beloved.
Then I broke into his room, and he lay there, quite dead. But on his face was a tender smile of happiness.
BOOK TWO: The Form of Fire
CHAPTER ONE
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Darkover. The end of exile
There was someone at the door. Regis Hastur struggled up through confused dreams and found himself in his own rooms in Comyn Castle, his body-servant arguing in dogged whispers with someone who stood at the door, insisting. Regis threw a furred bedgown about his shoulders and went to see what it was.
“ Vai dom, this—this personis insisting on seeing you, even at this godforgotten hour—”
“Well, I’m awake now anyhow,” he said, blinking. For a moment he did not recognize the sturdy, dark-eyed youngster who stood there, and the youngster’s wry smile told Regis that he knew it.
“We haven’t met many times and I don’t think we’ve ever been formally introduced,” he said. “Not since I was eight or nine years old, anyhow. My name is Marius, and I won’t argue about the rest of it when I’m here to ask a favor of you.”
Now Regis recognized Ke
Yet they had placed Regis himself in Ke
Regis said, “Come in, Marius; what can I do for you?”
“It’s not for me,” Marius said, “but for my friend. I have been living, this season, in my father’s town house in Thendara. I haven’t been made to feel exactly welcome in Comyn Castle.”
“I know, and I’m sorry, Marius. What can I say? I don’t make Council decisions, but that doesn’t mean I agree with them, either. Come in, won’t you? Don’t stand here in the hallway. A drink? Erril, take his cloak.”
Marius shook his head. “There’s no time for that, I’m afraid. My friend—you know him; he told me, once, you were prisoners together at Aldaran, and you know something of—” Marius fidgeted, lowered his voice as if he spoke a gutter obscenity— “of Sharra.”
Now Regis remembered his dream, the monstrous fire-form flaring and ravaging in his nightmare, ships bursting in flame— “I remember,” he said, “all too well. Your friend—Rafe Scott, isn’t it?” He remembered, too, that he had seen them together in Thendara. Yes; in the company of Lerrys Ridenow, who liked the society of Terrans. “What’s happened, Marius?”
And yet his mind was ru
“He was my guest,” Marius said, “and the servants heard him crying out and came and wakened me; but when I went to him he didn’t know me, just kept crying out, raving about Sharra— I couldn’t make him hear me. Could you—could you come?”
“What you want is a healer,” Regis said. “I don’t have any skill at that kind of thing…” and he found himself wondering if Danilo, who had been prisoner with him during those weeks at Aldaran, who also had been touched by the fire-form, had wakened in terrifying nightmares of Sharra. And what did it mean?
“Lord Regis,” said the body-servant in outrage, “you’re not thinking of going out with this—at this hour of night, at the beck and call of just anybody?”
Regis had been thinking of refusal. What Marius needed was a healer or a licensed matrix technician. Regis had spent a season in a Tower, learning to manage his own laranso that it would not make him ill or drive him mad, but he had none of the advanced skills for matrix healing of mind or body, and what he knew of Sharra was very little. Only that for all that time his own matrix had been overshadowed, so that he could not touch it without seeing that ravaging form of fire— but the servant’s words made him angry again.
“I don’t know if I can help you very much, Marius, and I don’t know the Scott youngster at all. I haven’t seen him since then, not to speak to. But I’ll come as a friend,” he said, disregarding his servant’s look of outrage. “Get me my clothes, Erril, and my boots. If you’ll excuse me while I get dressed—”
Hurrying into his clothes, he thought that he was perhaps the only telepath still in the Domains who had had even that much indirect experience with Sharra. What little he knew of it did not tempt him to learn more.
But what can this mean? The matrix is not even on Darkover! It went with Lew and Ke
He splashed his face with icy water, hoping to clear his confusion. And then he realized what could have happened…
I am responsible for this. I sent the message, and my grandfather will be very angry when he finds out that it was I. And already I am suffering the consequences of my actions.
It flashed through his mind, relived in an instant as it had happened. It had been a score of tendays ago; and he had, as Heir to Hastur, been privy to a decision made by the cortes, the ruling body of Thendara. He was in honor bound not to discuss their decisions with any outsider; but what to do when honor conflicts with honor? And in the end he had gone to the one man on Darkover who might have a stake in reversing this decision.
Dyan Ardais had heard him out, a faint smile playing ironically over his lips, as if he could sense how Regis hated this… the necessity that he, Regis, should come as a suppliant, begging favors of Dyan. Regis had concluded, angrily, “Do you want to see them do this to Ke
Dyan had frowned, then, and made him go all over it again. “What exactly are they intending to do?”
“At the first session of Council, this year, they are going to declare Ke
“I don’t see what choice they have.”
“Ke
After a long silence, Dyan had said, “I’ll make certain that Ke
And now, weeks later, hurrying to join Marius, Regis wondered about that. Even if Ke
Perhaps, he thought, perhaps it is only nightmare…perhaps it is not the frightening coincidence I think. Perhaps Rafe’s nightmare reached out to the one person in Thendara who had been touched by Sharra and so I, too, dreamed—
He slung his cloak about his shoulders and said to Marius, “Let’s go. Erril, call my bodyguard.” He didn’t want the man; but he also knew, even at this hour, he could not walk the streets of Thendara wholly unattended; and even if he could, he had been forced to promise his grandfather that he would not.