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Dyan is myself, myself as I might all too easily have been. How can I condemn him? But I ca
Last night, forced by bitter necessity, I struck at Lew, who is more than friend, more than brother to me. Now it seems that I must condemn Dyan, who is no more than what I might have been, to a madman’s death. What right have I to do all this?
He set down his fork, feeling that Beltran’s hospitality would choke him. He held himself tightly barriered lest either of the older men pick up even a hint of his thoughts. “Forgive me, vai dom’yn, I have business elsewhere. Danilo, attend me,” he said, rising, and turned away. “We will speak of this at the proper time, Lord Dyan.”
I must see what is left of the Comyn after last night. Perhaps there is nothing left for me to rule!
CHAPTER TWO
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Lew Alton’s narrative
The sullen red of another day was dying when I woke; my head throbbed with the half-healed wound Kadarin had given me, and my arm was afire with the long slash from Regis’s dagger. I lay and wondered for a moment if the whole thing had been a delirious nightmare born of concussion. Then Andres came in, and the deep lines of grief in his face told me it was real. He had loved Li
“I suppose you are the only man on Darkover who can go to a Festival Night ball and come home with something like this,” he grumbled. “What sort of fight was it?”
So he had heard only that Li
“You look as if you needed a tenday in bed,” Andres said crossly. Then his very real concern for me surfaced in a harsh, “Lad, I’ve lost two of you! Don’t send yourself after Marius and Li
I yielded and lay quiet. Somewhere out there Sharra raged, I supposed… but I would know if they came into the Comyn Castle (was I altogether freed? I did not dare look at my matrix to see) and there was nothing to be gained by going out and looking for trouble. I watched Andres grumbling around the room, a soothing sound I remembered from boyhood. When Marius or I had raced our horses at too breakneck a pace and tumbled off, breaking a finger or a collarbone on the way down, he had grumbled in exactly the same way.
Marius and I had never had the boyhood squabbles and fistfights of most brothers I knew; there had been too many years between us. By the time he was out of pinafores and able to assert himself, I was already grown and into the cadet corps. I had only begun to know what kind of man my brother was, and then he was gone from me, the furthest distance of all. I had dragged him, too, into the inexorable fates pursuing me. But at least he had had a clean death, a bullet through the brain, not the death in fire that waited for me.
For now that Kadarin was loose with the Sharra sword, I knew how I would die, and made up my mind to it. Ashara’s plan, and the help of Regis Hastur’s new and astonishing Gift, which seemed somehow to hold power over Sharra, might destroy the Sharra matrix; but I knew perfectly well that I would go with it into destruction.
Well, that was what had awaited me for all these years, bringing me back to Darkover at the appointed time, to the death appointed, which I should have shared with Marjorie.
We had pla
But then I, using all the power of that matrix, had taken her, and the Sword, and flung us through space bodily—the Terrans called it teleportation, and I had never done it before or since—to Arili
… I had survived, or some part of me had survived, and all these years had despised myself because I had not followed her to death. Now I knew why I had been spared: Kadarin and Thyra still lived, and somehow they would have recovered the matrix and ravaged Darkover again with its fire. This time there would be no respite; and when Sharra was destroyed, none of us would be left alive. And so I must set my affairs in order.
I called Andres back to me, and said, “Where is the little girl?”
“Rella—that’s the cook’s helper—looked after her today, and put her to bed in the room Marius had when he was a little tyke,” Andres said.
“If I live, I may be able to take her to Armida,” I said, “but if anything should happen to me—no, foster-father, listen; nothing’s certain in this life. Now that my father and brother are gone—you have served us all faithfully for a quarter of a century. If something should happen to me, would you leave Darkover?”
“I don’t know. I never thought about it,” the old man said. “I came here with DomKe
“Bring me something to write on.” When he complied, I scribbled with my good hand, folded the paper and sealed it.
“I can’t leave Armida to you,” I said. “I suppose Gabriel will have it after me; it’s in the Alton Domain. I would if I could, believe me. But if you take this to the Terran Legate in the Trade City, this will take you to Terra, and I’d rather you would foster Marja yourself than turn her over to Gabriel’s wife.” DomnaJava
He blinked and I saw tears filling his eyes, but all he said was, “God forbid I should ever have to use it, vai dom. But I’ll do my best for the little girl if anything happens. You know I’d guard her with my life.”
I said soberly, “You might have to.” I did not know why, but I was filled suddenly with icy shivers; my blood ran cold in my veins, and for a moment, even in the dying light which turned the whole room crimson, it seemed that blood lay over the stones around me. Is this then the place of my death? Only a moment, and it was gone. Andres went to the window, drew the curtains with a bang.
“The bloody sun!” he said, and it sounded like a curse. Then he tucked the paper I had given him, without looking at it, into a pocket, and went away.