Hastur Lord

The days ran on, each darker than the one before, until Midwinter Night drew near. This time was also a great cristoforoholiday—the birth-date, they said, of the Bearer of Burdens.

Rinaldo would not permit any of the usual Midwinter celebrations, dismissing them as heretical. Instead, he invited Regis and Li

Regis arrived early to participate in the customary giving of gifts to the servants. At first glimpse, a fever raced through Danilo. All the things he wanted to say boiled over the cauldron of his mind so that for a moment, he could not even breathe. For a heart-stopping moment, Regis met his gaze.

Rinaldo was watching both of them intently, waiting like a hunter for the slightest lapse. Desperate to do nothing that might betray the depths of his emotions, Danilo threw all his concentration into barricading his mind. Regis answered him with an expression of unconcerned calm.

After the servants went off to their own holiday di

Java

He’s angry . . . or afraid.Danilo had known Gabriel since his days as a cadet and could not imagine what would cause fear in the older man. Caution, certainly, for Gabriel’s position as brother-in-law to Regis must make his every action suspect.

Servants brought in bowls of mulled berry wine and platters of little seed-cakes that, if not strictly traditional, created an atmosphere of festivity. Rinaldo, playing the generous host, made sure everyone had a full goblet.

“It is time for your gift, my brother.” Rinaldo lifted his goblet to Regis. Danilo noticed the hectic, almost feverish light in Rinaldo’s eyes.

“I have brought nothing for you,” Regis said, “save for my wishes for a peaceful season.”

A note in his voice tore at Danilo’s heart, a cold whisper slicing through the bright jollity. Danilo had none of the Aldaran Gift of precognition, but he sensed that whatever happened next would change the world forever.

Rinaldo smiled, saying, “Do not distress yourself. I am so happy tonight that nothing can displease me.”

The door swung open, and Bettany entered with two ladies in attendance. Her gown, an edifice of brocade and satin, rustled as she moved. A small fortune in Ardcarran rubies set in copper filigree lay upon her exposed bosom and dangled from her ears.

To Danilo’s surprise, one of the attendants was Tiphani Lawton. He did not recognize her at first glance, for she wore the long belted tunic over full skirts of an ordinary Darkovan woman. Her hair was caught back in a coil on her neck and covered with a demure coif. But she did not comport herself as a Darkovan woman. Her gaze was bold and direct, and her eyes glowed with brittle fire.

Danilo did not know how to react, whether he should acknowledge her presence. If Rinaldo had managed to spirit her away from Terran Headquarters, Danilo did not want to consider the consequences.

At Rinaldo’s gesture, Bettany came to stand beside him. Her color deepened as the other guests bowed to her. Certainly, there was an unwonted freshness to her skin, a new softness to her chin and a fullness to her partly bared breasts.

“Tell them our news, my dearest,” Rinaldo said.

She accepted a goblet from a servant and lifted it. “Drink a toast, my lords and ladies, to the son of my lord Rinaldo, which I shall bear come Midsummer’s Eve.”

For a fraction of a heartbeat, stu

Regis, his expression unreadable, bowed first to Bettany, as a new mother-to-be taking her place of honor, and then to his brother. “Please accept my most sincere congratulations.”

Everyone applauded Bettany and drank several more toasts to her and her unborn child. Then the party split into two groups, the women sitting together, talking about pregnancy and baby clothes, while the men remained standing.

“I know what you are all thinking,” Rinaldo said, finishing his goblet and holding it out for a servant to refill. “None of you believed that I—an emmasca—could father a child. Admit it, you all believed me incapable.”

Gabriel clamped his jaw shut. Regis, meeting his brother’s challenging stare, said, “It does happen upon rare occasions, I suppose. Our chieriancestry manifests in the laranof some and the six-fingered hands of others. It is said to be especially strong in those who are born as you were, emmasca. But the chieriare not infertile. They do produce offspring, although very few.”

Regis paused, his eyes softening, and Danilo sensed in him one of the few luminous memories from the days of the World Wreckers. A chieri, one of the fabled “Children of Light” of the ancient forests, had come forward to help the beleaguered planet.

Danilo closed his eyes, remembering the tall, slender creature, at times like a wild, heartbreakingly beautiful girl, then unquestionably masculine. Keral had given birth to a child, conceived on the same night as Kierestelli and so many others, before returning to the Yellow Forest and the remnants of the chierirace. Did Keral still dance under the four moons in yearning, in grief, in ecstasy? And the child, the hope of a fading people, did that child flourish?

Will any of us ever see them again?

“Nothing is impossible to him who puts his faith in the Divine,” Rinaldo said. His expression of triumph left Danilo profoundly uneasy.

At least motherhood might bring Bettany a measure of fulfillment. Most well-born girls hoped for nothing more than a comfortable home, a husband and children. Li

When Bettany moved apart from the other women, Danilo seized the opportunity to extend his felicitation. She responded with a sniff. “My happiness will come from my sons.”

After a fractional, astonished moment, Danilo hastened to say, “I hope they will grow to be honorable men.”

“They will be powerful and rich! All the world will kneel in fealty to them! Everyone will know that Igave them life!”

She paused, chest heaving. Perhaps she was aware that she could easily be overheard. Li

“Everyone said I was worthless. Oh, not when I could hear them, but I knew. I heard them whispering in my dreams. Now they will see—I will show them all! Even you with your kindness—” and here, Danilo remembered her angry words when he had suggested she seek out Li