Her homely reference helped to break the tension. Regis and Danilo settled themselves, and she took a seat opposite them.
“Had you a pleasant journey?” she asked, when they declined refreshment.
“It was well enough, thank you,” Regis said. “We came by aircar as far as Black Rock village.”
Linnea nodded. “It’s a long day’s ride at this season, but I remember attending the harvest festivals there as a child.” She paused, waiting for him to say more.
“You look well, and so does Kierestelli,” he said.
She gave a little laugh. “As you see, we are both very well. Regis, I cannot believe that you came all this way, and risked taking a Terranan flying-machine into these mountains, simply to inquire after my health. Please tell me why you have come. Has something happened? Is it your grandfather?”
“No, there is nothing wrong with him beyond his years,” Regis hastened to assure her. “I came to ask a favor and also to see you. It has been too long.”
“It has been a long time.” Linnea glanced away, for the first time a trifle unsure; then she gathered herself to face him directly. “What favor?”
He’d forgotten how straightforward she was, how plain and unaffected in her speech. She’d never been rude, having been brought up with all the social niceties of their class, but years as a Keeper, coupled with a natural frankness, had stripped away conventional insincerities.
As simply as he could, Regis told her about Felix Lawton. At the end, he said, “Will you come to Thendara to work with him?”
“Thendara is far away,” she said, her tone guarded. “It’s hard to believe that there is no qualified leronis nearer.”
“There is no one else with your training who is not committed to work in the Towers. The Bridge Society healer can help him through the worst of his threshold sickness, but she cannot teach him how to use his laran. She thinks he may have the potential to become a Keeper.”
You more than anyone knows how important it is to nurture such a talent.
Her gray eyes widened, but only for an instant. “It would not be a simple matter to move to Thendara. I have made a life here. High Windward is my home. And there is Kierestelli to consider. You have seen your daughter, Regis. How do you think she would fare in a city?”
Regis had not considered that Linnea would keep Kierestelli with her. Having seen the two of them together, however, he understood why Linnea would not consider leaving without her.
“I could arrange for accommodations in either the Hastur section of Comyn Castle or my own town house,” he said. “Thendara is a large city, with all that implies. At the same time, it offers many resources, art and culture and society, a chance to learn about other worlds and to meet a wide variety of people.”
“To be assaulted and exploited by them, you mean.” Linnea’s gray eyes flashed silver fire. She did not need to remind Regis of his own dead children, slain by World Wrecker assassins before Kierestelli was born.
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “That was a long time ago. Yes, any place where large numbers of people live together has problems, but I promise you that our daughter will not be exposed to them. I myself will keep her safe.”
There it was, his word on it. The word of a Hastur was still considered more binding than any oath.
Linnea sat very still, with the unearthly calm she had developed in her years at a Tower. “Yes,” she said quietly, “I believe you would.”
She got to her feet in a swirl of woolen skirts. “I must think about this. Such a decision ought not to be made carelessly or too quickly. Meanwhile, enjoy the hospitality of High Windward. The cooks have been rushing around like headless barnfowl since your arrival, concocting a dinner they believe worthy of you.” She smiled with a trace of mischievous spirit. “My kinsmen are also anxious to welcome you properly. Don’t worry, they keep to the old ways and will not press you about your business here.”
“I believe I can endure an evening of toasts and storytelling,” Regis said.
“Then,” she said, going to him and laying her fingertips on his arm, “let us go down to join them.”
5
The next day brought fine weather, high clear skies of the crystalline brilliance of the mountains. Regis and Danilo went riding with Linnea and Kierestelli, the three adults on shaggy ponies, the girl on a beautiful silver-gray chervine. Regis noticed that although the little doe wore a halter, Kierestelli never touched the reins. Girl and animal moved as one, bound by a sympathy of mind.
Linnea took them down the path to the old, deserted village of the forge folk and showed them the caves where she had played as a child. Regis very much suspected that Kierestelli did the same. Once or twice, they came upon a herd of wild chervines who stared at them, unafraid, before bounding away. Kierestelli laughed and clapped her hands.
That evening, they took their dinner along with Kierestelli and her nurse in the suite of rooms that Linnea had grown up in. These were in the same wing as the chambers Regis and Danilo had been given. Regis realized that Linnea had a hand in that choice.
“I knew you wouldn’t be comfortable in the Royal Suite,” she said on the second night, as they sat near the fire over cups of warmed firi and bowls of pitchoo nuts. Kierestelli had just gone up to bed. “It’s huge and echoing and pretentious. They say it was built just in case a Hastur Lord should visit. I think it’s been used only once, and that by bandits.”
“You’re right, I’m much better where I am,” Regis answered. Replete with hearty country food, exercise in the cold air, and undemanding companionship, he was far more relaxed than in Thendara.
“I do admit,” he went on in a jovial mood, “there is a certain appropriateness in reserving the Royal Suite to the princes of the road, as outlaws are sometimes called.”
“The folk who dwelled here would have been far less amused at the prospect,” Danilo said.
Linnea glanced at him. “Yes, from all accounts that was a terrible time. The fellow’s name was Brynat Scarface, or something like that. You can still see the damage to the inner parapet where his men breached the walls.”
“Let us hope those lawless times never come again,” Danilo said.
Regis took a sip of his firi, finding it too sweet for his taste. The Terrans had brought more effective policing methods, and the Domains had been at peace with one another for decades. The closest they had come to war was during the Sharra business, when Beltran of Aldaran marched on Thendara with an army. Still, Regis reflected grimly, the decline of the Comyn created openings for ruthless men to take advantage of the weak. Petty thieves were one thing, even bandit kings like Brynat Scarface, but should a leader emerge, one bent on conquest and willing to use any means necessary to seize power . . .
He came back to himself as Linnea picked up her ryll and tested the tuning of the strings. She picked out the melody of an old lullaby, a tune so haunting that Regis wondered if he had heard it in his dreams. She sang in a light but pleasant voice. Then she shifted into a walking song with a strong rhythm, and Regis sang along, while Danilo accompanied them on a small drum.
Eventually, the silences between songs lengthened. Regis noted that Danilo was yawning. “Go to bed before you fall over.”
“I’m all right.”
“I’m in no danger here, and you’re done in. I don’t want to have to carry you.”
Danilo’s gaze flickered to Linnea, sitting with her ryll on her lap.
Are we going to argue because I want a little time with the mother of my daughter? Regis thought.
Danilo pushed himself to his feet. “I’ll be off, then. Vai leronis,” he bowed to Linnea. “Regis.”
After Danilo had departed, Linnea set her harp in its case. “He has no reason to be jealous of me.”
“Protective, I think.”
She sighed. “Do you remember how we teased him about sleeping across the threshold of our door?”
“Come here.” Regis held out his hand
to her and indicated the place on the divan beside him. “I remember what happened behind those closed doors.”
She came to him, still holding herself apart, but smiling now. “It was glorious, that brief time. I regret none of it. How could I, every time I see Stelli?”
Regis remembered when, in a gesture of compassion and openness of heart, Linnea had offered to give him children to replace those murdered by the World Wreckers. Then, as now, he had thought that a child by her would be precious beyond words.
“I do not regret it, either,” he said in a voice made hoarse by emotion. “It is said that when we love someone, they become part of us forever.”
What was this fey, romantic mood that had taken hold of him? He felt the yearning harmonics of the ballad thrumming beneath the beating of his heart. On impulse, he said, “Could we ever get it back, do you think?”
She turned to him, gray eyes wide with surprise. His question had caught her off guard. No, he told himself silently, it had caught both of them unprepared and open.
“I—I don’t know. Such things do happen. Regis, please don’t toy with me. You know I loved you, and I love you still. And I know that your first, your primary love will always be Danilo.”
“Is that why you left Thendara? Because you could not share me? Was the love I was able to give you not enough?”
Linnea shook her head, refusing to be drawn into a quarrel. “No, it is not that. I simply—” She got up, restless yet still too much in command of herself to give way to pacing. “I wanted more. I thought we loved each other in those first days enough to find our way through any difficulty. How little I knew! It was my first serious love affair and, I suspect, yours with a woman. I didn’t anticipate how intense the feelings would be, how sweet, how overwhelming. I think we both went a little mad. I didn’t think . . .” Now she turned back to him. Shadows of remembered pain cloaked her eyes.
“I didn’t measure what I would lose against what I would gain. In the end, it wasn’t enough.”
“I don’t understand,” he said. “You have our daughter and as much of my heart as I am capable of offering to any woman. Is that not sufficient?”
Too late, after the words were said, Regis realized what she had given up. She had been a Keeper, one of the few elite Tower workers capable of occupying the centripolar position in a matrix circle. Through her supple, disciplined mind had run the interwoven psychic powers of every member of the circle. Their lives as well as their sanity had been in her keeping. Once, Keepers had been revered as gods, living apart and virgin, immune to normal human warmth. For a man to lift a hand to a Keeper or even assault her with a lustful glance had been punishable by death. Those times were long past; Keepers no longer trained in the old ways of inhuman restrictions. Linnea had not been a virgin, although she had set aside her work as a leronis when she came to him.
“Surely—surely you can still function as a Keeper?” Regis said. “You know how to do so safely?”
She sat down beside him again. The fragrance of her hair, some kind of spicy herb, filled him. “Of course, I know how to keep my channels clear,” she said. “I have known that since my first training as a monitor. I did not lose my skills along with my virginity. But, Regis—I cannot be both Keeper and mother.”
She paused to let her words sink in. “In a circle,” she explained, “I must put all other thought aside, leave all loyalties and considerations outside the door. The slightest lapse or indecision might have disastrous consequences. I cannot abandon Kierestelli, not even for a single night. She is always in my heart, in my thoughts. Can you understand that?”
Slowly, he nodded. He wondered what it was like to be so loved by a woman. His bond with Danilo was of quite another sort, one unique to their histories. Danilo’s catalyst telepathy had wakened his deeply suppressed laran when they were still teenagers. Danilo was the other half of his mind, of his heart. Yet in his encounters with women, in the happiness he had glimpsed in married couples, he sensed a different balance, a complementarity that both excited and puzzled him.
He felt a stirring of desire and admiration, of respect and then rising pleasure, in her nearness. They sat close enough so he could see the tendrils of hair that had escaped from the clasp at the base of her neck. He remembered touching the soft skin there, tasting her, feeling his own passion in her eager response.
“Could you teach Felix,” he asked, “give him the training he might have received in days gone by from a household leronis?”
“Yes, I could . . . if I were sure that Kierestelli would come to no harm in Thendara. And,” she added in a whisper, “if you wanted me there. I would not subject her—” and myself—“to your resentment.”
“My—? Linnea, if you do not believe my words, then believe this . . .”
Regis leaned forward and slid one hand beneath the coils of her hair, cupping the back of her head. She sighed and moved toward him. Deliberately, he lowered his laran barriers so that his mind was open to hers. He offered her the tenderness now welling up in him, the response of his body to hers.
He had forgotten how soft her mouth was, how smooth her skin. It felt as if she were kissing him with her heart, not just her lips. Her touch was not like a man’s, not like Danilo’s, and yet it was perfect.
The thought struck Regis that it was impossible to compare one person’s loving with another’s. How could Linnea take Danilo’s place or he hers? Then all rational thought disappeared as he gave himself over to the kiss.
The rapport between them deepened, obliterating all outside awareness. Regis had forgotten how strong her laran was, how supple her mind. Echoes rippled through him, wordless emotion and memory of the deep sharing they had once offered one another. In that world of thought, no time had passed. The first moment of their love was still going on, stretching into the future. In the opening of one heart to another, they were still bound.
The wave of passion crested. Linnea drew back, her eyes shining. The light from the fire burnished her hair to dark copper. Lips parted, cheeks flushed, she had never looked lovelier to him.
She rose and took his hand, smiling slightly. “My rooms, I think.”
Linnea had taken a suite in the older part of the castle, apart from the rest of the inhabitants. As they made their way down the chilly hallway, Regis sensed the muting of the background psychic chatter. Of course, someone with Linnea’s sensitivity and Tower training would prefer a degree of insulation.
As they entered the sitting room, the young maid who had been tending the fire stood up.
“Thank you, Neyrissa,” Linnea said. “I won’t need you for anything else tonight.”
The girl curtsied and hurried away. Linnea stretched her fingers toward the fire. Regis came to stand beside her, although he had no need of bodily warmth.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he said.
“You mean, will gossip about us fill the castle tomorrow morning?” She looked up at him with a mischievous gleam in her eyes. “I am a leronis. I have not granted any of my kinsmen the right to be the keeper of my conscience—or of my virtue, or my reputation—nor am I likely to. I tend to those matters as I myself see fit. My family accepted this when I went to Arilinn.”
She paused, somber now. “We are not so different in this, you and I. We do our duty as honor demands but according to our own understanding. It would have been far easier for you to set Danilo aside and marry. I’m sure Dom Danvan Hastur and the entire Comyn Council would have been delighted.”
“I choose whom I take to my bed and with whom I share my life.”
“As do I.” Linnea closed the space between them and slipped her hands around his neck. Her fingers parted his hair, caressing the sensitive skin on his nape. Tilting her head back, she stood on tiptoe and whispered, “I choose . . .”
In the echo of her words, Regis realized that he, too, had chosen. This night would not be like so many others, the pleasantry of a few hours, the discharge of his responsibility to produce h
eirs for his clan and caste. In the past, women had been drawn to him because of his position and power, his beauty, his sensual personality. By the time Linnea entered his life, he had grown cynical about women. Because he could have almost any woman he wanted, he had wanted none of them. She had changed all that with the simple opening of her heart, a woman of his own caste, a trained Keeper willing to set aside her own dreams to ease his grief.
This was no dalliance, this night. Every kiss, every caress, created anew the love that had once flowed between them. Her joy magnified his own through their shared rapport. He danced through the movements, feeling how their differences complemented and enhanced one another.
At the peak of their pleasure, when all the world swirled around him in a rapture of iridescent light, Regis became aware of a change in that radiance, a gathering of energy into a tiny point. Golden light-that-was-more-than-light bathed the mote. Regis felt a sense of imminence, of condensing presence, and knew that Linnea sensed it also.
Regis had once promised himself that he would not marry, would not share his Domain with any woman with whom he was not also content to share his life. This woman now bore his son.
He had been a fool to let her go. This time, he would make sure it turned out differently.
Regis rose early the next morning and found himself whistling under his breath as he broke his fast. The meal was a round, crusty nut-bread, pots of jams and preserves, a platter of browned, steaming sausages, and bowls of pickled redroot.
Danilo had already gone down to the stables, preparing for their departure. He had been asleep when Regis returned in the early hours, so Regis had not had the chance to tell him that he had a private matter to discuss with Linnea. After last night, Regis had no doubt that she would understand his intentions in only a few words. He must return to Thendara, but she and Kierestelli would follow as soon as arrangements could be made.
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