The Children of Kings

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Removing the blood to relieve the pressure was another matter. There was too much for Hayat’s body to reabsorb it, and Gareth dared not enlarge the wound to allow it to drain. Then he remembered Linnea describing how Tower circles were able to lift small quantities of metals from deep within the planet’s crust to the surface.

  Envisioning the pool of blood like a bladder filled with liquid was easy. With his laran, he spun a membrane around the tiny lake. He had only to move it from here to there . . .

  The blood resisted, dense with inertia. He shoved again, but his mental control was erratic and ragged. The bubble wobbled alarmingly, as if it were about to burst.

  Exhaustion gnawed at him. He was running out of strength, running out of time. He fought the urge to tighten his mental grip on the blood bubble or to hurry the process. He realized, with some dim and distant part of his mind, that he had already gone too far. He no longer had the strength to save both himself and this other man.

  Softly, softly . . .

  Gareth could not tell whether the voice was real or an echo from some buried memory. All hesitation vanished; he had all the time in the world, enough to do what must be done.

  He imagined enveloping the bubble in downy feathers, in layer upon layer of spidersilk. Then, instead of trying to forcibly shift it, he simply saw it in a different place, no longer within Hayat’s chest but resting gently on his shirt, the membrane dissolving, the blood being absorbed into the cloth of his shirt . . .

  “Garrin . . . Garrin, man! Wake up!”

  With a sickening wave of dizziness, Gareth snapped back into his ordinary senses. He was still on his knees beside Hayat, who was moaning and moving his good arm. All Gareth could think was that he should not be alive.

  Merach, who had been shaking Gareth by the shoulders, released him suddenly. Not far away, a man was shouting—Dayan, Gareth thought. He fumbled for the locket and managed to drop the starstone into it and snap it closed. Men lifted Hayat and carried him away.

  With Merach’s help, Gareth managed to get to his feet. Now that he was back in his physical body, every part of him ached, except for the slash in his side, which felt as if a fiery brand had buried itself in his flesh. He desperately wanted to get away from the arena, but had no idea where he might go.

  “You there!”

  Gareth jumped at the sound of Dayan’s voice. The crowd drew apart as the Shainsa lord strode up. Gareth’s vision wavered so badly, he could not make out Dayan’s expression. In a moment, he would collapse, and no shouting would be able to rouse him.

  Dayan’s gaze burned with an icy flame. “My son was near death, beyond the aid of ordinary men. Not even the most learned of our physicians could have saved him as you just did.”

  Gareth shook his head. Something was rising up in him, washing away the ache in his limbs and the fire in his side.

  “Who are you, truly? To whom do I owe the life of my son?”

  Gareth would have fled into silence, but the thing moving in him seized him, put thoughts into his mind, and spoke with his voice.

  “I am Gareth Marius-Danvan Elhalyn y Hastur, Heir to the Comyn and the Seven Domains! I have come here to prevent your people and mine from massacring one another. If what I have done for your son means anything, let it stand as a token of that goodwill. And if you would repay that debt, all I ask is that you cast aside the coward’s weapons. Bury them deep in the cleansing sands, and let that be the end to it.”

  Storm-tide currents of night swirled around the edges of Gareth’s vision. He shivered, suddenly cold. Dayan spoke, but Gareth could not understand the words.

  He felt himself falling, slipping down through space, slipping endlessly . . .

  Hands caught him, lowered him to a surface that was surprisingly soft. Something pressed against the wound in his side.

  A figure bent over him, features cloaked in shadow. Warm breath brushed his cheek. Soft and sweet came the voice he had never expected to hear again.

  “Can’t you stay out of trouble for even one night?”

  33

  Linnea felt as unsettled as if a Hellers thunderstorm were gathering overhead. While she was working, she had been able to focus her mind, but during her private waking hours, as now, when she was attempting to knit a blanket for Illona’s baby, she had less success in disciplining her thoughts. After learning of Gareth’s disappearance, Domenic had sent a message to Mikhail, still in Armida, and then dispatched Danilo Syrtis to Carthon to continue his investigations there.

  Try as she might, Linnea could not dispel her anxiety about what might be happening in the skies, in the Dry Towns. She thought of what Kierestelli had said about the fleeting contact with Gareth. At least, she presumed it was Gareth. The possibility of Gareth inheriting the Hastur Gift, of being a living matrix, was theoretically possible, although she had never seen any sign of it. That in itself was not final. Regis had not demonstrated the Gift until it flowered full-force under conditions of desperate need.

  Stitch, stitch . . . The knitting needles, cherry wood sanded to satiny smoothness, slid over one another.

  What had happened to bring Gareth to such a point? What had happened to his own starstone? She shuddered at the possibilities.

  Gareth . . . the Dry Towners . . . the off-worlders . . . She would go mad if she allowed herself to brood on things over which she had no control.

  She’d dropped a stitch. Rather than unravel the last four rows, she set her work down in her lap.

  The sole good thing to emerge from the current situation was that Kierestelli was willing to speak with her. No, she reminded herself, she must call her daughter by her chosen name, Silvana. Lady of the Forest. Yes, that was apt, considering where Silvana had passed the greater portion of her life.

  What did she look like? Was her hair the same shade of copper? Did she play music, as they had when she was a child? Was her laughter still as light and fluid as a mountain stream?

  A tapping at the door interrupted Linnea’s musings. She softened her laran barriers enough to sense who waited outside.

  Ah. Brunina Alazar.

  “Come in, chiya.”

  The young novice entered, her cheeks flushed but her movements under perfect control. “One of the Regent’s aides requests your presence at the listening station in the Terran Zone.” If her delivery was a trifle breathless, that was to be excused, as she had clearly run up the two flights of stairs.

  Linnea set aside her knitting and reached for the hooded cloak that hung beside her door. She didn’t really need its warmth, not at this season, but since taking up her post as Keeper of Comyn Tower, she had become accustomed to shielding her face when out in public.

  There was no point in asking why she had been requested to come, for Brunina would have included that information if she’d been given it. The younger woman was watching her for any hint of what this unusual event indicated. No one outside the small group—Domenic and Danilo, of course, and Jeram and a few of his most trusted assistants, and herself—knew about the possibility of an attack either from the Dry Towns or the Federation.

  Her escort was no cadet, such as might normally be sent to deliver a message, but one of Mikhail’s senior officers. She did not know his name. He greeted her with the respect due a Keeper. He’d readied a pair of horses from the Castle stables, a serviceable cob for himself and for Linnea the sweet-gaited gray mare that Marguerida kept for her lady guests.

  At a brisk trot, they angled through the Old Town toward the Terran Zone. The market square teemed with vendors and buyers, street performers and urchins. The air smelled of roasted fowl, served on skewers with spiced onions, and everywhere there were barkers crying out their wares, music, and ripples of childish laughter. Linnea remembered how Regis loved to walk the streets. Time after time, he would be recognized by his hair and his beauty, if not his regal dress, but after each disappointment,
he would return.

  It began to rain, one of the sudden downpours typical of the season. Linnea pulled her hood more snugly around her face, but the guard took no apparent notice of the weather.

  They crossed the cracked tarmac. Much of this area was still cordoned off, and very few of the buildings had been taken over by city dwellers. The circumstances of the Federation withdrawal, culminating in the ambush on the Old North Road, lingered like a miasma. The metal and glass might wait for a hundred years before becoming part of the living city.

  A pair of guards, alert and armed, waited for them at the entrance to the headquarters building. One of them took charge of the horses.

  “Vai leronis, will you be so kind as to follow me?” said the second guard.

  She followed him through the entrance hall, at least that’s what the space would have been in a Darkovan building. The interior smelled of chemicals, the air stale and flat. Her cloak dripped, but the place felt so cold to her mind, she was loath to set it aside.

  Shortly, Linnea sensed the psychic energies emanating from a chamber halfway down the corridor and recognized Jeram among them. His Gift had not wakened until after the Federation departed, but the leroni of Nevarsin Tower had saved him and taught him basic skills.

  My daughter was his Keeper. She knew him. Linnea reminded herself to be careful; neither Jeram nor anyone else outside the two of them knew of her relationship to Silvana. Silvana had not given Linnea permission to divulge her identity.

  Trust must be earned.

  Another pair of guards bracketed the door. They stepped aside as Linnea approached. One of them opened the door and stood back for her to enter. Beyond lay a chamber made cavernous by the absence of windows and filled with large mechanisms. Small, focused lights cast misshapen shadows on the walls. Banks of instruments hummed softly, like slumbering giants.

  So much metal! Linnea thought. Like any true Darkovan, she was astonished by the casually extravagant use of what was rare and precious. She could not imagine what kind of people would simply walk off and leave such wealth, but Terranan did not think like ordinary folk. They had taken their armaments, anything that had a military use, and abandoned the rest.

  Linnea went in. The floor was some kind of nonreflective material and gave a little under her feet. The chamber was not as devoid of human life as the first glance suggested. A group of men and women clustered around a bank of machinery. Their Darkovan clothing seemed out of place between the sterile gray walls. Besides Jeram and Domenic, Linnea recognized Hermes Aldaran, who had once represented Darkover in the Federation Senate, and Marguerida’s friend Ethan MacDoevid. Ethan had never given up his enthusiasm for space travel, even when the Federation withdrew.

  Linnea didn’t know the young woman with the dark hair, snub nose, and wide, mobile mouth, although when Jeram introduced the girl as Cassandra Haldin, Linnea recognized the name. The story was that Cassandra’s father had been a Federation technician stationed in Thendara for a few years. When he left Darkover, he’d abandoned the girl and her mother, as had so many others before him. Linnea sensed no trace of laran from the young woman, although clearly Cassandra had an aptitude for the off-world devices. She had the slightly distracted look of someone focused on listening. An apparatus of off-world design covered her ears. Her hands hovered over a panel of colored lights as she stared at the screen before her.

  Domenic and Ethan rose and bowed as Linnea entered. Jeram, not trained since birth in Darkovan reverence for Keepers, lifted one hand in greeting. Cassandra was so absorbed in her work that for a long moment she did not notice; when she did, she scrambled up, although she did not remove the listening device.

  “Please, be at your ease,” Linnea said, and was pleased when the girl returned immediately to her work.

  “Su serva, vai domna,” Domenic said with an easy, engaging grin.

  Before Linnea could inquire why she had been summoned, Jeram motioned for quiet. He indicated the screen. “There they are.”

  Linnea peered over his shoulder, but she could make no sense of the symbols, bright against a black background, or the curved lines that slowly moved across the screen.

  “I’ve got a clear signal,” Cassandra said. Her voice was so beautiful, Linnea thought she must have trained as a singer.

  Jeram touched several small colored pads on the console and began speaking in Terran Standard. Linnea knew a little of that language, enough to deduce that he was hailing a starship.

  The ship of Silvana’s message?

  A tendril of fear coiled around the nape of her neck before she reined her emotions under control. Although she could not follow the literal meaning of the conversation, she noted the tension in Jeram’s voice and the tautness in the muscles around his eyes. After a pause, a voice answered.

  During the exchange, one of the guards brought up a seat for Linnea, a Temoran-style folding chair, uncushioned but shaped for comfort. She nodded her thanks and settled into it.

  Mouth grim, Jeram turned away from the screen. “Here’s the situation. Two days ago, the Grissom out of Castor Sector, in orbit around Darkover, was attacked by a privateer licensed under the Nagy Star Alliance. They managed to destroy it, but they’re badly damaged and need to set down for repairs. They wouldn’t say what they were doing here, but they’re assuming that since Darkover never applied for full Federation membership, we’re sympathetic to their goal of independence.”

  Domenic nodded. “They’re right.”

  “Castor Sector has every reason to resent the Federation’s military bullying, that’s true enough,” Hermes said. “But we don’t know what’s been going on or who has the upper hand. This is the first we’ve heard of this Nagy Alliance. Sandra Nagy was never our friend, even before she disbanded the Senate. That does not mean that anyone who opposes her has our best interests at heart.”

  “The Federation never used privateers or bounty hunters,” Jeram said with a trace of heat.

  “Not the Federation we knew,” Hermes reminded him.

  Domenic said nothing, but he looked thoughtful.

  “They destroyed the privateer, so there’s no reason not to allow them to land in the spaceport, is there?” Ethan pointed out. “Their first message sounded desperate. They can’t leave the Cottman system, and they can’t sustain themselves in orbit. Don’t we have a moral obligation to help them?”

  Jeram’s gaze flickered to Linnea, then back to Domenic.

  Hermes shook his head. “We have to consider our own position. It’s imperative that we avoid even the appearance of taking sides. We don’t know who else might be after the Grissom.”

  “They destroyed the privateer,” Ethan repeated with a trace of stubbornness.

  Domenic turned to Hermes. “What are you saying?”

  “The Feds are not to be trusted,” Hermes replied.

  Jeram spoke up. “Hermes, as you yourself pointed out, these are not Feds. Even if they were, Ethan raises a valid point. Regardless of their political affiliation, the people on the Grissom need our help. Their stellar drive is damaged, and they have nowhere else to go.”

  “They’re armed, need I remind you, with Compact-forbidden weapons.” Hermes paused to let the implications sink in. “If we let them land, what is to stop them from taking whatever they want? Staying for as long as they want? Turning the spaceport here into a base of operations?”

  Memory tugged at Linnea, the vivid images she’d received over the relays from Silvana . . .

  . . . ships aloft, raining fire upon a city, upon Thendara . . . This ship?

  Fears, she told herself, not omens or visions of the future.

  Hermes appealed to Jeram. “You know what I’m talking about! Tell them!”

  Linnea caught the quick jerk of Jeram’s head, a subconscious gesture of repugnance.

  Domenic was listening carefully as the arguments unfolded. He ha
sn’t made up his mind, Linnea thought. He’s weighing the risks . . . and the demands of duty and humanity. But in the end, he will decide. For this he was trained, and Mikhail was right to leave him in charge.

  “If we don’t allow them to land,” Cassandra said in her clear, musical voice, “they may do so anyway, with prejudice against us. We cannot prevent them. I do not know these people, but I know you, Jeram. You would honor the laws of hospitality, would you not? Is not our best chance for a peaceful outcome to extend our friendship so that they will do so in return?”

  “You don’t know these factions the way I do,” Hermes said.

  “That much is true,” Domenic broke the awkward silence that followed. He did not say so aloud, but Linnea caught the unguarded edge of his thought, My friend Hermes, you were too long among dishonorable people in the Federation; their taint lingers in your thoughts. “Until we meet these people face to face, we cannot judge their character. We can know only our own hearts and minds. In our dealings with the Terranan, we have sought to follow our own path, to create a future that honors the best of our traditions.”

  Cassandra’s eyes brightened and Ethan nodded. Jeram sat very still, carefully avoiding even the appearance of giving advice.

  “Domna Linnea,” Domenic said, “what are your thoughts on the matter?”

  “No one can know what is to come,” she said. “Even the Aldaran Gift is unpredictable and shows only what might come to pass. We have only the present, and what we must live with if we fail to live up to our highest standards of honor.”

  Domenic cleared his throat. “Then we will offer this ship the use of our spaceport and any other help and materials we can. Tell them so, Jeram, but emphasize that in doing this, we are not committing ourselves to any military or political treaties. In this quarrel with the Federation—or Nagy’s Alliance—Darkover must remain strictly neutral.”