One of the Guardsmen said, “I found this on the ground, torn off in the fight. He must have fought valiantly for a young lad outnumbered.” He held out a long, heavy cloak of thick colorless wool, bound with leather buckles and straps. It was much cut and slashed. Dom Felix sat up a little and said, “That fashion of cloak has not been worn in the Domains in my lifetime; I believe they wear them still in the Hellers. And it is lined with marl-fur; it came from somewhere beyond the river. Mountain bandits wore such cloaks. But why Dani? We are not rich enough to ransom him, nor important enough to make him valuable as a hostage.”
Regis thought grimly that Dyan’s men came from the Hellers. Aloud he said only, “Mountain men act for whoever pays them well. Have you enemies, Dom Felix?”
“No. I have dwelt in peace, farming my acres, for fifteen years.” The old man sounded stunned. He looked at Regis and said, “My lord, if you are sick—”
“No matter,” Regis said. “Dom Felix, I pledge you by the oath no Hastur may break that I shall find out who has done this to you, and restore Dani to you, or my own life stand for it.” He laid his hand over the old man’s for a moment. Then he straightened and said, “One of the Guardsmen shall remain here, to look after your lands in your son’s absence. Gabriel, you ride back with the escort to Thendara and carry this news to Kennard Alton. And show him this cloak; he may know where in the Hellers it was woven.”
“Regis, I have orders to take you to Neskaya.”
“In good time. This must come first,” Regis said. “You are a Hastur, Gabriel, if only by marriage-right, and your sons are Hastur heirs. The honor of Hastur is your honor, too, and Danilo is my sworn man.”
His brother-in-law looked at him, visibly wavering. There were good things about being heir to a Domain, Regis decided like having your orders obeyed without question. He said impatiently, “I shall remain here to bear my friend’s father company, or wait at Edelweiss.”
“You cannot stay here unguarded,” Gabriel said at last. “Unlike Dani, you are rich enough for ransom, and important enough for a hostage.” He stood near enough to Comyn to be undecided. “I should send a Guardsmen with you to Edelweiss,” he said. Regis protested angrily. “I am not a child! Must I have a nanny trotting at my heels to ride three miles?”
Gabriel’s own older sons were beginning to chafe at the necessity of being guarded night and day. Finally Gabriel said, “Regis, look at me. You were placed in my care. Pledge me your word of honor to ride directly to Edelweiss, without turning aside from your road unless you meet armed men, and you may ride alone.”
Regis promised and, taking his leave of Dom Felix, rode away. As he rode toward Edelweiss, he thought, a little triumphantly, that he had actually outwitted Gabriel. A more experienced officer would have allowed him, perhaps, to ride to Edelweiss on his promise to go directly . . . but he would also have made Regis give his pledge not to depart from there without leave!
His triumph was short-lived. The knowledge of what he must do was tormenting him. He had to find out where—and how—Danilo was taken. And there was only one way to do that: his matrix. He had never touched the jewel since the ill-fated experiment with kirian. It was still in the insulated bag around his neck. The memory of that twisting sickness when he looked into Lew’s matrix was still alive in him, and he was horribly afraid.
Surprisingly for these peaceful times, the gates of Edelweiss were shut and barred, and he wondered what alarm had sealed them. Fortunately most of Javanne’s servants knew his voice, and after a moment Javanne came running down from the house, a servant-woman puffing at her heels. “Regis! We had word that armed men had been seen in the hills! Where is Gabriel?”
He took her hands. “Gabriel is well, and on his way to Thendara. Yes, armed men were seen at Syrtis, but I think it was a private feud, not war, little sister.”
She said shakily, “I remember so well the day Father rode to war! I was a child then, and you not born. And then word came that he was dead, with so many men, and the shock killed Mother. . . . ”
Javanne’s two older sons came racing toward them, Gabriel and Rafael, nine years old and seven, dark-haired, well-grown boys. They stopped short at the sight of Regis and Rafael said, “I thought you were sick and going to Neskaya. What are you doing here, kinsman?”
Gabriel said, “Mother said there would be war. Is there going to be war, Regis?”
“No, as far as I know, there is no war here or anywhere, and you be thankful for it,” Regis said. “Go away now, I must talk with your mother.”
“May I ride Melisande down to the stables?” Gabriel begged, and Regis lifted the child into the saddle and went up to the house with Javanne.
“You have been ill; you are thinner,” Javanne said. “I had word from Grandfather you were on your way to Neskaya. Why are you here instead?”
He glanced at the darkening sky. “Later, sister, when the boys are abed and we can talk privately. I’ve been riding all the day; let me rest a little and think. I’ll tell you everything then.”
Left alone, he paced his room for a long time, trying to steel himself to what he knew he must do.
He touched the small bag around his neck, started to draw it out, then thrust it back, unopened. Not yet.
He found Javanne before the fire in her small sitting room; she had just finished nursing the smaller of the twins and was ready for dinner. “Take the baby to the nursery, Shani,” she told the nurse, “and tell the women I’m not to be disturbed for any reason. My brother and I will dine privately.”
“Su serva, domma,” the woman said, took the baby and went away. Javanne came and served Regis herself. “Now tell me, brother. What happened?”
“Armed men have taken Danilo Syrtis from his home.”
She looked puzzled. “Why? And why should you disturb yourself about it?”
“He is my paxman; we have sworn the oath of bredin,” Regis said, “and it may well be private revenge. This is what I must find out.” He gave her such an edited version of the affair in the cadet corps as he thought fit for a woman’s ears. She looked sick and shocked. “I have heard of Dyan’s . . . preferences, who has not? At one time there was talk he should marry me. I was glad when he refused, although I, of course, was offered no choice in the matter. He seems to me a sinister man, even cruel, but I had not thought him criminal as well. He is Comyn, and oath-bound never to meddle with the integrity of a mind. You think he took Dani, to silence him?”
“I cannot accuse him without proof,” Regis said. “Javanne, you spent time in a tower. How much training have you?”
“I spent one season there,” she said. “I can use a matrix, but they said I had no great talent for it, and Grandfather said I must marry young.”
He drew out his own matrix and said, “Can you show me how to use it?”
“Yes, no great skill is needed for that. But not as safely as they can at Neskaya, and you are not yet wholly well. I would rather not.”
“I must know now, at once, what has come to Danilo. The honor of our house is engaged, sister.” He explained why. She sat with her plate pushed aside, twirling a fork. At last she said “Wait” and turned away from him, fumbling at the throat of her gown. When she turned back there was something silk-wrapped in her hands. She spoke slowly, the troubled frown still on her features. “I have never seen Danilo. But when I was a little maiden, and old Dom Felix was the hawk-master, I knew Dom Rafael well; he was Father’s bodyguard and they went everywhere together. He used to call me pet names and take me up on his saddle and give me rides. . . . I was in love with him, as a little girl can be with any handsome man who is kind and gentle to her. Oh, I was not yet ten years old, but when word came that he had been killed, I think I wept more for him than I did for Father. I remember once I asked him why he had no wife and he kissed my cheek and said he was waiting for me to grow up to be a woman.” Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes far away. At last she sighed and said, “Have you any token of Danilo, Regis?”
/> Regis took the dagger with the Hastur crest. He said, “We both swore on this, and it was cut from his belt when he was taken.”
“Then it should resonate to him,” she said, taking it in her hands and laying it lightly against her cheekbone. Then, the dagger resting in her palm, she uncovered the matrix. Regis averted his eyes, but not before he got a glimpse of a blinding blue flash that wrenched at his gut. Javanne was silent for a moment, then said in a faraway voice, “Yes, on the hillside path, four men—strange cloaks—an emblem, two eagles—cut away his dagger, sheath and all—Regis! He was taken away in a Terran helicopter!” She raised her eyes from the matrix and looked at him in amazement.
Regis’ heart felt as if a fist were squeezing it. He said, “Not to Thendara; the Terrans there would have no use for him. Aldaran?”
Her voice was shaking. “Yes. The ensign of Aldaran is an eagle, doubled . . . and they would find it easy to beg or borrow Terran aircraft—Grandfather has done it here in urgency. But why?”
The answer was clear enough. Danilo was a catalyst telepath. There had been a time when Kermiac of Aldaran trained Keepers in his mountains, and no doubt there were ways he could still use a catalyst.
Regis said in a low voice, “He has already borne more than any untrained telepath was meant to bear. If further strain or coercion is put on him his mind may snap. I should have brought him back with me to Thendara instead of leaving him there unguarded. This is my fault.”
Bleakly, struggling against a horrible fear, he raised his head. “I must rescue him. I am sworn. Javanne, you must help me key into the matrix. I have no time to go to Neskaya.”
“Regis, is there no other way?”
“None. Grandfather, Kennard, the council—Dani is nothing to them. If it had been Dyan they might have exerted themselves. If Aldaran’s men had kidnapped me, they’d have an army on the road! But Danilo? What do you think?”
Javanne said, “That nedestro heir of Kennard’s. He was sent to Aldaran and he’s kin to them. I wonder if he had a hand in this.”
“Lew? He wouldn’t.”
Javanne looked skeptical. “In your eyes he can do no wrong. As a little boy you were in love with him as I with Dom Rafael; I have no child’s passion for him, to blind me to what he is. Kennard forced him on Council with ugly tricks.”
“You have no right to say so, Javanne. He is sealed to Comyn and tower-trained!”
She refused to argue. “In any case, I can see why you feel you must go, but you have no training, and it is dangerous. Is there such need for haste?” She looked into his eyes and said after a moment, “As you will. Show me your matrix.”
His teeth clenched, Regis unwrapped the stone. He drew breath, astonished: faint light glimmered in the depths of the matrix. She nodded. “I can help you key it, then. Without that light, you would not be ready. I’ll stay in touch with you. It won’t do much good, but if you . . . go out and can’t get back to your body, it could help me reach you.” She drew a deep breath. For an instant then he felt her touch. She had not moved, her head was lowered over the blue jewel so that he saw only the parting in her smooth dark hair, but it seemed to Regis that she bent over him, a slim childish girl still much taller than he. She swung him up, as if he were a tiny child, astride her hip, holding him loosely on her arm. He had not thought of this in years, how she had done this when he was very little. She walked back and forth, back and forth, along the high-arched hall with the blue windows, singing to him in her husky low voice. . . . He shook his head to clear it of the illusion. She still sat with her head bent over the matrix, an adult again, but her touch was still on him, close, protective, sheltering. For a moment he felt that he would cry and cling to her as he had done then.
Javanne said gently, “Look into the matrix. Don’t be afraid, this one isn’t keyed to anyone else; mine hurt you because you’re out of phase with it. Look into it, bend your thoughts on it, don’t move until you see the lights waken inside it. . . .”
He tried deliberately to relax; he realized that he was tensing every muscle against remembered pain. He finally looked into the pale jewel, feeling only a tiny shock of awareness, but something inside the jewel glimmered faintly. He bent his thoughts on it, reached out, reached out . . . deep, deep inside. Something stirred, trembled, flared into a living spark. Then it was as if he had blown his breath on a coal from the fireplace: the spark was brilliant blue fire, moving, pulsing with the very rhythm of his blood. Excitement crawled in him, an almost sexual thrill.
“Enough!” Javanne said. “Look away quickly or you’ll be trapped!”
No, not yet. . . . Reluctantly, he wrenched his eyes from the stone. She said, “Start slowly. Look into it only a few minutes at a time until you can master it or it will master you. The most important lesson is that you must always control it, never let it control you.”
He gave it a last glance, wrapped it again with a sense of curious regret, feeling Javanne’s protective touch/embrace withdraw. She said, “You can do with it what you will, but that is not much, untrained. Be careful. You are not yet immune to threshold sickness and it may return. Can a few days matter so much? Neskaya is only a little more than a day’s ride away.”
“I don’t know how to explain, but I feel that every moment matters. I’m afraid, Javanne, afraid for Danilo, afraid for all of us. I must go now, tonight. Can you find me some old riding-clothes of Gabriel’s, Javanne? These will attract too much attention in the mountains. And will you have your women make me some food for a few days? I want to avoid towns nearby where I might be recognized.”
“I’ll do it myself; no need for the women to see and gossip.” She left him to his neglected supper while she went to find the clothing. He did not feel hungry, but dutifully stowed away a slice of roast fowl and some bread. When she came back, she had his saddlebags, and an old suit of Gabriel’s. She left him by the fire to put them on, then he followed her down the hall to a deserted kitchen. The servants were long gone to bed. She moved around, making up a package of dried meat, hard bread and crackers, dried fruit. She put a small cooking-kit into the saddlebags, saying it was one which Gabriel carried on hunting trips. He watched her silently, feeling closer to this little-known sister than he had felt since he was six years old and she left their home to marry. He wished he were still young enough to cling to her skirts as he had then. An ice-cold fear gripped at him, and then the thought: before going into danger, a Comyn heir must himself leave an heir. He had refused even to think of it, as Dyan had refused, not wanting to be merely a link in a chain, the son of his father, the father of his sons. Something inside him rebelled, deeply and strongly, at what he must do. Why bother? If he did not return, it would all be the same, one of Javanne’s sons named his heir. . . . He could do nothing, say nothing. . . .
He sighed. It was too late for that, he had gone too far. He said, “One thing more, sister. I go where I may never return. You know what that means. You must give me one of your sons, Javanne, for my heir.”
Her face blanched and she gave a low, stricken cry. He felt the pain in it but he did not look away, and finally she said, her voice wavering, “Is there no other way?”
He tried to make it a feeble joke. “I have no time to get one in the usual way, sister, even if I could find some woman to help me at such short notice.”
Her laughter was almost hysterical; it cut off in the middle, leaving stark silence. He saw slow acceptance dawning in her eyes. He had known she would agree. She was Hastur, of a family older than royalty. She had of necessity married beneath her, since there was no equal, and she had come to love her husband deeply, but her duty to the Hasturs came first. She only said, her voice no more than a thread, “What shall I say to Gabriel?”
“He has known since the day he took you to wife that this day might come,” Regis said. “I might well have died before coming to manhood.”
“Come, then, and choose for yourself.” She led the way to the room where her three sons slept in cots
side by side. By the candlelight Regis studied their faces, one by one. Gabriel, sturdy and swarthy and taller than his brother; Rafael, slight and dark, close-cropped curls tousled around his face, Mikhail, who was four, was still pixie-small, fairer than the others, his rosy cheeks framed in light waving locks, almost silvery white. Grandfather must have looked like that as a child, Regis thought. He felt curiously cold and bereft. Javanne had given their clan three sons and two daughters. He might never father a son of his own. He shivered at the implications of what he was doing, bent his head, groping through an unaccustomed prayer. “Cassilda, blessed Mother of the Domains, help me choose wisely. . . .”
He moved quietly from cot to cot. Rafael was most like him, he thought. Then, on some irresistible impulse, he bent over Mikhail, lifted the small sleeping form in his arms.
“This is my son, Javanne.”
She nodded, but her eyes were fierce. “And if you do not return he will be Hastur of Hastur; but if you do return, what then? A poor relation at the footstool of Hastur?”
Regis said quietly, “If I do not return, he will be nedestro, sister. I will not pledge you never to take a wife, even in return for this great gift. But this I swear to you: he shall come second only to my first legitimately born son. My second son shall be third to him, and I will take oath no other nedestro heir shall ever displace him. Will this content you. breda?”
Mikhail opened his eyes and stared about him sleepily, but he saw his mother and did not cry. Javanne touched the blond head gently. “It will content me, brother.”
Holding the child awkwardly in unpracticed arms, Regis carried him out of the room where his brothers slept. “Bring witnesses,” he said, “I must be gone soon. You know this is irrevocable, Javanne, that once I take this oath, he is not yours but mine, and must be sealed my heir. You must send him to Grandfather at Thendara.”
She nodded. Her throat moved as she swallowed hard, but she did not protest. “Go down to the chapel,” she said. “I will bring witnesses.”
Heritage and Exile Page 27
