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He flushed, stung to the depths. I hadn't overestimated either his intelligence or his sensitivity. He was a

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boy still, but the man would be well worth knowing, with strong integrity and honor. I hoped with all my

heart he would be our ally.

"Danilo," I said, "we need you. The Comyn cast you out in disgrace, undeserved. What loyalty do you

owe them?"

"The Comyn, nothing," he said quietly. "Yet I am pledged and my service given. Even if I wanted to do

what you ask, Lew, and I'm not sure, I am not free."

"What do you mean?"

Danilo's face was impassive, but I could sense the emotion behind his words. "Regis Hastur sought meout at Syrtis," he said. "He did not know how or why, but he knew I had been wronged. He pledgedhimself to set it right."

"We're trying to set many wrongs right, Dani. Not just yours."

"Maybe," he said. "But we swore an oath together and I pledged him my sword and my service. I am his

paxman, Lew, so if you want me to help you, you must ask his con-

sent. If my lord gives me leave, then I am at your service. Otherwise I am his man: I have sworn."

I looked at the solemn young face and knew there was nothing I could say to that. I felt a quite irrationalanger at Regis because he had forestalled me here. For a moment I wrestled with strong temptation. Icould make him see it my way . . .

I recoiled in horror and shame at my own thoughts. The first pledge I had sworn at Arilinn was this:never, never force the will or conscience of another, even for his own good. I could persuade. I couldplead. I could use reason, emotion, logic, rhetoric. I could even seek out Regis and beg bim for hisconsent; he too had reason to be disaffected, to rebel against the corruption in the Comyn. But furtherthan this I could not go. I could not. That I had even thought of it made me feel a little sick.

"I may indeed ask Regis for your aid, Dani," I said quietly. "He too is my friend. But I will never force

you. I am not Dyan ArdaisI"

That made him smile a little. "I never thought you were, Lew. And if my lord gives me leave, then I willtrust him, and you. But until that time shall come, Dom Lewis"-he gave me my title very formally, thoughwe had been using the familiar mode before this-"have I your permission to depart and return to myfather?"

I gestured at the snow, a white torrent whipping the windows, sending little spits of sleet down thechimney. "In this, lad? Let me at least offer you the hospitality of my kinsman's roof until the weathersuits! Then you shall be given proper escort and company out of these mountains. You cannot expect meto set you adrift in these mountains, at night and in winter, with a storm blowing up?" I summoned aservant again, and requested that he provide proper lodging for a guest, near my own quarters. Before Danilo went away to his bed, I gave him a kinsman's embrace, which he returned with a childlikefriendliness that made me feel better.

But I was still deeply troubled. Damn it, I'd have a word with Beltran before I slept!

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Chapter SEVENTEEN

Regis rode slowly, head down against the biting wind. He told himself that if he ever got out of thesemountains, no place on Darkover would ever seem cold to him again.

A few days ago he had stopped in a mountain village and traded his horse for one of the sturdy littlemountain ponies. He felt a sort of despairing grief at the necessity-the black mare was Kennard's gift andhe loved her-but this one attracted less attention and was surer-footed along the terrible trails. Poor Melisande would surely have died of the cold or broken a leg on these steep paths.

The trip had been a long nightmare: steep unfamiliar trails, intense cold, sheltering at night in abandonedbarns or shepherd's huts or wrapped in cloak and blanket against a rock wall, close curled against thehorse's body. He tried in general to avoid being seen, but every few days he had gone into a village tobargain for food and fodder for his pony. He aroused little curiosity; he thought life must be so hard inthese mountains that the people had no time for curiosity about travelers.

Now and again, when he feared losing his way, he had drawn out the matrix, trying by furiousconcentration to fix his attention on Danilo. The matrix acted like one of those Terran instruments Kennard had once told him about, guiding him, with an insistent subliminal pull, toward Aldaran and Danilo.

By now he was numbed to fear, and only determination kept him going, that, and the memory of hispledge to Dani's father. But there were times when he rode in a dark dream, losing awareness of Daniloand the roads where he was. Images would spin in his mind, which seemed to drink up pictures andthoughts from the villages he passed. The thought of looking again into the matrix filled him with such acrawling sickness that he could not force himself to draw it out. Threshold sickness again. Javanne hadwarned him. At

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the last few villages he had simply inquired the road to Aldaran.

All the morning he had been riding up a long slope where forest fires had raged a few seasons ago. Hecould see miles of scorched and blackened hillside, ragged stumps sticking up gaunt and leafless throughthe gullied wasteland. In his hyper-suggestible state the stink of burned woods, ashes and soot swirling upevery time Ms pony put a hoof down, brought him back to that last summer at Armida and his first turnon the fire-lines, the night the fire came so close to Armida that the outbuildings burned.

That evening he and Lew had eaten out of the same bowl because supplies were running short. Whenthey had laid down the stink of ashes and burned wood was all around them. Regis had smelled it even inhis sleep, the way he was smelling it now. Toward midnight something woke him, and he had seen Lewsitting bolt upright, staring at the red glow where the fire was.

And Regis had known Lew was afraid. He'd touched Lew's mind, and felt it: his fear, the pain of hisburns, everything. He could feel it as if it had been in his own mind. And Lew's fear hurt so much that Regis couldn't stand it. He would have done anything to comfort Lew, to take his mind off the pain andthe fear. It had been too much. Regis couldn't shut it out, couldn't stand it

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But he had forgotten. Had made himself forget, till now. He had blocked away the memory until, laterthat year, when he was tested for laran at Nevarsin, he had not even remembered anything but the fire.

And that, he realized, was why Lew was surprised when Regis told him he did not have laran,...

The mountain pony stumbled and went down. Regis scrambled to his feet, shaken but unhurt, taking thebeast by the bridle and gently urging him to his feet. He ran his hand up and down the animal's legs. Nobones were broken, but the pony flinched when Regis touched his rear right hock. He was limping, and Regis knew the pony could not bear his weight for a while. He led him along the trail as they crested thepass. The downward trail was even steeper, black and mucky underfoot where recent rains had soakedthe remnants of the fire. The stench in his nostrils was worse than ever, restimulating again the memoriesof the earlier fire and the shared fear. He kept asking himself why he forgot, why he made himself forget.

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The sun was hidden behind thick clouds. A few drifting snowflakes, not many but relentless, began to fallas he went down toward the valley. He guessed it was about midday. He felt a little hungry, but notenough to stop and dig into his pack and get out something to eat.

He hadn't been eating much lately. The villagers had been kind to him, often refusing to take payment forfood, which was tasty, though unfamiliar. He was usually on the edge of nausea, though, unwilling to startup that reflex again by actually chewing and swallowing something. Hunger was less painful.

After a time he did dig some grain out of his pack for the horse. The trail was well-traveled now; theremust be another village not far away. But the silence was disturbing. Not a dog barked, no wild bird orbeast cried. There was no sound but his own footsteps and the halting rhythm of the lame pony's steps. And, far above, the unending wind moaning in the gaunt snags of the dead forest.

It was too much solitude. Even the presence of a bodyguard would have been welcome now, or two,chatting about the small chances of the trail. He remembered riding in the hills around Armida with Lew,hunting or checking the herdsmen who cared for the horses out in the open uplands. Suddenly, as if thethought of Lew had brought him to mind again, Lew's face was before him, lighted with a glow-not forestfire now! It was aglow, blazing in a great blue glare, space-twisting, gut-wrenching, the glare of thematrix! The ground was reeling and dipping under his feet, but for a moment, even as Regis dropped thepony's reins and clapped his hands over his tormented eyes, he saw a great form sketch itself on theinside of his eyelids, inside his very brain,

. . . a woman, a golden goddess, flame-clothes, flame-crowned, golden-chained, burning, glowing,

blazing, consuming . . .

Then he lost consciousness. Over his head the mountain pony edged carefully around, uneasily nuzzlingat the unconscious lad.

It was the pony's nuzzling that woke him, some time later. The sky was darkening, and it was snowing sohard that when he got stiffly to his feet, a little cascade of snow showered off him. A fauit sickening smelltold him that he had vomited as he lay senseless. What in Zandru's hells happened to me?

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He dug his water bottle from his saddlebag, rinsed his mouth and drank a little, but was still too queasyto swallow much.

It was snowing so hard that he knew he must find shelter at once. He had been trained at Nevarsin tofind shelter in unlikely places, even a heap of underbrush would do, but on a road as well-traveled as thisthere were sure to be huts, barns, shelters. He was not mistaken. A few hundred feet further on, theoutline of a great stone barn made a dark square against the swirling whiteness. The stones wereblackened with the fire that had swept over it and a few of the roof slates had fallen in, but someone hadreplaced the door with rough-hewn planking. Drifted ice and snow from the last storm was bankedagainst the door, but he knew that in mountain country doors were usually left unfastened against justsuch emergencies. After much struggling and heaving Regis managed to shove the rough door partwayopen and wedge himself and the pony through into a gloomy and musty darkness. It had once been afodder-storage bam; there were still a few rodent-nibbled bales lying forgotten against the walls. It wasbitterly cold, but at least it was out of the wind. Regis unsaddled his pony, fed him and hobbled himloosely at one end of the barn. Then he raked some more of the moldy fodder together, laid his blanketsout on it, crawled into them and let sleep, or unconsciousness, take him again.

This long sleep was more like shock, or suspended animation, than any normal sleep. Regis could notknow it was the mental and physical reaction of a telepath hi crisis. Now it only seemed that he wanderedfor eternities-certainly for days-in restless nightmares. At times he seemed to leave his aching bodybehind and wander in gray formless space, shouting helplessly and knowing he had no voice. Once ortwice, coming up to dim semiconsciousness, he found his face wet and knew he had been crying in hissleep. Time disappeared. He wandered in what he only dimly knew was the past or the future: now in thedormitories of Nevarsin where the memory of cold, loneliness and an aching frustration held him aloof,frightened, friendless; now by the fireside at Armida, then bending with Lew and an unknown fair-hairedgirl over the bedside of an apparently dying child, again wandering through thick forests while strangealiens, red-eyed, peered at them through the trees.

Again he was fighting with knives along a narrow ledge,

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the ragged red-eyed aliens thrusting at him, trying to kick him off. He sat in the Council chamber and heard Terrans arguing; in the Guard hall of Comyn Castle he saw Danilo's sword breaking with that terrible sound of shattering glass. He was looking down with a sense of aching tragedy at two small children, pale and lifeless, lying side by side in their coffins, dead by treachery, so young, so young, and knew they were his own. Again he stood in the armory, numb and shamed into immobility while Dyan's hands ran along his bare bruised body, and then he and Danilo were standing by a fountain in the plaza at Thendara, only Danilo was taller and bearded, drinking from wooden tankards and laughing while girls threw festival garlands down from windows above them.

After a time he began to filter these random awarenesses more critically. He saw Lew and Danilostanding by a fireplace in a room with a mosaic pattern of white birds on the floor, talking earnestly, andhe felt insanely jealous. Then it seemed as if Kennard was calling his name in the gray dim spaces, and hecould see Kennard drifting far off hi the dimness. Only Kennard was not lame now, but young andstraight-backed and smiling as Regis could hardly remember him. He was calling, with a mounting senseof urgency, Regis, Regis, where are you? Don't hide from mef We have to find you! All Regis could

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make of this was that he had left the Guards without leave and the Commander wanted to have him