The Alton Gift (5 page)

He could not remember Regis without Danilo Syrtis, his sworn brother and paxman, at his side, or Lady Linnea, lending him her gracious strength.

Glancing at his parents, Domenic saw how they, too, formed a

seamless whole. They were the right hand and the left, the darkness and the dawn. In that moment, he knew he could not face the future they had planned for him if he were alone. But he did not know where to find the other half of his soul.

Lewis-Kennard Alton stood at the window of the main hall in the Alton suite in Comyn Castle. Bitter storms had lashed the ancient stone walls for the past tenday, and the courtyard garden glistened. Even so, the worst of the winter had passed, Snow no longer lay thick on the ground, and buds swelled on the bare branches.

This room was one of the oldest in the Castle, the walls set with luminous stones from deep caves that charged with light all day and radiated a soft glow at night. Since Lew had last seen the place, someone, probably Marguerida, had covered the old stone seats with needle-pointed cushions in sea-wave patterns of blue and green.

Lew sighed. In his late sixties, one-handed, his face etched with scars, he felt as weary in spirit as the wet, gray world outside. He would just as soon have remained at Armida, the family estate, where he had useful work to do, advising the younger Gabriel, gentling young horses, riding the pasture boundaries, savoring the peace and nostalgia of his childhood home. Marguerida had specifically asked him to attend the funeral for Javanne Lanart-Hastur. He could not have stayed away.

This place is too full of ghosts.

Memory stirred, unbidden. Many years ago, Lew had ridden with

Regis Hastur on the road to Thendara to attend Comyn Council. Regis had been only fifteen then, slender and earnest. His grandfather, Dan-van Hastur, had been grooming him to take his place as Regent of the Comyn. Lew remembered the hunger in the younger man's eyes as he watched the Terran Federation ships roaring into the sky.

That was when the Federation still maintained its Headquarters at Thendara, while men of good will on both sides worked together— and women, too, for the Renunciates had been training as midwives with the Terran Medical corps and working as guides and translators since the days of Magdalen Lome.

… Before the illegal, immensely powerful matrix known as Sharra drew them all into madness… Before he had loved and lost Marjorie Scott…

… Before interstellar civil war tore the Federation apart, before it closed its Base on Darkover, before the nightmarish Battle of Old North Road and its aftermath…

But all of that was over, best forgotten.

A chill crept along Lew's bones. With his one remaining hand, he clutched the front of his shirt, where his stars tone lay wrapped in triple-insulated silk. He dared not look into its luminescent blue depths.

The past is too much with me.

"Father, you are here at last!" Marguerida entered, wearing a shawl of the Alton tartan over a gown of green like the cool shade beneath a pine forest.

He turned toward her, holding out his hand. She smiled, enveloping him with her special warmth, and stepped into his embrace.

How good it is to have you with us again
, she spoke with her mind to his.

Lew broke the embrace, holding her at arm's distance to look into her eyes. Despite her outward poise, tension coiled through her muscles.

"What troubles you, my dear?"

"Come, sit down." Leading him into the smaller family parlor, she gestured to the cushioned seat beside the fireplace. The andirons were new, shaped like graceful, intertwined trees. The fire had burned down into a bed of glowing coals, radiating a gently seductive warmth. Marguerida offered her father a choice of
jaco
or hot mulled wine from the

sideboard. He refused both, but she poured herself a cup of the bitter stimulant brew, stirred in a spoonful of fragrant sage honey to her taste, and sat facing him.

"I am so glad to have you here to talk to. Mikhail's tied up—a message arrived two days ago and he won't tell me about it—but he'll join us later."

Marguerida spoke lightly, but Lew sensed her distress at her husband's secrecy. Surely, any two married people as busy as Marguerida and Mikhail could not share every detail of their lives, but they had always been open with one another.

Mikhail has burdens enough
, she added telepathically,
without my adding what may turn out to be baseless fears
.

This much was true. Even in Armida, where Altons farmed and raised their fine horses, and cares faded in the rhythmic passages of seasons, Lew sensed how difficult it had been for his son-in-law to assume the Regency of the Domains. Regis Hastur, who had held that position until his death three years ago, had cast a long shadow, one that might endure for generations.

Mikhail had all the makings of a brilliant Regent, trained for the work since childhood by Regis himself. Slowly, with his usual deliberate care, Mikhail was shaping Darkover without a Terran presence. Men by their nature resisted change, even when it was for the better. If some opposed Mikhail's leadership, just as many supported him. In the end, patience and time would win; Mikhail knew this, and Marguerida did, too.

There must be something else
…

Yes
, Marguerida answered, and Lew caught a flicker of fear from her mind.

"I'm probably just overly sensitive," she said, setting down her
jaco
and rubbing her temples. "I've had one of my headaches on and off for a tenday now, not an ordinary one, but… I can't decide if it's my Aldaran precognition or just nerves."

Lew raised one eyebrow at the thought of Marguerida admitting to such a frailty.

Marguerida frowned. "I've never entirely trusted these premonitions. For one thing, they show only my own future or that of those very close to me. When Ariel Alar went into labor with Alanna, I
knew

Alanna would be all right because our lives would intertwine, but I had no idea what would happen to Ariel, how crazy she would become. Second, the foreseeings are far from certain. Third, and most impor-tandy, I refuse to believe in predestination or hold with the superstition that our fates are sealed by the gods. Anyone's gods."

Lew could not restrain a smile. If ever a person were determined to create her own destiny, it was his headstrong daughter. From the day she returned to Darkover—no, from the moment of her birth—she had faced life on her own terms. Her early upbringing on the Federation world of Thetis had given her an independence and forthright approach to life unusual for a Darkovan woman. When her Alton relatives had pressured her to marry and assume her place in traditional Comyn society, she had forged her own way. She had married, but for love, not position; she had taken up her heritage and used her power to expand Darkovan literacy, to continue the music that was her passion. Now she stood at her husband's side, an equal partner in the defense of the world she had come to love.

Marguerida went on, "When Alanna was still in the womb, I had a vision of her—wild and rebellious, which she certainly has become, and also the cause of great troubles. In fact, I remember thinking she ought to be called Deirdre, for all the sorrow she would bring."

"Yet you took her into your own home and gave her the loving care her mother could not," Lew said.

"What else was there to do?" Marguerida replied with some heat. "If we are to avert disaster, we must guide her into a different path. I have tried my best to be patient and understanding, to make her feel accepted. Whether I have been successful remains to be seen. She did not take it well when I insisted she go to Arilinn Tower."

"The discipline of Arilinn is not easy," Lew said. "Was there no alternative?"

Marguerida shook her head. "Her
laran
had become too dangerous. Her tantrums were growing worse every day. Mikhail and I feared her mind might be too fragile to withstand the power of her talent. I could not save her, so I had no choice but to turn her over to those who could."

"In that case, you did right to send her there. If Arilinn could not help her, I doubt anyone could."

"Time and her season of training have indeed helped to steady her," Marguerida said. "I believe she is over the worst, although her temper is still uncertain. She came back to us with the same wilfulness, but she no longer started fires or threw pottery at the wall with her mind. In fact, she seemed to have effectively suppressed her
laran
. It did not distress her, so I assumed the Keepers knew what they were doing."

And jour premonition about her?

She favored him with a wry smile. "You know me too well, Father. As you may have suspected, it has never entirely resolved, and now the sense of oncoming danger has returned. I don't know why. Alanna is much as she has always been. She is difficult, true, but her heart is good. She can be sweet and loving as well as contrary. I cannot see how she poses any greater threat now than she did before."

Lew sat back, rubbing his jaw with his one hand. "Are you sure your foreboding relates to Alanna?"

"What else?" She got up in a quick restless movement, tugging at the glove on her left hand, and began pacing. "The Domains are at peace, Francisco Ridenow is safely in exile, and the Terrans and that hideous Lyle Belfontaine are gone. After the Battle of Old North Road, they are not likely to return any time soon."

Memories, like a swarm of horrific ghosts, rose up in Lew's mind. The Terran ambush at Old North Road had been the last spiteful act of Acting Station Chief Lyle Belfontaine. The departing bureaucrat had almost destroyed Darkover's ruling Council as they rode to the funeral of Regis Hastur. What it might have meant for Darkover to lose so many Gifted minds at a single stroke was too terrible to contemplate. Combining their psychic powers, channeled through Mikhail's ring and Marguerida's shadow matrix, the two had defeated the attempt. And afterward…

Lew's gut clenched at the memory. After the battle, he and Marguerida had used their special talent, the Alton Gift of forced rapport, to selectively erase the memories of the Terran survivors, so that they remembered nothing extraordinary about the battle.

There was no other option, he told himself for the hundredth time. If the Federation ever found out what Darkovan
laran
could do, how it could be used as a weapon, any hope for his world remaining inde-

pendent and free would swiftly come to an end. Afterward, Lew had gotten sickeningly drunk for the first time in years.

Marguerida was right. They had bought this current era of peace at a terrible price, but no enemies remained to threaten the Domains. The Terran Federation was gone, consumed by internecine war. Alanna offered no immediate threat. She had spirit, yes, and rebellion, but nothing worse.

And jet
. . .

What if Marguerida perceived the approach of some other danger? Something perhaps masquerading as good? Had not great evil been done in the name of worthy causes? Was that not the story of the Ages of Chaos? Of Caer Donn and the flames of Sharra? Of the Battle of Old North Road?

Ghosts
, he thought.
Nothing more
.

The conversation veered to inconsequential matters. Domenic and Yllana came in, chattering with the ease of affectionate siblings too long separated, something about Yllana's attempt to compose a new ballad about the spaceman, the
chieri
, and the Dry Towner's wife. Lew was surprised to see how both his grandchildren had grown. Domenic bowed politely, with a only a trace of the gangling awkwardness of a few years ago. Something in his reserve reminded Lew of Regis at that age. A hint of watchfulness around the eyes suggested that Domenic felt things deeply and that he had not yet found his place. Lew's heart went out to the boy, so clearly struggling to become a man, with all the uncertainties, conflicting emotions, and demands placed upon him.

As for Yllana, she would not look directly at Lew, clearly trying hard not to stare.

What did she see? Lew wondered. He knew what he looked like, a man aged beyond his years, a cripple with a face of scars, a mouth cut and twisted into a perpetual grimace, a man sick in his very soul…

"Ah, here is Mikhail," Marguerida said.

Mikhail entered, talking intently with his paxman, Donal Alar. Over the usual shirt and trousers, he wore a long, sleeveless robe, edged with white fur and bands of embroidery, vines weaving around a stylized representation of the Hastur fir tree. He looked up, his mouth curving into a smile. Yllana embraced her father with a child's unaffected warmth. Marguerida's edge of tension softened.

"
Dom
Lewis, you are very welcome," Mikhail said. "Perhaps Marja will be more easy about the upcoming session, with your keen eyes to spot any trouble. You are our elder statesman, and we value the perspective of your experience."

Lew made no effort to deflect the compliment, because it was true. His own father had schooled him in the intricacies of court politics, and his years as a Senator in the Terran Federation had given him ample opportunity to practice those skills. Absently, he rubbed the stump of his arm, where it had been cut away after the Sharra disaster in order to save his life.

Yllana excused herself and, with a parting kiss for both her parents, left the parlor. Donal bowed and followed her, closing the door behind him. Domenic remained, quietly watchful.

As Mikhail sank into one of the cushioned seats, Marguerida shot her husband a worried glance.

Mikhail leaned forward. "You may think I flatter you, Lew, but I cannot tell you how glad I am to have you here, especially at this time."

"Why now?" Lew asked.

"What has happened?" Marguerida said, almost at the same time.

Mikhail reached into an inner pocket of his robe and drew out a letter. "This came two days ago. I did not mention it before, because I have been considering how to answer it."

Mikhail handed the letter to his wife. The paper crackled as she spread it open. She read, her lips moving as she formed the words in Darkovan script. The blood drained from her face.

Is this the danger warned of by my Gift
? ran through her mind, easily sensed by Lew.

"You cannot seriously—" Marguerida stammered aloud. "Mik, you
must not
agree to this!"

"Let Lew read the letter," Mikhail said. "Domenic already knows what it contains."

Lew took the paper and read slowly, trying to block out the distress radiating from his daughter's mind. The letter, addressed to Mikhail in his capacity as Regent, began with polite expressions of sympathy for the loss of his mother. The writer had an elegant command of the niceties of Comyn etiquette, at once respectful and intimate.

This could not, Lew thought, be what had upset Marguerida. He