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Damon bowed his head, burying his face in his hands. Callista gently bent and kissed the cold brow,murmuring something Andrew could not hear. A dark form, crouched kneeling beside the bier, suddenlystirred and rose. It was a short, sturdily built young man, disheveled and heavy-eyed, his eyelidsreddened with long weeping. Andrew knew who he must be, even before Callista held out her hands.

“Cathal, dear cousin.”

He stared at them pitifully for a moment before he found his voice. “Lady Ellemir, my lords…”

“I am not Ellemir, but Callista, cousin,” she said quietly. “We are grateful that you should have remained

with Domenic till we could come. It is right there should be someone near who loved him.”

“So I felt, and yet I felt guilty, I who was his murderer—” His voice broke. Damon embraced the

shaking lad.

“We all know it was mischance, kinsman. Tell me how it happened.”

The red-eyed stare was pitiable. “We were in the armory, working with wooden practice swords as wedid every day. He was a better swordsman than I,” Cathal said, and his face came apart. He too, Andrew noticed, had Comyn features; “cousin” was not just politeness.

“I didn’t know I had hit him so hard, truly I didn’t. I thought he was shamming, teasing me, that he would spring up and laugh—he did that so often.” His face twisted. Damon, remembering a thousand pranks during Domenic’s cadet year, wrung Cathal’s hand. “I know, my boy.” Had the lad gone like this,

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uncomforted, burdened since the death?

“Tell me about it.”

“I shook him.” Cathal was white with horror. “I said, ‘Get up, you silly donkey, stop playing the fool.’ And then I took off his mask and I saw he was unconscious. But even then I didn’t think much about it—someone is always getting hurt.”

“I know, Cathal, I was knocked senseless half a dozen times in my cadet years, and look, my middle

finger is still crooked where Coryn broke it with a practice sword. But what did you do then, lad?”

“I ran off to fetch the hospital officer, Master Nicol.”

“You left him alone?”

“No, his brother was with him,” Cathal said. “Dezi was putting cold water on his face, trying to bring him

around. But when I came back with Master Nicol he was dead.”

“Are you sure he was alive when you left him, Cathal?”

“Yes,” Cathal said positively. “I could hear him breathing, and I felt his heart.”

Damon shook his head, sighing. “Did you notice his eyes. Were the pupils dilated? Contracted? Did hereact to light in any way?”

“I… I didn’t notice, Lord Damon, I never thought to look.”

Damon sighed. “No, I suppose not. Well, dear lad, head injuries do not always follow the rules. A Guardsman in my year as hospital officer was knocked against a wall in a street fight, and when theypicked him up he seemed quite well, but at supper he went to sleep with his head on the table, and neverwoke, but died in his sleep.” He stood up, his hand resting on Cathal’s shoulder.

“Set your mind at rest, Cathal. There was nothing you could have done.”

“Lord Hastur and some of the others, they questioned and questioned me, as if anyone could ever believe I could hurt Domenic. We were
 
bredin
 
—I loved him.” The boy went and stood before the statue of Cassilda, saying vehemently, “The Lords of Light strike me here if I could ever harm him!” Then he turned and knelt for a moment at Callista’s feet. “
 
Domna
, you are a
 
leronis
 
, you can prove at will that I held no malice toward my dear lord, that I would have died myself to shield him, would that my hand had withered first!”

Tears had begun to flow again. Damon bent and raised him, saying firmly, “We know that, my lad,believe me.”

Grief and guilt flooded him. The boy was wide open to Damon’s mind, but the guilt was only for thecareless blow, there was no guile in Cathal. “Now a time has come when more weeping is onlyself-indulgence. You must go and rest. You are his paxman; you must ride at his side when he is laid inthe earth.”

Cathal drew a long breath, looking up into Damon’s face. “You
 
do
 
believe me, Lord Damon. Now,now I really think I can sleep.”

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He watched the boy turn away, sighing. Whatever reassurances he might give, Cathal would live the restof his life with the knowledge that he had slain his kinsman and his sworn friend by evil chance. Poor Cathal. Domenic died quickly and without pain. Cathal would suffer for years.

Callista was standing before the bier, looking down at Domenic, dressed in the colors of his Domain, hiscurly hair combed unnaturally smooth, his eyes peacefully closed. She felt at his throat.

“Where is his matrix? Damon, it should be buried with him.”

Damon frowned. “Cathal?”

The boy, at the very threshold of the chapel, stopped. “Sir?”

“Who laid him out for burial? Why did they take his matrix from his body?”

“Matrix?” The blue eyes were uncomprehending. “I heard him say often enough that he had no interest in

such things. I didn’t know he had one.”

Callista’s fingers strayed to her throat. “He was given one when he was tested. He had
 
laran
 
, though heused it but seldom. When I last saw him it was around his neck, in a little bag like this.”

“Now I remember,” Cathal said. “He did have something around his neck, I thought it a lucky charm or some such thing. I never knew what it was. Perhaps whoever laid him out for burial thought it too shabby a trinket to bury with him.”

Damon let Cathal go. He would ask who had prepared Domenic’s body for burial. Surely it should beburied with him.

“How could anyone take it?” Andrew asked. “You have told me, and shown me, that it is not safe to

touch another’s matrix. When you took Dezi’s, it was nearly as painful for you as for him.”

“In general, when the owner of a keyed matrix dies, the stone dies with him. After that it is only a dead piece of blue crystal, without light. But it is not suitable that it should remain to be handled.” The chances were overwhelming that some servant had simply thought it, as Cathal said, a shabby trinket not fit to bury with a Comyn heir.

If Master Nicol, not understanding, had touched it, perhaps loosened it, trying to give Domenic air,
 
that
could have killed him, but no, Dezi was there. Dezi would have known, being Arilinn-trained. If Master Nicol had tried to remove the matrix, Dezi, who, as Damon had cause to know, could do a Keeper’swork, would surely have chosen to handle it himself, as he could do so safely.

But if Dezi had taken it…

No. He would
 
not
 
believe that. Whatever his faults, Dezi had loved Domenic. Domenic alone in thefamily, had befriended him, had treated Dezi like a true brother, had insisted on his rights.

Brother had slain brother, before this, but no. Dezi had loved Domenic, he loved his father. It wouldhave been hard, indeed, not to love Domenic.

For a moment Damon stood beside the bier of the dead boy. Come what might, this was the end of the

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old days at Armida. Valdir was so young, and if he must be heir so soon, there would be no time for the usual training of a Comyn son, the years in cadet corps and Guardsmen, the time spent in a Tower if he was fit for it. He and Andrew would do their best to be sons to the aging Lord Alton, but despite their best intentions, they were not Altons steeped in the traditions of the Lanarts of Armida. Whatever happened, it was the end of an era.

Callista followed Andrew as he went to examine the paintings on the walls. They were very old, donewith pigments that glowed like jewels, depicting the legend of Hastur and Cassilda, the great myth of the Comyn. Hastur in his golden robes wandering by the shores of the lake; Cassilda and Camilla at theirlooms; Camilla surrounded by her doves, bringing him the traditional fruits; Cassilda, a flower in her hand,proffering it to the child of the God. The drawings were ancient and stylized, but she could recognizesome of the fruits and flowers. The blue and gold blossom in Cassilda’s hand was the
 
kireseth
 
, the bluestarflower of the Kilghard Hills, colloquially called the golden bell. Was this sacred association, shewondered, why the
 
kireseth
 
flower was taboo to every Tower circle from Dalereuth to the Hellers? Shethought, with a pang of regret, how she had lain in Andrew’s arms, unafraid, during the winter blooming. They used to make jokes about it at weddings, if the bride were reluctant Her eyes stung with tears, butshe swallowed them back. While the heir of the Domain, her dearly loved younger brother, lay dead, wasthis any time to be fretting about her private troubles?

Chapter Eighteen

«^»

It was a gray morning, the sun hidden behind banks of fog and little spits and drizzles of sleet blowingaround the heights, as the funeral procession rode northward from Thendara, bearing the body of Domenic Lanart-Alton to lie beside his forefathers of the Comyn. The
 
rhu fead
 
at Hali, the holy place ofthe Comyn, lay an hour’s ride northward from the Comyn Castle, and every lord and lady of Comynblood who could come to the Council in the last three days rode with them to do honor to the heir to Alton, killed by tragic mischance so young.

All except Esteban Lanart-Alton. Andrew, riding with Cathal Lindir and young Valdir, remembered thescene which had broken out that morning when Ferrika, summoned by the old man to give him somethingto strengthen him for the journey, had flatly refused.

“You are not fit to ride,
 
vai dom
 
, not even in a horse-litter. If you follow him to his grave, you will lie there beside him before a tenday is out.” More gently, she had added, “The poor lad is beyond all helping or hurt, Lord Alton. We must think now of your own strength.”

The old man had flown into such a rage that Callista, hastily summoned, had feared that his very angerwould bring on whatever catastrophe Ferrika feared for him. She had tried to mediate, saying tentatively, “Can it harm him as much as this kind of disturbance?”

“I will hear no woman’s ruling,”
 
Dom
 
Esteban had shouted. “Send for my body-servant and get out of here, both of you! Dezi—” He had turned to the lad for confirmation, and Dezi said, his smooth face flushing with color, “If you will ride, Uncle, I will go with you.”

But Ferrika had slipped away, and returned in a moment with Master Nicol, the hospital officer of the Guards. He felt the old man’s pulse, turned down his eyelid to look at the small veins there, then saidcurtly, “My lord, if you ride out today, you are not likely to return. There are others here who can burythe dead. Your heir has not even been formally accepted by Council, and in any case he is but a lad of

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twelve years. Your task,
 
vai dom
 
, is to save your own strength till that boy is grown to manhood. By a

last sentimental service for your dead son, will you risk leaving your living one fatherless?”

Before these unwelcome truths there was nothing to say. Dismayed,
 
Dom
 
Esteban had allowed Master

Nicol to put him back to bed. He clung to Dezi’s hand and the boy remained docilely at his side.

Now, riding northward to Hali, Andrew recalled the calls of condolence, the long talks with othermembers of the Council which had taxed Lord Alton’s strength to the utmost. Even if he survived thecoming Council season and the homeward journey, could he live until Valdir was declared a man atfifteen? And how could a boy of fifteen possibly cope with the complex policies and politics of the Domain? Certainly not this sheltered, scholarly lad from a monastery!

Valdir rode at the head of the procession, in drab formal mourning, his face very pale against the darkgarments. Beside him rode his sworn friend Valentine Aillard, who had come with him from Nevarsin, abig, sturdy boy with hair so blonde it looked white. Both boys looked solemn, but not deeply grieved. Neither of them had known Domenic well enough for that.