Sharra's Exile (2 page)

characterizes the Alton Domain. He had done it because there was no other way to prove to the Comyn Council that I was worthy to be the Alton Heir. But I had had to live with it—and with his domination

—ever since.

My hand throbbed where I had slammed down what was left of the arm. Peculiar, that ache; I could feel it in my fourth and sixth fingers…as if I had burned off a nail. And yet there was nothing there, nothing but the empty scar… they had explained it to me; phantom pain, nerves remaining in the rest of the arm. Damned real for a phantom. At least the Terran medics, and even my father, now realized there was nothing more to be done for the hand, and they had done what they should have done at first, and taken it off. Nothing to be done, even with their (rightly) fabled medical science. My mind still flinched away from the memory of the twisted, terrifying thing which had crowned their latest, experimental technique at regeneration. Whatever it is in the cells of the body which bids a hand be a hand, with palm and fingers and nails, and not a claw or a feather or an eye, had been burned away by Sharra, and once, through the drugs, I had seen what my hand had become—

Force my mind away from that too… was there anything safe to think about
? I stared into the quiet sky from which the last lingering trace of crimson had faded.

He said quietly “It’s worse at twilight, I think. I wasn’t even full-grown yet when I came first to Terra; I used to come here at sunset so that my cousins and foster-brothers wouldn’t see. You get so tired—”

His back was to me, and in any case it was too dark to see anything but the dark loom of his presence, but still, somewhere in my mind, I could see the wry deprecating half-smile, “of the same old moon.

And my Terran cousins thought it shameful for anyone my age to cry. So I made sure, after the first time, that they wouldn’t see it.”

There is a saying on Darkover;
only men laugh, only men dance, only men weep
.

But it had been different for my father, I thought in fierce envy. He had come here of his free will, and for a purpose; to build a bridge between our peoples, Terran and Darkovan. Larry Montray, his Terran friend, remaining on Darkover to be fostered in the Alton Domain: Kennard Alton coming here for a Terran education in the sciences of this world.

But I?

I had come here an exile, broken, maimed, my beloved Marjorie dead because I, like my father before me, had tried to build a bridge between Terran Empire and Darkover. And I had better reason: I was a son of both worlds, because Kennard, all Comyn, had married Montray’s half-sister, Elaine. So I tried; but I had chosen the wrong instrument—the Sharra matrix—and failed, and lived on, with everything that made life real for me dead or abandoned on a world half a Galaxy away. Even the hope which had persuaded my father to bring me here—that my hand, burned in the fires of Sharra, might somehow be salvaged or regenerated—had proved worse than a mirage; even after all I had endured, that was gone too. And I was here on a hated world, alien and familiar at once.

My eyes were growing used to the darkness; I could see my father now, a man in late middle age, stooped and lame, his once-blazing hair all gray; his face was deeply lined with pain and conflict.

“Lew, do you want to go back? Would it be easier? I was here for a reason; I was an exchange student, on a formal mission. It was a matter of honor. But nothing binds you here. You can take ship and return to Darkover whenever you will. Shall we go home, Lew?” He did not glance at my hand; he didn’t need to.
That
had failed, there was no reason to stay here hoping for a miracle.

(But I could still feel that dull pain like a torn-off nail around the thumb. And the sixth finger ached as if I had pinched it in a vise, or burnt it. Strange. Haunted by the ghost of a hand that wasn’t there.)

“Lew, shall we go home?” I knew he wanted it; this alien land was killing him, too. But then he said the wrong thing.

“The Council wants me back. They know, now, I will father no other sons. And you are acknowledged Heir to Alton; when I went away, they said it was unlawful for the lord of Alton Domain and his Heir to leave the Domains at the same time. If you returned, the Council would be forced to acknowledge—”

“Damn the Council!” I said, so loudly that my father flinched. The same damned old political

maneuvering. He had never stopped trying to get the Council to acknowledge me—it had made a

nightmare of my childhood, forced him into the painful and dangerous step he had taken, forcing premature awakening of my
laran
gift. Later it had driven me to my Aldaran kinsfolk, and the ill-fated attempt to raise power through Sharra, and Marjorie…I slammed the door shut in my mind, a closed place, black, blank. I would not think about that,
I would not
— I wanted no part of their damned Council, nor of the Comyn, nor Darkover— I turned my back and walked away toward the lake cabin, feeling him behind me, close, too close—

Get out of my mind! Get
—
out! Leave me alone
! I slammed my mind shut like the cabin door, heard the door open and close, felt him there though I stood with closed eyes. I did not turn or look.

“Lew. No, damn it, don’t shut me out again, listen to me! Do you think you are the only one in the world who has known what it is to lose a loved one?” His voice was rough but it was a roughness I knew; it meant that if his voice had been less rough he might have wept. It had taken me twenty-two years to know that my father could weep.

“You were two years old; and your sister died at birth. We both knew there should be no more. Elaine

—” he had never before spoken her name in my hearing, though I knew it from his friends; always it had been the distant, formal
your mother
. “
Yllana
,” he said again, saying the Darkovan version of the name this time. “She knew as well as I, how fragile is the rule of a man with only one son. And you were not a hardy child. Believe me, I did not demand it of her. It was her free choice. And for fifteen years I have borne
that
burden, and tried never to let Marius feel it… that I grudged him life at the cost of Yllana’s—”

He had never said so much before. I could feel in his harsh voice what it had cost him to say it.

But it had been my mother’s free choice, to risk her life in bearing my brother Marius. Marjorie had
had no choice
—

Fire. Ravening flames shooting into the sky, the great hovering wings of flame. Marjorie, burning,
burning in the flames of Sharra…CaerDonn, the world, Darkover, all in flames
—

I slammed the barrier and the blackness down into my mind, heard myself shouting “No!” at the top of my voice, and once again brought up my maimed arm and slammed it down on anything, anything that would send pure physical pain crashing through my mind to the point where I could think of nothing else.
He should not make me look at this, that I had killed the only thing I had ever loved or would ever
love
—

From very far away I heard him calling my name, felt the concerned touch of his thoughts… I slammed the barrier tighter, felt the dark close down. I stood there, not hearing, not seeing, until he went away.

BOOK ONE: The Exile

CHAPTER ONE

Darkover: the third year of exile

Regis Hastur stood on a balcony of Comyn Castle, high over Thendara and the valley which lay ahead, looking over the city and the Terran Trade City beyond.

Behind him lay the castle, shadowed beneath the mountains. Before him lay the Terran Trade City, the spaceport beyond it—and the rising skyscrapers of the Terran Headquarters building. As he had thought many times before, he thought:
this has its own alien beauty
.

For many years he had had a dream. When he had come of age, he would leave Darkover behind him, take passage on one of those Terran starships, and go outward, among the stars, strange suns and worlds multiple beyond all telling. He would leave behind him all that he hated about his life; his own uneasy position, heir to an ancient household and a Regency which was more of an anachronism with every passing year; the continuing pressure to marry, young as he was, and provide heirs to the legacy of the Hasturs: the unknown potential of
laran
, the inbred psychic ability bred into bones and brain and genes. He would leave behind him the rulership of the contending Domains, each striving for

something different in the ever-changing world that was modern Darkover. Regis was eighteen; legally of age three years ago, sworn to Hastur. Now he knew he would never have his dream.

He would not have been the first of the Comyn to leave Darkover and go into the Empire. Adventure, the lure of an alien society and a vast complex universe, had drawn more than one Darkovan, even of the highest nobility, into the Empire.

The Ridenow Domain
, he thought.
They make no secret of their belief that Darkover should align with
the Empire, become a part of this modern world. Lerrys Ridenow has traveled widely in the Empire,
and no doubt at Council this season he will be singing their praises again. Kennard Alton was
educated on Terra, and he is there now, with his son Lew
. And then Regis wondered how Lew fared, somewhere in that alien universe.

If I were free of the burden of the Hastur heritage, I too would go forth and never return
. And again the temptation struck him, as he had planned it when he was a rebellious child in his first year in the Cadets of the Guard—the necessary apprenticeship served by all Comyn sons. He and his friend Danilo had plotted it together; they would ship outward on one of the Terran ships, find a place for themselves there… lose themselves in the immensities of a thousand alien worlds. Regis smiled, reminiscently, knowing it had been the dream of children. For better or worse, he was Heir to Hastur, and the fate of Darkover was a part of his life, as intimately as body or brain. Danilo was Heir to Ardais, adopted by the childless Lord Dyan Ardais, being prepared for that high office as Regis was prepared for his own.

Last year had been their third year in the cadets together; junior officers, learning command and self-command. It had been a peaceful time; but it was over. Regis had spent the winter past in the city of Thendara, attending sessions of the
cortes
, dealing with city magistrates, diplomatic envoys from the other Domains and the Dry Towns beyond the Domains, the representatives of the Terrans and the Empire; learning, in short, to take his grandfather’s place as representative of the Domains.

Danilo had paid only one or two fleeting visits to the city since that Festival Night when Council Season had ended; he had had to return to Castle Ardais with Dyan and learn the ordering of the Domain which, if Dyan died still childless, would be his own. Then, Regis had heard, Danilo had been called back to Syrtis by the grave illness of his own father.

Why is Danilo on my mind now, so suddenly
? And then he knew; he was not a powerful telepath, but the bond sworn between himself and Danilo was a strong one, and he turned abruptly away from the view of city and spaceport which lay before him, thrusting the curtains closed behind him as he went inside.

It is a boy’s idle dream, to stand there and dream of the stars. My world lies here
. He went into the outer room of the Hastur apartments just as one of the servants came in search of him.

“
Dom
Danilo Syrtis, Heir and Warden of Ardais,” he announced, and Danilo came into the room, a slender, handsome young man, dark-haired and dark-eyed. Regis moved to take him into a formal

kinsman’s embrace, but over his shoulder he saw the servant leave the room and the formal greeting somehow transformed itself into an enthusiastic mutual hug.

“Dani! I’m so glad to see you! You can’t imagine how dull the city is in winter!”

Danilo chuckled, looking down at Regis affectionately. He was a little taller, now, than his friend. “I’d have chosen it. I swear to you that the climate of Ardais has much in common with that of Zandru’s coldest hell. I don’t think Lord Dyan was any colder than that in Nevarsin monastery!”

“Is Dyan still at Nevarsin?”

“No, he left it early last winter. We were at Ardais together all the winter; he taught me many things he said I should know as Regent of the Domain. Then we traveled south to Thendara together… Strange, I never thought I would take pleasure in his company, yet he has taken great pains to have me properly educated for the place I will have—”

“He would do that for the honor of his own house,” said Regis dryly.

“Yet when my poor father died he was kindness itself.”

“I am not surprised at that either,” Regis said. “You have grown handsome, Dani, and Lord Dyan has always had an eye for beauty in a boy—”

Danilo laughed. They could laugh together about it, now, though three years ago it had been no laughing matter. “Oh, I am too old for Dyan now—he prefers lads who have not yet grown their beards, and you can see—” with a nervous finger he twisted the small, dark moustache on his upper lip.

“Why, I wonder, then, that you have not grown a full beard!”

“No,” said Danilo, with a strange, quiet persistence. “I know Dyan better now. And I give you my word, never once has he offered me a word or a gesture unseemly between father and son. When my own father died, he showed him all honor; he said it was a pleasure to do honor to one who had deserved it; it made amends, perhaps, for the honor he had had to show to those of his kinsmen who deserved it not.” The old Lord of Ardais had died three years ago, mad and senile after a long and disgraceful life of debauchery.

“Dyan said something like that to me once,” Regis agreed.

“But enough of that—I am glad you are here,
bredu
. I suppose you are to sit in Council this year among the Ardais?”

“So Dyan says,” Danilo agreed. “But Council will not begin till tomorrow, and tonight—well, I have not been in Thendara for years.”

“I seldom go into the streets,” said Regis, so quietly that it did not even sound bitter. “I cannot walk half a mile without a crowd following me…”