“You have no choice, now, but to move into the Alton apartments in Comyn Castle,” Jeff said, and I nodded, with a sigh. The house, at least for the moment, was uninhabitable. Gabriel had come, with the final crew of Guards who had gotten the fire out. He offered to arrange for men to guard the ruins and prevent looting until we could get workmen to repair the roof and make the place weatherproof again. Every room was filled with smoke, furniture lying blackened and ruined. I tried without success to close my eyes and nostrils to the sight and smell. I have… a horror of fire, and now, I knew, somewhere at the back of my mind, if I gave it mental lease, the form of fire was there, raging, ravening, ready to destroy…and destroy me with it.
Not that I cared a damn, now—
Andres looked twenty years older. He came to me now and said, hesitantly, “Where—where shall we take Marius?”
It was a good question, I thought; a damned good question, but I didn’t know the answer. There had never been any room for him in the Comyn Castle, not since he was old enough to notice his existence; they had never noticed it, in life, and now, in death, they would not care.
Gabriel said quietly, “Have him carried to the chapel in Comyn Castle.” I looked up, startled and ready to protest, but he went on: “Let him have that much in death, kinsman, even though he didn’t have it in life.”
I looked on his dead face only once. The bullet that had smashed out his life had somehow left his face unmarked; and he looked, dead, like the little brother I remembered.
Now indeed I was alone. I had laid my father to rest on Vainwal, near my son, who had never lived except in the dreams I had shared with Dio before his birth. Now my brother would lie in an unmarked grave, as the custom was, on the shores of the Lake of Hali, where all the Hastur-kin were laid to rest. A thousand legalities separated me from Dio.
I should never have come back here! Istared at the lightly falling snow in the street outside, and realized that it did not matter where I was, here or elsewhere. Andres, crushed and old; Jeff, who had left his adopted world behind for Darkover; and Gabriel, who had his own family, but who, now, in default of any other, was Alton. Let him have the Domain; I should have sent for Marius, taken him away before it came to this…
No. That way lay only endless regret, a time when I would listen and hunger for my father’s voice in my mind because it was all I had left of the past, live complacently with ghosts and grief and guilt… no. Life went on, and someday, perhaps, I would give a damn— for now there were two things that must be done.
“Kadarin is somewhere in the City,” I said to Gabriel. “He must be found. I can’t possibly emphasize it enough—how dangerous he is. Dangerous as a banshee, or a wolf maddened by hunger—”
And he had the Sharra matrix! And somehow he might manage to raise it again, the raging form of fire which would break the Comyn Castle and the walls of Thendara like kindling-sticks in a forest fire…
And there was worse…I too had been sealed to Sharra…
I could not speak of that to Gabriel. Not even to Jeff. I tried to tell myself; Kadarin could do nothing, nothing alone. Even if he managed to raise the Sharra forces, alone or with Thyra… who must, somehow, be alive too— the fires would turn on them and consume them, as they had burned and ravaged me. I could feel my hand burning again, burning in the fires of Sharra— could feel it now, the burning that the Terran medics had called phantom pain— haunted, I told myself at the edge of hysteria, haunted by the ghost of my father and the ghost of my hand…and stopped myself, hard.
That way I could go mad, too. I said grimly to Andres, “Get me something to eat, find us all some dinner. Then we will take Marius to the chapel at Comyn Castle, and go there for the rest of the Council. The caretakers there will be Alton men; they’ll know me as my father’s Heir. And there’s one more person who has to be told. Linnell.”
Andres’s eyes softened. “Poor Linnie,” he muttered. “She was the only person in Comyn who cared about him. Even when no one else remembered he was alive, he was always her foster-brother. She sent him Festival gifts, and went riding with him on holidays— She had promised him, when they were children, that if he married first she would be his wife’s bride-woman and if she married first he should give her away. She came here last not a tenday ago, to tell him that her wedding with Derik had been set, and they were laughing together and talking about the wedding—” and the old man stopped, quite overcome.
I had not seen Linnell to speak to since I came back. I had thought, when I went to speak with Callina about making the Sharra matrix safe, I would pay Linnell my respects— she was nearer to Marius’s age, but we had been friends, brother and sister. But there had been no time. Now time was running out for us; and I must speak with Callina too, not only as kinswoman but as Keeper.
I too had been sealed to Sharra… they could draw me into that unholy thing, at any moment—
I bent over Marius’s body; took the little dagger from his waist. I had given it to him when he was ten years old; I had not realized that he had borne it all these years. In the years on Vainwal, I had not remembered to wear side-arms. I slipped it into the empty sheath in my boot, startled at how easily the gesture came after all these years.
Before Sharra can draw me again into itself, this dagger will find my heart…
“Take him to the Castle,” I said, and followed slowly behind the small, weary procession through the lightly falling summer snow. I was almost glad for the roaring pain in my head, which kept me from thinking, too much, about Linnell’s face when I must tell her of this death.
Marius rested that night in the Comyn Castle, in the chapel, beneath the old stone arches, the paintings on the wall; from her silent niche the blessed Cassilda, clad in blue and with a starflower in her hand, watched forever over her children. My father had cared little for the Gods, and brought me up the same way. Marius in death was closer to the Comyn than ever he had been in life. But I looked up at the Four Gods portrayed at the four corners of the Chapel—Avarra, dark mother of birth and death, Aldones, Lord of Light, Evanda, bright mother of life and growth, Zandru, the dark lord of the Nine Hells…and, like pressing a sore tooth, felt the burning touch of Sharra somewhere in my mind—
Sharra was bound in chains, by Hastur, who was the son of Aldones, who was the Son of Light—
Fables, fairy tales to frighten children or console them in the dark. What had the Gods to do with me, who bore Sharra’s fires like a raging torrent that might some day burn out my brain… as she had burned my hand away—
But as I went out of the Chapel, I thought: the fire is real, real enough to burn away the city of Caer Donn, real enough to destroy Marjorie, to sear my hand to scars that would never heal; and in the end to destroy me, cell-deep, so that even the child I fathered came forth a monstrous, nonhuman thing… that much is no fable. Somethingmust lie behind the legends. If there is any answer anywhere under the four moons, it must be known to the Keepers, or it will not be known anywhere. As I came out, I looked up at the night sky, which had cleared somewhat, and at the darkness of the Tower behind the Castle. Ashara, oldest of the Keepers on Darkover, might know the answer. But first I would see my brother buried. And I must go and tell his foster-sister, so that she could weep for him the tears I could no longer shed.
Marius was buried two days later. It was a small procession that rode to Hali; Gabriel and I, Linnell, Jeff and Andres; and, to my surprise, Lerrys Ridenow. At my questioning look he said roughly, “I was fond of the boy. Not as you might think, damn you, but he was a good lad, and he didn’t have many kinsmen who’d give him such a kind word as they’d throw to a dog. We needed him as Heir to Alton; he would have had some sense on the Council, and all the Gods know, in these days we can use some plain good sense!”