He said something like that at the graveside, where it was traditional to speak good memories of the dead; words that would transcend grief and give everyone something else to remember of the one who was buried. I remembered my father’s bitterness when my mother had not been buried here; it was almost my first memory. Elaine gave two sons to the Comyn, and yet they would not let her body rest among the children of Hastur. Now, standing by the grave of my mother’s son, who had been accepted in death though never in life, I found myself remembering my father’s dying cry, ripping through my mind; but afterward… afterward, too, I had heard his last thought, the surprised cry of joy; Elaine! Yllana… beloved! Had his dying mind seen a vision, was there that kind of mercy in death, or was there, somehow, something beyond death? I had never thought so; death was the end. Yet, though my father had never believed, either, but in his last moments he had cried out to greet someone, something, and his last emotion had been astonishment and joy. What was the truth? Marius, too, even though his death had been terribly sudden, had looked peaceful.
Perhaps, then, somewhere, in spite of the galaxy of stars that lay between, somewhere beyond time and space, Marius knew that my father’s last thought had been of him… .fight for your brother’s rights… or even that now, somewhere, he was with the mother whose life he had taken in birth…
No, this was morbid nonsense, fables to comfort the bereaved.
Yet, that cry of joy, delight…
I thought, cynically, Well, I will know when I am dead, or I will never know the difference.
Lerrys finished his short speech and stepped back. I could not bring myself to speak, save for a brief sentence or two. “My father’s last words or thoughts were of his younger son. He was greatly loved, and it is my sorrow that he never knew it.”
Linnell wore a dark cloak, thick gray, almost too heavy for her slight body. She said, in a voice thick with tears, “I never knew my own brothers; they were fostered away from me. When Marius and I were very little, before we knew we were boy and girl, or what that means, he said to me once, ‘Linnie, I’ll tell you what, you can be my brother and I’ll be your sister.’ ” Even weeping, she laughed through it.
No doubt, I thought, Marius was more a brother to her than that arrogant young scamp Merryl!
It was near noon; the red sun stood high in the sky, casting sharp shadows across the clouds which covered the surface of the Lake of Mali. Here on this shore, so legend among the Comyn said, the forefather of all the Comyn, Hastur, son of the Lord of Light, had fallen to earth, and here he had met with Cassilda the Blessed, and here she had borne the son who had fathered all of the Comyn… what was the truth of the legend? The hills rose beyond Hali, distant, shadowed, and above them a small shadow of moon, pale blue in the colored sky. And on the far shore the chapel of Hali, where rested the sacred things of the Comyn, from the days when the fullest powers of their minds were known… we were a shadow; a remnant; an echo of the powers that had been known in the Seven Domains in the old days. Once many Towers had risen over the Domains, telepaths in the relays had sped messages back and forth more quickly than the mechanical signals of the Terran Empire; the powers of mind allied to matrix had flown air-cars, brought metal to the ground from deep within the core of the planet, look deep within the body and cure disease, heal wounds, control the minds of animals and birds, look deep within the cell plasm and know whether the unborn child would be gifted with laranof a specific kind… yes, and in those days there had been wars fought with strange and terrible weapons, ranging into other dimensions, and of these weapons Sharra was one of the least… somewhere within the white gleaming walls of that chapel were there other weapons, one which could be effective against Sharra…?
I would never know. In the days of the Compact, knowledge of those weapons had been destroyed, too, and perhaps it was as well that it should be so. Who could have foreseen, in those days, that descendants of the Comyn should somehow discover the ancient talisman of Sharra, and raise that raging fire?
I looked around the shores of the Lake with a sudden shiver.
Kadarin! Kadarin had the Sharra matrix, and he would try, perhaps, to force me back within it—
In the old days at Aldaran, Kadarin and Beltran had raised dozens of fanatical believers, ready to let their own raw emotion rage forth, be drawn into the raging fires of Sharra, feeding all that raw hungry mind power into the destroying flames to be loosed on the city… could he bring such a force to Thendara, could he recapture me to loose that destroying power in my mind?… I trembled, looking at the hills, feeling that somehow I was being watched, that Kadarin lurked somewhere, waiting to seize me, force me back to the power-pole of Sharra, feedingthat unholy flame!
And Sharra will rise and destroy and burn me wholly away in ftre…all my hate, all my rage and torment…
Rafe Scott was not at the graveside. Yet he had been one of my brother’s few friends. Had Kadarin seized him too, drawn him back into Sharra? Dizziness seized me, I saw men riding, an army on the road, marching on Thendara—
Andres’s hand on my shoulder steadied me. “Easy, Lew,” he muttered. “There’s not much more. We’ll be away from here soon, and then you can rest.”
Rest be damned! With all this closing in on us, Sharra’s matrix free and in Kadarin’s hands once more, there would be no rest for me for some time.
Hoofbeats! I tensed, my hand gripping the hilt of the light ceremonial sword I had been persuaded to wear for this occasion. Kadarin with his rabble, ready to capture me and drag me into slavery to Sharra once more? But the riders came slowly to the graveside, and I saw they wore the uniform of the Castle Guard. Regis Hastur slid from his horse and came slowly to the graveside. I had wondered what had happened to him; he had been there when Marius died and the house was burned…
He stood for a moment over the grave and said quietly, “I did not know Marius well, and it is my sorrow. But once I heard him speak, in a tavern, the kind of words which we need in Council. His death is upon all our heads here; and here I promise that I will have the courage to speak the words he never had a chance to say in Council.”
He looked up expectantly, and behind Regis I saw the tall, lean figure of Dyan Ardais, in the ceremonial gray and black of his Domain. He came to the graveside, and looked at the open grave; but he did not speak, merely picked up a handful of soil and cast it quietly into the grave. Then, after a long silence, he said, “Rest well, kinsman; and may all the folly and wrong which brought you to birth rest here with you.” He turned away from the grave and said, “Lord Regis persuaded me that it was well to guard you; in these days there are enemies and Comyn should not ride unguarded. We will escort you in safety back to the Castle.”
In silence, then, I turned from my brother’s grave, and we went to our horses. As Lerrys mounted, I said quietly, “It was good of you to come, kinsman. Thank you.”
His fair face darkened and he said fiercely, “It wasn’t for you, damn you, it was for Marius!” He turned his back on me, pulling himself up, with a dancer’s agile movement, into the saddle. He wore Darkovan dress and was heavily cloaked against the fierce cold of the hills, in wool and leather, not the elegant silks and synthetics of the pleasure worlds.
I hauled myself, awkwardly, one-handed, into the saddle. Regis said from his horse, “I would have come sooner. But I felt it necessary to get leave to bring guards. I never had a chance to tell you; Beltran is on the road, and he brings what could almost be called an army. Beltran has no love for you. And if Kadarin’s at large—”