“With Marius dead, it seems reasonable, doesn’t it? I have no wish to see Alton heritage in Hastur hands. But there is an Alton child. Fostered in a good, loyal Domain—perhaps even in the care of Prince Derik and Linnell—that child could be trusted to bring back the honor of the Alton Domain.”
“A child of Marius? Or of Kennard?”
“I’d rather not say anything about it until arrangements have been made,” Dyan evaded, “but I give you my word of honor, the child’s an Alton, and with potential laran. Regis, you are Lew’s friend; can’t you persuade him to step down and hand over the Domain in return for an assurance that during his lifetime he’ll have Armida unquestioned? What do you think of that plan?”
It stinks to high heaven, Regis thought, but he cast about for some more diplomatic way of saying it. “Why not put it up to Lew? He’s never been ambitious, and if this child is an Alton, he might perfectly well agree to adopt him and name the youngster his Heir.”
“Lew’s too damned much of a Terran,” Dyan said. “He’s lived in the Empire for years. I wouldn’t trust him, now, to bring up a Comyn Heir.”
“Kinsman,” said Danilo, in the most formal mode; then he paused and walked restlessly to the window. Regis and Danilo were lightly in rapport, and Regis could see, through his friend’s eyes, the view of the high mountain pass above Thendara and the scattered watch-fires of Beltran’s army. Abruptly Danilo swung around and said to Dyan angrily, “You pretend to be afraid of Lew because of his Terran education and because of Sharra! Have you forgotten that Beltran, out there, was part of the Sharra rebellion too? And that’sthe man you’re trying to bring into the Comyn as full partner?”
“Beltran’s devoted himself to undoing what his father did. Kermiac was a Terran lackey; but when Beltran became Lord Aldaran, he renounced that—”
“And renounced honor, decency and the laws of hospitality,” said Danilo angrily. “You weren’t there, sir, when he last decided to take action! I saw Caer Donn burning!”
Dyan shrugged slightly. “A Terran city. What a pity he didn’t burn one or two more while he was at it! Don’t you see, Beltran can use Sharra against the Terrans, to give us the upper hand if they continue to—encroach—on our good will and our world.”
Regis and Danilo stared at him in horror. Finally Regis said, “Kinsman, I think you speak this way because you do not know much about Sharra. It cannot be tamed that way, and used as a weapon—”
“We would not have to use it,” Dyan said. “The Terrans, too, remember Caer Donn and the burning of the spaceport there. The threat would be enough.”
Why should we need such a threat against the Terrans? We live in the same world! We cannot destroy them without destroying ourselves!
Dyan asked angrily, “Have you too, Regis, been seduced by the Empire? I never thought to see the day when a Hastur would speak treason!”
“I think what you say is worse than treason, Dyan,” Regis said, struggling for calm. “I cannot believe that you would do what you censured Lew for doing—make compromise with Beltran to bring back all those old terrors out of the Ages of Chaos! I know Beltran. You do not.”
“Don’t I?” asked Dyan, his eyes glinting strangely.
“If you do, and you still wish this alliance—”
“Look here,” said Dyan harshly, interrupting him, “what we face now is the very survival of the Comyn—you know that. We need a strong Comyn, firmly allied against those who would hand us over to the Terrans. The Ridenow have already gone over—or haven’t you heard Lerrys’s favorite speech? Write off the Ridenow. Write off Lew—a cripple, half Terran, with nothing to lose! Write off the Elhalyn—” and as Danilo began a formal protest he gestured him imperatively to silence. “If you don’t know that Derik’s a halfwit, you’re the only one in Council who doesn’t. Forget about the Aillard— DomnaCallina is a sheltered woman, a Keeper, a Tower-dweller; she can’t do much, but I do have some influence, praise to Aldones, on DomMerryl.” His grin was wolfish. “What does that leave? The three of us in this room, Merryl, and your grandfather—who’s over a hundred, and although he’s still sharp-witted enough, he can’t go on forever! In the name of all of Zandru’s frozen hells, Regis, need I say anything more?”
And this is the burden of being a Hastur, Regis thought wearily. This is only the beginning. More and more they will come to me for such decisions.
“You think that means we must make an alliance with Aldaran, even at the cost of betraying the legitimate Heads of two Domains?” he asked.
“Two Domains? Lew would have been exiled six years ago, and it seems to me we are being generous with him,” Dyan said.
“And DomnaCallina? Is a Keeper nothing more than a woman to be married off for a political alliance?”
“If she wished to remain a Keeper,” said Dyan savagely, “she should have remained within her Tower and refrained from trying to meddle in Council affairs! Tell me, Regis, will you stand with me in Council, or are you going to side with the Ridenow and hand us over to the Terrans without making a fight for Darkover?”
Regis bent his head. Put starkly like that, it seemed to give him no choice. Dyan had neatly mousetrapped him into seeming to agree, and either way, he betrayed someone. Lew was his sworn friend from childhood. Painfully he remembered the years he had spent at Armida, running about like a puppy at Lew’s heels, wearing his outgrown clothes, riding, hawking, fighting at his side in the fire-lines when the Kilghard Hills went up in flame; remembered a tie even stronger, even older than that with Danilo; the first fierce loyalty of his life. Lew, his sworn friend and foster-brother.
Maybe this was best after all. Lew had said, again and again, that he wants no power in Comyn. Certainly Regis could not allow Dyan to believe that he would side against the Hasturs, and for the Terrans. Regis swallowed hard, trying to weigh loyalties. For all of Dyan’s harshness, he knew that the older man was a shrewd judge of political reality. The thought of Darkover and the Domains in the hands of the Terrans, one more colony in a star-spanning Empire, came hard. But there seemed no middle way.
“I will never compromise with Sharra,” he said wearily. “I draw the line there.”
“If you stand firmly with me,” said Dyan, “we will never need to use it. If we take a firm line, the threat is enough—”
“I don’t believe that,” said Danilo. “Sharra—” he stopped and Regis knew Danilo was seeing what he saw, the monstrous form of fire, blanking every matrix in the vicinity, drawing power even from those who hated it… death, destruction, burning!
Dyan shook his head. “You were children then, both of you, and you had a scare. The Sharra matrix is no more than a weapon— a mighty weapon. But nothing worse. Surely—” he grinned his wolfish grin—“you do not believe that it is a God from some other dimension, or the old legends that Hastur bound Sharra in chains and that she should be loosed only at the end of the world—or maybe you do” Dyan grinned again, “and maybe, Regis, you will have to be the Hastur to bind her this time!”
He is making fun of me, Regis knew it, and yet a terrifying chill made every hair on his body stand again on end.
Hastur the God, father and forefather of all the Hastur-kin, bound Sharra in chains… and I am Hastur. Is this my task?
Shaking his head to clear it, he reached out to pour himself another cup of jaco, and sipped it slowly, hardly tasting the bitter-chocolate fragrance. He told himself angrily not to be superstitious. The Sharra matrix was a matrix, a mechanical means of amplifying psychic powers; it had been made by human minds and hands, and by other human minds and hands it could be contained and made harmless. In Beltran’s hands—and Kadarin’s—it would be a fearful weapon, but then, there was no reason Beltran should be allowed to use it. Kadarin was human; and both Comyn and Terran had put a price on his head. Surely it was not as bad as he feared.