Authors: Marion Zimmer Bradley
the reclusive Priscilla might not welcome them with open arms did not occur to them
until they were almost there, and neither of them could easily back down without
appearing a fool.
After three days of steady riding, they had come to Elhalyn Castle unannounced.
Priscilla Elhalyn had not appeared very perturbed by the intrusion. After all, Mikhail
was the grandson of Alanna Elhalyn, who had been the sister of Priscilla's own father,
Stefan. A visit from a cousin was always acceptable, her attitude implied. Indeed, in
her rather vague and disordered way, she behaved almost as if she had expected them.
She was a small woman, with eyes clouded like gray agates, surrounded by her
children and few servants, pleasant enough, but hardly the adventure he had been
hoping to have.
Elhalyn Castle itself was a modest pile—not as large or impressive as Ardais—but
well-built and strong. One of the servants said it dated back to the Ages of Chaos,
when the Compact had finally ended the wars which had plagued the
planet for so long. Studying the stonework, Mikhail had
suspected the building was not that old. Still, with the muddle that passed for history
from
that
time,
he
knew
that
anything was possible. •
So much had been lost during those troubled times, so many records, and so much
knowledge. Some of the knowledge was better off lost, he knew, for they had used
matrices in ways that were unthinkable to his "mind. There had been
clingfire, a
stuff
that adhered to the skin and burned to the bone, which was a terrifying idea. And that
was not the worst. Mikhail could hardly imagine it, and was glad for Darkover that
those terrible times were far in the past.
Not that recent times had been uneventful, of course. The Sharra Rebellion had
wracked the world shortly after his birth, and the World Wreckers had tried to destroy
the entire ecology of Darkover a few years later. But, for nearly the last two decades,
things on Darkover had been quiet. There was no real need of the protection of
Guardsmen, except that as Elhalyn Regent he had a certain status, and it was
customary.
Elhalyn Castle had been in a shocking state of disrepair, and Mikhail wondered why.
The climate of Darkover was unforgiving. The winters were brutal, and all the houses
he knew were well-maintained, just to ensure the basic health of the residents during
the coldest months of the year. Drafty corridors and doors that creaked on their hinges
were a new and rather unpleasant experience. Dyan had some pungent comments to
make on the subject, but Mikhail put it down to the well-known eccentricity of the
Elhalyns.
Mikhail had studied Priscilla's five children for any hint of the documented instability
of the Elhalyn line, but they had seemed healthy and normal, despite the oddity of their
home. They were unused to strangers, and rather shy, but after a day, they seemed to
accept the two men well enough. The two girls, the youngest of the children, Miralys
and Valenta, stopped hiding behind their mother's skirts, and the boys—Alain, Vincent,
and Emun—asked questions about horses, Thendara, the Terranan, and other matters of
curiosity. The boys had admired Valient, the sire of his present horse, and Dyan's
spirited mare Roslinda, re-
marked on the clothing they wore, and generally behaved like other youngsters he had
known.
It had been rather tedious, until the night of the séance. He could still remember the
cold touch of whatever had spoken and shuddered. He was, in retrospect, very glad that
the ghost of Derik—if it had been "he—had extracted his oath never to speak of the
incident. Doing so would have cast serious doubts on his own sanity, he was sure.
But when he made that promise, he had never expected to return to the Elhalyn lands,
nor to see Priscilla and her children again. Certainly he had not anticipated becoming
Regent for the Elhalyn Domain, with orders from Regis Hastur to find one among the
three sons of Priscilla to reclaim the long vacant throne of the kings of Darkover.
There had been several times since that tumultuous meeting in the Crystal Chamber
when Mikhail had wished to refuse the Regency. That choice would have perhaps
restored his relationship with his parents, as well as relieving him of an unwanted
burden. But his sense of duty was too strong. He could not bring himself to speak the
words. If only he had not been trained to rule!
For that matter, if only his parents were not so stubborn and mistrustful of him, of Lew
Alton, and Marguerida. There was no good thinking about it! He had been trained to be
a dutiful heir to Regis Hastur, to rule, and then it had all been snatched away from him.
All he could do was his best at the task ahead of him, even if it did feel as if he had
been shuffled off. Any
leronis
could have tested the boys, and he knew it. But Regis
had insisted that Mikhail do it, and would settle for no one else.
The longer he thought about it, the more certain Mikhail was that he was missing
critical pieces of information. He had not been shuffled off, no matter how he felt
about it. He was part of the plan—an unwilling pawn in one of Regis' games. It was
infuriating! He felt trapped, both by his loyalties and by his uncle's manipulations. He
was not free to pursue his own ambitions, and he resented it more than he had realized
until this moment.
It was all very dispiriting. There was little comfort in the realization that no one, so far
as Mikhail knew, was entirely happy with the things that Regis proposed. He felt a
brief empathy for his young cousin, Dani Hastur, who should by
now have been proclaimed heir. All he had managed to get out of anyone was a cryptic
remark from Lady Linnea. "Regis is not certain of Dani yet." If Mikhail felt exiled and
trapped at the same time, how must Danilo Hastur feel?
Everything Regis had proposed, even the inclusion of the Aldarans in the Comyn
Council, was very logical. But Darkovans, Mikhail knew, were not a very logical
people. They were passionate, and when their emotions were in full cry, as it seemed
his mother's were at present, they did not listen to anything but their hearts. And, he
decided, Regis did not seem to grasp this.
Mikhail wondered what secrets his uncle was keeping, thinking a little guiltily of his
own. He had never spoken of the séance, and he had never revealed his two visits to
the Aldaran family. These were small things, and Regis had told him once that half of
statecraft was having information and knowing when to use it and when not to.
Mikhail dismissed his conflicted thoughts with a shrug. All this speculation was giving
him a headache. He knew that Regis had changed in some manner, and all he could do
was live with it. He could not quite put a name to the difference, but now he thought
about it, there was also something almost hasty in his actions, as if he had some secret
timetable he must keep to.
Enough! It was too beautiful a day for such thoughts. He could now see the looming
bulk of Elhalyn Castle against the horizon, and was relieved that Priscilla had left the
place. Halyn House was the old dower residence ten miles closer to the sea and he only
hoped it was in a better state than the moldering castle, which even from a distance
looked rundown and depressing.
But even if it wasn't any better kept, he believed he could put up with it so long as he
knew it was not going to be forever, that long before he entered his dotage he would be
free of either the Regency or the possibility of taking Regis' place once and for all.
Odd. Once he had wanted that—had longed for the thankless job that Regis had done
so ably for two decades. That was long before he met Marguerida. He let out a soft
chuckle that made Charger prick his ears. Mikhail let himself remember the lists he
had made as a youngster, of things he intended to do when he took the throne. They
had been, he suspected, both idealistic and extremely foolish.
The wind shifted a little, and the smell of the Sea of Dalereuth wafted toward him. It
was a sharp scent, full of salt and something he could not put a name to. Marguerida
would know, for she had grown up on an oceanic world after she left Darkover at the
age of five. Even with the impressions of Thetis he had gotten from her mind over the
months, Mikhail had no real sense of what it was like to live beside a rolling ocean,
full of odd creatures shaped like stars, or the leaping sea-mammals she called
delfins.
Sometimes, he knew, she longed for Thetis, for its warmth, and Mikhail wondered if
she would ever be completely happy on Darkover. He hoped she would, because he
could not be happy without her, and if she left, he could not bear it. And after her
training in the Tower was complete, she would be free to do just that—leave Darkover.
It was not a happy thought. If she chose to depart, it would create havoc and likely ruin
whatever plans Regis was hatching.
A strange croak from overhead made him look up, letting go of his morbid thoughts.
There was a large bird, some sort .of crow, but a type he had never seen before. It was
shining black, with patches of white feathers across the edges of the wings. It looked at
him with a suspicious red eye, cried again, and circled above him three times. He
flinched a little, for the bird looked dangerous with its large talons and sharp beak.
Mikhail watched the bird wheeling in the air, enjoying the perfection of its flight. He
followed it until it vanished, then urged his horse ahead. It was still several miles to
Halyn House, and if he wanted to arrive before dusk, he needed to hurry.
As he rode, Mikhail experienced a slight frisson of uneasiness that had been lurking in
the back of his mind for miles. Then he silently cursed himself for a superstitious fool.
That sea crow had been no omen, no portent of doom. He was just out of sorts from
being given a task he did not wish for and did not want.
He began to sing, his voice lifting in a rather naughty ditty he had learned from
Marguerida, a student drinking
song from her days at University. It was quite wicked, and he could hear the
Guardsmen chuckling behind him, a cheerful noise that so lightened his heart that he
nearly forgot his cares as he rode toward Halyn House.
2
It was such a beautiful day, Margaret Alton reflected, that it was a shame it was being
ruined by her headache. Sitting on a low bench in the fragrance garden at Arilinn, she
tried to use the methods she had learned during her four months in the Tower to
alleviate the pain. But although she had mastered the technique, her headache
stubbornly refused to stop pounding in her skull.
She flinched as the intensity of the pain seemed to increase, until it felt as if someone
were stabbing stilettos into her brow, just above the eyes. She could feel the pulse of
her blood, hot in her veins, and she suddenly realized this was no ordinary headache.
No, Margaret decided, this was something entirely different from the dreadful
sensation she got in her head when she remained too long within the Tower. It had
never occurred to her that being near large collections of matrices would be almost
impossible for her—even though the sight of a personal starstone made her queasy.
And nothing had prepared her for the environment of Arilinn Tower—for the enormous
energies confined behind the stone walls. Worse, no one else had realized what the
great screens were doing to her until she fell violently ill.
Her first experience had been a harrowing one, with an episode of threshold sickness
almost as terrible as the one she had suffered at Castle Ardais the previous summer.
Whenever she looked at the building, and remembered those first days in the student
dormitory, she shuddered. She could have died, she knew.
Fortunately she had not, and the problem had a fairly simple solution. Outside the
actual Tower, away from the energies of the matrices, her illness abated. She now lived
in a little cottage outside the walls. She loved it, for here
she was free of the constant chatter of her fellow students, and their hostility as well. It
was the first time she had ever lived alone, and the sense of separateness, of privacy,
soothed something within her she had not even known was painful. She only, entered
the Tower for lessons now. And those were devoted at present not so much to studying
her own
laran,
as to learning various meditative techniques that would permit her to be
in the proximity 9f the large number of matrix stones that were housed in Arilinn or
any "Tower.
The Tower was nothing like she had imagined before she came there. Margaret had
assumed the place would be a single building, like those she had glimpsed on her two
visits to the overworld a few months earlier. Instead, it was a small but bustling
community, with the Tower at its center. There were weavers who made robes