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someone who is young and skilled and above all fearless. I think you have the strength for it. Have you

the will?"

I found myself recalling the fey sense of destiny which had gripped me as I rode here. Was this thedestiny I had foreseen, to break the hold of a corrupt clan on Darfcover, to overthrow their grip at ourthroats, set Darkover in its rightful place among the equals of the Empire?

It was almost too much to grasp. I was suddenly very tired. Marjorie, still stroking my hand gently in hersmall fingers, said without looking up, "Enough, Beltran, give him time. He's weary from traveling andyou've been jumping at him till he's confused. If it's right for him, he'll decide."

She was thinking of me. Everyone else was thinking of how well I could fit into their plans.

Beltran said with a rueful, friendly smile, "Cousin, my apologies! Marjorie is right, enough for now! Afterthat long journey, you're more in need of a quiet drink and a soft bed than a lecture on Darkovan historyand politics! Well, the drink for now and the bed soon, I promise!" He called for wine and a sweetfruit-flavored cordial not unlike the shal-lan we drank in the valley. He raised his glass to me. "To ourbetter acquaintance, cousin, and to a pleasant stay among us."

I was glad to drink to that. Mariorie's eyes met mine over the rim of her glass. I wanted to take her handagain. Why : did she appeal to me so? She looked young and shy, with an endearing awkwardness, butin the classic sense, she was not beautiful. I saw Thyra sitting within the curve of Kadarin's arm, drinking

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from his cup. Among valley folk that would have proclaimed them admitted lovers. I didn't know what, if

anything, it meant here. I wished I were free to hold Marjorie like that

I turned my attention to what Beltran was saying, about Terran methods used hi the rapid building of Caer Donn, of the way hi which trained telepaths could be used for weather forecasting and control. "Every planet in the Empire would send people here to be trained by us, and pay well for the privilege."

It was all true, but I was tired, and Beltran's plans were so exciting I feared I would not sleep. Besides,my nerves were raw-edged with trying to keep my awareness of Marjorie under control. I felt I wouldrather be beaten into bleeding pulp than intrude, even marginally, on her sensitivities. But I kept

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wanting to reach out to her, test her awareness of me, see if she shared my feelings or if her kindness

was the courtesy of a kinswoman to a wearied guest....

"Beltran," I said at last, cutting off the flow of enthusiastic ideas, "there's one serious flaw in your plans. There just aren't enough telepaths. We haven't enough trained men and women even to keep all nine of the towers operating. For such a galactic plan as you're contemplating, we'd need dozens, hundreds."

"But even a latent telepath can learn matrix mechanics," he said. "And many who have inherited the gifts

never develop them. I believed the tower-trained could awaken latent faran"

I frowned. "The Alton gift is to force rapport. I learned to use it in the towers to awaken latents if theyweren't too barricaded. I can't always do it. That demands a catalyst tele-path. Which I'm not."

Thyra said sharply, "I told you so, Bob. That gene's extinct."

Something in her tone made me want to contradict her. **No, Thyra," I said, "I know of one. He's onlya boy, and untrained, but definitely a catalyst telepath. He awakened laran in a latent, even after I failed."

"Much good that does us," Beltran said in disgust. "Comyn Council has probably bound him so tight, with favors and patronage, that he'll never see beyond their will! They usually do, with telepaths. I'm surprised they haven't already bribed and bound you that way."

I thought, but did not say, that they had tried.

"No," I said, "they have not. Dani has no reason at all to love the Comyn ... and reason enough to hate."

I smiled at Marjorie and began to tell them about Danilo and the cadets.

Chapter THIRTEEN

Regis lay in the guest chamber at Edelweiss, tired to exhaustion, but unable to sleep. He had come to Edelweiss through a late-afternoon fall of snow, still too stunned and sickened to talk, or to eat thesupper Javanne had had prepared for him. His head throbbed and his eyes flickered with little dots oflight which remained even when his eyes were shut, crawling, forming odd visual traceries behind theeyelids.

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Dyan, he kept thinking. In charge of cadets, misusing power like that, and no one knew, or cared, orinterfered.

Oh, they knew, he realized. They must have known. He would never believe Dyan could have deceived

Kennard!

He remembered that curious unsatisfactory talk in the tavern with Dyan and his head throbbed harder, asif the very violence of his emotions would burst it asunder. He felt all the worse because he had, in truth,liked Dyan, had admired him and been flattered by bis attention. He had welcomed the chance to talk toa kinsman as an equal ... like a stupid, silly child! Now he knew what Dyan was trying to find out, sosubtle it was never even an invitation.

It was not the nature of Dyan's desires that troubled him so greatly. It was not considered anything soshameful to be an ombredin, a lover of men. Among boys too young for marriage, rigidly kept apart bycustom from any women except their own sisters or cousins, it was considered rather more suitable toseek companionship and even love from their friends than to consort with such women as were commonto all. It was eccentric, perhaps, in a man of Dyan's years, but certainly not shameful.

What sickened Regis was the kind and type of pressure used against Danilo, the deliberate, sadisticcruelty of it, the particularly subtle revenge Dyan had taken for the wound to his pride.

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Petty harrassment would have been cruel but understandable. But to use laran against him! To forcehimself on Danilo's mind, to torment him that way! Regis felt physically ill with disgust

Besides, he thought, still tossing restlessly, there were enough men or young lads who would havewelcomed Dyan's interest. Some, perhaps, only because Dyan was a Comyn lord, rich and able to givepresents and privileges to his friends, but others, certainly, would find Dyan a charming, pleasing andsophisticated companion. He could have had a dozen minions or lovers and no one would have thoughtof criticizing him. But some perverse cruelty made him seek the one boy in the cadets who would havenone of him. A cristo-foro.

He turned on his side, thrust a pillow over his face to shut out the light of the single candle he was tooweary to get up and extinguish, and tried to sleep. But his mind kept going back to the frightening,disturbingly sexual nightmares which had preceded the wakening of his own laran. He knew now how Dyan had pursued Danilo even in sleep, enjoying the boy's fright and shame. And he knew now theultimate corruption of power: to make another person a toy to do your will.

Was Dyan mad, then? Regis considered. No, he was very sane, to choose a poor boy, one withoutpowerful friends or patrons. He played with Dani as a cat plays with a captive bird, torturing where hecould not kill. Regis felt sick again. Pleasure in pain. Did it give Dyan that kind of pleasure to batter himblack and blue at swordplay? With the vivid tactile memory of a telepath he relived that moment when

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Dyan had run his hands over his bruised body, the deliberate sensual quality of the touch. He feltphysically used, contaminated, shamed. If Dyan had been physically present then, Regis would havestruck him and dared the consequences himself.

And Dani was a catalyst telepath. That terrible force, that loathsome compulsion, against the rarest andmost sensitive of telepaths!

Again and again, compulsively, he returned to that night in the barracks when he had tried-and failed-toreach out to Danilo and comfort him. He felt again and again the pain, the physical and mental shock ofthat wild rejection, the flood of guilt, terror, shame which had flooded him from that

brief and innocent touch on Danilo's bare shoulder. Cassilda, blessed Mother of the Comyn! Regis

thought in scalding shame, I touched him! Is it any wonder he thought me no better than Dyanl

He turned over on his back and lay staring at the vaulted ceiling, feeling his body ice over with dread. Dyan was a member of Council. They could not be so corrupt that they would know what Dyan haddone, and say nothing. But who could tell them?

The single candle near his bed wavered, flickered in and out of focus; colors looped and spun across hisvisual field and the room swelled up, receded and shrank until it seemed to lie far away, then loomenormously around him in great echoing space.

He recognized the feeling from when Lew gave him kirian, but he was not drugged now!

He clutched at the bedclothes, squeezing his eyes shut. He could still see the candleflame, a dark fireprinted inside his eyelids, the room around him lit with blazing brilliance, reversed afterimages, dark tobright and bright to dark, and a roaring in his ears like the distant roaring of a forest fire . . . ... Thefire-lines at Armida! For an instant it seemed that •he saw Lew's face again, crimson, gazing into a greatfire, ' drawn with terror and wonder, then the face of a woman, shining, ecstatic, crowned with fire,burning, burning alive in the flames ... Sharra, golden-chained Forge-Goddess.  The room was alive withthe fire and he burrowed beneath the blankets, sunk, battered, swirled. The room was dissolving aroundhim, tilting ... every thread in the smooth fine linen of the blankets seemed to cut into him, hard and rough,the .twisted fibers of blanket trying to curl and frizzle and dig ..painfully into his skin, like cutting edges. He heard someone Inoan  aloud  and  wondered  who  was  there  moaning  and .crying like that. Thevery air seemed to separate itself and come apart against his skin as if he had to sort it out into littledroplets before he could breathe. His own breath hissed and whistled and moaned as it went in and out,like searing fire, to be quenched by the separate droplets of water in bis ^ lungs....

Pain crashed through bis head. He felt his skull smashing, shattering into little splinters; Another blowsent him flying high, falling into darkness.

"Regis!" Again the crashing, reeling sickness of the blow

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and the long spin into space. The sound was only meaningless vibration but he tried to focus on it, make it mean something. "Regis!" Who was Regis? The roaring candlefiame died to a glimmer and Regis heard himself gasp aloud. Someone was standing over him, calling his name, slapping him hard and repeatedly. Suddenly, noiselessly, the room fell into focus.

"Regis, wake up! Get up and walk around, don't drift with it!"

"Javanne ..." he said, struggling fuzzily upright to catch her hand as it was descending for another blow.

"Don't, sister ..."

He was surprised at how weak and faraway his voice sounded. She gave a faint cry of relief. She wasstanding beside his bed, a white shawl slipping from her shoulders above her long nightgown. "I thoughtone of the children cried out, then heard you. Why didn't you tell me you were likely to have thresholdsickness?"

Regis blinked and dropped her hand. Even without the touch he could feel her fear. The room was stillnot quite solid around him. "Threshold sickness?" He thought about it a moment. He'd heard of it, ofcourse, born into a Comyn family: a physical and psychic upheaval of awakening tele-paths inadolescence, the inability of the brain to cope with sudden overloads of sensory and extrasensory data,resulting in perceptual distortions of sight, sound, touch. ... "I never had it before. I didn't know what itwas. Things seemed to thin out and disappear, I couldn't see properly, or feel..."

"I know. Get up now and walk around a little."

The room was still tilting around him; he clung to the bed-frame. "If I do, I'll fall...."

"And if you don't, your balance centers will start drifting out of focus again. Here," she said with a faint laugh, tossing the white shawl to him, looking courteously away as he wrapped it around his body and struggled to his feet. "Regis, did no one warn you of this when your laran wakened?"

"Didn't -who warn me? I don't think anyone knew," he said, taking a hesitant step and then another. She was right; under the concentrated effort of getting up and moving, the room settled into solidity again. He shuddered and went toward the candle. The little lights still danced and jiggled behind his eyes, but it was candle-sized again. How had it

grown to a raging forest fire out of childhood? He picked it up, was amazed to see how his hand shook. Javanne said sharply, "Don't touch the candle when your hand's not steady, you'll set something afirel Regis, you frightened me!"

"With the candle?" He set it down.

"No, the way you were moaning. I spent half a year at Neskaya when I was thirteen, I saw one of the

girls go into convulsions in crisis once."

Regis looked at his sister as if for the first time. He could sense, now, the emotion behind her cross,brisk manner, real fear, a tenderness he had never guessed. He put his arm around her shoulders andsaid, wonderingly, "Were you really afraid?" The barriers were wholly down between them and what sheheard was, Would you really care if something happened to me? She reacted to the wonderingamazement of that unspoken question with real dismay.