The Alton Gift (8 page)

Danilo broke off, his telepathic senses alert. There was another person nearby.

Domenic launched himself from his chair, crossed to the door in two strides, and jerked it open, revealing a beautiful and disconsolate young woman. Danilo recognized Marguerida's fosterling, though he had seen very little of her in the past years. She wore a mismatched orange skirt and lace-trimmed pink velvet jacket, as if she had thrown on the nearest garments to hand.

"Alanna!" Domenic cried.

With a cry, the girl threw herself into Domenic's arms. Danilo said, "I think you'd better bring her inside."

Within a short time, Alanna was seated in one of the leather armchairs, and a second breakfast, with an extra carafe of
jaco
, had been sent for. Domenic perched beside her on a footstool, chafing her hands between his. She looked pale except for twin spots of hectic color on her cheeks. Her hair curled in damp, unruly tendrils about her face. She had not yet stopped trembling.

"I know it was wrong to follow you," she said, between hiccoughs. "I couldn't help myself."

The girl's emotions, like an invisible turbulence, raked Danilo's nerves. Their gazes locked for a heartbeat as his mind touched hers. In that moment, Danilo saw her not as a gently reared
damisela
but as a creature of ice-pale fire. Strands of light, like colorless flames, flowed from her head and hands. She vibrated with their surging currents, wrapped in a confusion of light and motion—

With a sob, Alanna buried her face in her hands. "Whatever he's doing,
make it stop
!"

"
Dom
Danilo has done nothing to you, sweetheart—" Domenic said.

"He's in my mind, I tell you! He's putting things there!"

The girl swayed in her chair. Danilo caught her in his arms before she fell over. Her hands brushed his, her skin chill and damp. The physical contact intensified the telepathic rapport.

He stood in the middle of a whirlwind, not of ordinary air, but of light and energy. Images overlapped, like reflections from a ripple-touched pool.

… he saw himself, holding an unconscious girl in his arms; he saw Domenic do the same…

… he saw the room empty; he saw himself staring into a cold hearth, a husk of grief, holding a dagger to his chest…

… he saw Lew Alton burst into the room, the fires of Sharra burning behind his eyes…

With a soft cry, Alanna sagged in his arms, and the visions disappeared, leaving only a deep shaking in the marrow of his bones. With Domenic's help, he eased the girl back into the chair.

A tap on the door announced the arrival of more food. Alanna stirred at the entrance of the servants, and she devoured three fruit-laced spiral buns as if she hadn't eaten in a tenday.

"Zandru's Seven Frozen Hells, Alanna, what
was
that?" Domenic asked, his expression one of astonishment.

"You saw it, too?" Alanna whimpered.

"I think we both did, you were sending telepathic images so strongly," Domenic said.

Alanna looked as if she were about to burst into tears. "What is wrong with me? Am I going mad?"

"Hardly that," Danilo said, trying to interject a note of rational calm

into the conversation, "although it can seem so if you don't understand what's happening to you. How long you have had these visions?"

Alanna sniffed and rubbed her nose with one delicate hand. "Visions? They seem more like streams in a river. Each one takes me to a slightly different time or place. They started around the time of Grandmother Javanne's funeral."

She turned tear-wet eyes toward Domenic. "What is happening to me?"

The boy took her into his arms in a way no man but her promised husband should do. "It's all right, my darling."

"No," Alanna wailed, stomping one foot. "It's
not
all right! It's horrible and I want it to stop!"

"It's most certainly
laran"
Danilo said, although he had never heard of such a Gift. The Aldarans were said to possess precognition, but as far as he knew, Alanna had no Aldaran blood. Moreover, the girl was well past the age at which psychic talents usually manifested themselves.

"Auntie Liriel tested me when I turned twelve and said I had plenty of
laran
potential," Alanna said, frowning. "For a time, I could move small objects and start fires. Then Auntie Marguerida made me go to Arilinn. I hated it there,
hated it
! Nothing but rules and regulations and voices echoing in my head! After
Dom
Regis died, I refused to go back. If they'd made me, I would have run away rather than spend my life shut up in that stuffy old Tower, with everyone nagging me to control myself."

"I spent almost three years in a Tower, and it's not so bad," Domenic said.

Alanna shook her head, sending ripples through her tangled coppery curls. "I don't want to talk about it! All I want is to make this thing in my head stop!"

Leaping to her feet, Alanna snatched up the mug, still half-full of
jaco
, and drew back her arm to hurl it at the opposite wall.

Danilo caught her arm, deftly removed the mug from her grasp, and set it down again. "I think your energies would be far better served,
damisela
, by learning to master your visions. For one thing, it would be far easier on the crockery."

"If you're going to send me back to Arilinn, you can forget it!" Alanna snapped.

"That's precisely what I do advise," Danilo said firmly. "An untrained telepath is a danger to herself and everyone around her."

"I won't go!" Alanna shrieked. "I won't, won't, won't!" Her voice grew in loudness with each repetition. Her face turned red and tears wet her cheeks. Her delicate hands curled into fists.

Gently, Domenic took her in his arms and, surprisingly, she calmed almost immediately. He stroked her hair, murmuring, "It's all right, no one is going to force you."

"What are we going to do?" she asked, clinging to him.

"We'll have to find someone else to teach you," Domenic said.

"
You
could do it." Sniffing, she raised tear-bright eyes to his in an adoring expression.

"No, he
cannot."
Danilo said. A girl this willful, with
laran
this strong, needed a teacher who could not be intimidated or manipulated. He wished Lady Linnea were still in Thendara so that he might ask her advice. Perhaps in a less formal setting than a Tower, she might give Alanna the guidance the girl so desperately needed.

Alanna lifted her chin and smoothed her rumpled skirts. "Then I shall simply treat this as any other annoyance beneath the notice of a Comynara. It's like threshold sickness, after all, and that went away on its own."

"
Damisela
, you are proposing a very foolish thing," Danilo said sternly. "Your visions will not go away on their own. Only a Keeper trained in the old ways could safely suppress them, and I am not sure that is ever a good idea. It is likely they will get progressively worse unless you learn to control your Gift."

"You're only saying that because you hate me! You want to get rid of me!" she flung back at him.

Danilo glared at the distraught young woman, aware that he felt very little sympathy for her. As a City Guard and later as paxman and bodyguard to Regis, he had handled drunks and thieves, assassins and kidnappers. He was no stranger to physical violence. But young women in the throes of temper tantrums were another matter entirely. He wanted to grab the girl and shake some sense into her, but that would only in-

tensify her resistance. As it was, she distrusted him so much at the moment that she might well refuse anything he suggested, no matter how sensible.

"Sweetheart, I agree with
Dom
Danilo," Domenic said, looking uncomfortable. "I don't think it's a good idea to ignore your visions. We both saw how they distress you. Surely, the
leroni
at Arilinn have the skills to help you."

"As long
as you
are near me, I shall be well." Alanna slipped her hand into Domenic's. Her voice softened and her eyes gleamed as she smiled up at him. Danilo sensed the spark of physical passion between them.

"Truly, I shall," she murmured. "Promise me you will forget all about my outburst."

As Domenic reassured her, Danilo wished the boy had not given in so easily. Alanna was an extraordinarily desirable young woman. Even though Danilo had never been attracted to women, not since he had given his heart to Regis, he understood the power of sexual attraction. From the way Domenic gazed at her, he was thoroughly enthralled.

It is not good for one person to have such influence over another
Danilo did not like to think what might happen if such a person, with so little self-control, felt rejected. He knew all too well from his own experience how easily passion, spurned, could turn into revenge.

"Does Marguerida know about your relationship?" Danilo asked. "Does Mikhail?"

Domenic shifted, clearly embarrassed. "No, we have taken care never to appear together before my parents, lest we give ourselves away telepathically. They must not find out until we are ready to tell them. Until then, will you keep our secret?"

"It is not mine to give away," Danilo shrugged.

Alanna had now regained her composure. Danilo sensed her Gift, like an interweaving of colorless light, quiescent but ready to flare up again. It was a pity she was so opposed to training at a Tower, for she desperately needed the discipline.

A generation ago, Danilo thought, Alanna would have been packed off to a husband and babies without a thought. She was a respectable, marriageable young woman, and there was no question about her
laran
.

But a man in Domenic's position needed more—a wife to stand by his side, not sit at his feet.

As Linnea was to Regis. As Marguerida is to Mikhail.

Domenic loved Alanna, and in the warmth of that love, she seemed to rise above her childish ill temper. Perhaps over time she would also grow to become the woman Domenic so clearly wanted her to be.

On the day of the opening session of the Comyn Council, Lew escorted Marguerida through the wide double doors that formed the main entrance to the Crystal Chamber. The Guardsmen on either side of the doors stood at strict attention. One of them looked vaguely familiar; perhaps Lew had known his father. Once, Lew would have stopped for a friendly word, a custom from his own time as a Guards officer. During his years off-planet, however, he'd become a stranger.

Sunlight streamed through the prisms set in the Chamber ceiling. Lew was struck, as he had been many times before, by the sensation of moving through the heart of a rainbow. The Chamber's eight sides included one wall in which were set the carved wooden doors through which Lew and Marguerida had come, and seven sections, one for each Domain. Railings separated each area with its benches and curtained-off enclosures. Banners in the colors of each Domain hung on the walls: Elhalyn, Hastur, Ardais, Aillard, Alton, and Ridenow. The double-eagle banner marked the Seventh Domain. Aldaran had been exiled from the Comyn, but now was reunited with the others.

In his mind, Lew remembered standing in this very Chamber so many years ago, waiting for the assembled Comyn to pass judgment on

his fitness to be named his father's heir. His nerves thrummed with the residue of all the terrible things that had happened here, lives broken and then given back, marriages decided, feuds declared and ended.

The past is too much with me. My father, Sharra
…
gods help me, Marjorie dying! The Battle of Old North Road
…
Will I ever be free of them
?

Lew forced his attention to the present. Dani Hastur was already here, representing the Elhalyn clan of his wife. He stood talking with some of the Aldaran folk, looking friendly and relaxed, apparently enjoying himself. About ten years younger than Marguerida, Dani was a pleasant-looking man. He lacked the intense, charismatic beauty that often characterized the Hastur men, but was calm and easygoing in his manner. Unlike Regis, who had been raised by an irascible grandfather, Dani looked out at the world from the security of a loving family. Regis and Linnea had done their best to shield him from the tyranny of his heritage, and if he had chosen a lesser place in the world, he had carved out a niche of sunshine within his father's shadow.

Lew glanced around for the man who was Dani's namesake, his father's paxman and dearest friend. Danilo Syrtis rarely attended such functions any more, yet there he was, in earnest conversation with Kennard-Dyan Ardais, perhaps discussing which of Kennard-Dyan's many illegitimate offspring should be named Heir to the Ardais Domain. Lew reflected that a
nedestro
heir would not necessarily be a bad thing, for the Comyn had grown too few, too inbred in the last few generations.

A heavy, thronelike chair had been set up for Mikhail in the Hastur section, with another beside it for Marguerida. As always, Donal Alar stood at Mikhail's elbow. Mikhail wore the Hastur colors, blue and silver, his jacket trimmed with white fur, and today he looked regal enough to be King. His hair, silver threaded through pale gold, shone like a natural crown. When Regis had formally designated Mikhail as his heir, Mikhail had legally become a Hastur, entitled to sit under the fir-tree banner. Since becoming Regent, Mikhail had worn the Hastur colors of blue and silver at Council functions as an emblem of his authority.

Lew escorted his daughter to her seat and greeted his son-in-law. Shortly, more men and women arrived, arranging themselves under the banners of their respective Domains. Istvana Ridenow, who was the

Keeper of Neskaya Tower as well as Marguerida's dear friend, took a seat in her family's section. Istvana was also kinswoman to Lew's second wife, Marguerida's much-mourned stepmother, Diotima Ridenow The diminutive
leronis
had lost none of her aura of enormous authority with age. Her gray eyes were still clear and steady, although the passing years had bowed her narrow shoulders and added new lines around her mouth.

In these days, the entire assembly filled only a fraction of the available space. At the height of the Comyn powers, however, the Chamber must have been small for all who could claim Domain-right. Then, everyone present was Gifted with
laran
. By tradition, telepathic dampers were still placed about the Chamber at strategic intervals. Before the Council began its business, they would be set and adjusted so no trick of
laran
could be used to sway other men's minds. At one time, the Altons were so feared for their Gift of forced rapport that one of the supposedly random dampers was always placed directly above their enclosure. Although he understood the rationale, Lew did not look forward to feeling half-blind and half-deaf.

The official Ridenow contingent arrived to a flurry of interest, entering not by their private passage but through the main doors. Cisco Ridenow, as Acting Warden of his Domain, preceded his father. He looked fit, a strongly built man with the flaxen hair and distinctively shaped eyes of his family, wearing his uniform of City Guards Captain.

Francisco Ridenow strode into the chamber as if it belonged to him. He was a tall man, some years older than Mikhail, his dark-red hair shot with gray, his once-handsome features marked with lines that suggested pain and disappointment rather than joy. He paused in the center of the room, his eyes taking in the assembly. A fire burned in him, igniting his every movement. He wore a close-fitting doublet and breeches in the Ridenow colors of green trimmed with gold, with none of the frills so popular that season. Only a faint hesitation, an almost imperceptible stiffness in one leg, remained from the wound he had taken during his unsuccessful attack upon Mikhail. From all appearances, the assault might never have taken place.

Francisco had always been charming and ambitious, good-looking as a young man. For a time, he paid court to Marguerida, but her heart had already been given to Mikhail, and his to her. To this day, Lew

could not say how deeply Marguerida's rejection had embittered Francisco. Disappointed hopes, thwarted aspirations, jealousy, resentments, all had festered within him.

As Francisco approached, Marguerida laid one hand on her husband's arm. Francisco bowed to them, a fraction less deep than true courtesy required but not enough to constitute an outright insult, and then took his place behind his son. From the curtained back of the enclosure, a slender young woman with red-gold hair slipped onto one of the ladies' benches.

"He's up to something, I can tell." Marguerida bent close to her husband. "Be careful,
cario
?'

"My love, all will be well," Mikhail said. "See, there is his daughter, sitting beside Cisco. Surely, he would not risk her safety by any rash action."

Lew made a few inconsequential comments, excused himself, and went to his own place under the Alton banner beside the empty chair designated for the senior Gabriel. A padded chair had been placed just inside the railing. Marguerida must have arranged it. How like her, to consider an old man's comfort. The younger Gabriel came in a few minutes later. Gabriel looked much the same as he always did, a sturdy man, swarthy instead of fair like his brother Mikhail. Clearly, the challenges of running a huge estate like Armida agreed with him, or perhaps it was a happy marriage to a widow with two half-grown sons. Gabriel had joked that in adopting her children, he was making up for lost time. The midwives had determined that their first child, a daughter, would arrive in the fall.

A page slipped in through the back of the Alton enclosure and offered cups of watered wine. Gabriel took one, but Lew waved his away. He had not touched alcohol since his tenday-long binge after the Battle of Old North Road, a desperate attempt to forget what he had done to protect Darkover.

The Council meeting opened with the traditional ceremonies. Mikhail, as Regent of the Domains and Warden of Hastur, presided with his usual easy grace. In the past, as Lew well knew, the roll call had been the occasion for a challenge, especially when the seat of a Domain was vacant. It was not unheard-of for another claimant to come forward. If Francisco were to challenge his son for Ridenow, now would be the time.

The roll proceeded, beginning with Elhalyn as the highest-ranking Domain. Dani Hastur stood in response, naming those members of his family who were also present, his wife, Miralys Elhalyn, and their son, Gareth. Hastur was next, with Mikhail himself answering and presenting Domenic. Domenic had already been confirmed as Heir, but he had not attended a Council meeting since. Heads turned as he stepped forward and bowed respectfully. A buzz swept through the ladies present, and Lew imagined their whispers. The boy was attractive enough, 'and with his rank and proven
laran
, he would be a splendid catch for one of their daughters.

Lew waited, watchful for any move on Francisco's part. The Ride-now lord sat quietly, following the proceedings with every appearance of courteous interest. When Mikhail called, "Ridenow," Cisco rose and bowed.

"
Vai domyn, Dom
Mikhail, I answer as Warden of Ridenow in place of my father, who is proscribed from serving as the Head of his Domain at this time. However, he is with us today, with your permission, and I ask that he be allowed to sit among us, according to the ancient traditions of Domain-right."

"
Dom
Cisco, your father is welcome in this Council," Mikhail said. "
Dom
Francisco, old quarrels have divided us for too long. Even as the Domain of Aldaran, so long banished from this chamber, now sits here as a valued and equal member, so do I hope you will once again find a place among us."

It was, Lew thought, a gracious speech, if foolhardy, giving Francisco an opening. When the Ridenow lord stepped forward, a murmur rippled through the assembly.

"I am sensible of the honor of your welcome to me,
Dom
Mikhail, both for yourself and in the name of the Comyn," Francisco said. "Since the days of our ancestors, we have met in this fashion, resolving our differences and working together for the benefit of all. It is said that even in the Ages of Chaos, before my kinsman Varzil the Good instituted the Compact, the great lords of the Comyn set aside their quarrels when they came together in Council. We can do no less, we who live in these times of peace."

Mikhail inclined his head graciously. "We welcome your part in it and a renewed fellowship in the future."

Francisco bowed again and sat down. Lew relaxed a fraction. Perhaps Mikhail had been right and Francisco was now prepared to make a new and honorable place for himself. His years of exile might well have granted him the time to reflect, for a better man to emerge.

During this exchange, Cisco had remained standing. "
Vat domyn"
he said, "I have the additional honor of presenting to you my sister, who has now come of age.
Damisela
Sibelle Francesca Ridenow."

The girl with the red-gold hair came forward with her face demurely lowered as her brother began speaking. She halted just inside the railing and curtsied deeply. Lew had thought her pretty before, almost as striking as Alanna Alar. As she raised her face, the multihued pastel light bathed her for a single glowing moment before she retreated into shadow.

In the old days, as well as within Lew's own memory, feuds had been settled by marriage. He noticed the way more than one lord glanced from the Ridenow girl to Domenic.

A perfect solution to this lingering strife.

Whatever else he might be, Francisco was no fool.

The Council approved Mikhail's agenda for the season's business with only a few changes. The session ended at last, and the telepathic dampers were turned off. Lew felt a surge of relief at the return of his normal
laran. A
few Comyn rose, preparing to make their exits, but most turned amiably to their neighbors, discussing the social events to come or other everyday matters. Given the distances between Domains and the difficulty of travel in any but the best weather, most had not seen each other since last summer. Gossip and dancing, the latest fashions and amusements, a whirl of concerts and parties, a betrothal or two, perhaps even a breath of scandal, all these commanded as much interest as the official events.

When Lew told Marguerida of his plan to pay a courtesy visit to Francisco Ridenow, he did not expect her approval. He broached the subject to her and Mikhail that evening in the little family parlor of the Alton quarters. After dinner, Domenic had excused himself on business of his own, leaving the older adults to linger around the fireplace over their
shallan
.

"Father, you cannot be serious!" Marguerida set her cup forcefully on the table. The honey-pale liqueur splashed over the rim. She dabbed at the spot with her napkin, then got restlessly to her feet.

Dear child, please calm down
, he said telepathically.
At least't stop pacing
.

I am
calm
. Marguerida sat down again.
It is you who are out of your mind
.

"Francisco has no reason to harm me—" Lew began.

"Except to get back at Mikhail. Or me."

"—and I have every reason to be courteous to him," Lew went on, ignoring her comment. "He was, after all, kin to Dio."

Mikhail looked thoughtful. "If we are to give him a chance to reestablish himself in Comyn society, then an overture must be made. With today's Council, we have taken the first step toward resolving this issue, but we cannot expect an instant reconciliation. If Lew is willing to undertake it, I think the effort might prove fruitful."