And then Rafe blinked and in the twinkling of an eye it was gone and he looked at Regis with intelligence in his eyes. Regis noted, with mild surprise, that his eyes too were golden, like the woman he had seen. Rafe said, “What’s the matter, why are you staring at me? What are you doing here—” He blinked again and looked round him wildly. “Marius, what happened?”
“You tell me that,” said Marius angrily. “All I know is that you wakened the whole house screaming and raving of—of—” Again the hesitation and Rafe finally, matter-of-factly, supplied the word. He said “Sharra,” and Regis was relieved, obscurely, as if a deadlock had been broken.
Marius said, “I couldn’t make you hear me; you didn’t know me.”
Rafe frowned and said, “I’m sorry for having disturbed you—in hell’s name, did you go and fetch the Hastur out of bed at this hour of the night?” He looked at Regis in apology and dismay. “I’m sorry. It must have been a bad dream, no more.”
Outside the dawn was graying into pale light. Marius said, embarrassed, “Will you honor my house, Lord Regis, and take some breakfast here? It is a poor apology for disturbing your rest—”
“It will be my pleasure, cousin,” Regis said, using the word just a trace more intimate than the formal kinsman, not quite as intimate as foster-brother. His grandfather would be very angry when he heard; but all the smiths in Zandru’s forges can’t mend a broken egg, and done was done. Marius gave orders to Andres, and Regis added, “Ask the servants to feed my Guardsman in the kitchens, will you?”
When the servants were gone, Marius said, “What happened, Rafe? Or don’t you really know?”
Rafe shook his head. “I don’t think it was a dream,” he said. “I saw my sister Thyra, and she—she turned into Sharra again. I was afraid—”
Regis demanded, “But why should it happen now, of all times, when nothing like it has happened for six years?”
Rafe said, “I’m almost afraid to find out. I thought Sharra was gone—dormant, at least here on Darkover—”
“But it isn’t here on Darkover,” Regis said, “The Altons took it offworld; perhaps to Terra. I’ve never known why—”
“Perhaps,” Rafe said, “because, here on Darkover, it could never be controlled and might do more harm—” and he was silent, but Regis, seeing the picture in his mind, remembered that the old Terran spaceport at Caer Dorm, in the mountains, had gone up in flames. “If it had been here, Kadarin might have gotten it back.”
“I didn’t know he was still alive,” said Regis.
Rafe sighed. “Yes. Though I haven’t seen either of them for years. They were—in hiding for a long time.” He seemed about to say something more, then shrugged and said, “Under ordinary circumstances, I would have been glad to know that Thyra was still alive, but now—”
With shaking fingers he fumbled at the matrix around his neck. “I was only a child when the Sharra circle was broken, and then I—I was in shock. I was ill for a long time. When I recovered, they told me Marjorie was dead, that Lew had taken the matrix offworld and would never return, and I—I found I could not use my starstone; I had been part of it, and when the link with the Sharra matrix was broken, my own starstone was—was burned out, I thought. But now I am not sure—”
He unwrapped the stone. It was, Regis thought dispassionately, a very small one, a blue jewel, faceted, flawed. He bent his eyes on it; it flamed crimson within, so clearly that even Regis and Marius could see the form of fire. He put the stone away, with fingers that wobbled as he tried to draw the strings of the little leather pouch.
“What does it mean?” he asked in a whisper.
“There’s only one thing it can mean,” Regis said. “It means that Kennard has come home. Or Lew. Or both. And that, for some reason or other, they have brought the Sharra matrix home with them.”
On the first day of Council season, Regis Hastur came early to the Crystal Chamber. He debated, for a moment, going in through the Hastur entrance—in the hallway around the Chamber, there was a private entrance for each Domain, and a small antechamber to each railed-off segment, so that the members of the Domain might meet privately for a moment before making formal appearance in Council—but then shrugged, and, pausing for a friendly word with the Guardsman at the door, went into the main entrance.
Outside it was a day of brilliant sun, and the light streamed through the prisms in the ceiling which gave the chamber its name; it was like standing at the multicolored heart of a rainbow. The Crystal Chamber was eight-sided, and spacious—at least, Regis thought, it seemed spacious now; at the height of Comyn powers it must have seemed small for all those who had Domain-right in the Comyn. Where Regis stood was a central dais, the wide double doors at the back protected by trusty Guardsmen; the other seven sides were allotted, each to one of the Domains, and each was a section divided off by wooden railings and lined with benches, boxes, and a few curtained-off enclosures so that the lords and ladies of each Domain might watch unseen or maintain their privacy until the time came fur the full Council session. One segment was empty, and had been empty since Regis, or any of his living relatives, could remember; and he remembered that his grandfather had told him once, when he was a boy, that the Domain of Aldaran had been untenanted since he, or any of his relatives, could remember. The old Seventh Domain, Aldaran, had been exiled from the Comyn for so long that no one could remember why; the reasons, if indeed there were reasons, had been lost in the Ages of Chaos. He had seen it every year since he was old enough to attend Council; empty, dusty benches and seats, a bare space on the wall where once the double-eagle banner of Aldaran had hung.
The curtains were drawn around the Alton Domain’s enclosure too. It had been empty for the last five seasons; now, at the beginning of the sixth, Regis supposed that either Lew or Kennard or both would be there, to head off the threatened action—to declare the Alton Domain vacant and place it formally in the hands of Gabriel Lanart-Hastur as Warden of the Domain. But had either of them returned? He could not believe that Kennard would return without paying at least a courtesy call on Lord Hastur, and there had been no such call. On the other hand, if Lew had returned, Regis found it unlikely that he would not have sent some word to Regis himself.
We were friends. I think Lew would have let me know.
But there had been no word, and Regis was beginning to be troubled. Perhaps Lew and Kennard had decided to let the Domain go by default. In the days that were inevitable, a feudal lordship over an enormous Domain might have no meaning. Marius was well-to-do; Kennard owned a good deal of property aside from the Great House at Armida. Perhaps, Regis thought, he was better spared that kind of feudal Wardenship of the ancient Domain, as Regis himself would as soon have been spared the changes that were certainly coming in Darkovan society; let Gabriel have the thankless task of dealing with them.
He looked around the Chamber. He could see someone stirring behind the partially closed curtains of the Ridenow enclosure; perhaps Lord Edric’s wife or any of her grown daughters. Well, there were enough Ridenow sons and daughters; they were not, apparently, cursed by the barrenness which plagued some of the older Domains. The direct line of the Aillard was extinct; a collateral line, the Lindir-Aillard family, ruled that house, with Lady Callina as formal head of the Domain; she had a younger sister Linnell, who had been another of Kennard’s fosterlings, and a brother who was one of Dyan Ardais’s circle, though Regis was not sure (and did not care) whether the boy was Dyan’s lover and favorite, or simply a hanger-on. Latterly, Merryl Lindir-Aillard had been seen more often in the company of young Prince Derik Elhalyn. On one occasion Regis’s grandfather, Danvan, Lord Hastur, had expressed some distress at the company the prince kept.