“I do not question your competence,” she said, and her voice was like molten silver. “But where your arrangements for the Domain alliances concern me, I have a legitimate right to question, and if need be, to veto. Answer what Hastur has asked you, my brother.” She used the most formal and distant mode of that word. “I cannot comment until I know what is being proposed.”
Merryl looked disconcerted. I didn’t know him; I didn’t know most of the younger Aillards, even though Callina’s younger sister Linnell was my foster-sister. Now he stood shifting nervously from foot to foot, glanced at Derik, who was grinning and gave him no help, and finally said, “I have made arrangements that the Lady Callina should consolidate a new alliance by marriage with Dom Beltran of Aldaran.”
I saw shock come over Callina’s face, but I could not keep silent. I burst out, “You people must all have gone mad! Did you say—alliance with Aldaran? Beltran of Aldaran?”
Hastur glanced repressively at me, and Derik Elhalyn said, “I see no reason against it.” He sounded defensive, very young. “The Aldarans are already allied to one major Domain by marriage, as you of all people should know, Dom Lewis. And in this day and age, with the Terrans at our very doorstep, it seems well to me that we should take this opportunity to line up their allegiance with the Comyn.”
He repeated this as a child repeats his lesson. I wondered who had schooled him in that theory. Glancing at Merryl, I decided that the answer was not far to seek.
But—ally with Aldaran? With that damned renegade clan—?
Callina said, “When before this has a Keeper been subjected to the whims of the Council? I am the head of the Aillard Domain in my own right; and not subject to Dom Merryl. I think there need be no further discussion of this—” I could almost hear her sorting through her mind for an inoffensive adjective, and she finally compromised—“this ill-advised plan. I am sorry, my prince; I refuse.”
“You—refuse?” Derik turned to stare at her. “On what grounds, lady?”
She made an impatient gesture; her veil fell back, revealing dark hair braided with gems. She said, “I have no will to marry at this time. And if I should, and when I do, I shall, no doubt, be capable of finding myself a husband who will be suitable. And I do not think I will look for him among the Aldaran Domain. I know more of that Domain than I wish to know, and I tell you, we might as well hand ourselves over here and now to the accursed Terrans than ally with that—” again the mental sorting, the visible search for a word—“with that renegade, exiled Domain.”
Dyan said, “Domna, you have been misinformed.” His voice held that exquisite, indifferent courtesy which he always had when speaking to women. “The Aldaran are no longer in the laps of the Terrans. Beltran has broken that alliance to Terra, and for that reason, if for no other, I do not think we can afford to hold aloof from Aldaran.” He turned to the Council and explained: “Alliance with Aldaran would give us more strength, and that is what we need now, to stand united against the pull of the Terran Empire. Granted, there are those among us who would turn us over to the Terrans—” His eyes moved toward the Ridenow enclosure—“but there are also those who remain loyal to our world and to the old ways. And of these, I am convinced, Beltran of Aldaran is one. Our forefathers—for reasons which seemed good to them, no doubt—cast out the Domain of Aldaran from the Comyn. But there were seven Domains; there should be seven Domains again, and this move, I am sure, would catch the imagination of the common people.”
She said, “I am a Keeper—”
He shrugged and said, “There are others. If Beltran has asked for alliance to the Aillard Domain—”
“Then I say for the Aillards that we will have none of it,” said Callina. And, unexpectedly she turned to me.
“And here sits one who can prove the truth of what I say!”
“You damned, incredible fools!” I heard my own voice, and as Hastur turned to me, there was first a stir of voices, then a mutter, then a clamor, and I realized that once again I had disrupted Council, that I had jumped head-first into an argument I really knew nothing about. But I had started and I must go on.
“The Terrans are bad enough. But what the Aldarans got us into—” I fought for control. I would not, I would not speak the name of that ravening terror, which had flared and raged in the hills, which had sent Caer Donn up in flames, which had burned away my hand and my sanity—
“You ought to be in favor of this alliance,” said Derik. “After all, if we recognize the Aldarans, there won’t be so much question about whether you are legitimate or not, will there?”
I stared at him, wondering if Derik were really this much of a fool, or whether the statement had a profundity that somehow escaped me; no one else seemed inclined to question it. It was like some nightmare, where perfectly ordinary people said the most outrageous things and they were taken for granted.
Dyan Ardais said bluntly, “There’s no question of legitimacy. Council accepted Kennard’s eldest son, and that’s that. Sit down and listen, Lew. You’ve been away a long time, and when you know what’s been happening while you were away, you may change your mind. It might not change your status, but it could change your brother’s.”
I glanced at Marius. It was certain that the recognition of Aldaran would do a great deal to alter his legitimacy or otherwise. But did Dyan honestly think that would make the rest of the Council overlook his Terran blood? Dyan went on, his rich musical voice persuasive and kind, “I think it’s your hate speaking, not your good sense. Comyn—” he said, looking around, “I think we can all agree that Dom Lewis has reason for prejudice. But it was a long time ago. Listen to what we have to say, won’t you?”
There was a general murmur of approval. I could have dealt with hostility from Dyan, but this—! Damn him! He had hinted—no, he had said right out—that I was to be pitied, a cripple with an old grudge, coming back and trying to take up the old feud where I left off! By skillfully focusing all the unspoken feelings, their pity, the old admiration and friendship for my father, he had given them a good reason to disregard what I said.
The worst of it was, I wasn’t sure he was wrong. The rebellion at Aldaran, in which I had played so disastrously wrong-headed a part, had been, like all civil wars, a symptom of something seriously wrong in the culture; not an end in itself. The Aldarans were not the only ones on Darkover who had been lured by the Terran Empire. The Ridenow brothers had almost given up pretending loyalty to the Comyn… and they were not the only ones. The Comyn, officially at least, had stood out almost alone against the lure of the Terran Empire, promising a world made easier, simpler, with Terran technology and a star-spanning alliance. I had been an easy scapegoat for both sides, with my Terran blood on the one hand and, on the other, the fact that Kennard, educated on Terra, had nevertheless turned his back on the Empire and become one of the staunchest supporters of the Comyn conservatives. Maybe all sons rebel against their fathers as a matter of course, but few can have had their personal rebellion escalated into such tragedy, or brought down such disaster on their own heads or their families’. I had been drawn into the rebellion, and my tremendous laran, trained at Arilinn, had been put to the service of Beltran’s rebellion and to… even now I flinched and could not say the name to myself. My good hand clutched at the matrix and let it go as if it burned me.
Sharra. Ravening, raging, a city in flames…