She must have been an ordinary woman once; at least as ordinary as any of the Comyn could be said to be ordinary; and not immortal, only long-lived as some of the Hasturs were long-lived. There was chieri blood mixed with the blood of the Domains. Regis knew little of the chieri, but they were said to be immortal and beautiful, still dwelling somewhere in a remote valley where humankind never came. But his own grandfather showed signs of being one of those Hasturs whose reign could span generations …it was a lucky thing for the Comyn, that Danvan Hastur had been there to reign as Regent during these troubled years… Regis found his thoughts sliding into unexpected channels, as if some other mind had briefly touched his own; he started, blinked as if he had fallen asleep on his feet for a moment; his skin crawled, and something touched him— Regis felt a faint nausea deep in his body. A shadow had fallen across the doorway and Callina Aillard was standing there.
He had not seen her come. Lord of Light! Regis swore to himself, sweating; had he stood there, sound asleep on his feet, an idiot’s grin on his face, his clothing disarranged or worse? He felt exposed, desperately uncomfortable; Callina was a Keeper, and uncanny. He managed to get out a formal, “Su serva, Domna…”
She was not now wearing the formal crimson robes she had worn in the Crystal Chamber, the traditional garb which marked out a Keeper as apart, untouchable, sacrosanct. Instead she had on a long, fleecy gown of blue wool, close-cut, high-necked. It was girdled with a copper belt, squared plaques of the precious metal, a large blue semi-precious stone at the center of each plaque; and her hair, coiled low on her neck, was caught into a priceless clasp of copper filigree.
“Come through here, and then we can talk if you wish. Hush; do not disturb the relays.” Her voice was so low it barely stirred the air between them, and Regis followed on tiptoe, as if a normal step would be like a shout. They passed through a large silent chamber, bare, with relay screens staring blank and glassy blue, and other things which Regis did not recognize; before one of the screens a young girl was curled up on a soft seat. Her face had the strange, not-quite-present look of a telepath whose mind was fixed in the relays communicating with other Towers, other telepaths. Regis did not know the girl and Callina of course did not notice her in any way; in fact, only her body was there in the room with them at all.
Callina opened a noiseless door at the far end of the room, and they went through into a small, comfortable private room, with low divans and chairs, and a high window with colored glass, throwing prism lights across the room; but it was dark outside, and if it had not been high summer Regis would have thought it might be snowing. Callina shut the door soundlessly behind them, gestured him to a seat and curled up in one of them herself, tucking her feet under her, and drawing the hem of the blue gown over them. She said in her stilled voice, “Well, Regis, did Old Hastur send you to me to ask if I’d go through the marriage ceremony with Beltran, just to save the Council some embarrassment?”
Regis felt his face burning; had she read his mind while he stood there, asleep on his feet like a gaby? He said truthfully, “No, he didn’t, though he did mention it to me at dinner last night. I don’t think he would have the arrogance actually to ask it, Lady Callina.”
Callina said, sighing, “Derik is an accursed fool. And I had no idea what that foolish brother of mine was doing behind my back, or that Derik was stupid enough to listen to him. Linnell loves Derik; it would break her heart to separate them now. How she can care for such a fool—!” Callina shook her head in exasperation. “Merryl’s never reconciled himself to being born an Aillard, and subject to the female Head of the Domain. And I doubt he ever will.”
“Grandfather did suggest that you might go through the ceremony—no more than that—as a matter of form,” Regis said.
“It might be easier than telling Beltran what he otherwise must say to him,” Callina said, “that this marriage was contrived by a young man greedy for power and a prince too dull to see how he’s being manipulated.”
“Don’t forget,” Regis said dryly, “a Regent too lazy or forgetful to keep a strong hand over his not-too-intelligent princeling.”
“Do you really think it was only laziness or forgetfulness?” Callina asked, and Regis said, “I don’t like to think my grandfather would have plotted against the Head of a Domain—”
Then he remembered a conversation he had had with Danilo three years ago, as fresh as today: so Domain after Domain falls into Hastur hands; the Elhalyn is already under Hastur Regency, then the Aillard with Derik married to Linnell, Regis thought, all the easier if Callina was married off and exiled in distant Aldaran. And he had watched his grandfather’s machinations against the Altons.
“No, he couldn’t plot it,” Callina said, and a faint smile stirred her lips, “but he could sit back while Merryl and that fool of a Derik create such a situation that I must fall into place or seriously embarrass the Comyn.”
“Callina, even Hastur cannot marry off the Head of a Domain without her own consent. And you are Keeper for Ashara; what will she say to that?”
“Ashara…” Callina was silent for a moment, as if the very sound of the name stirred unease in her calm face. She looked troubled. “I seldom see Ashara. She spends much of her time in meditation. I could hold all her power in the Council, but I am afraid—” she stopped herself in mid-sentence. “You are not Tower-trained, Regis?”
He shook his head. “I had enough training so that I could manage my Gift without becoming ill, but I’m not that powerful a telepath, and Grandfather needed me in Thendara, he said.”
“I think you are more of a telepath than you believe, kinsman,” Callina said, with a skeptical look.
The quiet, assured statement somehow made him uneasy; he frowned, ready to protest. “I’m useless in the relays, and they couldn’t teach me much about monitoring—”
“That may be,” she said. “In the Towers we test only for those gifts which are useful to their functions; monitoring, the skill to stay in rapport with a matrix screen for mining and manipulating power— in this day and age, that seems the only kind of laran the Towers find useful. But you are finding out that there is more to your laran than you believed—is it not so, cousin?”
Regis flinched as if she had put her fingers directly on a bruise he did not know he had.
“You had better tell me about it,” she said, “I saw how you had picked up the presence of Sharra, in Council. Let me see your matrix, Regis.”
Apprehensively, Regis touched the small velvet bag, undid the strings, tilted the small blue crystal into his palm. It lay there blue and placid, small distant lights glimmering inside the stone; no sign of fire, no sign of the ravening Form of Fire…
“It’s gone!” he said in surprise.
“And you expected it to be there,” Callina said. “Really, I think you had better tell me everything about it.”
Regis was still staring at his matrix in disbelief. After a moment he managed to blurt out something about it; how Javanne had been trapped by the image, how he had, without thinking about it, freed her mind from the matrix.
“It was like—I watched her, once, unpicking a design that had gone wrong in her tapestry—I think it must have felt like that, though I don’t know how to do tapestry—”