One by one Beltran’s men were coming up, laying down their Terran blasters before Lady Callina, kneeling and pronouncing the brief formula dating back to the days of King Carolin of Hali, when the Compact had been devised; that no man should bear a weapon beyond the arm’s reach of him who wielded it, so that any man who would kill must dare his own death— Callina looked cold and cross.
“Can’t we go a bit nearer, sir? I can’t see or hear ’em,” the Guardsman asked.
Regis replied, “Go, if you like; I can see well enough from here.” His voice was absentminded; he himself was down there, a few steps from Callina. He could sense her inner raging; she was only a pawn in this, and like Regis, she was at the mercy of Comyn Council, without power to rebel even as effectively as Regis could do.
Regis had protested once, long ago, that the path was carved deep for a Comyn son, a path he must walk whether he wished or no… stronger yet were the forces binding Comyn daughters. He must have thought this more strongly than he realized, for he saw Callina turn her head a little and look, puzzled, at the spot where Regis felt himself to be and, not seeing him, frown a little, but he followed her thoughts: Ashara would protect me, but her price is too high… I do not want to be her pawn…
The ceremony seemed endless; no doubt Beltran had structured it that way, so that the Comyn witnesses might witness his strength. There was a high heap of Terran weapons, blasters and nerve guns, at Callina’s feet. What in Aldones’s name, does Beltran think we are going to do with them? Hand them over to the Terrans? For all we know, he might have as many more in Aldaran itself!
Beltran has made a demonstration of strength. He hopes to impress us. Now we need some counter-demonstration, so that he need not go away thinking that he has done what we had not the power to make him do…
His eyes met the eyes of Dyan Ardais. Dyan turned, looking up at the distant spot on the wall where Regis stood. Regis did, without thinking about it, something he had never done before and did not consciously know how to do; he dropped into rapport with Dyan, sensing the man’s strength and his exasperation at the way this put Beltran into a position of power.
Strengthen me, Dyan, for what I must do! He felt Dyan’s thoughts, surprise at the sudden contact, an emotion of which Dyan was not quite consciously aware… su servo. Dom, a veis ordenes emprйzi… in the inflection with which he would have put himself at Regis’s orders, now and forever, in life and death at the disposal of a Hastur… once, on the fire-lines during his first year as an officer in the Guards, he had been sent with Dyan into the fire-lines when forest-fire raged in the Venza hills behind Thendara, and once he had looked up and found himself working at Dyan’s side, strained to the uttermost, shared effort in every nerve and muscle. It was very like being back to back, swords out, each guarding the other’s back like paxman and sworn lord… he felt Dyan’s strength backing his as he reached out blindly with his telepathic force—
GET BACK! It was a cry of warning, telepathic and not vocal, but everyone in the crowd experienced it, edged backward. The great heap of weapons began to glow, reddened, turned white-hot…
They vanished, vaporized; there was a great sickening stench for a moment, then that too was gone. Callina was staring, pale as death, at the empty blackened hole in the ground where they had been. Regis felt Dyan’s touch almost like a kinsman’s embrace; then they fell apart again…
He was alone, staring from his isolated watch-post on the wall at the empty space where the great heap of weapons had been. He heard his grandfather’s voice, seizing this opportunity as if he himself had been responsible:
“Kneel now, Beltran of Aldaran, and swear Compact to your assembled equals,” he said, using the word Comyn. Still somewhat dazed at the destruction which had overshadowed his dramatic gesture of giving up his weapons, Beltran knelt and spoke the ritual words.
“And now,” he said, coming up to Callina and bending to kiss her fingertips, “I claim my promised wife.”
She was rigid, conceding only the cold tips of her fingers, but she said, in a voice only half audible, “I will handfast myself to you tonight. I so swear.” Regis could not see her now, he was too far away, but he knew she was cold with rage, and he did not blame her at all.
And then he caught another stray thought he hardly recognized.
I do not need these weapons, for there is a better one at my command than anything the Terrans have made—
Was that Dyan? He did not recognize the touch. Nor would he recognize Beltran’s; when he had been imprisoned in Castle Aldaran he had been a boy, without laran, unwakened, and he would not have recognized Beltran’s mental “voice.”
But a cold and icy shudder went over him, as he knew just what weapon was meant. Was Beltran really mad enough to think of using—that?
And if I have power over Sharra, is it I that must face it?
He had a certain amount of power over the Form of Fire, at least when it manifested itself within a matrix. But neither Rafe nor Javanne had been fully inside Sharra. He did not think he could free Lew’s matrix as he had freed theirs. Lew had been closely sealed to Sharra… and Regis cringed away from that thought.
But he must risk it… but first he should give Rafe’s message. A brief, swift searching told him Lew was nowhere in the crowd at his feet, and he realized that something was happening to his laran for which he had not in the least been prepared: he was using it almost carelessly, without effort.
Is this, then, the Hastur Gift?
Forcibly he put that thought, that fear, aside, and went in search of Lew Alton. By the time he found him, Rafe would be there, and he sensed that Lew would not want to confront Rafe Scott unprepared.
Nor was Regis prepared for seeing Lew as he saw him when first old Andres ushered him into the Alton apartments. It did not seem, for a moment, that it was Lew at all, it did not seem that it was a person at all, just a swirling mass of forces, a presence of anger, a touch of a familiar voice.. .Kennard? But he is dead… and a swift awareness of the terrifying Form of Fire. Regis blinked and somehow managed to bring Lew’s physical presence into focus, to bring the new and terrifying dimensions of his own laran under control. What was happening to him? He never used laran like this, he rarely used it at all… but now, giving it even the slightest mental lease seemed to mean that it would fly like a hawk, free, unwilling to return to being hooded— He forced it down, forced himself to see Lew instead of simply touching him. But the touch came anyhow, and through the texture of it he recognized something he had felt when he linked with Dyan. Quite simply he found himself saying aloud, “But of course; he was your father’s cousin, and close kin to the Altons. Lew, didn’t you know that Dyan had the Alton Gift?”
Of course, this is how he could force rapport on Danilo, this is how he makes his will known and enforces it…
But this is misuse…he uses it thus, to force his will… and this is the gravest crime for one with laran—
He was never trained in its use…He was sent from the Tower…The Alton Gift can kill, and they turned him loose, untrained, not knowing his own power…
Perhaps like mine, wakening late and suddenly growing as mine has grown, like growing out of my clothes when I was a lad, I am not strong enough nor big enough to contain this monstrous thing which is the Hastur Gift…
With main force Regis shut off the flow and said shakily aloud, “Lew, can you put a damper on? I’m not—not used to this.”
Lew nodded, went quickly to a control, and after a moment Regis felt the soothing vibration, blurring the patterns. He was again alone, in control of his own mind. Exhausted, he dropped in a chair.