Ellemir had spoken more truly than she knew: It was ill-luck for a sister to sing that song in a brother’s hearing. But, looking at the women, Damon thought that like the sister in the old ballad, who had condemned the brotherslayer to outlawry, they would not shrink from the sentence.
It was only a few steps into another part of the suite, but to Damon it seemed a long journey, across a gulf of misery, before they stood before Dom Esteban, who looked at them in bewilderment.
“What means this? Why are you all so solemn? Callista, what is wrong with you, chiya? Elli, have you been crying?”
“Father.” said Callista, white as death, “where is Valdir? And is Dezi near?”
“They are together, I hope. I know you have a grudge against him, Damon,” he said, “but after all, the lad has right on his side. I should have done years ago what I propose to do now. He is not old enough to be regent of the Domain, of course, or Valdir’s guardian, the idea is preposterous, but once acknowledged he will see reason. And then he will be such a brother to Valdir as he was to my poor Domenic.”
“Father,” Ellemir said in a low voice, “that is what we fear.”
He turned to her in anger. “I thought you, at least, would show a sister’s forebearance, Ellemir!” Then he met the eyes of Damon and Andrew, fixed steadily on him. He looked from one to the other and back again, in growing distress and annoyance.
“How dare you!” Then, impatiently, he reached out for contact, read directly from them what they knew. Damon felt the knowledge sink into the old man’s mind in one great surge of pain. It was like death, a blinding moment of physical agony. He felt the old man’s last thought: My heart, my heart is surely breaking. I thought that was only an idle word, but I feel it there, before he slipped into merciful unconsciousness. Andrew, moving swiftly, caught the limp body in his arms as he pitched out of his wheeled chair.
Too shocked to think clearly, he laid him on his bed. Damon was still paralyzed with the backlash of the Alton lord’s pain.
“I think he’s dead,” Andrew said, shocked, but Callista came and felt his pulse, laid her ear briefly against his chest. “No, the heart still beats. Quickly, Ellemir! Run and fetch Ferrika, she is nearest, but one of you men must go down to the Guard Hall and search for Master Nicol.”
She waited beside her father, remembering that Ferrika had warned her about his weakening heart. When the woman came, she confirmed Callista’s fear.
“Something has gone wrong in the heart, Callista.” In her sympathy she forgot the formal “my lady,” remembering that they had played together as children. “He has had too many shocks to endure.” She brought stimulant drugs and when Master Nicol came, between them they managed to get a dose into him.
“It’s touch and go,” the hospital officer warned. “He might die at any moment, or linger like this till Midsummer. Has he had a shock? With respect, Lord Damon, he should have been guarded from the slightest stress or bad news.”
Damon felt like demanding how do you guarded a telepath against evil news. But Master Nicol was doing his best, and he would have had no more answer than Damon himself.
“We will do what we can, Lord Damon, but for now… it is fortunate he had already chosen you regent.”
It was like a flood of ice water. He was regent of Alton, with wardship and sovereignty over the Domain, till Valdir was declared a man.
Regent. With power of life and death.
No, he thought, flinching with revulsion. It was too much. He did not want it.
But looking down at the stricken old man, he knew that duty lay on him. Confronted with proof of Dezi’s treachery, the Alton lord would have acted unflinchingly to protect the children, young boy and unborn babe, who were the next heirs to Alton. As Damon must act…
When Dezi came back with Valdir, he found them all waiting for him.
“Valdir,” said Ellemir gently, “our father lies very ill. Go and find Ferrika and ask news of him.” To their great relief, the child ran off at once, and Dezi stood waiting, defiant.
“So now you have your will, Damon. You are regent of Alton. Or are you? I wonder.”
Damon found his voice. “I am warned, Dezi. You cannot serve me as you served Domenic. As regent of Alton I demand that you give up to me the matrix you stole from Domenic’s body.”
He saw comprehension sweep over Dezi’s face. Then, to Damon’s horror, he laughed. Damon thought he had never heard a sound so shocking as that laughter.
“Come and take it, you Ridenow half-man,” he taunted. “You will not find it so easy this time! You could not take me that way now, even with your Nest about you!” Damon flinched at the ancient obscenity, for the women’s sake. “Come, I called you challenge in Council, let us have it here and now! Which of us is to be regent of Alton? Have you that much strength? Half monk, half eunuch, they call you!”
Damon knew he had picked up the taunt from Lorenz, or was it from Damon himself? He found his voice. “If you kill me, you prove yourself even less fit to be regent. It is not strength alone, but right and responsibility.”
“Oh, have done with that cant!” Dezi scoffed. “Such responsibility, I suppose, as my loving father took for me?”
Damon wanted to say that the dom had truly loved Dezi enough for his treachery almost to kill him too. But he wasted no words, grasping his own matrix, focusing, striking to alter the resonances of the one Dezi wore. Had stolen.
Dezi felt the touch, struck out a blinding mental blow. Damon went physically to his knees before the impact. Dezi had the Alton gift, the anger which could kill. Fighting panic, he realized that Dezi had grown, was stronger. Like a wolf with a taste for man’s flesh, he had to be destroyed at once, lest this ravening beast get among the Comyn…
The room began to cloud, thicken with swirling lines of force between them. He felt himself falter, felt Andrew’s strength behind him, even as Andrew was physically holding him upright. Dezi glowed within the fog. He hurled lightnings at the men. Damon felt the ground thinning beneath his feet, felt himself beaten down toward the floor.
Callista stepped between them. She seemed to tower above them all, tall and commanding, her matrix blazing at her throat. Damon saw the matrix in Dezi’s hand glow like a live coal, felt it burn through his tunic and into his flesh. Dezi yelled in pain and rage, and for an instant Damon saw Callista as she had been in Arilinn, flickering with the crimson of a Keeper’s robes. With the small dagger she wore at her waist she struck at the thong about Dezi’s throat. The matrix fell to the floor, blazed like fire when Dezi grabbed for it. Damon felt with Dezi the flare of agony as Dezi’s hand began to burn in the flame. The matrix rolled to one side, a useless black dead thing.
And Dezi disappeared! Andrew, for a fraction of a second, watched the place where Dezi had vanished, the air still trembling behind him. Then it rang in all their minds, a terrible dying scream of despair and rage. And they saw it, as if they had been physically present in that room at Armida.
When Callista had destroyed Domenic’s stolen matrix, Dezi could not face being without one again. With his last strength he had teleported himself through the overworld, to materialize at that place where Damon had placed his own for safekeeping — a panic reaction, without rational thought. A moment of considering would have told him it was safely locked away inside a solid, metal-bound strongbox. Two solid objects could not occupy the same space at the same time, not in the solid universe. And Dezi — they all saw it and shuddered with horror — had materialized half in, half out of the box holding the matrix. And even before that despairing dying scream died away, they had all heard the echo in Damon’s mind. Dezi lay on the floor of the strong-room at Armida, very completely and very messily dead. Even through his horror Damon found a moment to pity whoever would have to deal with that dreadfully materialized corpse, half in and half out of a solidly locked strongbox which had split his skull like a piece of rotten fruit.