Pain crashed through his head. He felt his skull smashing, shattering into little splinters; Another blow sent him flying high, falling into darkness.

“Regis!” Again the crashing, reeling sickness of the blow and the long spin into space. The sound was only meaningless vibration but he tried to focus on it, make it mean something. “ Regis!” Who was Regis? The roaring candleflame died to a glimmer and Regis heard himself gasp aloud. Someone was standing over him, calling his name, slapping him hard and repeatedly. Suddenly, noiselessly, the room fell into focus.

“Regis, wake up! Get up and walk around, don’t drift with it!”

“Javanne … ” he said, struggling fuzzily upright to catch her hand as it was descending for another blow. “Don’t, sister … ”

He was surprised at how weak and faraway his voice sounded. She gave a faint cry of relief. She was standing beside his bed, a white shawl slipping from her shoulders above her long nightgown. “I thought one of the children cried out, then heard you. Why didn’t you tell me you were likely to have threshold sickness?”

Regis blinked and dropped her hand. Even without the touch he could feel her fear. The room was still not quite solid around him. “Threshold sickness?” He thought about it a moment. He’d heard of it, of course, born into a Comyn family: a physical and psychic upheaval of awakening telepaths in adolescence, the inability of the brain to cope with sudden overloads of sensory and extrasensory data, resulting in perceptual distortions of sight, sound, touch … “I never had it before. I didn’t know what it was. Things seemed to thin out and disappear, I couldn’t see properly, or feel … ”

“I know. Get up now and walk around a little.”

The room was still tilting around him; he clung to the bed-frame. “If I do, I’ll fall … ”

“And if you don’t, your balance centers will start drifting out of focus again. Here,” she said with a faint laugh, tossing the white shawl to him, looking courteously away as he wrapped it around his body and struggled to his feet. “Regis, did no one warn you of this when your laranwakened?”

“Didn’t whowarn me? I don’t think anyone knew,” he said, taking a hesitant step and then another. She was right; under the concentrated effort of getting up and moving, the room settled into solidity again. He shuddered and went toward the candle. The little lights still danced and jiggled behind his eyes, but it was candle-sized again. How had it grown to a raging forest fire out of childhood? He picked it up, was amazed to see how his hand shook. Javanne said sharply, “Don’t touch the candle when your hand’s not steady, you’ll set something afire! Regis, you frightened me!”

“With the candle?” He set it down.

“No, the way you were moaning. I spent half a year at Neskaya when I was thirteen, I saw one of the girls go into convulsions in crisis once.”

Regis looked at his sister as if for the first time. He could sense, now, the emotion behind her cross, brisk manner, real fear, a tenderness he had never guessed. He put his arm around her shoulders and said, wonderingly, “Were you really afraid?” The barriers were wholly down between them and what she heard was, Would you really care if something happened to me?She reacted to the wondering amazement of that unspoken question with real dismay.

“How can you doubt it? You are my only kinsman!”

“You have Gabriel, and five children.”

“But you are my father’s son and my mother’s,” she said, giving him a short, hard hug. “You seem to be all right now. Get back into that bed before you take a chill and I must nurse you like one of the babies!”

But he knew now what the sharpness of her voice concealed and it did not trouble him. Obediently he got under the covers. She sat on the bed.

“You should spend some time in one of the towers, Regis, just to learn control. Grandfather can send you to Neskaya or Arilinn. An untrained telepath is a menace to himself and everyone around him, they told me so when I was your age.”

Regis thought of Danilo. Had anyone thought to warn him?

Javanne drew the covers up under his chin. He recalled now that she had done this when he was very small, before he knew the difference between elder sister and a never-known mother. She was only a child herself, but she had tried to mother him. Why had he forgotten that?

She kissed him gently on the forehead and Regis, feeling safe and protected for the moment, toppled over the edge of a vast gulf of sleep.

The next day he felt ill and dazed, but although Javanne told him to keep to his bed, he was too restless to stay there.

“I must return at once, at once to Thendara,” he insisted. “I’ve learned something which makes it necessary to talk to Grandfather. You said, yourself, I should arrange to go to one of the towers. What can happen to me with three Guardsmen for escort?”

“You know perfectly well you’re not able to travel! I should spank you and put you to bed as I’d do with Rafael if he were so unreasonable,” she said crossly.

His new insight into her made him speak with gentleness. “I’d like to be young enough for your cosseting, sister, even if it meant a spanking. But I know what I must do, Javanne, and I’ve outgrown a woman’s rule. Please don’t treat me like a child.”

His seriousness sobered her, too. Still unwilling, she sent for his escort and horses.

All that long day’s ride, be seemed to move through torturing memories, repeating themselves over and over, and a growing unease and uncertainty: would they believe him, would they even listen? Danilo was out of Dyan’s reach, now; there was time enough to speak if he endangered another. Yet Regis knew that if he was silent, he connived at what Dyan had done.

In midafternoon, still miles from Thendara, wet snow and sleet began to fall again, but Regis ignored the suggestions of his escort that he should seek shelter and hospitality somewhere. Every moment between him and Thendara now was a torture; he yearned to be there, to have this frightening confrontation over. As the long miles dragged by, and he grew more and more soggy and wretched, he drew his soaked cape around him, huddling inside it like a protective cocoon. He knew his guards were talking about him, but he shut them firmly away from his consciousness, withdrawing further and further into his own misery.

As they came over the top of the pass he heard the distant vibration from the spaceport, carried thick and reverberating in the heavy, moist air. He thought with wild longing of the ships taking off, invisible behind the wall of rain and sleet, symbols of the freedom he wished he had now.

He let the thickening storm batter him, uncaring. He welcomed the icy wind, the sleet freezing in layers on his heavy riding-cloak, on his eyelashes and hair. It kept him from sliding back into that strange, hypersensitive, hallucinatory awareness.

What shall I say to Grandfather?

How did you face the Regent of Comyn and tell him his most trusted counselor was corrupt, a sadistic pervert using his telepathic powers to meddle with a mind placed in his charge?

How do you tell the Commander of the Guard, your own commanding officer, that his most trusted friend, holding the most trusted and responsible of posts, has ill-treated and shamefully misused a boy in his care. How do you accuse your own uncle, the strongest telepath in Comyn, of standing by, indifferent, watching the rarest and most sensitive of telepaths being falsely accused, his mind battered and bruised and dishonored, while he, a tower-trained psi technician, did nothing?

The stone walls of the Castle closed about them, cutting off the biting wind. Regis heard his escort swearing as they led their horses away. He knew he should apologize to them for subjecting them to this cold, wearying ride in such weather. It was a totally irresponsible thing to do to loyal men and the fact that they would never question his motives made it worse. He gave them brief formal thanks and admonished them to go quickly for supper and rest, knowing that if he offered them any reward they would be offended beyond measuring.