Then it was as if he had blown his breath on a coal from the fireplace: the spark was brilliant blue fire, moving, pulsing with the very rhythm of his blood. Excitement crawled in him, an almost sexual thrill.

“Enough!” Javanne said. “Look away quickly or you’ll be trapped!”

No, not yet … Reluctantly, he wrenched his eyes from the stone. She said, “Start slowly. Look into it only a few minutes at a time until you can master it or it will master you. The most important lesson is that you must always control it, never let it control you.”

He gave it a last glance, wrapped it again with a sense of curious regret, feeling Javanne’s protective touch/embrace withdraw. She said, “You can do with it what you will, but that is not much, untrained. Be careful. You are not yet immune to threshold sickness and it may return. Can a few days matter so much? Neskaya is only a little more than a day’s ride away.”

“I don’t know how to explain, but I feel that every moment matters. I’m afraid Javanne, afraid for Danilo, afraid for all of us. I must go now, tonight. Can you find me some old riding-clothes of Gabriel’s, Javanne? These will attract too much attention in the mountains. And will you have your women make me some food for a few days? I want to avoid towns nearby where I might be recognized.”

“I’ll do it myself; no need for the women to see and gossip.” She left him to his neglected supper while she went to find the clothing. He did not feel hungry, but dutifully stowed away a slice of roast fowl and some bread. When she came back, she had his saddlebags, and an old suit of Gabriel’s. She left him by the fire to put them on, then he followed her down the hall to a deserted kitchen. The servants were long gone to bed. She moved around, making up a package of dried meat, hard bread and crackers, dried fruit She put a small cooking-kit into the saddlebags, saying it was one which Gabriel carried on hunting trips. He watched her silently, feeling closer to this little-known sister than he had felt since he was six years old and she left their home to marry. He wished he were still young enough to cling to her skirts as he had then. An ice-cold fear gripped at him, and then the thought: before going into danger, a Comyn heir must himself leave an heir. He had refused even to think of it, as Dyan had refused, not wanting to be merely a link in a chain, the son of his father, the father of his sons. Something inside him rebelled, deeply and strongly, at what he must do—Why bother? If he did not return, it would all be the same, one of Javanne’s sons named his heir … He could do nothing, say nothing …

He sighed. It was too late for that, he had gone too far. He said, “One thing more, sister. I go where I may never return. You know what that means. You must give me one of your sons, Javanne, for my heir.”

Her face blanched and she gave a low, stricken cry. He felt the pain in it but he did not look away, and finally she said, her voice wavering, “Is there no other way?”

He tried to make it a feeble joke. “I have no time to get one in the usual way, sister, even if I could find some woman to help me at such short notice.”

Her laughter was almost hysterical; it cut off in the middle, leaving stark silence. He saw slow acceptance dawning in her eyes. He had known she would agree. She was Hastur, of a family older than royalty. She had of necessity married beneath her, since there was no equal, and she had come to love her husband deeply, but her duty to the Hasturs came first. She only said, her voice no more than a thread, “What shall I say to Gabriel?”

“He has known since the day he took you to wife that this day might come,” Regis said. “I might well have died before coming to manhood.”

“Come, then, and choose for yourself.” She led the way to the room where her three sons slept in cots side by side. By the candlelight Regis studied their faces, one by one. Rafael, slight and dark, close-cropped curls tousled around his face; Gabriel, sturdy and swarthy and already taller than his brother. Mikhail, who was four, was still pixie-small, fairer than the others, his rosy cheeks framed in light waving locks, almost silvery white. Grandfather must have looked like that as a child, Regis thought. He felt curiously cold and bereft. Javanne had given their clan three sons and two daughters. He might never father a son of his own. He shivered at the implications of what he was doing, bent his head, groping through an unaccustomed prayer. “Cassilda, blessed Mother of the Domains, help me choose wisely … ”

He moved quietly from cot to cot. Rafael was most like him, he thought. Then, on some irresistible impulse, he bent over Mikhail, lifted the small sleeping form in his arms.

“This is my son, Javanne.”

She nodded, but her eyes were fierce. “And if you do not return he will be Hastur of Hastur; but if you doreturn, what then? A poor relation at the footstool of Hastur?”

Regis said quietly, “If I do not return, he will be nedestro, sister. I will not pledge you never to take a wife, even in return for this great gift. But this I swear to you: he shall come second only to my first legitimately born son. My second son shall be third to him, and I will take oath no other nedestroheir shall ever displace him. Will this content you, breda?”

Mikhail opened his eyes and stared about him sleepily, but he saw his mother and did not cry. Javanne touched the blond head gently, “It will content me, brother.”

Holding the child awkwardly in unpracticed arms, Regis carried him out of the room where his brothers slept. “Bring witnesses,” he said, “I must be gone soon. You know this is irrevocable, Javanne, that once I take this oath, he is not yours but mine, and must be sealed my heir. You must send him to Grandfather at Thendara.”

She nodded. Her throat moved as she swallowed hard, but she did not protest “Go down to the chapel,” she said. “I will bring witnesses.”

It was an old room in the depths of the house, the four old god-forms painted crudely on the walls, lights burning before them. Regis held Mikhail on his lap, letting the child sleepily twist a button on his tunic, until the witnesses came, four old men and two old women of the household. One of the women had been Javanne’s nurse in childhood, and his own.

He took his place solemnly at the altar, Mikhail in his arms.

“I swear before Aldones, Lord of Light and my divine forefather, that Hastur of Hastur is this child by unbroken blood line, known to me in true descent. And in default of any heir of my body, therefore do I, Regis-Rafael Felix Alar Hastur y Elhalyn, choose and name him my nedestroheir and swear that none save my first-born son in true marriage shall ever displace him as my heir; and that so long as I live, none shall challenge his right to my hearth, my home or my heritage. Thus I take oath in the presence of witnesses known to us both. I declare that my son shall be no more called Mikhail Regis Lanart-Hastur, but—” He paused, hesitating among old Comyn names for suitable new names which would confirm the ritual. There was no time to search the rolls for names of honor. He would commemorate, then, the desperate need which had driven him to this. “I name him Danilo,” he said at last. “He shall be called Danilo Lanart Hastur, and I will so maintain to all challenge, facing my father before me and my sons to follow me, my ancestry and my posterity. And this claim may never be renounced by me while I live, nor in my name by any of the heirs of my body.” He bent and kissed his son on the soft baby lips. It was done. They had a strange beginning. He wondered what the end would be. He turned his eyes on his old nurse.

“Foster-mother, I place you in charge of my son. When the roads are safe, you must take him to the Lord Hastur at Thendara, and see to it that he is given the Sign of Comyn.”