Angry? Did he interpret my fear for him as anger? I said, “Not angry, only worried about you. Kirianisn’t anything to play with. I’m going to try and touch you now. Don’t fight me if you can help it.”

I gently reached for contact with his mind. I wouldn’t use the matrix for this; under kirianI might probe too far and damage him. I first sensed sickness and confusion—that was the drug, no more—then a deathly weariness and physical tension, probably from the long ride, and finally an overwhelming sense of desolation and loneliness, which made me want to turn away from his despair. Hesitantly, I risked a somewhat deeper contact.

And met a perfect, locked defense, a blank wall. After a moment, I probed sharply. The Alton gift was forced rapport, even with nontelepaths. He wanted this, and if I could give it to him, then he could probably endure being hurt. He moaned and moved his head as if I was hurting him. Probably I was. The emotions were still blurring everything. Yes, he had laranpotential. But he’d blocked it. Completely.

I waited a moment and considered. It’s not so uncommon; some telepaths live all their lives that way. There’s no reason they shouldn’t. Telepathy, as I told him, is far from an un-mixed blessing. But occasionally it yielded to a slow, patient unraveling. I retreated to the outer layer of his consciousness again and asked, not in words, What is it you’re afraid to know, Regis? Don’t block it. Try to remember what it is you couldn’t bear to know. There was a time when you could do this knowingly. Try to remember …

It was the wrong thing. He had received my thought; I felt the response to it—a clamshell snapping rigidly shut, a sensitive plant closing its leaves. He wrenched his hands roughly from mine, covering his eyes again. He muttered, “My head hurts. I’m sick, I’m so sick … ”

I had to withdraw. He had effectively shut me out. Possibly a skilled, highly-trained Keeper could have forced her way through the resistance without killing him. But I couldn’t force it. I might have battered down the barrier, forced him to face whatever it was he’d buried, but he might very well crack completely, and whether he could ever be put together again was a very doubtful point.

I wondered if he understood that he had done this to himself. Facing that kind of knowledge was a terribly painful process. At the time, building that barrier must have seemed the only way to save his sanity, even if it meant paying the agonizing price of cutting off his entire psi potential with it. My own Keeper had once explained it to me with the example of the creature who, helplessly caught in a trap, gnaws off the trapped foot, choosing maiming to death. Sometimes there were layers and layers of such barricades.

The barrier, or inhibition, might some day dissolve of itself, releasing his potential. Time and maturity could do a lot. It might be that some day, in the deep intimacy of love, he would find himself free of it. Or—I faced this too—it might be that this barrier was genuinely necessary to his life and sanity, in which case it would endure forever, or, if it were somehow broken down, there would not be enough left of him to go on living.

A catalyst telepath probably could have reached him. But in these days, due to inbreeding, indiscriminate marriages with nontelepaths and the disappearance of the old means of stimulating these gifts, the various Comyn psi powers no longer bred true. I was living proof that the Alton gift did sometimes appear in pure form. But as a general thing, no one could sort out the tangle of gifts. The Hastur gift, whatever that was—even at Arilinn they didn’t tell me—is just as likely to appear in the Aillard or Elhalyn Domains. Catalyst telepathy was once an Ardais gift. Dyan certainly wasn’t one! As far as I knew, there were none left alive.

It seemed a long time later that Regis stirred again, rubbing his forehead; then he opened his eyes, still with that terrible eagerness. The drug was still in his system—it wouldn’t wear off completely for hours—but he was beginning to have brief intervals free of it. His unspoken question was perfectly clear. I had to shake my head, regretfully.

“I’m sorry, Regis.”

I hope I never again see such despair in a young face. If he had been twelve years old, I would have taken him in my arms and tried to comfort him. But he was not a child now, and neither was I. His taut, desperate face kept me at arm’s length.

“Regis, listen to me,” I said quietly. “For what it’s worth, the laranis there. You have the potential, which means, at the very least, you’re carrying the gene, your children will have it.” I hesitated, not wanting to hurt him further, by telling him straightforwardly that he had made the barrier himself. Why hurt him that way?

I said, “I did my best, bredu. But I couldn’t reach it, the barriers were too strong. Bredu, don’t look at me like that,” I pleaded, “I can’t bear it, to see you looking at me that way.”

His voice was almost inaudible. “I know. You did your best.”

Had I really? I was struck with doubt I felt sick with the force of his misery. I tried to take his hands again, forcing myself to meet his pain head-on, not flinch from it But he pulled away from me, and I let it go.

“Regis, listen to me. It doesn’t matter. Perhaps in the days of the Keepers, it was a terrible tragedy for a Hastur to be without laran. But the world is changing. The Comyn is changing. You’ll find other strengths.”

I felt the futility of the words even as I spoke them. What must it be like, to live without laran? Like being without sight, hearing … but, never having known it, he must not be allowed to suffer its loss.

“Regis, you have so much else to give. To your family, to the Domains, to our world. And your children will have it—” I took his hands again in mine, trying to comfort him, but he cracked.

“Zandru’s hells, stopit,” he said, and wrenched his hands roughly away again. He caught up his cloak, which lay on the stone seat, and ran out of the room.

I stood frozen in the shock of his violence, then, in horror, ran after him. Gods! Drugged, sick, desperate, he couldn’t be allowed to run off that way! He needed to be watched, cared for, comforted—but I wasn’t in time. When I reached the stairs, he had already disappeared into the labyrinthine corridors of that wing, and I lost him.

I called and hunted for hours before, reeling with fatigue since I, too, had been riding for days, I gave up finally and went back to my rooms. I couldn’t spend the whole night storming all over Comyn Castle, shouting his name! I couldn’t force my way into the Regent’s suite and demand to know if he was there! There were limits to what Kennard Alton’s bastard son could do. I suspected I’d already exceeded them. I could only hope desperately that the kirianwould make him sleepy, or wear off with fatigue, and he would come back to rest or make his way to the Hastur apartments and sleep there.

I waited for hours and saw the sun rise, blood-red in the mists hanging over the Terran spaceport, before, cramped and cold, I fell asleep on the stone bench by the fireplace.

But Regis did not return.

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Chapter THREE

Regis ran down the corridor, dazed and confused, the small points of color still flashing behind his eyes, racked with the interior crawling nausea. One thought was tearing at him:

Failed. I’ve failed. Even Lew, tower-trained and with all his skill, couldn’t help me. There’s nothing there. When he said what he did about potential, he was humoring me, comforting a child.

He reeled, feeling sick again, clung momentarily to the wall and ran on.