I gestured at the snow, a white torrent whipping the windows, sending little spits of sleet down the chimney. “In this, lad? Let me at least offer you the hospitality of my kinsman’s roof until the weather suits! Then you shall be given proper escort and company out of these mountains. You cannot expect me to set you adrift in these mountains, at night and in winter, with a storm blowing up?” I summoned a servant again, and requested that he provide proper lodging for a guest, near my own quarters. Before Danilo went away to his bed, I gave him a kinsman’s embrace, which he returned with a childlike friendliness that made me feel better.

But I was still deeply troubled. Damn it, I’d have a word with Beltran before I slept!

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Chapter SEVENTEEN

Regis rode slowly, head down against the biting wind. He told himself that if he ever got out of these mountains, no place on Darkover would ever seem cold to him again.

A few days ago he had stopped in a mountain village and traded his horse for one of the sturdy little mountain ponies. He felt a sort of despairing grief at the necessity—the black mare was Kennard’s gift and he loved her—but this one attracted less attention and was surer-footed along the terrible trails. Poor Melisande would surely have died of the cold or broken a leg on these steep paths.

The trip had been a long nightmare: steep unfamiliar trails, intense cold, sheltering at night in abandoned barns or shepherd’s huts or wrapped in cloak and blanket against a rock wall, close curled against the horse’s body. He tried in general to avoid being seen, but every few days he had gone into a village to bargain for food and fodder for his pony. He aroused little curiosity; he thought life must be so hard in these mountains that the people had no time for curiosity about travelers.

Now and again, when he feared losing his way, he had drawn out the matrix, trying by furious concentration to fix his attention on Danilo. The matrix acted like one of those Terran instruments Kennard had once told him about, guiding him, with an insistent subliminal pull, toward Aldaran and Danilo.

By now he was numbed to fear, and only determination kept him going, that, and the memory of his pledge to Dani’s father. But there were times when he rode in a dark dream, losing awareness of Danilo and the roads where he was. Images would spin in his mind, which seemed to drink up pictures and thoughts from the villages he passed. The thought of looking again into the matrix filled him with such a crawling sickness that he could not force himself to draw it out. Threshold sickness again. Javanne had warned him. At the last few villages he had simply inquired the road to Aldaran.

All the morning he had been riding up a long slope where forest fires had raged a few seasons ago. He could see miles of scorched and blackened hillside, ragged stumps sticking up gaunt and leafless through the gullied wasteland. In his hyper-suggestible state the stink of burned woods, ashes and soot swirling up every time his pony put a hoof down, brought him back to that last summer at Armida and his first turn on the fire-lines, the night the fire came so close to Armida that the outbuildings burned.

That evening he and Lew had eaten out of the same bowl because supplies were running short. When they had laid down the stink of ashes and burned wood was all around them. Regis had smelled it even in his sleep, the way he was smelling it now. Toward midnight something woke him, and he had seen Lew sitting bolt upright, staring at the red glow where the fire was.

And Regis had known Lew was afraid. He’d touched Lew’s mind, and feltit: his fear, the pain of his burns, everything. He could feel it as if it had been in his own mind. And Lew’s fear hurt so much that Regis couldn’t stand it. He would have done anything to comfort Lew, to take his mind off the pain and the fear. It had been too much. Regis couldn’t shut it out, couldn’t stand it.

But he had forgotten. Had made himself forget, till now. He had blocked away the memory until, later that year, when he was tested for laranat Nevarsin, he had not even remembered anything but the fire.

And that, he realized, was why Lew was surprised when Regis told him he did not have laran…

The mountain pony stumbled and went down. Regis scrambled to his feet, shaken but unhurt, taking the beast by the bridle and gently urging him to his feet. He ran his hand up and down the animal’s legs. No bones were broken, but the pony flinched when Regis touched his rear right hock. He was limping, and Regis knew the pony could not bear his weight for a while. He led him along the trail as they crested the pass. The downward trail was even steeper, black and mucky underfoot where recent rains had soaked the remnants of the fire. The stench in his nostrils was worse than ever, restimulating again the memories of the earlier fire and the shared fear. He kept asking himself why he forgot, why he made himself forget.

The sun was hidden behind thick clouds. A few drifting snowflakes, not many but relentless, began to fall as he went down toward the valley. He guessed it was about midday. He felt a little hungry, but not enough to stop and dig into his pack and get out something to eat.

He hadn’t been eating much lately. The villagers had been kind to him, often refusing to take payment for food, which was tasty, though unfamiliar. He was usually on the edge of nausea, though, unwilling to start up that reflex again by actually chewing and swallowing something. Hunger was less painful.

After a time he did dig some grain out of his pack for the horse. The trail was well-traveled now; there must be another village not far away. But the silence was disturbing. Not a dog barked, no wild bird or beast cried. There was no sound but his own footsteps and the halting rhythm of the lame pony’s steps. And, far above, the unending wind moaning in the gaunt snags of the dead forest.

It was too much solitude. Even the presence of a bodyguard would have been welcome now, or two, chatting about the small chances of the trail. He remembered riding in the hills around Armida with Lew, hunting or checking the herdsmen who cared for the horses out in the open uplands. Suddenly, as if the thought of Lew had brought him to mind again, Lew’s face was before him, lighted with a glow—not forest fire now! It was aglow, blazing in a great blue glare, space-twisting, gut-wrenching, the glare of the matrix! The ground was reeling and dipping under his feet, but for a moment, even as Regis dropped the pony’s reins and clapped his hands over his tormented eyes, he saw a great form sketch itself on the inside of his eyelids, inside his very brain,

… a woman, a golden goddess, flame-clothed, flame-crowned, golden-chained, burning, glowing, blazing, consuming…

Then he lost consciousness. Over his head the mountain pony edged carefully around, uneasily nuzzling at the unconscious lad.

It was the pony’s nuzzling that woke him, some time later. The sky was darkening, and it was snowing so hard that when he got stiffly to his feet, a little cascade of snow showered off him. A faint sickening smell told him that he had vomited as he lay senseless. What in Zandru’s hells happened to me?

He dug his water bottle from his saddlebag, rinsed his mouth and drank a little, but was still too queasy to swallow much.

It was snowing so hard that he knew he must find shelter at once. He had been trained at Nevarsin to find shelter in unlikely places, even a heap of underbrush would do, but on a road as well-traveled as this there were sure to be huts, barns, shelters. He was not mistaken. A few hundred feet further on, the outline of a great stone barn made a dark square against the swirling whiteness. The stones were blackened with the fire that had swept over it and a few of the roof slates had fallen in, but someone had replaced the door with rough-hewn planking. Drifted ice and snow from the last storm was banked against the door, but he knew that in mountain country doors were usually left unfastened against just such emergencies. After much struggling and heaving Regis managed to shove the rough door partway open and wedge himself and the pony through into a gloomy and musty darkness. It had once been a fodder-storage barn; there were still a few rodent-nibbled bales lying forgotten against the walls. It was bitterly cold, but at least it was out of the wind. Regis unsaddled his pony, fed him and hobbled him loosely at one end of the barn. Then he raked some more of the moldy fodder together, laid his blankets out on it, crawled into them and let sleep, or unconsciousness, take him again.