“The Gods witness I meant it! It’s only … only … ” Suddenly he knew the right thing to say. “You remember what a fuss it caused, when I expected anyone to wait on me, in the barracks!”

Their eyes caught and held. Regis had no idea whether it was his own thought or Danilo’s: We were boys then. And now … how long ago that seems! Yet it was only last season!It seemed to Regis that they were looking back, as men, across a great chasm of elapsed time, at a shared boyhood. Where had it gone?

With a sense of fighting off unutterable weariness—it seemed he had been fighting off this weariness as long as he could remember—he reached for Danilo’s hands. They felt hard, calloused, real, the only firm anchor-point in a shifting, dissolving universe. Momentarily he felt his hands going throughDanilo’s as if neither of them were quite solid. He blinked hard to focus his eyes, and saw a blue-haloed form in front of him. He could see through Danilo now, to the wall beyond. Trying to focus against the swarming fireflies that spun before his eyes, he remembered Javanne’s warning, fight it, move around, speak. He tried to get his voice back into his throat

“Forgive me, Dani. Who should serve me if not my sworn man … ?”

And as he spoke the words he felt, amazed, the texture of Danilo’s relief: My people have served the Hasturs for generations. Now I too am where I belong.

No! I do not want to be a master of men … !

But the swift denial was understood by both, not as a personal rejection, but the very embodiment of what they both were, so that the giving of Danilo’s service was the pleasure and the relief it was, so that Regis knew he must not only accept that service, but accept it fully, graciously.

Danilo’s face suddenly looked strange, frightened. His mouth was moving but Regis could no longer hear him, floating bodiless in the sparkling darkness. The base of his skull throbbed with ballooning pain. He heard himself whisper, “I am … in your hands … ” Then the world slid side-wise and he felt himself collapse into Danilo’s arms.

He never knew how he got there, but seconds later, it seemed, he felt searing pain all over his naked body, and found himself floating up to the chin in a great tub of boiling water. Danilo, kneeling at his side, was anxiously chafing his wrists. His head was splitting, but he could see solid objects again, and his own body was reassuringly firm. A servant was hovering around with clean garments, trying to attract Danilo’s attention long enough to get his approval of them.

Regis lay watching, too languid to do anything but accept their ministrations. He noticed that Danilo unobtrusively kept his own body between Regis and the Aldaran servant. Danilo chased the man out quickly, muttering under his breath, “I’m not going to trust any of them alone with you!”

At first the water had seemed scalding to his chilled body; now he realized it was barely warm, in fact it must have been drawn for some time, was probably a bath prepared for Danilo before he came in. Danilo was still bending over him, his face tight with worry. Suddenly Regis was filled with such intolerable anxiety that he cut off the intense, sensuous pleasure of the hot water soothing his chilled and stiffened body—eleven nights on the trail and not warm once!—and drew himself upright, hauling himself out of the hot tub, reaching for a towel to wrap himself in. Danilo knelt to dry him, saying, “I sent the servant for a healer-woman, there must be someone of that sort here. Regis, I never saw any-one faint like that before; your eyes were open but you couldn’t hear me or see me … ”

“Threshold sickness.” Briefly he sketched in an explanation. “I’ve had a few attacks before. I’m over the worst.” I hope, he added to himself. “I doubt if the healer could do anything with this. Here, give me that, I can dress myself.” Firmly he took the towel away from Danilo. “Go and tell her not to bother, and find out if there’s anything hot to drink.”

Skeptically Danilo retreated. Regis finished drying himself and clambered into the unfamiliar clothing. His hands were shaking almost too hard to tie the knots of his tunic. What’s the matter with me, he asked himself, why didn’t I want Dani to help me dress? He looked at his hands in cold shock, as if they belonged to someone else. I didn’t want him to touch me!

Even to him that sounded incongruous. They had lived together in the rough intimacy of the barracks room for months. They had been close-linked, even thinking one another’s thoughts.

This was different.

Irresistibly his mind was drawn back to that night in the barracks, when he had reached out to Danilo, torn by an almost frenzied desire to share his misery, the spasm of loathing and horror with which Danilo had flung him away …

And then, shaken and shamed and terrified, Regis knew what had prompted that touch, and why he was suddenly shy of Danilo now. The knowledge struck him motionless, his bare feet cold through the wolfskin rug on the tile floor.

To touch him. Not to comfort Dani, but to comfort his own need, his own loneliness, his own hunger …

He moved deliberately, afraid if he remained motionless another instant the threshold sickness would surge up over him again. He knelt on the wolfskin, drawing fur-lined stockings up over his knees and deliberately tying the thongs into intricate knots. On the surface of his mind he thought that fur clothing was life-saving here in the mountains. It felt wonderful.

But, relentless, the memory he had barricaded since his twelfth year burst open like a bleeding wound; the memory he had let himself lose consciousness before recovering on the northward trail: Lew’s face, alight with fire, his barriers down in the last extremity of exhaustion and pain and fear.

And Regis had shared it all with him, there were no barriers between them. None. Regis had known what Lew wanted and would not ask, was too proud and too shy to ask. Something Regis had never felt before, that Lew thought he was too young to feel or to understand. But Regis had known and had shared it.

And afterward, perhaps because Lew had never spoken of it, Regis was too ashamed to remember. And he had never dared open his mind again. Why? Why? Out of fear, out of shame? Out of … longing?

Until Danilo, without even trying, broke that barricade.

And now Regis knew why it was Dani who could break it …

He doesn’t know, Regis thought, and then with a bleak and spartan pride, He must never know.

He stood up, felt the splitting pain at his forehead again. He knew a frightened moment of disquiet. How could he keep this from him? Dani was a telepath too!

Lew had said it was like living with your skin off. Well, his skin was off and he was doubly naked. Taking a grip on himself, he walked out into the other room, decided his boots weren’t dry. Inside he felt cold and trembly, but physically he was quite warm and calm.

How could be face Lew again, knowing this? Coldly, Regis told himself not to be a fool. Lew had always known. He wasn’t a coward, he didn’t lie to himself! Lew remembered, so no wonder he was astonished when Regis had said he did not have laran!

Lew had asked him why he could not bear to remember …

“You should have gone straight to bed and let me bring you supper there,” Danilo said behind him, and Regis, firmly taking mastery of his face, looked around. Danilo was looking at him with friendly concern, and Regis remembered, with a shock, that Danilo knew nothing, nothing of the memory and awareness that had flooded him in the scant few minutes they had been parted. He said aloud, trying for a casual neutral tone, “I collapsed before I saw anything of the suite but this room. I have no idea where I’m going to be sleeping.”

“And I’ve had days with nothing to do but explore. Come, I’ll show you the way. I told the servant to bring your supper in here. How does it feel to be quartered in a royal suite, after the student dormitory at Nevarsin?”