There was room enough for a regent and all his entourage in this guest suite: enormous bedrooms, servants quarters in plenty, a great hall, even a small octagonal presence chamber with a throne and footstools for petitioners. It was more elaborate than his grandfather’s suite in Thendara. Danilo had chosen the smallest and least elaborate bedroom, but it looked like a royal favorite’s chamber. There was a huge bed on a dais which would, Regis thought irreverently, have held a Dry-Towner, three of his wives and six of his concubines. The servant he had seen before was warming the sheets with a long-handled warming pan, and there was a fire in the fireplace. He let Danilo help him into the big bed, put a tray of hot food beside him. Danilo sent the man away, saying gravely, “It is my privilege to wait on my lord with my own hands.” Regis would have laughed at the solemn, formal words, but knew even a smile would hurt Danilo unspeakably. He kept his composure, until the man was out of earshot, then said, “I hope you’re not going to take that formal my-lord tone all the time now, bredu.”

There was relief in Danilo’s eyes too. “Only in front of strangers, Regis.” He came and lifted covers off steaming bowls of food, clambered up on the bed and poured hot soup from a jug. He said, ‘The food’s good. I had to ask for cider instead of wine the first day, that’s all. I see they brought both tonight, and the cider’s hot.”

Regis drank the soup and the hot cider thirstily; but although it was his first hot meal in days, he found it almost too hard to chew and swallow.

“Now tell me how you found me here, Regis.”

Regis’ hand went to the matrix on the thong around his neck. Danilo shrank a little. “I thought such things were to be used only by technicians, with proper safeguards. Isn’t it dangerous?”

“I knew no other way.”

Danilo looked at him, visibly moved. “And you took that risk for me, bredu?”

Regis deliberately withdrew from the moment of emotion. “Take that last cutlet, won’t you? I’m not hungry … I’m here and alive, aren’t I? I expect I’ll have trouble with my kinfolk; I got away from Gabriel and my escort by a trick. I was supposed to be on my way to Neskaya Tower.”

The diversion worked. Danilo asked with a faint revulsion, “Are you to be a matrix mechanic, now they know you have laran?”

“God forbid! But I have to learn to safeguard myself.”

Danilo had made a long mental leap. “Is this—using a matrix, untrained—why you have been having threshold sickness?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps. It couldn’t help.”

Danilo said, “I should have sent for Lew Alton, instead of the healer-woman. He’s tower-trained, he’d know what to do for it.”

Regis flinched. He didn’t want to face Lew just yet. Not till he had his own thoughts in order. “Don’t disturb him. I’m all right now.”

“Well, if you’re sure,” Danilo said uncertainly. “No doubt, by now, he’s in bed with his girl and wouldn’t thank anyone for disturbing him, but just the same—”

“His girl?”

“Aldaran’s foster-daughter. The guards are lonely and have nothing to do but gossip, and I thought it just as well to learn as much as I could about what’s going on here. They say Lew’s madly in love with her, and old Kermiac’s arranging a marriage.”

Well, Regis thought, that made good sense. Lew had never been happy in the lowlands and he was lonely. If he took a wife from his mountain kinsmen, that was a good thing.

Danilo said, “There’s wine, if you want it,” but Regis firmly shook his head. He might sleep better for it, but he dared not risk anything that might break down his defenses. He took a handful of sugared nuts and began nibbling them.

“Now, Dani, tell me all about it. Old Kermiac did not know why they had brought you here, and I had no chance to ask Lew alone.” He wondered suddenly which of the women in the fireside room was Lew’s sweetheart. The hard-faced girl with the harp? Or the delicate remote, younger one in blue?

“But you must have known all about it,” said Danilo, “or how could you have come after me? I tried … I tried to reach out for you with my mind, but I was afraid. I could feelthem. I was afraid they’d use that somehow … ” Regis sensed he was almost crying. “It’s terrible! Laranis terrible! I don’t want it, Regis! I don’t want it!”

Impulsively Regis reached out to lay a steadying hand on his wrist, stopped himself. Oh no. Not that. Not so easy an excuse to … to touch him. He said, keeping his voice detached, “It seems we have no choice, Dani. It has come to us both.”

“It’s like—like lightning! It hits people who don’t want it, hits them at random—” Danilo’s voice shook.

Regis wondered how anyone lived with it. He said, “I don’t much want it either, now that I’ve got it. No more than I want to be heir to Comyn.” He sighed. “But we have no choice. Or the only choice we have is to misuse it—like Dyan—or to meet it like men, and honorably.” He knew he was not talking only of larannow. “ Larancannot be all evil. It helped me find you.”

“And if I’ve brought you into danger of death … ”

“That’s enough of that!” The words were a sharp rebuke; Danilo shrank as if Regis had slapped him, but Regis felt he dared not face another emotional outburst. “Lord Kermiac has called me guest. Among mountain people that is a sacred obligation. Neither of us is in danger.”

“Not from old Kermiac perhaps. But Beltran wants to use my laranto awaken other telepaths, and what’s he going to do with them when he’s got them awakened? Whatever they’re doing … ” He stared right through Regis and whispered, “It’s wrong. I can feel it, reaching for me even in my sleep!”

“Surely Lew wouldn’t be a party to anything dishonorable.”

“Not knowingly, maybe. But he’s very angry with the Comyn, and wholly committed to Beltran now,” Danilo said. “This is what he told me.”

He began to explain Beltran’s plan for revival of the old matrix technology, bringing Darkover from a non-industrial, non-technological culture into a position of strength in a galactic empire. As he spoke of star-travel Regis’ eyes brightened, recalling his own dreams. Suppose he need notdesert his world and his heritage to go out among the stars, but could serve his people and still be part of a great star-spanning culture … it seemed too good to be true.

“Surely if it could have been done at all, it would have been done at the height of the strength of the towers. They must have tried this.”

“I don’t know,” said Danilo humbly, “I’m not as well-educated as you, Regis.” And Regis knew so little!

“Let’s not sit and make guesses about what they’re doing,” Regis said, “Let’s wait till tomorrow and ask them.” He yawned deliberately. “I haven’t slept in a bed for a dozen nights. I think I’ll try this one out.” Danilo was taking away the mugs and bowls; Regis beckoned him back.

“I hope you have no foolish notion of standing guard while I sleep, or sleeping on the floor across my doorway?”

“Only if you want me to,” said Dani, but he sounded hurt, and with that unwelcome sensitivity Regis knew he’d have liked to. The picture that had haunted him for days now returned, Dani’s brother shielding his father with his body. Did Dani really want to die for him? The thought shocked him speechless.

He said curtly, “Sleep where you damn please, but get some sleep. And if you really like having me give you orders, Dani, that’s an order.” He didn’t wait to see where Dani chose. He slid down into the great bed and dropped into a bottomless pit of sleep.

At first, exhaustion taking its toll of his aching body and overstrained emotions, he was too weary even to dream. Then he began to drift in and out of dreams: the sound of horses’ hooves on a road, galloping … the armory in Comyn Castle, struggling weakly against Dyan, armed and fresh against an aching lassitude that would not let Regis lift his sword … a great form swooping down, touching Castle Aldaran with a finger of fire, flames rising skyward. By the firelight he saw Lew’s face alight with terror, and reached out to him, feeling the strange and unfamiliar emotions and sensations, but this time he knew what he was doing. This time he was not a child, his child’s body responding half-aware to the most innocent of caresses; this time he knew and accepted it all, and suddenly it was Danilo in his arms, and Danilo was struggling, trying to push him away in pain and terror. Regis, gripped by need and blind cruelty, gripped him more and more tightly, fighting to hold him, subdue him, and then, with a gasp, cried aloud, “No! Oh, no!” and flung him away, pulling himself upright in the great bed.