Wind, and cold slashes of snow blew through the open doorway; Danilo, laden with branches, staggered inside, shoved them near the fireplace, went quickly out again. Regis tried to separate the driest branches to lay a fire, but could not steady his hands enough to manipulate the small mechanical flint-and-steel, fed with resinous oil, which kept the spark alive. He laid the device on the bench and sat with his head in his hands, feeling completely useless, until Danilo, bent under another load of branches, came in and kicked the door shut behind him.

“My father calls that a lazy man’s load,” he said cheerfully, “carrying too much because you’re too lazy to go back for another. It ought to keep the cold out awhile. Anyway, I’d rather be cold here than warm in Aldaran’s royal suite, damn him.” He strode to where Regis had laid the fire, kneeling to spark it alight with Regis’s lighter. “Bless the man who invented this gadget. Lucky you have one.”

It had been part of Gabriel’s camping-kit that Javanne had given him, along with the small cooking pots they carried. Dani looked at Regis, huddled motionless and shivering on the bench. He said, “Are you very angry with me?” Silently, Regis shook his head.

Danilo said haltingly, “I don’t want to … to offend you. But I’m your paxman and I have to do what’s best for you. Even if it’s not always what you want.”

“It’s all right, Dani. I was wrong and you were right,” Regis said. “I couldn’t even light the fire.”

“Well, I don’t mind lighting it. Certainly not with that gadget of yours. There’s water piped in the corner, there, if the pipes aren’t frozen. If they are, we’ll have to melt snow. Now, what shall we cook?”

The last thing Regis cared about at that moment was food, but he forced himself to join in a discussion about whether soup made from dried meat and beans, or crushed-grain porridge, would be better. When it was bubbling over the fire, Danilo came and sat beside him. He said, “Regis, I don’t want to make you angry again. But we’ve got to have this out. You’re no better. Do you think I can’t see that you can hardly ride?”

“What do you want me to say to you, Dani? I’m doing the best I can.”

“You’re doing morethan you can,” said Danilo. The light of the blazing fire made him look very young and very troubled. “Do you think I’m blaming you? But you must let me help you more.” Suddenly he flared out, “What am I to say to them in Thendara, if the heir to Hastur dies in my hands?”

“You’re making too much of this,” Regis said. “I never heard that anyone died of threshold sickness.” Yet Javanne had looked genuinely frightened …

“Maybe not,” Danilo said skeptically, “but if you cannot sit your horse, and fall and break your skull, that’s fatal, too. Or if you exhaust yourself and take a chill, and die of it. And you are the last Hastur.”

“No I’m not,” Regis said, at the end of endurance. “Didn’t you hear me tell Lew? I have an heir. Before I ever came on this trip I faced the fact that I might die, so I named one of my sister’s sons as my heir. Legally.” Danilo sat back on his heels, stunned, wide open, and his thought was as clear as if he had spoken aloud, For my sake?Regis forcibly stopped himself from saying anything more. He could not face the naked emotion in Danilo’s eyes. This was the time of danger, the forced intimacy of these evenings, when he must barricade himself continually against revealing what he felt. It would be all too easy to cling to Danilo for strength, to take advantage of Danilo’s emotional response to him.

Danilo was saying angrily, “Even so, I won’t have your death on my head! The Hasturs need you for yourself, Regis, not just for your blood or your heir!”

“What do you suggest I do about it?” Regis did not know, himself, whether it was an honest question or a sarcastic challenge.

“We are not pursued. We must rest here till you are well again.”

“I don’t think I shall ever be well again until I have a chance to go to one of the towers and learn to control this.” Laran? Gift? Curse, he thought. In his blood, in his brain.

But that was not the only thing making him ill, he knew. It was the constant need to barrier himself against his feelings, against his own unwelcome thoughts and desires. And for that there was no help, he decided. Even in the towers they could not make him other than he was. They might teach to conceal it, though, live with it.

Danilo laid his hand on Regis’ shoulder. “You must let me look after you. It is my duty.” He added after a moment, “And my pleasure.”

By an effort that literally made his head spin, Regis remained motionless under the touch. Rigidly, refusing the proffered rapport, he said, “Your porridge is burning. If you’re so eager to do something, attend to what you’re supposed to be doing. The damned stuif is inedible even when properly cooked.”

Danilo stiffened as if the words had been a blow. He went to the fire and took off the boiling concoction. Regis did not look at him or care that he had hurt him. He was beyond thinking about anything, except his own attempt notto think.

He felt a violent anger with Danilo for forcing this intimate confrontation on him. Suddenly he recalled the fight Danilo had picked in the barracks; a fight which, had it not been for Hjalmar’s intervention, might have gone far beyond a single blow. He wanted to lash out at Danilo now, flay him with cruel words. He felt a need to put distance between them, break up this unendurable closeness, keep Dani from looking at him with so much love. If they fought, perhaps Regis would no longer have to be constantly on guard, afraid of doing and saying what he could not even endure to think …

Danilo came with porridge in a small pannikin. He said tentatively, “I don’t think this is burned … ”

“Oh, stop being so damned attentive.” Regis flung at him. “Eat your supper and let me alone, damn you, just stop hovering over me! What must I do to make you realize I don’t want you, I don’t need you? Just let me alone!”

Danilo’s face went white. He went and sat on the other bench, his head bent over his own porridge. His back to Regis, he said coldly, “Yours is there when you want it, my lord.”

Regis could see clearly, as if time had slid out of focus, that searing moment in the barracks, when Danilo had flung him off with an insult. It was clear in Danilo’s mind, too: He has done to me, knowing, what I did to him, unknowing.

By main force Regis held himself back from immediate apology. The smell of the porridge made him feel violently sick. He went to the stone shelf and laid himself down, wrapping himself in his riding-cloak and trying to suppress the racking shudders that shook his whole body. It seemed to him that he could hear Danilo crying, as he had done so often in the barracks, but Danilo was sitting on the bench, quietly eating his supper. Regis lay looking at the fire, until it began to flare up, flame—hallucination. Not forest fire, not Sharra. Just hallucination again. Psi out of control.

Still, it seemed that he could see Lew’s face, vividly, by firelight. Suppose, Regis thought, when I reached up toward him, drew him down beside me, he had flung me off, slapped me? Suppose he had thought the comfort I offered him a thing too shameful to endure or acknowledge?

I was only a child. I didn’t know what I was doing.

He wasn’t a child. And he knew.

Unable to endure this train of thought, he let the swaying sickness take him again. It was almost a relief to let the world slide away, go dim and thin out to nothing. Time vanished. He heard Danilo’s voice after a time, but the words no longer made sense; they were just vibration, sound without sense or relevance. He knew with the last breath of sanity that his only hope of saving himself now was to cry out, get up and move around, call out to Danilo, hang on to him as an anchor in this deadly nowhere—