My eyes were growing used to the darkness; I could see my father now, a man in late middle age, stooped and lame, his once-blazing hair all gray; his face was deeply lined with pain and conflict.

“Lew, do you want to go back? Would it be easier? I was here for a reason; I was an exchange student, on a formal mission. It was a matter of honor. But nothing binds you here. You can take ship and return to Darkover whenever you will. Shall we go home, Lew?” He did not glance at my hand; he didn’t need to. Thathad failed, there was no reason to stay here hoping for a miracle.

(But I could still feel that dull pain like a torn-off nail around the thumb. And the sixth finger ached as if I had pinched it in a vise, or burnt it. Strange. Haunted by the ghost of a hand that wasn’t there.)

“Lew, shall we go home?” I knew he wanted it; this alien land was killing him, too. But then he said the wrong thing.

“The Council wants me back. They know, now, I will father no other sons. And you are acknowledged Heir to Alton; when I went away, they said it was unlawful for the lord of Alton Domain and his Heir to leave the Domains at the same time. If you returned, the Council would be forced to acknowledge—”

“Damn the Council!” I said, so loudly that my father flinched. The same damned old political maneuvering. He had never stopped trying to get the Council to acknowledge me—it had made a nightmare of my childhood, forced him into the painful and dangerous step he had taken, forcing premature awakening of my larangift. Later it had driven me to my Aldaran kinsfolk, and the illfated attempt to raise power through Sharra, and Marjorie…I slammed the door shut in my mind, a closed place, black, blank. I would not think about that, I would not— I wanted no part of their damned Council, nor of the Comyn, nor Darkover— I turned my back and walked away toward the lake cabin, feeling him behind me, close, too close—

Get out of my mind! Get— out! Leave me alone! I slammed my mind shut like the cabin door, heard the door open and close, felt him there though I stood with closed eyes. I did not turn or look.

“Lew. No, damn it, don’t shut me out again, listen to me! Do you think you are the only one in the world who has known what it is to lose a loved one?” His voice was rough but it was a roughness I knew; it meant that if his voice had been less rough he might have wept. It had taken me twenty-two years to know that my father could weep.

“You were two years old; and your sister died at birth. We both knew there should be no more. Elaine—” he had never before spoken her name in my hearing, though I knew it from his friends; always it had been the distant, formal your mother. “ Yllana,” he said again, saying the Darkovan version of the name this time. “She knew as well as I, how fragile is the rule of a man with only one son. And you were not a hardy child. Believe me, I did not demand it of her. It was her free choice. And for fifteen years I have borne thatburden, and tried never to let Marius feel it… that I grudged him life at the cost of Yllana’s—”

He had never said so much before. I could feel in his harsh voice what it had cost him to say it.

But it had been my mother’s free choice, to risk her life in bearing my brother Marius. Marjorie had had no choice—

Fire. Ravening flames shooting into the sky, the great hovering wings of flame. Marjorie, burning, burning in the flames of Sharra…CaerDonn, the world, Darkover, all in flames—

I slammed the barrier and the blackness down into my mind, heard myself shouting “No!” at the top of my voice, and once again brought up my maimed arm and slammed it down on anything, anything that would send pure physical pain crashing through my mind to the point where I could think of nothing else. He should not make me look at this, that I had killed the only thing I had ever loved or would ever love—

From very far away I heard him calling my name, felt the concerned touch of his thoughts… I slammed the barrier tighter, felt the dark close down. I stood there, not hearing, not seeing, until he went away.

BOOK ONE: The Exile

CHAPTER ONE

Darkover: the third year of exile

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Regis Hastur stood on a balcony of Comyn Castle, high over Thendara and the valley which lay ahead, looking over the city and the Terran Trade City beyond.

Behind him lay the castle, shadowed beneath the mountains. Before him lay the Terran Trade City, the spaceport beyond it—and the rising skyscrapers of the Terran Headquarters building. As he had thought many times before, he thought: this has its own alien beauty.

For many years he had had a dream. When he had come of age, he would leave Darkover behind him, take passage on one of those Terran starships, and go outward, among the stars, strange suns and worlds multiple beyond all telling. He would leave behind him all that he hated about his life; his own uneasy position, heir to an ancient household and a Regency which was more of an anachronism with every passing year; the continuing pressure to marry, young as he was, and provide heirs to the legacy of the Hasturs: the unknown potential of laran, the inbred psychic ability bred into bones and brain and genes. He would leave behind him the rulership of the contending Domains, each striving for something different in the ever-changing world that was modern Darkover. Regis was eighteen; legally of age three years ago, sworn to Hastur. Now he knew he would never have his dream.

He would not have been the first of the Comyn to leave Darkover and go into the Empire. Adventure, the lure of an alien society and a vast complex universe, had drawn more than one Darkovan, even of the highest nobility, into the Empire.

The Ridenow Domain, he thought. They make no secret of their belief that Darkover should align with the Empire, become a part of this modern world. Lerrys Ridenow has traveled widely in the Empire, and no doubt at Council this season he will be singing their praises again. Kennard Alton was educated on Terra, and he is there now, with his son Lew. And then Regis wondered how Lew fared, somewhere in that alien universe.

If I were free of the burden of the Hastur heritage, I too would go forth and never return. And again the temptation struck him, as he had planned it when he was a rebellious child in his first year in the Cadets of the Guard—the necessary apprenticeship served by all Comyn sons. He and his friend Danilo had plotted it together; they would ship outward on one of the Terran ships, find a place for themselves there… lose themselves in the immensities of a thousand alien worlds. Regis smiled, reminiscently, knowing it had been the dream of children. For better or worse, he was Heir to Hastur, and the fate of Darkover was a part of his life, as intimately as body or brain. Danilo was Heir to Ardais, adopted by the childless Lord Dyan Ardais, being prepared for that high office as Regis was prepared for his own. Last year had been their third year in the cadets together; junior officers, learning command and self-command. It had been a peaceful time; but it was over. Regis had spent the winter past in the city of Thendara, attending sessions of the cortes, dealing with city magistrates, diplomatic envoys from the other Domains and the Dry Towns beyond the Domains, the representatives of the Terrans and the Empire; learning, in short, to take his grandfather’s place as representative of the Domains.

Danilo had paid only one or two fleeting visits to the city since that Festival Night when Council Season had ended; he had had to return to Castle Ardais with Dyan and learn the ordering of the Domain which, if Dyan died still childless, would be his own. Then, Regis had heard, Danilo had been called back to Syrtis by the grave illness of his own father.