“Lew,” he said, and we hugged each other. I stood back a little to look at him.

“I wouldn’t have recognized you. You were just a skinny little tadpole—” I said. Now he was tall, almost as tall as I, sturdy, broad-shouldered—a man. I could see the shock in his eyes as he took in the scars on my face, the arm that ended in the folded sleeve. I don’t know what, if anything, my father had told him—and he had only been a child when it happened—but God only knows what gossip he had heard in the Comyn. Well, I was used to that shock in people’s faces when they saw me first; I only had to remember the first time I’d looked in a mirror after it all happened. They got used to it, and if they didn’t, they weren’t likely to stay around in my life long enough for it to matter. So I didn’t say anything except, “It’s good to see you, brother. Where’s Andres?”

“Home,” Marius said. “Waiting. I wouldn’t let him come with me this morning. Whatever happened, I didn’t want him mixed up in it. He’s not as young as he used to be.” I caught the unspoken part of that, too. He didn’t want it thought that the claimant for the Alton Domain wanted, or needed, a Terran bodyguard. I never thought of Andres as Terran anymore; he’d been a second father to me, and all the father Marius had had during these crucial years between boy and man.

That had been my fault, too. Then, angrily, I put that thought aside. No law had required our father to spend all his attention on his elder son. It was not my doing, but Marius had been neglected for me, and I wondered, even as we embraced, just how much he resented it. Even now, he might feel that I had turned up just in time to snatch the Domain from his hands.

But there were those in the Comyn who would see nothing in Andres but his Terran background and name. Andres was one of the half dozen or less people here on Darkover that I cared to see.

One of the others was waiting quietly behind Marius until our embrace loosened and we stood back from each other. I said, “Well, Gabriel?”

“Well, Lew?” he replied, in almost the same inflection. “You certainly picked one hell of a moment to walk in!”

“I’m sure you’d have preferred him to wait a day or two, until you had the Domain neatly tied up in your own wallet,” Marius retorted sharply.

“Don’t be a fool, youngster,” Gabriel said without heat, and I remembered that Gabriel’s oldest son must be close to Marius’s own age; a bit younger, perhaps, but not much. “What was I to think, with no word from Kennard? And by the way, Lew, where is the old man? Not well enough to travel?”

I hadn’t wanted Marius to find it out that way, but Gabriel picked it up from my mind before I spoke and so did Marius. Gabriel said something shocked and sympathetic, and Marius began to cry. Gabriel put an arm around him as Marius struggled for self-control. He was still young enough to be ashamed of weeping in public. But behind him my other kinsman made no attempt to conceal the tears streaming down his face.

I hadn’t seen him since I’d left Arilinn, and there, though everyone knew that he was the son of my father’s elder brother and could have been the rightful claimant, before my father or me, to Armida, he had made a great thing, a point of honor, of bearing the name of his Terran foster-father; he was Lord Damononly on ceremonial occasions. The rest of the time we knew him—and thought of him—only as Jeff Kerwin. As he looked at me, tears falling down his face, I remembered the close ties among the Arilinn circle. It was the only time, perhaps, I had been truly happy, truly at peace, in my entire life. He asked now, “Did you—did you at least bring him home to rest here on Darkover, cousin?”

I shook my head. “You know the Terran law,” I reminded him. “I came as soon as I had—had buried him.”

Jeff sighed and said, “He was like a father to me, too, or an elder brother.” He turned to Marius, embracing him, and said, “I have not seen you since you were a child—a baby, really.”

“So here we have all four claimants for the Alton Domain,” said a harsh, musical voice behind us. “But instead of disputing manfully for the Domain as one would expect of hillmen, they are indulging in a love-feast! What a touching spectacle, this reunion!”

Marius whirled on him and said, “Listen, you—” His fists clenched, but I touched his arm with my good hand. “Let it go, brother. He doesn’t know. Lord Dyan, you were my father’s friend, you’ll want to know this. He is buried on Vainwal. And on the last day of his life, a few minutes before his death—which was very sudden and unexpected—he spoke kindly of you and said you had been a good friend to my brother.”

But as I spoke of that last day, remembering—my head was ringing.

— My last command! Go back, Lew, go back and fight for your brother’s rights—

With that final command still ringing in my mind, drowning out everything else, I was even prepared to be civil to Lord Dyan.

Dyan stared straight ahead, his jaw tight, but I saw the muscles in his throat move. At that moment I came closer to liking Dyan Ardais than ever before, or ever again. Somehow his struggle not to weep, as if he were a boy still young enough to be ashamed of tears, touched me as no display could have done. Jeff actually dared to lay a compassionate hand on Dyan’s shoulder. I remembered that Jeff had been married to Dyan’s half-sister—I had never seen her; she had died before I came to Arilinn—and watching them, I knew how Jeff had been persuaded to leave Arilinn and come here, when Jeff had about as much interest in the Regency of Alton—or the politics of the Comyn—as he had in the love life of the banshee. Less, really; he might have had some intellectual curiosity about the banshee.

The silence stretched.

… back and fight for your rights, your brother’s rights… last command…

Endless, a never-ending loop battering my mind… It seemed, for a moment, impossible that they did not hear.

Gabriel said finally, “All my life he’s been there; bigger than life. I simply can’t believe he’s gone.”

“Nor I,” said Jeff. Abruptly he looked at me, and I saw my face mirrored in his mind and was shocked. “Zandru’s hells, Lew! Did you come here directly from the spaceport?” I nodded and he asked, “When did you eat last?”

I thought about that and said at last, “I can’t remember. They shot me so full of drugs aboard ship…I’m still fuzzy.”

… My last command…go back… it was to drown that unending clamor in my mind, that I put my hand to my head, but Jeff put his hand under my arm. He said, “You can’t think straight in this condition, and thinking straight is the first thing you have to be able to do. Besides, you ought not to appear before Council wearing Terran clothes. It made a dramatic point, perhaps, for a few minutes, but it would start people thinking the wrong things. Dyan—?”

The Ardais lord nodded, and Jeff said, “I am guested here in the Ardais quarters—I don’t know who, if anyone, is living in the Alton ones—”

“Caretakers,” said Gabriel, with a wry twist of his mouth. “I may be presumptuous, but not thatpresumptuous!”

“Come along,” Jeff said. “We can find you something to eat, and some decent clothes—”

Dyan said, “Yours would go round him twice, Jeff.” He looked me up and down. “You’re thinner than you used to be. Tell them to find something of mine for him.”

Jeff led me quickly along the corridor; I was glad to get away, for some others of the Comyn and the others in the Crystal Chamber had come out into the hallway. I saw someone wearing Ridenow colors, and the flash of golden and green made me think of Dio.

Was she here, would she confront me at any moment, shriekingMonster! Would she think I had come to force her back as if the Terran ceremony had made her my prisoner?…

Her touch, her understanding…it might even have quieted the shrieking in my mind…yet the love between us had not been strong enough to hold through tragedy. How could I ask it…that horriblething… no man had any right to do that to a woman…