For DIANA PAXSON, who asked the question which directly touched off this book;

and

for THEODORE STURGEON, who first explored the questions which, directly or indirectly, underlie almost everything I have written.

Damon Ridenow rode through a land cleansed.

For most of the year, the great plateau of the Kilghard Hills had lain under the evil influence of the catmen. Crops withered in the fields, under the unnatural darkness which blotted out the light of the sun; the poor folk of the district huddled in their homes, afraid to venture into the blasted countryside.

But now men worked again in the light of the great red sun of Darkover, garnering their harvests against the coming snows. It was early autumn, and the harvests were mostly in.

The Great Cat had been slain in the caves of Corresanti and the giant illegal matrix which he had found and put to such frightful use had been destroyed with his death. Such catmen as still lived had fled into the far rain forests beyond the mountains, or fallen to the swords of the Guardsmen that Damon had led against them.

The land was clean again and free of terror, and Damon, most of his army dismissed to their homes, rode homeward. Not to his ancestral estates of Serrais; Damon was an unregarded younger son and had never felt Serrais his home. He rode now to Armida, to his wedding.

He sat his horse now at the side of the road, watching the last few men separate themselves according to their way. There were uniformed Guardsmen bound for Thendara, in their green and black uniforms; there were a few men bound northward to the Hellers, from the Domains of Ardais and Hastur; and a few riding south to the plains of Valeron.

“You should speak to the men, Lord Damon,” said a short, gnarled-looking man at Damon’s side.

“I’m not very good at making speeches.” Damon was a slight, slender man with a scholar’s face. Until this campaign he had never thought himself a soldier and was still surprised at himself, that he had led these men successfully against the remnants of the catmen.

“They expect it, lord,” Eduin urged, and Damon sighed, knowing what the other man said was true. Damon was Comyn of the Domains; not Lord of a Domain, or even a Comyn heir, but still Comyn, of the old telepathic, psi-gifted caste which had ruled the Seven Domains from time unknown. The days were gone when Comyn were treated as living gods, but there was still the respect, near to awe. And Damon had been trained to the responsibilities of a Comyn son. Sighing, he urged his horse to a spot where the waiting men could see him.

“Our work is done. Thanks to you men who have answered my call, there is peace in the Kilghard Hills and in our homes. It only remains for me to give you my thanks and farewell.”

The young officer who had brought the Guardsmen from Thendara rode toward Damon, as the other men rode away. “Will Lord Alton ride to Thendara with us? Shall we await him?”

“You would have long to wait,” Damon said. “He was wounded in the first battle with the catmen, a small wound, but the spine was injured past healing. He is paralyzed from the waist down. I think he will never ride anywhere again.”

The young officer looked troubled. “Who will now command the Guardsmen, Lord Damon?”

It was a reasonable question. For generations the command of the Guardsmen had lain in the hands of the Alton Domain; Esteban Lanart of Armida, Lord Alton, had commanded for many years. But Dom Esteban’s oldest surviving son, Lord Domenic, was a youth of seventeen. Though a man by the laws of the Domains, he had neither the age nor the authority for command. The other remaining Alton son, young Valdir, was a boy of eleven, a novice at Nevarsin Monastery, being schooled by the brothers of St.-Valentine-of-the-Snows.

Who would command the Guards, then? It was a very reasonable question, thought Damon, but he did not know the answer. He said so, adding, “It will be for Comyn Council to decide next summer, when Council meets in Thendara.” There had never been war in winter on Darkover; there never would be. In winter there was a fiercer enemy, the cruel cold, the blizzards which swept down across the Domains from the Hellers, No army could move against the Domains in winter. Even bandits were kept close to their own homes. They could wait for the next Council season to name a new commander. Damon changed the subject.

“Will you reach Thendara by nightfall?”

“Unless something should delay us by the way.”

“Then don’t let me delay you further,” Damon said, and bowed. “The command of these men is yours, kinsman.”

The young officer could not conceal a smile. He was very young, and this was his first command, brief and temporary as it was. Damon watched with a thoughtful smile as the boy mustered his men and rode away. The boy was a born officer, and with Dom Esteban disabled, competent officers could expect promotions.

Damon himself, though in command of this mission, had never thought of himself as a soldier. Like all Comyn sons he had served in the cadet corps, and had taken his turn as an officer, but his talents and ambitions had been far otherwise. At seventeen he had been admitted to the Arilinn Tower as a telepath, to be trained in the old matrix sciences of Darkover. For many, many years he had worked there, growing in strength and skill, reaching the rank of psi technician.

Then he had been sent from the Tower. No fault of his own, his Keeper had assured him, only that he was too sensitive, that his health, even his sanity might be destroyed under the tremendous stresses of matrix work.

Rebellious but obedient, Damon had gone. The word of a Keeper was law, never to be questioned or resisted. His life smashed, his ambitions in ruins, he had tried to build himself a new life in the Guardsmen, though he was no soldier, and knew it. He had been cadet master for a time, then hospital officer, supply officer. And on this last campaign against the catmen he had learned to bear himself with confidence. But he had no desire to command, was glad to relinquish it now.

He watched the men ride away until their forms were lost in the dust of the roadway. Now for Annida and home…

“Lord Damon,” Eduin said at his side, “there are riders on the road.”

“Travelers? At this season?” It seemed impossible. The winter snows had not yet begun, but any day the first of the winter storms would sweep down from the Hellers, blocking the roads for days at a time. There was an old saying, Only the mad or the desperate travel in winter. Damon strained his eyes to make out the distant riders, but he had been somewhat shortsighted since childhood, and could make out only a blur.

“Your eyes are better than mine. Are they armed men, do you think, Eduin?”

“I do not think so, Lord Damon; there is a lady riding with them.”

“At this season? That seems unlikely,” Damon said. What could bring a woman out into the uncertain traveling of the approaching winter?

“It is a Hastur banner, Lord Damon. Yet Lord Hastur and his lady would not leave Thendara at this season. If for some reason they rode to Castle Hastur, they would not be on this road. I cannot understand it.”

Yet even before he finished, Damon knew the identity of the woman who rode with the little party of Guardsmen and escorts toward him. Only one woman on Darkover would ride alone beneath a Hastur banner, and only one Hastur would have reason to ride this way.

“It is the Lady of Arilinn,” he said at last, reluctantly, and saw Eduin’s face light up with wonder and awe.