The journey took four cold and exhausting days. On the second day Ellemir took to her litter and did not ride horseback again till just before they entered the city gates. In the notched pass which overlooked the city she insisted on leaving the horse-litter and mounting again.

“The litter jolts me, and the baby, worse than Shirina’s gait,” she insisted pettishly, “and I will not be carried into Thendara as if I were a spoiled queen or a cripple. I want them to know my child is no weakling!” Ferrika, appealed to, said that Ellemir’s comfort was more important than anything else, and if she felt comfortable and able to ride, ride she should.

Andrew had never seen the Comyn Castle except distantly from the Terran Zone. It stood high above the city, immense and ancient, and Callista told him how it had stood there since before the Ages of Chaos, how it had not been built by human hands at all. The stones had been lifted into place by matrix circles from the Towers, working together to transform the forces.

Inside it was a labyrinth, with enormous long corridors, and the rooms to which they were shown — rooms, Callista told him, reserved since time immemorial for the Altons at Council season — were almost as spacious as the adjoining suites they occupied at Armida.

Outside the Alton suite the castle seemed deserted. “But Lord Hastur is here,” Callista told him. “He remains in Thendara most of the year, and his son Danvan is helping to command the Guards. I suppose they wil summon council to act on the heirship of Alton. There are always questions, and Valdir is so young.”

As Dom Esteban was carried into the main hall of the Alton rooms, a slender, sallow boy with a sharp, intelligent face and hair so dark it hardly seemed red, about twelve years old, came forward to meet him.

“Valdir.” Dom Esteban held out his arms, and the boy knelt at his feet.

“You are so young, my boy, but you will have to be a grown man already!” As the boy rose, he clasped him close. “Do you know what has become of your brother’s…” He choked on the word. Young Valdir said quietly, “He rests in the chapel, Father, and his paxman is with him. I did not know what I ought to do, but” — he gestured, and Dezi came hesitantly into the main room — “my brother Dezi has been such a help to me, since I came from Nevarsin.”

Damon thought, uncharitably, that Dezi had lost no time, now that his protector was dead, in worming himself into the good graces of the next heir. Next to the thin, sallow Valdir, Dezi, with his bright red hair and freckled fac«, looked far more like a member of the family than did the legitimate son. Dom Esteban embraced Dezi, weeping.

“My dear, dear boy—”

Damon wondered how he could deprive the old man of the comfort of his only other remaining son, deprive Valdir of his only living brother? It was a true saying, bare is back without brother. In any case, Dezi, deprived of his matrix, was harmless.

Valdir came and hugged Ellemir. “I see you finally did marry Damon. I thought you would.” But before Callista he hung shyly back. Callista held out her hands, explaining to Andrew, “I went to the Tower when Valdir was an infant in arms; I have seen him only a few times since, and not since he was a tiny child. I am sure you have forgotten me, brother.”

“Not quite,” said the boy, looking up at his tall sister. “I seem to remember a little. We were in a room with colors, like a rainbow. I must have been very small. I fell and hurt my knee, and you took me on your lap and sang to me. You were wearing a white dress with something blue on it.”

She smiled. “I remember now, it was when you were presented in the Crystal Chamber, as every Comyn son must be so that they may be sure he has no hidden defect or deformity, when later he is pledged for marriage. I was only a psi monitor then. But you were not even five years old; I am surprised you should even remember the blue veil. This is my husband, Andrew.”

The child bowed courteously but did not offer Andrew his hand, retreating to Dezi’s side. Andrew bowed coldly to Dezi; Damon gave him a kinsman’s embrace, hoping the touch would dispel the suspicions he could not be rid of. But Dezi was well barricaded against him. Damon could not read his mind even a little. Then Damon admonished himself to be fair. At their last meeting he had tortured Dezi, nearly killed him; how could he greet Damon with much friendship?

Dom Esteban was taken to his rooms. He looked pleadingly at Dezi, and the young man followed his father. When they had gone Andrew said with a grimace, “Well, I thought we were rid of him. But if it comforts our father to have him near, what can we do?”

Damon thought it would not be the first time that a bastard son, rascally in his youth, had become the prop and mainstay of a father who had lost his other children. He hoped for Dom Esteban’s sake, and for Dezi’s own, that it might prove to be so.

He joined Andrew and Callista, saying, “Will you come with me to the chapel, to see what has been done with Domenic? If all is seemly, we can spare our father this, and Ellemir. Ferrika has put her to bed. She knew Domenic best… there is no need to harrow her feelings more.”

The chapel was in the deepest part of the Comyn Castle, carved from the living rock of the mountain on which it stood. It had the cold, earthy chill of an underground cavern. Domenic lay in the echoing silence on a long trestled bier, before the carved image Andrew could already recognize as the Blessed Cassilda, mother of the Domains. In the carved stone figure Andrew fancied be could actually see a faint likeness to Callista’s own features, and to the cold and lifeless face of the young man who lay dead.

Damon bowed his head, burying his face in his hands. Callista gently bent and kissed the cold brow, murmuring something Andrew could not hear. A dark form, crouched kneeling beside the bier, suddenly stirred and rose. It was a short, sturdily built young man, disheveled and heavy-eyed, his eyelids reddened with long weeping. Andrew knew who he must be, even before Callista held out her hands.

“Cathal, dear cousin.”

He stared at them pitifully for a moment before he found his voice. “Lady Ellemir, my lords…”

“I am not Ellemir, but Callista, cousin,” she said quietly. “We are grateful that you should have remained with Domenic till we could come. It is right there should be someone near who loved him.”

“So I felt, and yet I felt guilty, I who was his murderer—” His voice broke. Damon embraced the shaking lad.

“We all know it was mischance, kinsman. Tell me how it happened.”

The red-eyed stare was pitiable. “We were in the armory, working with wooden practice swords as we did every day. He was a better swordsman than I,” Cathal said, and his face came apart. He too, Andrew noticed, had Comyn features; “cousin” was not just politeness.

“I didn’t know I had hit him so hard, truly I didn’t. I thought he was shamming, teasing me, that he would spring up and laugh — he did that so often.” His face twisted. Damon, remembering a thousand pranks during Domenic’s cadet year, wrung Cathal’s hand. “I know, my boy.” Had the lad gone like this, uncomforted, burdened since the death?

“Tell me about it.”

“I shook him.” Cathal was white with horror. “I said, ‘Get up, you silly donkey, stop playing the fool.’ And then I took off his mask and I saw he was unconscious. But even then I didn’t think much about it — someone is always getting hurt.”

“I know, Cathal, I was knocked senseless half a dozen times in my cadet years, and look, my middle finger is still crooked where Coryn broke it with a practice sword. But what did you do then, lad?”

“I ran off to fetch the hospital officer, Master Nicol.”

“You left him alone?”

“No, his brother was with him,” Cathal said. “Dezi was putting cold water on his face, trying to bring him around. But when I came back with Master Nicol he was dead.”