I smiled grimly. “Don’t, then. What is it?”

“My grandfather sent me to call you back. As a matter of fact, I wanted an excuse to get out myself.”

“I suppose I ought to thank you for pulling that blow-pipe away from Dyan. Right now, I’m inclined to think you’d have saved us all trouble if you’d let him use it.”

“Are you going to fight him?”

“How can I? You know what they say about the Altons.”

The youngster joined me at the railing. “Want me to fight him as your proxy? That’s legal, too.”

I tried to hide how much the offer had touched me. “Thanks. But you’d better keep out of this business.”

“It’s too late for that. I’m in it already. Waist-deep.”

I asked, on impulse, “Did you know Marius well?”

“I wish, now, that I could say yes.” His face held a queer sort of shame. “Unfortunately — no, I never did.”

“Did anybody?”

“I don’t think so. Although he and Lerrys were friends, in a way.” Regis traced an idle pattern in the dust, with his bootheel. After a minute he rubbed his toe over it and said, “I spent a few days in the Ridenow forst before coming to council, and—” he paused. “This is difficult — I heard it by chance, and the only honorable thing I could do, was to pledge not to repeat it. But the boy is dead now, and I think you have a right to know.”

I said nothing. I had no right to insist that a Hastur violate his word. I waited for him to decide. At last he said, “It was Lerrys who suggested the alliance with Aldaran, and Marius himself went to Castle Aldaran as ambassador. Do you think Beltran would have had the insolence to offer marriage to a Keeper, unsolicited?”

I should have realized that. Someone must have told Belt-ran that such an offer would meet with serious consideration. But was Regis breaking his pledge, just to tell me my brother had been pawn-hand in a mildly treasonable intrigue?

“Can’t you see?” Regis demanded. “Why Callina? Why a

Keeper? Why not Dio, or Linnell, or my sister Javanne, or any of the other comynara? Beltran wouldn’t care. In fact, he’d probably have an ordinary girl, provided she could give him laran rights in council. No. Listen, you know the law — that a Keeper must remain a virgin, or she loses her power to work in the screens?”

“That’s nonsense,” I said.

“Nonsense or not, they believe it. The point is, this marriage launches two ships on one track. Beltran allied to them, and Callina out of the council’s way by good, fair, safe, legal means.”

“It begins to fit together,” I said. “Dyan and all.” There was, after all, something Dyan wanted less than a capable, adult male Alton in council; a Comyn Keeper might be, even more of a threat to him. “But that marriage will take place only over my dead body.”

He knew immediately what I meant. “Then marry her yourself, now, Lew! Do it illegally, if you have to, in the Terran Zone.”

I grinned ironically and held out my mutilated arm. I could not marry, by Darkovan law, while Kadarin lived. An unsettled blood-feud takes precedence over every other human obligation. But by Terran law we could marry.

I shook my head, heavily. “She’d never consent.”

“If only Marius had lived!” Regis said, and I was moved by the sincerity of his words; the first honest regret I had heard from anyone, though they had all expressed formal condolences. I liked it better that he did not pretend to any personal sorrow, but simply said, “The Comyn needed him so. Lew, could you use any other telepath — me, for instance — for a focus like that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think so. I’d rather not try. You’re a Hastur, and it probably wouldn’t kill you, but it wouldn’t be fun.” My voice suddenly turned hard. “Now tell me what you really came here to tell me!”

“The death sign,” he blurted, then his face crumpled in panic. “I didn’t mean that, I didn’t—”

I could have had his confidence if I had waited. Instead I did something that still shames me. I caught one of his wrists with my good hand, and with a quick twist, a trick hold I’d learned on Vialles, forced him against the railing. He started to leap at me, then I caught his thought.

I can’t fight a man who has only one hand.

That hardened my rage; and in that instant of black wrath I lashed out and forced rapport on him; I drew into his mind roughly, with a casual swift searching that took what it wanted, then withdrew.

Stark white, shaking, Regis slumped against the railing; and I, the taste of triumph bitter on my tongue, turned my back on him. To justify my own self-contempt, I made my voice hard. “So you built the sign! You — a Hastur!”

Regis swung around, shaking with wrath. “I’d smash your face for that, if you weren’t — why the hell did you do that?”

I said harshly, “I found out what I wanted to know.”

He muttered, “You did.”

Then, his eyes blazing but his voice unsteady, he said, “That’s what scared me. That’s why I came to you. You’re an Alton, I thought you’d know. At the council, something hit me. I — I don’t know anything about matrix mechanics, surely you must know that now? I don’t know how I did it, or why. I just bridged the gap and threw the sign. I thought I could tell you — ask you—” His voice broke, on the ragged edge of hysteria; I heard him swear, chokingly, like a child trying not to cry. He was shaking all over.

At last he said, “All right. I’m still scared. And I could kill you for what you did. But there’s no one else to ask for help.” He swallowed. “What you did, you did openly. I can stand that. What I can’t stand is not knowing what I might do next.”

Shamed and unnerved, I walked away from him. Regis, who had tried to befriend me, had received the same treatment I’d given my worst enemy. I couldn’t face him.

After a minute he followed me. “Lew. I said, we’ll have to forget it. We can’t afford to fight. Did it occur to you?

We’re both in the same fix, we’re both doing things we’d never do in our right mind,”

He knew, and I knew, it wasn’t the same; but it made me able to look round and face him.

“Why did I do it, Lew? How, why?”

“Steady,” I said. “Don’t lose your head. We’re all scared. I’m scared, too. But there must be a reason.” I paused, trying to muster my memory of the Comyn Gifts. They are mostly recessive now, bred out by intermarriage with outsiders, but Regis was physically atavistic, a throwback to the pure Comyn type; he might also be a mental throwback. “The Hastur Gift, whatever that is, is latent in you,” I said. “Perhaps, unconsciously, you knew the council should be broken up, and took that drastic way of doing it. I added, diffidently, “If what had happened — hadn’t happened, I’d offer to go into your mind and sift it. But — well, I don’t think you’d trust me now.

“Probably not. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I said roughly. “I don’t even trust myself, after that. But Ashara or Callina, for that matter, either of the Keepers, could deep-probe and find out for you.”

“Ashara—” He looked up thoughtfully toward the Keeper’s Tower. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

We leaned across the railing, looking down into the valley, dulled now and darkened by the falling night. A baritone thunder suddenly shook the castle, and a silver dart sped bullet-wise across the sky, trailing a comet’s tail of crimson, and was lost.

“Mail-rocket,” I said, “from the Terran Zone.”

“Terra and Darkover,” said a voice behind us, “the irresistible force, and the immovable object.”

Old Hastur came out on the balcony. “I know, I know,” he said, “you young Altons don’t like being ordered around here and there. Frankly, I don’t enjoy doing it; I’m too old.” He smiled at Regis. “I sent you out to keep you from jumping into the mess along with Lew. But I wish you’d managed to keep your temper, Lew Alton!”