“You’re making too much of this,” Regis said. “I never beard that anyone died of threshold sickness.” Yet Javanne had looked genuinely frightened …
“Maybe not,” Danilo said skeptically, “but if you cannot sit your horse, and fall and break your skull, that’s fatal, too. Or if you exhaust yourself and take a chill, and die of it. And you are the last Hastur.”
“No I’m not,” Regis said, at the end of endurance. “Didn’t you hear me tell Lew? I have an heir. Before I ever came on this trip I faced the fact that I might die, so I named one of my sister’s sons as my heir. Legally.” Danilo sat back on his heels, stunned, wide open, and his thought was as clear as if he had spoken aloud, For my sake? Regis forcibly stopped himself from saying anything more. He could not face the naked emotion in Danilo’s eyes. This was the time of danger, the forced intimacy of these evenings, when he must barricade himself continually against revealing what he felt. It would be all too easy to cling to Danilo for strength, to take advantage of Danilo’s emotional response to him.
Danilo was saying angrily, “Even so, I won’t have your death on my head! The Hasturs need you for yourself, Regis, not just for your blood or your heir!”
“What do you suggest I do about it?” Regis did not know, himself, whether it was an honest question or a sarcastic challenge. “We are not pursued. We must rest here till you are well again.”
“I don’t think I shall ever be well again until I have a chance to go to one of the towers and learn to control this.” Laran? Gift? Curse, he thought. In his blood, in his brain.
But that was not the only thing making him ill, he knew. It was the constant need to barrier himself against his feelings, against his own unwelcome thoughts and desires. And for that there was no help, he decided. Even in the towers they could not make him other than he was. They might teach to conceal it, though, live with it.
Danilo laid his hand on Regis’ shoulder. “You must let me look after you. It is my duty.” He added after a moment, “And my pleasure.”
By an effort that literally made his head spin, Regis remained motionless under the touch. Rigidly, refusing the proffered rapport, he said, “Your porridge is burning. If you’re so eager to do something, attend to what you’re supposed to be doing. The damned stuif is inedible even when properly cooked.”
Danilo stiffened as if the words had been a blow. He went to the fire and took off the boiling concoction. Regis did not look at him or care that he had hurt him. He was beyond thinking about anything, except his own attempt not to think.
He felt a violent anger with Danilo for forcing this intimate confrontation on him. Suddenly he recalled the fight Danilo had picked in the barracks; a fight which, had it not been for Hjalmar’s intervention, might have gone far beyond a single blow. He wanted to lash out at Danilo now, flay him with cruel words. He felt a need to put distance between them, break up this unendurable closeness, keep Dani from looking at him with so much love. If they fought, perhaps Regis would no longer have to be constantly on guard, afraid of doing and saying what he could not even endure to think….
Danilo came with porridge in a small pannikin. He said tentatively, “I don’t think this is burned …”
“Oh, stop being so damned attentive.” Regis flung at him. “Eat your supper and let me alone, damn you, just stop hovering over me! What must I do to make you realize I don’t want you, I don’t need you? Just let me alone!”
Danilo’s face went white. He went and sat on the other bench, his head bent over his own porridge. His back to Regis, he said coldly, “Yours is there when you want it, my lord.”
Regis could see clearly, as if time had slid out of focus, that searing moment in the barracks, when Danilo had flung him off with an insult. It was clear in Danilo’s mind, too: He has done to me, knowing, what I did to him, unknowing.