“My father was greatly skilled in his youth and has taught all of us some of the skills of a matrix technician. Yet I am said to have but little natural talent for it. You have had the training, Lew, so tell me, which is the most important, talent or skill?
I told him what I had been told myself. “Talent and skill are the right hand and the left; it is the will that rules both, and the will must be disciplined. Without talent, little skill can be learned; but talent alone is worth little without training.”
“I am said to have the talent,” said the girl Marjorie. “Uncle told me so, yet I have no skill, for by the time I was old enough to learn, he was old past teaching. And I am half-Terran. Could a Terran learn those skills, do you think?”
I smiled and said, “I too am part-Terran, yet I served at Arilinn—Marjorie?” I tried to speak her Terran name and she smiled at my stumbling formation of the syllables.
“Marguerida, if you like that better,” she said softly in cahuenga. I shook my head. “As you speak it, it is rare and strange . . . and precious,” I said, wanting to add, “like you,” Beltran curled his lip disdainfully and said, “So the Comyn actually let you, with your Terran blood, into their sacred towers? How very condescending of them! I’d have laughed in their faces and told them what they could do with their tower!”
“No, cousin, it wasn’t like that,” I said. “It was only in the towers that no one took thought of my Terran blood. Among the Comyn I was nedestro, bastard. In Arilinn, no one cared what I was, only what I could do.”
“You’re wasting your time, Beltran,” said a quiet voice from near the fire. “I am sure he knows no more of history than any of the Hali’imyn, and his Terran blood has done him little good,” I looked across to the bench at the other side of the fire and saw a tall thin man, silver-gilt hair standing awry all around his forehead. His face was shadowed, but it seemed to me for a moment that his eyes came glinting out of the darkness like a cat’s eyes by torchlight. “No doubt he believes, like most of the valley-bred, that the Comyn fell straight from the arms of the Lord of Light, and has come to believe all their pretty romances and fairy tales. Lew, shall I teach you your own history?”
“Bob,” said Marjorie, “no one questions your knowledge. But your manners are terrible!”
The man gave a short laugh. I could see his features now by firelight, narrow and hawklike, and as he gestured I could see that he had six fingers on either hand, like the Ardais and Aillard men. There was something terribly strange about his eyes, too. He unfolded his long legs, stood up and made me an ironic bow.
“Must I respect the chastity of your mind, vai dom, as you respect that of your deluded sorceresses? Or have I leave to ravish you with some truths, in hope that they may bring forth the fruits of wisdom?”
I scowled at the mockery. “Who in hell are you?”
“In hell, I am no one at all,” he said lightly. “On Darkover, I call myself Robert Raymon Kadarin, s’dei par servu” On his lips the elegant casta words became a mockery. “I regret I cannot follow your custom and add a long string of names detailing my parentage for generations. I know no more of my parentage than you Comyn know of yours but, unlike you, I have not yet learned to make up the deficiency with a long string of make-believe gods and legendary figures!”
“Are you Terran?” I asked. His clothing looked it
He shrugged. “I was never told. However, it’s a true saying: only a race-horse or a Comyn lord is judged by his pedigree. I spent ten years in Terran Empire intelligence, though they wouldn’t admit it now; they’ve put a price on my head because, like all governments who buy brains, they like to limit what the brains are used for. I found out, for instance,” he added deliberately, “just what kind of game the Empire’s been playing on Darkover and how the Comyn have been playing along with them. No, Beltran,” he said, swinging around to face my cousin, “I’m going to tell him. He’s the one we’ve been waiting for.”