“I don’t believe a word of it.”
“Your belief wouldn’t make it true; your doubt won’t make it false,” Kadarin said. “The very name of this world, Darkover, is a Terran word meaning,” he considered a minute, translated, ” ‘color of night overhead.’ On that crewlist there were di Asturiens and MacArans and these are, you would say, good old Darkovan names. There was a ship’s officer named Camilla Del Rey. Camilla is a rare name among Terrans now, but it is the most common name for girl-children in the Kilghard Hills; you have even given it to one of your Comyn demi-goddesses. There was a priest of Saint Christopher of Centaurus, a Father Valentine Neville, and how many of the Comyn’s sons have been taught in the cristoforo monastery of Saint-Valentine-of-the-Snows? I brought Marjorie, who is a cristoforo, a little religious medal from Terra itself; its twin is enshrined in Nevarsin. Must I go on with such examples, which I assure you I could quote all night without tiring? Have your Comyn forefathers ever told you so much?’
My head was reeling. It sounded infernally convincing.
“The Comyn cannot know this. If the knowledge was lost—”
“They know, all right,” Beltran said with contempt. “Ken-nard knows certainly. He has lived on Terra.”
My father knew this and had never told me?
Kadarin and Beltran were still telling me their tale of a “lost ship” but I had ceased to listen. I could sense Marjorie’s soft eyes on me in the dying firelight, though I could no longer see them. I felt that she was following my thoughts not intruding on them but rather responding to me so completely that there were no longer any barriers between us. This had never happened before. Even at Arilinn, I had never felt so wholly attuned to any human being. I felt she knew how distressed and weary all this had made me.
On the cushioned bench she stretched out her hand to me and I could feel her indignation running up from her small fingers into my hand and arm and all along my body. She said, “Bob, what are you trying to do to him? He comes here weary from long travel, a kinsman and a guest; is this our mountain hospitality?”
Kadarin laughed. “Set a mouse to guard a lion!” he said. I felt those unfathomably strange eyes piercing the darkness to see our hands clasped. “I have my reasons, child. I don’t know what fate sent him here, but when I see a man who has lived by a lie, I try to tell him the truth if I feel he’s worth hearing it. A man who must make a choice must make it on facts, not fuzzy loyalties and half-truths and old lies. The tides of fate are moving—”
I said rudely, “Is fate one of your facts? You called me superstitious.”
He nodded. He looked very serious. “You’re a telepath, an Alton; you know what precognition is,”
Beltran said, “You’re going too fast. We don’t even know why he’s come here, and he is heir to a Domain. He may even have been sent to carry tales back to the old graybeard in Thendara and all his deluded yes-men.”
Beltran swung around to face me. “Why did you come here?” he demanded. “After all these years, Kennard cannot be all that eager for you to know your mother’s kin, otherwise you would have been my foster-brother, as Father wished.”
I thought of that with a certain regret. I would willingly have had this kinsman for foster-brother. Instead I had never known of his existence till now, and it had been our mutual loss. He demanded again, “Why have you come, cousin, after so long?”
“It’s true I came at my father’s will,” I said at last, slowly. “Hastur heard reports that the Compact was being violated in Caer Donn: my father was too ill to travel and sent me in his place.” I felt strangely pulled this way and that. Had Father sent me to spy on kinsfolk? The idea filled me with revulsion. Or had he, in truth, wished me to know my mother’s kin? I did not know, and not knowing made me uncertain, wretched.