Hastur looked grieved. “All the Ardais are unstable,” he said. “Dom Kyril has been mad these twenty years. But you know the law as well as I do. You forced us to name Lew your heir with that same law. There must be one in the direct line, male and healthy, to represent every Domain, and Dyan has appointed no heir. We cannot even dismiss him from Comyn Council, as we did with Kyril when he began to rave. I do not know how we can send him from Council even long enough to heal his mind, if he is truly mad. Is he sane enough even to choose an heir?”
Regis felt angry and bruised. They seemed to care only about Dyan. Dani was nothing to them, no more than he was to Dyan. He said aggressively, “What of Danilo? What of his disgrace and his suffering? He has the rarest of the Comyn gifts, and the way he has been treated dishonors us all!”
Both men turned to look at him as if they had forgotten him. He felt like a noisy rude child intruding on the counsels of his elders, but he stood his ground, watching the torchlight make flickering patterns on the antique swords over the fire, saw Dyan, the sharp foil in hand, plunging it into his breast….
“Amends shall be made,” Hastur said quietly, “but you must leave it to us.”
“I’ll leave Dyan to you. But Dani is my responsibility! I pledged him my sworn word. I am a Hastur, and the heir to a Domain, and I demand—”
“You demand, do you?” said his grandfather, swinging around to face him. “I deny your right to demand anything! You have told me you wish to renounce that right, to go off-world. It took all I had even to extract your promise to give the minimum duty to the cadets! You have refused, even as Dyan refused, to give an heir to your Domain. By what right do you dare criticize him? You have renounced your heirship to Hastur; by what right do you stand here in front of us and make demands? Sit down and behave yourself or go back to your room and leave these things to your betters!”
“Don’t you treat me like a child!”
“You are a child,” said Hastur, his lips pressed tightly together, “a sick, silly child.”
The room was flickering in and out of focus with the firelight. Regis clenched his fists, fighting for words. “An injury to anyone with laran .., dishonors us all.” He turned to Kennard, pleading. “For the honor of the Guards … for your own honor …”
Kennard’s crippled hands touched him gently; Regis could feel pain ripping through those swollen hands as he wrenched them away. He felt himself sliding in and out of his body, unable to bear the jangle and confusion of all their thoughts. He thought with wild longing of being aboard a starship outward bound, free, leaving this little world behind with all its intrigue. He stood for a moment in Kennard’s memory on the faraway surface of Terra, struggling with the pull of honor and duty against all he longed for, back to the heritage laid out for him before he was born, a path he must walk whether he would or not … felt his grandfather’s anguish, Rafael, Rafael, you would not have deserted me like this . .. heard Dyan’s slow cynical voice, a very special stud animal whose fees are paid to Comyn …
It forced him physically to his knees with the weight of it. Past, present, future spun together, whirling, he saw Dani’s hand meet his on the hilt of a gleaming sword, felt it rip his mind open, overshadowing him. Son of Hastur who is the Son of Light! He was crying like a child. He whispered, “To the House of Hastur … I swear …”
Kennard’s hands, hot and swollen, touched his temples; he felt for an instant that Kennard was holding him upright
Gradually the seething flood of emotion, foreknowledge, memory, receded. He heard Kennard say, “Threshold sickness. Not crisis, but he’s pretty sick. Speak to him, sir.”
“Regis …”