Star of Danger by Marion Zimmer Bradley

“The trailmen might evolve something like this, instead of what you fear, Kennard.”

The chieri answered for Kennard. “The trail-folk, in the far-back times, were our kinfolk, but then we left the trees and built fire, they feared it and our ways moved apart. They are our younger brothers, to grow more slowly in wisdom. But perhaps it is time, indeed, for what this child of two worlds has done.”

Larry stared up at the alien’s strange beautiful face. “You—know all this?”

“The Comyn powers are chieri powers, little brother,” the chieri said. It stretched out its long body on the green turf. “I suppose you have no patience with long tales, go I will say only this, Kennard—the chieri lived on Darkover long before you Terrans came, to drive us into the deep and deeper woods.”

Kennard said, “But I am not Terran,” and Larry felt his amazed anger. “Larry is the Terran!”

The chieri smiled. “I forgot,” he said gently, “that to your people, the passing of a lifetime is as a sleep and a sleep to our folk. Children of Terra are you both. I was here, a youngling of my people, when the first ship from Terra arrived, a lost ship and broken, and your people were forced to remain here. The time came when they forgot their origins; but the name they gave to this world—Darkover—indeed reflects their speech and their customs.”

It was a strange tale he told, and Kennard and Larry, lying at ease and almost in disbelief, listened while the chieri told his tale.

The Terran ship had been one of the first early starships to cross space. Their crew, some hundred men and women, had been forced to remain, and after dozens of generations—which had seemed like only a little while to the chieri-folk—they had spread over most of the planet.

“There is a tale you spoke of,” the chieri said, “of the lord of Carthon—one of your people, Kennard—who met with a woman of my folk Kierestelli; and she loved him, and bore him a son, and therewith she died, but the blood had mixed. And this son, Hastur, loved a maiden of your people, Cassilda, and from this admixture in their seven sons came the Seven Domains in which you take such pride.”

Interbreeding to produce these new telepathic powers in greater intensity had led to seven pure strains of telepathy, each with its own Domain, or family; and each with its own kind of laran, or psi power.

“The Hasturs. The Aillards. The Ridenow. The Elhalyn. The Altons—your clan, young Kennard. And the Aldaran.”

“The Aldaran,” said Kennard with a trace of bitterness, “were exiled from the Comyn—and they sold our world to the Terrans!”

The chieri’s beautiful face was strange. “You mean, when the Terrans came again, for the second time, the Aldaran first welcomed their long-forgotten brothers to their own people who had forgotten their ancestry,” he said. “Perhaps among the Aldarans, their Terran heritage was never forgotten. But as for you, little son of Darkover and of Terra”—and he looked at Larry with great gentleness—”you are weary; you should sleep. Yet I know very well why you are in haste. Even now—” his face became distant—”Valdir Alton answers for your fate to these new Terrans who have also forgotten that these men of Darkover are their brothers. As, indeed, all folk are brothers, though there are many, many times when they forget it. And because you are both of my people, I will help you—though I would love to speak more to you. For I am old, and of a dying race. Our women bear no more children, and one day the chieri will be only a memory, living on only in the blood of those, their conquerers.” He sighed. “Beautiful were our forests in those days. Yet time and change come to all men and all worlds, and you are right to speak with reverence of Kierestelli and to call Cassilda blessed, who first mingled blood with blood and thus assured that the chieri would survive in blood if never in memory. But I am old—I talk too much. I should act instead.”

He got to his feet. With those strange gray eyes—eyes like the eyes of Lorill Hastur, Larry realized—he enspelled them both, until nothing but those gray eyes remained; space whirled away and reeled—

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