Magda turned pale, knowing what Rohana’s next words would be. “I knew, then, having seen the portrait you showed me, just who is being held in Sain Scarp. Your friend,” she said to Magda. “Is he your lover?” She had used the polite term, for which the nearest Terran equivalent was “promised husband”; the derogatory mode would have implied “paramour.”
Magda forced her words through dread. A whole childhood spent hearing tales of bandits in the Hellers made her throat tight. “He was my”-she searched for the precise Darkovan equivalent for “husband,” for there were at least three forms of Darkovan marriage- “my freemate. We have separated, but we were childhood friends and I am deeply concerned for his safety.”
Montray, who had followed all this with difficulty, was scowling. “Are you certain? It is rare for any of my men to go so far into the Hellers. Could it not be some other kinsman with a resemblance to your son, Lady?”
“Rumal sent this with his message,” Rohana said, and held out a man’s neck-ornament on a fine copper chain. “I know it is not my son’s; it was made in Dalereuth, and such work is not sold in the Hellers, nor worn much.”
Montray turned it uneasily in his hands. It was a carved medallion of some blue-green semiprecious stone, encircled in finely worked copper filigree. “You know Haldane better than I do, Magda. Do you recognize it?”
“I gave it to him.” Her mouth was dry. It had been shortly before their short-lived marriage; the one and only time they had traveled together to the plains of Dalereuth. She had bought it for herself, but Peter had admired it so extravagantly that Magda, who after all could not wear a man’s ornament, had made him a present of it, in return for- She raised her shaking hands to the nape of her neck, touching the silver butterfly-clasp she always wore.
He took off the one I had worn, and pinned this one there . . . as only a lover would dare to do . . . and I let him. …
“That’s pretty conclusive,” Montray said. “Damn him, he knew better than to try to get into the Hellers alone. What chance is there that this bandit-di Scarp-will turn him loose, if he finds out he’s got the wrong man?”
“None,” Hastur said. “The mountain bandits remember all too well those first few years at Caer Donn, when Aldaran deceived the Terrans into believing it was permitted to use your weapons against them. I hope, for his own sake, that your young man does not reveal his identity.”
Montray said, “Doesn’t that just prove that we were right to help the Aldarans, and that you were wrong to stop us? They are still ravaging your people worse than ever, and your Darkovan Compact makes it impossible to attack them effectively. You should have let us finish wiping them out!”
“I must respectfully refuse to debate the ethics of Compact with you,” Hastur said; “it has kept Darkover free of major wars for hundreds of years, and is not open to debate. We still remember our Ages of Chaos.”
“That’s all very well,” Montray said, “but doesn’t it mean anything to you that an innocent bystander may be murdered in a quarrel that is none of his, and that you are condoning their actions by making it impossible for our people to rescue him?”
“It means a great deal,” said Hastur, and his eyes glowed with sudden anger. “I might remind you that he is hardly an innocent bystander, having walked into this situation of his own free will. We did not require him-for that matter, we did not even give him leave-to travel in the Hellers. He went of his free choice and for your purposes, or his own-not ours. But we did not forbid him to go, either; and it is really none of our affair if he suffers the same fate that our own men risk whenever they go there. I might remind you, also, that there was no compulsion upon us ever to tell you of his fate. Nor do we refuse you leave to rescue him, if you can do it as secretly as he went there.”