Rebels Asending

Chapter 15

and not fret about it. There are plenty of others who can perform the necessary duties, and just as capably.”

Domenic sagged in the chair. “It’s all so complicated. I thought you could tell me what to look for in a paxman because you’d been one yourself. You know—the right skills, the right temperament. But that isn’t what having a paxman—or being one—means. It’s about love and loyalty and honor, isn’t it?”

Danilo heard the hunger in the boy’s voice, the passion and loneliness.

Some chord deep within him responded. “We are not a society of impersonal laws, like the Terranan. It is those very things—love and loyalty and honor—

that link the Domains together. When we go astray, these principles call us back to ourselves.”

Domenic nodded. “I’ve been thinking I need a paxman to give me confidence.”

“No one can give you that. You must find it inside yourself.”

“I suppose. But my parents expect so much of me!”

“Do they expect any more of you than they do of themselves?”

“Well,” Domenic said wryly, “my mother does accomplish more than any five normal people.”

“That is not so bad,” Danilo said. “Perhaps work is what she needs, a way she can use her knowledge and experience. Domna Marguerida is a highly competent woman—”

“Don’t I know that!” Domenic burst out, and they both chuckled.

“What would you rather have her do?” Danilo asked. “Fret herself into hysterics, with nothing more useful to do than counting the holes in the linens? Or carry forth the vision she shares with Mikhail, helping to shape the future of Darkover?”

“Why does she have to shape me along with it? I never appreciated the custom of fostering out children until now. I always thought Uncle Piedro and Aunt Ariel were shirking their duty in sending Alanna to us.

Now, I almost wish I’d gone to live with them in exchange! Why is it so much easier to talk to anyone but my own parents? I don’t suppose you could adopt me?”

Danilo laughed. “I hardly think so. You’re what, twenty? By all our traditions, you’re no longer a child. A generation ago, you would have a wife and heir by now, and you’d be sitting in the Cortes or managing the family estate.”

“These times are different,” Domenic said. “There’s so much I have to learn first, not the least of which is how to survive the political intrigue of the Council. I want to find my own way! I don’t want to be like one of those string-puppets down at the marketplace.”

“Neither did Regis.” Danilo said quietly.

He remembered all too well that Regis had been under intense pressure to accept his responsibilities to Council and Domain. They both understood that he was expected to marry and father sons, to be everything his ‘formidable grandfather demanded.

“Yet,” Danilo said aloud, “in the end, Regis made up his own mind. He accepted his heritage and obligations freely, not because Lord Danvan expected it of him. You’ve probably heard stories of what Regis did then—

leading the expedition to find a cure for trailmen’s fever, using the Sword of Aldones to vanquish Sharra, standing up to the World Wreckers. None of these were Lord Danvan’s ideas, and none of them had ever been done before.

Regis made the position of Regent his own, with his own vision, his own talents. You will, too—”

Danilo broke off, his telepathic senses alert. There was another person nearby.

Domenic launched himself from his chair, crossed to the door in two strides, and jerked it open, revealing a beautiful and disconsolate young woman. Danilo recognized Marguerida’s fosterling, though he had seen very little of her in the past years. She wore a mismatched orange skirt and lace-trimmed pink velvet jacket, as if she had thrown on the nearest garments to hand.

“Alanna!” Domenic cried.

With a cry, the girl threw herself into Domenic’s arms. Danilo said, “I think you’d better bring her inside.”

Within a short time, Alanna was seated in one of the leather armchairs, and a second breakfast, with an extra carafe of jaco, had been sent for.

Domenic perched beside her on a footstool, chafing her hands between his.

She looked pale except for twin spots of hectic color on her cheeks. Her hair curled in damp, unruly tendrils about her face. She had not yet stopped trembling.

“I know it was wrong to follow you,” she said, between hiccoughs. “I couldn’t help myself.”

The girl’s emotions, like an invisible turbulence, raked Danilo’s nerves.

Their gazes locked for a heartbeat as his mind touched hers. In that moment, Danilo saw her not as a gently reared damisela but as a creature of ice-pale fire. Strands of light, like colorless flames, flowed from her head and hands.

She vibrated with their surging currents, wrapped in a confusion of light and motion—

With a sob, Alanna buried her face in her hands. “Whatever he’s doing, make it stop!”

” Dom Danilo has done nothing to you, sweetheart—” Domenic said.

“He’s in my mind, I tell you! He’s putting things there!”

The girl swayed in her chair. Danilo caught her in his arms before she fell over. Her hands brushed his, her skin chill and damp. The physical contact intensified the telepathic rapport.

He stood in the middle of a whirlwind, not of ordinary air, but of light and energy. Imagesoverlapped, like reflections from a ripple-touched pool.

… he saw himself, holding an unconscious girl in his arms; he saw Domenic do the same…

… he saw the room empty; he saw himself staring into a cold hearth, a husk of grief, holding a dagger to his chest…

… he saw Lew Alton burst into the room, the fires of Sharra burning behind his eyes…

With a soft cry, Alanna sagged in his arms, and the visions disappeared, leaving only a deep shaking in the marrow of his bones. With Domenic’s help, he eased the girl back into the chair.

A tap on the door announced the arrival of more food. Alanna stirred at the entrance of the servants, and she devoured three fruit-laced spiral buns as if she hadn’t eaten in a tenday.

“Zandru’s Seven Frozen Hells, Alanna, what was that?” Domenic asked, his expression one of astonishment.

“You saw it, too?” Alanna whimpered.

“I think we both did, you were sending telepathic images so strongly,”

Domenic said.

Alanna looked as if she were about to burst into tears. “What is wrong with me? Am I going mad?”

“Hardly that,” Danilo said, trying to interject a note of rational calm into the conversation, “although it can seem so if you don’t understand what’s happening to you. How long you have had these visions?”

Alanna sniffed and rubbed her nose with one delicate hand. “Visions?

They seem more like streams in a river. Each one takes me to a slightly different time or place. They started around the time of Grandmother Javanne’s funeral.”

She turned tear-wet eyes toward Domenic. “What is happening to me?”

The boy took her into his arms in a way no man but her promised husband should do. “It’s all right, my darling.”

“No,” Alanna wailed, stomping one foot. “It’s not all right! It’s horrible and I want it to stop!”

“It’s most certainly laran” Danilo said, although he had never heard of such a Gift. The Aldarans were said to possess precognition, but as far as he knew, Alanna had no Aldaran blood. Moreover, the girl was well past the age at which psychic talents usually manifested themselves.

“Auntie Liriel tested me when I turned twelve and said I had plenty of laran potential,” Alanna said, frowning. “For a time, I could move small objects and start fires. Then Auntie Marguerida made me go to Arilinn. I hated it there, hated it! Nothing but rules and regulations and voices echoing in my head! After Dom Regis died, I refused to go back. If they’d made me, I would have run away rather than spend my life shut up in that stuffy old Tower, with everyone nagging me to control myself.”

“I spent almost th