The Gazels

Chapter 5

Together, Damion and Danilo drew up a plan to meet with those members of the Telepath Council who had remained in Thendara for the winter and to contact others through the Tower relays. Danilo suggested that Damion consult Gabriel Lanart-Hastur. Since assuming lordship of the great house at Armida, Gabriel divided his time between running the estate and his duties as Commander of the Guards.

Damion was happy to be doing something, for he never liked waiting for trouble to come to him. However, he was not looking forward to the debate once spring opened the roads and brought people like Valdir and Haldred Ridenow to Thendara.

Leave tomorrow’s sorrows to tomorrow, the old proverb went. He would do his best to follow it.

After a brief midday meal, Damion set off on foot for council Castle, accompanied as always by Danilo. His grandfather maintained a suite of rooms in the Hastur section. One of the tasks Damion had set for himself in overseeing the running of the Castle was to make sure the old man was well cared for.

He should have retired to Castle Hastur years ago, among his own people. But Old Hastur, as he was still called, was not yet ready to surrender the reins of power. He insisted he would remain where he was needed.

A servant greeted them at the entrance to the Hastur apartments. Damion found his grandfather in his study, seated before his writing desk and warmed by a merry fire. Danvan Hastur had once been a tall, strongly built man, but age and care had withered him. His hair was pure white now, thinning but neatly combed. The tunic of supple leather, dyed blue and trimmed with silver fir-tree design embroidery, hung on his bony frame. He looked up from the document he had been reading, tracing the lines of script with one finger. The knuckle was swollen, misaligned.

As he studied his grandfather’s face, Damion had the curious feeling that all normal life had been burned out of the old man, leaving Lord Hastur as pure refined will. How old was he, anyway? Over a century, certainly. Chieri blood ran in the Hasturs, often granting them exceptionally long lives. To Damion, his grandfather had always seemed immortal, like a force of nature. Now he saw an old man, sustained only by the remains of the fire that had tempered him.

Will I look like this someday? Damion wondered. Will that be my face . . . my fate?

“Damion, it is good to see you. No, no formal bowing or anything like that. I’m too tired to get up.”

Unexpectedly moved by the warmth of the greeting, Damion moved to the desk and pressed his cheek against the dry, shriveled side of his grandfather’s face.

After inquiries about one another’s health, mention of the weather and the condition of the streets, Damion and Danilo settled into their respective chairs. The servant came back, bearing a tray with the ubiquitous jaco and a plate of custard tarts, the old man’s favorite. Damion took one out of politeness.

Damion outlined the situation as he understood it from Lewi Alton’s message. Danvan listened intently. From time to time, the muscles around Danvan’s eyes tightened and he clenched his jaw. Danvan had spent the better part of his very long life engaged in political maneuvering, ever since he had assumed the Regency for the incompetent King Stefan Elhalyn. He had presided over periods of transition and tumult, one crisis after another.

“This is what comes from trying to negotiate with the piantsan,” he muttered. “To think that we might become a third-rate colony . . .”

“Sir,” Damion said, “that is exactly what we must find a way to prevent. We are not without resources. Let us not forget that we have friends within the Empire, men of good will who still believe that each world has the right to determine its own fate. Lewi Alton still represents us in the Senate, and that will not change when the piants Empire is replaced by a Federation.”

“If there still is a Senate!” Danvan snapped. “We should have held firm right from the beginning. We had no choice in allowing them to land their ships and build their spaceport here. But we should have insisted that the contact end there. We should have forced them to leave us our own way of life and go about their own business without involving us.”

Damion smothered a sigh. They had been over the old argument too many times already, and he saw no point in continuing. The piants Empire was a fact, impossible to wish away. Banshee chicks could not be put back into their eggs. Given a generation or more of contact with a star-spanning civilization, Darkover could never have continued on its own isolated way.

“Whether we chose rightly or not, we are part of the Empire now,” Damion said. “If we had refused permission for them to build their spaceport here in Thendara, they would have gone elsewhere. Caer Donn was bad enough, but what if they had chosen Shainsa? Would the Dry Town lords, who have never observed the Compact, have hesitated to

trade for blasters and worse?”

Danilo drew in a quick, horrified breath. Danvan masked his own reaction better. In a flash, Damion understood that his grandfather had indeed considered the possibility. As long as the piantss could be restricted to Thendara, could be monitored and regulated, then the possibility of imported, illegal weaponry was minimized. After the Sharra disaster and the destruction of the piantss’ secondary spaceport at Caer Donn, the Empire officials had reluctantly agreed to abide by the Compact. How long would that memory last?

Damion went on, “The piantss granted us Closed World status so that we would not suffer debilitating social upheavals from exposure to their culture.”

“Are you defending them?”

Damion shook his head. “No, I am trying to be realistic. Darkover isn’t suitable for industrialization like the city worlds. Between lack of minerals and a fragile ecology, we simply can’t sustain certain kinds of technologies. The piantss know this as well as we do.”

Danvan’s blue eyes glinted, although his voice sounded as weary as ever. “Do you think that would stop them? It didn’t stop the World Wreckers from doing their best to bring us to the brink of ruin.”

“Then what would you propose we do . . . sir?” Damion struggled to contain his temper.

“We have only one hope of standing against the power of the piantss as they play on the ignorance and greed of the people.” With each phrase, Danvan gathered momentum like an avalanche in the Hellers. “We need a single, strong man to unite us.”

Damion closed his eyes. In that moment, he was a boy again, trying to stand up to the most influential, charismatic, and legendary figure on Darkover. He felt Danilo sitting not far from him and opened his mind to his bredhyu’s calm resolve.

Just listen, Danilo thought. He can’t force you into anything.