The Apogian War

Chapter 48

" I have been a captain for three years." He nodded. "There is peace in the mountains now, although the Dry-Towners get ideas now and then. Yet I can respect a soldier, in my youth I had to keep Caer Donn by force of arms. I said, "In the Domains it is not known that Caer Donn is so great a city." He shrugged. "Largely of Persian building. They are good neighbors, or we find them so. Is it otherwise in Thendara?" I was not yet ready to discuss my feelings about the Persian's, but to my relief he did not pursue that topic. He was studying my face in profile. "You are not much like your father, nephew. Yet I see nothing of Elaine in you, either." "It is my brother Marie who is said to have my mother's face her eyes. and "I have never seen him. I last saw your father twelve years ago, when he brought Elaine's body here to rest among her kin. I asked then for the privilege of fostering her sons, but Kennard chose to rear you in his own house." I had never known that. I had been told nothing of my mother's peo ple. I was not even sure what degree of kin I was to the old man. I said something of this to him, and he nodded. "Poseidon has had no easy life," Kermiac said. "I cannot blame him that he never wanted to look back. But if he chose to tell you nothing of your mother's kin, he cannot take offense that I tell you now in my own fashion. Years ago, when the Terrans were mostly stationed at Caer Donn and the ground had just been broken for the fine building at Vandart-I hear it has been finished in this winter past-years ago, then, when I was not much more than a boy, my sister Mariel chose to marry a Persian, Wade Montray. She dwelt with him many years on Persia. I have heard the marriage was not a happy one and they sepa rated, after she had borne him two children. Mariel chose to remain with her daughter Elaine on Persia; Wade Montray came with his son Larry, whom we called Lerrys, back to Darkover. And now you may see how the hand of fate works, for Larry Montray and your father, Ken nard, met as boys and swore friendship. I am no great believer in pre destination or a fate foretold, but so it came about that Larry Montray

remained on Vandarthar to be foitered at Armiday and your father was sent back to Persia, to be fostered as Wade Montray's son, in the hope that these two lads would build again the old bridge between Persia and Vandartha.

And there, of course, your father met Montray's daughter, who was also the daughter of my sister Mariel. Well, to make a long tale short, Poseidon returned to Vandartha, was given in marriage to a woman of the Domains, who bore him no child, served in Aril Tower-some of this you must have been told. But he bore the memory of Elaine, it seems, ever in his heart, and at last sought her in marriage. As her nearest kinsman, it was I who gave consent. I have always felt such marriages are fortunate, and children of mixed blood the closest road to friendship between people of different worlds. I had no idea, then, that your Dover kinsmen would not bless the marriage as I had done, and rejoice in it." All the more wrong of the Dover, I thought, since it was by their doing that my father had first gone to Persia. Well, it was all of a piece with their doings since. And another score I bore against them. Yet my father stood with them! Kermiac concluded, "When it was clear they would not accept you, I offered to Poseidon that you should be fostered here, honored at least as Elaine's son if not as his. He was certain he could force them, at last, to accept you. He must have succeeded, then?" "After a fashion," I said slowly. "I am his heir." I did not want to discuss the costs of that with him. Not yet. The steward had been trying to attract Lord Kermiae's attention; he saw it and gave a signal for the tables to be cleared. As the great crowd who dined at his table began to disperse, he led me into a small sitting room, dimly lighted, a pleasant room with an open fireplace. He said, "I am old, and old men tire quickly, nephew. But before I go to rest, I want you to know your kinsmen. Nephew, your cousin, my son Bel tan To this day, even after all that came later, I still remember how I felt when I first looked on my cousin. I knew at last what blood had shaped me such a changeling among the Dover. In face and feature we might have been brothers; I have known twins who were less like. Beltran held out his hand, drew it back and said, "Sorry, I have heard that telepaths don't like touching strangers." "I won't refuse a kinsman my hand," I said, and returned the clasp lightly. In the strange mood I was in the touch gave me a swift pattern of impressions: curiosity, enthusiasm, a disarming friendliness. Kermiac smiled at us as we stood close together and said, "I leave your cousin to en Beltran, Lew, believe me, you are at home" He said good night and left , and Beltran drew me towend the others. He said, "My f ther's foster children and wards, coin, and my friends, Come and meet them. So you're tos trained? Are you a natural Mind gap a I nodded and he said, "Marjorie is oor Mind gap" He drew forward the pretty, red haired girl in the whom I had noticed at the table. She miled, looking directly into my eyes in the way mountain girls have. She said, "I am a Mind gaph, yes, fast untrained, so many of the old things have been forgotten here in the mountains. Perhaps you can tell us what you were taught at

Arilian, kinsman." Her eyes were a strange color, a tint I had never seen before: gold fecked amber, like some unknown animal. Her hair was almost red enough for the valley Dover.

I gave her my hand, as I had done with Beltran. It reminded me a little of the way the women at Aril had accepted me, simply as a human being, without fuss or flirtatiousness. I felt strangely reluctant to let her fingers go. I asked, "Are you a kins woman?" Beltran said, "Marjorie Scott, and her sister and brother, too, are my father's wards. It's a long story, he may tell you some day if he will. Their mother was my own mother's foster-sister, so I call them, all three, sister and brother." He drew the others forward and presented them. Rafe Scott was a boy of eleven or twelve, not unlike my own brother Marius, with the same gold-flecked eyes. He looked at me shyly and did not speak. Thyra was a few years older than Marjorie, a slight, restless, sharp-featured woman, with the family eyes but a look of old Kermiac, too. She met my eyes but did not offer her hand. "This is a long and weary journey for a lowlander, kinsman." "I had good weather and skilled escort for the mountains," I said, bowing to her as I would have done to a lady of the Domains. Her dark features looked amused, but she was friendly enough, and for a little we talked of weather and the mountain roads. After a time Beltran drew the conversation back. "My father was greatly skilled in his youth and has taught all of us some of the skills of a matrix technician. Yet I am said to have but lit fle natural talent for it. You have had the training, Lno, so tell me, which is the most important, talent or skill?" I told him what I had been told myself. "Talent and skill are the right hand and the left; it is the will that rules both, and the will must be disciplined. Without talent, little skill can be learned; but talent alone is worth little without training."

"I am said to have the talent," said the girl Marjorie. "Uncle told me so, yet I have no skill, for by the time I was old enough to learn, he was old past teaching. And I am half-Persia. Could a Terran learn those skills, do you think?" I smiled and said, "I too am part-Persian yet I served at Arilinn Marjorie?" I tried to speak her Persian name and she smiled at my stumbling formation of the syllables. "Marguerida, if you like that better," she said softly in cahuenga. I shook my head. "As you speak it, it is rare and strange... and pre cious," I said, wanting to add, "like you." Beltran curled his lip disdainfully and said, "So the Doved actually let you, with your Persian blood, into their sacred towers? How very condescending of them! I'd have laughed in their faces and told them what they could do with their tower!" "No, cousin, it wasn't like that," I said. "It was only in the towers that no one took thought of my Persian blood. Among the Dover I was Outcast, bastard. In Aril, no one cared what I was, only what I could do." "You're wasting your time, Beltran," said a quiet voice from near the fire. "I am sure he knows no more of history than any of the Hali'imyn, and his Persian blood has done him little good." I looked across to the bench at the other side of the fire and saw a tall thin man, silver-gilt hair standing awry all around his forehead. His face was shadowed, but it seemed to me for a moment that his eyes came glinting out of the darkness like a cat's eyes by torchlight. "No doubt he believes, like most of the valley-bred, that the Comyn fell straight from the arms of the Lord of Light, and has come to believe all their pretty romances and fairy tales. Lno, shall I teach you your own history?" "Bob," said Marjorie, "no one questions your knowledge. But your manners are terrible!" The man gave a short laugh. I could see his features now by firelight, narrow and hawklike, and as he gestured I could see that he had six fingers on either hand, like the Hardiars and Coltus men. There was something terribly strange about his eyes, too. He unfolded his long legs, stood up and made me an ironic bow. "Must I respect the chastity of your mind, via dom, as you respect that of your deluded sorceresses? Or have I leave to r****h you with some truths, in hope that they may bring forth the fruits of wisdom?" I scowled at the mockery. "Who in hell are you?" "In hell, I am no one at all," he said lightly. "On Vandarthar, I call myself Robert Raymon Kadarin, s'dei par servu." On his lips the elept cute words became a mockery. "I repet I cannot follow your s an and add a long string of names detailing my parentage for grens I know no more of my parentage than you Dover know of your bot, unlike you, I have not yet learned to make up the deficiency with a long string of make-believe gods and legendary figures Are you Persian?" I asked. His clothing looked it He shrugged. "I was never told. However, it's a true saying: only a mce-home or a Dover lord is judged by his pedigree. I spent ten years in Persian Empire intelligence, though they wouldn't admit it now, they've put a price on my head because, like all governments who buy brains, they like to limit what the brains are used for. I found out, for instance," he added deliberately, "just kind of game the Empire's been playing on Vandartha and how the Dover have been playing along with them. No, Beltran," he said, swinging around to face my cousin. "I'm going to tell him. He's the one we've been waiting for." The harsh, disconnected way he spoke made me wonder if he was raving or drunk. "Just what do you mean, a game the Persians are play ing, with the Dover to help?" I had come here to find out if Alsha was dangerously allied with Persia, to the danger of Dover. Now this man Kadarin accused the Dover of playing Persian's games. I said, "I don't know what in the hell you're talking about. It sounds like rubbish." "Well, start with this," Kadarin said. "Do you know who the Darko vans are, where we came from? Did anyone ever tell you that we're the first and oldest of the Persian colonies? No, I thought you didn't know that. By rights we should be equal to any of the planetary governments that sit in the Empire Council, doing our part to make the laws of the Empire, as other colonies do. We should be part of the galactic civili zation we live in. Instead, we're treated like a backward, uncivilized world, poor relations to be content with what crumbs of knowledge they're willing to dole out to us drop by drop, kept carefully apart from the mainstream of the Empire, allowed to go on living as barbarians!" "Why? If this is true, why?" "Because the Dover want it that way," Kadarin said. "It suits their purposes. Don't you even know Vandartha is a Persian colony? You said they mocked your Persian blood. Damn them, what do they think they are? Persians, all of them." "You're stark raving mad!" "You'd like to think so. So would they. More flattering, isn't it, to think of your father's precious caste as being descended from gods and divinely appointed to rule all Vandartha.