If Dio had not accepted Marja… but she was not that kind of person. She had wanted my child, and now I had put my child in her care. The hurt would never leave her, for that pitiful monstrosity which should have been our son; but Dio never lived in the past. And now we had all the future before us.

Marja held on to my hand and Dio’s as we went into the Terran Zone. I looked back, just once, at the Comyn Castle which lay behind us.

I knew we would never go back.

But I did go back, just once more. It was only a few days later, but Marja had already begun to call Dio “Mother.”

Epilogue

« ^

Crowned King? King of what?” Regis said, shaking his head gently at his grandfather. “Sir, with all respect, the Comyn effectively do not exist. Lew Alton survives, but he does not wish to remain at Armida—and I cannot see any reason why he should. The Ridenow have already bowed to the inevitable, and applied for their status as Terran citizens. Dyan is dead—and his son is a child three years old. The Lady of Aillard is dead, and so is her sister; no one remains among the Aillard but Merryl… and his twin sister, who is the mother of Dyan’s son. The Elhalyn are gone… do you still think we must treat the Terrans as enemies, sir? I think it is time to accept that we are what they say—one of their lost colonies—and apply for protected status, to keep our world as it should be… immune to being overrun by Empire technology, but still part of the Empire.”

Danvan Hastur bowed his head. He said, “I knew it would come to this in the end. What is it that you want to do, Regis?”

With that new and terrible sensitivity, Regis knew what his grandfather was feeling, and so his voice was very gentle as he spoke to the old man.

“I have asked Lawton to come and see you, sir. Remember he is blood kin to the Ardais and to the Syrtis, sir; he might have been among the Comyn.”

Dan Lawton came into the room, and to Regis’s surprise he bowed deeply and knelt before Danvan Hastur.

“ Z’par servu, vai dom,” he said quietly.

“What mockery is this?” demanded Hastur.

“Sir, no mockery,” said Lawton without rising. “I am here to serve you in any way I can, Lord Hastur, to be certain that your ancient ways will not suffer.”

“I thought we were now no more than a Terran colony…”

“I do not think you understand what it is to be an Empire world, vai dom,” said Lawton quietly. “It means that you have the right to define what Darkover will become; you who inhabit Darkover alone. You may share or not share your own fields of learning—though I hope we will be allowed to know something of matrix technology, so that nothing like this Sharra episode may ever arise again without our knowledge. You and you alone—you people of Darkover, I mean, not you personally, with all respect, sir—may determine how many Terrans and on what terms may be employed here or may settle here. And because your interests must be protected in the Federation of worlds that is the Empire, you have the right to appoint, or to elect, a representative in the Empire’s Senate.”

“A fine thought,” said Danvan Hastur wearily, “but who is left that we could trust, after all the deaths in the Comyn? Do you think I am going to appoint that scamp Lerrys Ridenow, just because he knows Empire ways?”

“I would gladly serve you myself,” said Lawton, “because I love my home world-—it is my home world as well as yours, Lord Hastur, even though I have chosen to live as a Terran; I too was born beneath the Bloody Sun, and there is Comyn blood in my veins. But I think my task is here, so that there may be a Darkovan voice in the Terran Trade City. Regis has found a candidate, however.”

He gestured to the door, and Lew Alton came in.

His scarred face looked calm now, without the tension and torment which had inhabited it for so long; Regis, looking at him, thought: here is a man who has laid his ghosts. Would that I could lay mine! Within him the memory blurred, a time when he had been more than human, reaching from the center of the world to the sky, wielding monstrous power… and now he was no more than human again and he felt small, powerless, shut up inside a single mind and skull…

“A man who knows Darkover and Terra alike,” said Regis quietly, “Lewis-Kennard Montray-Alton of Armida, first Representative to the Imperial Senate from Cottman Four, known as Darkover.” And Lew came and bowed before Lord Hastur.

“By your leave, sir, I am going out on the ship which takes to the stars at sunset, with my wife and daughter. I will gladly serve for a term, after which you will be able to educate the people of Darkover to choose their own representatives…”

Danvan Hastur held out his hand. He said, “I would gladly have seen your father in this post, DomLewis. The people of Darkover—and I myself—have cause to be grateful to the Altons.”

Lew bowed and said, “I hope I may serve you well,” and Hastur said, “All the Gods bless you and speed you on your way.”

Regis left his grandfather talking with Lawton—he was sure a time would come when they would like and respect one another, if not yet—and went out into the anteroom with Lew. He took him into a kinsman’s embrace. “Will you come back when your term is over, Lew? We need you on Darkover—”

A momentary look of pain crossed Lew’s face, but he said, “I don’t think so. Out there—on the edge of the Empire— there are new worlds. I—I can’t look back.”

There have been too many deaths here…

Regis wanted to cry out, “Why should you go into exile again?” But he swallowed hard and bent his head, then raised it, after a moment, and said, “So be it, bredu. And wherever you go, the Gods go with you. Adelandeyo.”

He knew he would never see Lew again, and his whole heart went after him as he went out of the room. The Empire is his, and a thousand million worlds beyond worlds.

But my duty lies here. I am— Hastur.

And that was enough. Almost.

As the red sun was setting behind the high pass, Regis stood with Danilo on a balcony overlooking the Terran Zone, watching as the great Terran ship skylifted, bound outward to the stars. Where I can never go. And he takes with him the last of my dreams of freedom, and of power—

Do I want the love of Power or the Power of Love?

And suddenly he knew that he did not really envy Lew. No woman had ever loved him as Lew had been loved, no. But Dyan had left, in his death, a shining legacy of another kind of love; something he had heard, and only half remembered from his years in St. Valentine-of-the-Snows, returned suddenly to his mind,

“Dani, what is that thing the cristoforossay… greater love hath none…”

Danilo returned, in the most ancient dialect of casta, the one they had spoken at the monastery:

“Greater love no man knoweth than he who will lay down his life for his fellow.”

Dyan had laid his life down for them all, and in his death, Regis had come to a new understanding; love was love, no matter whence it came or in what form. Some day he might love a woman in this way; but if that day never came, he would accept the love that was his without shame or regret.

“I will not be King,” he said, “I am Hastur; that is enough.” An echo stirred in his mind, a memory that would never wholly surface.

Who are you ?

Hastur… it was gone, like a stilled ripple in the Lake. He said, “I’m going to need a lot of—a lot of help, Dani.”

And Danilo said, still in the most ancient dialect of Nevarsin, “Regis Hastur, I am your paxman, even to life or death.”

Regis wiped his face… the evening fog was condensing into the first drops of rain, but it felt hot on his eyes. “Come,” he said, “my grandfather must not be left too long alone, and we must take counsel how to educate our sons—Mikhail, and Dyan’s little son. We can’t stand here all night.”