We shall remain.

Rondo closed the door behind them. The room, although spacious, seemed filled with people, Danvan’s secretary, looking very agitated, a couple of servant women, and three or four young pages. One of the women was wringing out a cloth over a basin on the washing stand, and the other was measuring a tincture into a goblet.

For a terrible instant, Regis feared he had come too late. His grandfather lay so still, it was impossible to tell whether he was still breathing. Then the old man groaned and shifted. Regis crossed the room in a few long strides and bent over the bed.

Pale blue eyes opened, blank and unfocused, without a hint of recognition. One withered hand pawed the bedcovers. The gesture moved Regis unexpectedly.

“Grandfather,” he murmured, “it’s Regis. Don’t you know me?”

He almost expected the old man to sit up and berate him for one thing or another, mocking his concern as weakness. As the seconds blended into minutes, Regis knew this would not happen. In fact, his grandfather very possibly would never recognize him again.

Regis turned to Rondo, who had come to stand, like a mute sentinel, at the foot of the bed. “What’s wrong with him? Has a healer been consulted? Why isn’t someone attending him properly?”

“It was a stroke, a seizure of the brain.” One of the women that Regis had taken for a servant stepped forward, goblet in hand. She looked vaguely familiar, and he realized that he had seen her in the Terran Medical Building. She was one of the Bridge Society Renunciates, although garbed in ordinary women’s clothing.

“I am sorry,” she said, “there’s very little we can do for him.”

“Surely, the Terrans have treatments—I must apologize, mestra,I have not greeted you properly. I don’t know your name.”

“Ferrika n’ha Margali.”

“The same who helped Felix Lawton?”

She smiled, a lightening of the corners of her mouth. As she stepped closer to the bed, the light shone on her ruddy hair.

“Then I am doubly in your debt. Has Dr. Allison been sent for?”

“ DomDanvan would never permit it,” Rondo interrupted.

“My grandfather is in no condition to protest.”

Rondo glared at Regis for an instant before bowing his head.

Ferrika gestured for Regis to come apart from the others. “Lord Regis, not even the most sophisticated Terran medical technology can reverse old age. If your grandfather had not suffered a stroke, then it would be something else. I am sorry to sound harsh, but neither do I wish to offer you false hope. After a century of living, the body falls apart; it is only a matter of which organ system will fail first.”

Regis could not tell whether his grandfather was aware of their conversation, and if so, what he thought. The old man would doubtless make a caustic comment about the weakness of will that could not overcome such a trivial inconvenience as death.

“How long does he have?” Regis asked.

Ferrika glanced away. “Only Avarra knows the length of a man’s years. If he improves in the next two days, then he may live on for a time. But not, I think, for very long.”

“Live on . . .?” Regis echoed her words. “Like this?”

How Grandfather would hate to be trapped in a shell of unresponsive flesh, dependent on others for the simplest care.

Ferrika’s gaze met his with a disconcerting directness that reminded Regis of Linnea. “Sometimes, a swift ending is a blessing.”

He nodded, unable to speak. Ferrika began ushering the others from the room. Danvan’s secretary protested, but not too vigorously. Rondo set his jaw and looked as if he would refuse, until she reassured him that he would be summoned if there was any change. In the end, only Danilo remained, on guard just inside the door. Ferrika left the two of them alone with Danvan.

Regis found a chair and drew it up near his grandfather’s head. His mind had gone blank, as it had when he was a boy called to account by this stern, disapproving old man.

Moments slipped by, marked by the halting rise and fall of the old man’s chest. With his psychic barriers down, Regis felt Danilo’s steady presence. Danilo believed in him, believed that he could rise above the past. Therefore, Regis must find a way to see the best in this old man, as he had in so many others.

One of Danvan’s hands lay on top of the covers. The fingers, with their arthritic joints, quivered like the wings of a misshapen bird. On impulse, Regis grasped the hand. Its lightness surprised him, the softness of the paper-thin skin, the frailness of the bones.

“Grandfather . . .” He could not force the words through his lips, even if he knew what to say.

Grandfather, there’s so much I never told you . . .

Tears stung his eyes, but Regis refused to look away. He focused on the pale blue irises that glimmered between crepey lids.

See me, hear me. Forgive me.

“I know I often disappointed you,” Regis said aloud. “I couldn’t live up to my father’s reputation—” which grew in glory with each retelling and which you never let me forget.“I couldn’t be the king you so fiercely wanted me to be. I’m sorry if I let you down.”

Regis paused, unable to overcome the resentments that surged within him. Certainly, he admired his grandfather, for who of the Comyn did not, even when they disagreed with him? Part of him still craved the old man’s approval, although he knew he would never have it. Nothing he did would ever be good enough, nor would any sacrifice of his dreams ever be great enough.

He had run out of time. Unless he spoke now, he might never have another chance to set aside the old rancor, to summon all his compassion, to send his grandfather to whatever came beyond life with a clear conscience.

“Grandfather . . .”

Suddenly, the blue eyes cleared, and the withered mouth moved silently. Regis tensed, and bony fingers closed around his own with desperate, brittle strength. Regis . . .

Regis gasped, taken by surprise. Danvan Hastur, for all his force of will and personality and his extraordinary statesmanship, had very little of the laranthat characterized the Comyn. He had been able to lead the Domains for three generations by diplomacy, wily cunning, and reasoned argumentation. For him to now speak mind-to-mind required almost superhuman effort.

Regis . . .

Grandfather, I am here.

I . . . am dying . . . have . . . very little time . . .

One mind, linked directly to another, could not lie about a matter of such importance.

. . . secret I have carried . . . these many years . . . your brother . . . you have a brother . . .

Regis startled, almost dropping out of telepathic rapport. A brother? How was that possible? He had always believed that he, like Danilo, was the only son of his parents. To the best of his knowledge, his parents had been so devoted to each other that when Rafael Hastur had been killed, his wife Alanna had lived only long enough to deliver Regis and then had died of a broken heart.

. . . your father’s son . . .nedestro . . .

Lord of Light! Had his mother known?

Danvan’s gaze wavered in intensity.

No, it was . . . before they married . . . Regis! . . . find Rinaldo . . . bring him to Thendara, ensure his rights . . . as Hastur . . .

The old man’s mental presence, which had strengthened for a moment, now thinned like mist.

An older brother! Regis reeled under the thought. For so much of his life, he had struggled under the weight of believing himself the sole Hastur son. Nedestrochildren were often legitimatized; Regis had done this for his own offspring, those that survived infancy.

Promise me . . .came Danvan’s fading thought, more plea than command.

“Of course, I will. A brother, I never thought to have a brother!” And a brother with a claim to Hastur, a place among the Comyn.