"Are there scripts, then? I sort of had the idea that you made things up as you went along, getting the audience involved." There, that was better, and he did not sound quite so idiotic.

"That's how it used to be." She looked troubled for a moment. "But since Mathias joined the troupe, he has been doing-"

"Illona!" It was an angry yell.

"Yes, Auntie! I'd better go, before she gives herself a fit. Come out and watch the show tonight."

"Oh, yes, if my uncle says I can."

"He will-he seems very nice." She gave Nico a ravishing smile and scrambled up the folding stairs at the back of the wagon, her curiosity about him fading as she thought about thread and needles and lengths of fabric.

Herm rejoined Domenic and said, "What was that all about?"

"Oh, we were just talking, Uncle." She almost recognized me, but I managed to make her think she didn't. And I am sure she has no business with these Travelers.

What do you mean?

Well, she told me she was an orphan, and that the woman adopted her when she was very young. But I can sense her laran. It is completely untrained, but pretty strong even without any discipline. It makes me wonder how many other telepaths are roaming around, getting into trouble because they do not know how to manage their gifts.

I bow to your greater knowledge.

Father encountered a woman, years ago, who was a wild telepath, and she nearly killed him. He won't talk about it much, but I have heard him remembering it a few times, and it was very scary. I asked Aunt Liriel about it, and she said that this woman was a kind of sorceress, that she could make your mind go all fuzzy and helpless, but that she could only do it with a small number of people. But it made Father aware that there were probably more telepaths on Darkover than anyone thought before. And he and Great-Uncle Regis made an effort to find them, but it was not very successful.

Why not?

Grandfather Lew says it is because the men of the Domains have been altogether too generous with their favors over the years, and they have fathered children they never knew about. And after a few generations, laran has spread out in the general population more and more. And if, say, a mother died in childbearing, and hadn't told anyone that the father was the nedestro of some Domain, then no one would know until the child was grown and had threshold sickness. And then, if the sickness did not kill him or her, which is possible, since there is no way to predict the severity of it, then they would grow up and make more children, and pass it on. It is all very simple in theory, but as the generations pass, it becomes more and more complicated.

Why was the effort to locate these people not successful?

I'm not sure, but I think that perhaps there are not enough leroni to manage the job. What Grandfather Lew says is that in the past, there were so few people with gifts that no one ever made a good plan for it becoming part of the greater population. And Mother thinks that we Darkovens still tend to think that only those of the Domains have gifts worth bothering about, so that ordinary people like, for instance, the innkeeper, never really think about it. So, if they have a small gift, they either ignore it, or turn to being streetcorner seers.

But wouldn't such a person go to a Tower?

They would, if they had any sense, or of they had a substantial Gift. And in the past, of course they would. But what if someone has just a little bit of laran, enough to start afire, perhaps, or to be good with animals? Lew thinks that there are a lot of lesser powers, that are just so minor that we have never paid attention to them, because we were so focused on the Gifts of the Domains. He said something about recessive genes, which I don't understand. And if two common folk, with minor powers, got married, then their children might be more powerful. He says that generations of inbreeding have made us complacent.

I see that I will have to have a long talk with Lew when we get this thing settled.

Uncle, is there a back way out of the inn?

I don't know, but there probably is a way through the kitchens. Why?

Let's go see if Vancof is really drinking beer in the common room! I think he is up to something else.

Why do you think that?

It is just a feeling I have.

As they started for the entrance to the inn, there was the sound of hoofbeats on the cobbles of the yard. Nico glanced over his shoulder, and saw a wide-shouldered man awkwardly astride a sweating animal. He had a scowl on his broad face, and he dismounted gracelessly, swearing a little. A groom raced out and took the horse, gave the man a glare, and began to lead it away.

"Uncle, that man we saw talking to the driver this morning just rode in."

Herm grinned without the slightest humor. "Yes, so he did. The pot is really starting to boil. Come on-don't stare! Let's get inside before we attract attention." What's on his mind, I wonder?

Nothing much, Uncle, except that he doesn't ride well and is afraid of horses, that his bladder is ready to explode, and he wonders where the hell Vancof is.

All that?

Yes. And he as worried and puzzled, too-he doesn't understand why he was ordered to ride after Vancof. Something changed since this morning.

Well, he as going into the building, so we will just wander in and keep an eye on him, won't we?

15.

Marguerida stood outside the closed door of the room which had been given to Katherine Aldaran for a studio, and took a deep breath. She had gone to the suite to find the other woman, and the maid told her that Domna Aldaran had left right after breakfast, saying that she needed to start working. Lucky Katherine. Marguerida would have loved to be in her own office, although working on her opera was impossible now. A chill swept over her-would she ever be able to complete it, now that Regis was dead? She hadn't written the work for him, but for herself, but she had been so looking forward to seeing him hear it for the first time. The pages were still on her desk, inkstained and ruined. It hurt to think about it.

The strain of the past few days weighed on her body, giving her aches that Marguerida knew were a combination of exhaustion and sorrow. Right now she did not want to see Katherine, or anyone else for that matter. She wanted a nice quiet cave and utter stillness. Marguerida grinned at herself. She was worried about Domenic, and Kate was probably worried about Herm, so she had a duty to try to ease Katherine's fears. The problem was that she was sick and tired of duties, not to mention fractious personalities.

When Mikhail told her what her son had done, she had been furious with both of them. How dare her husband make a decision concerning Nico without consulting her! And sending Herm to join him? What good was that? It was only when she had thought of sending Rafaella n'ha Liriel and some of her sister Renunciates to follow them that her fears had lessened. And then Mik had told her that Lew suspected that Gareth Elhalyn might be up to some mischief where Nico was concerned, and her hard-won calm had gone up in smoke. She could not believe it for a second, and then she grasped the implications, and remembered how young Gareth was behaving with Javanne. As if I don't have enough to worry about, she thought, but I have to look at a fourteen-year-old boy as a potential enemy of my child.

Marguerida's only comfort thus far was that the Aldaran Gift had not manifested, as it often did concerning those dearest to her. It was a feeble and undependable lack of information, however, and she wished she was free to pursue her eldest child along the North Road, and shake him until his teeth rattled. Right at that moment, she would have welcomed a vision, so long as it was rosy. Unlikely. The Aldaran Gift never seemed to show itself with good futures, only ambiguous and frightening ones.

She lifted her hand to knock, then lowered it. Marguerida was not ready to see Kate just yet. She wanted to be more serene before she encountered the other woman. If only she had not bumped into Javanne Hastur, on her way to the studio, and had an exchange of discourtesies that had left her trembling with rage and biting back cruel words. Her mother-in-law had demanded to know where Nico was. It would have been amusing, under any other circumstances, since she usually avoided the boy as much as possible. Mikhail had been adamant that his mother must not know about Domenic's adventure, and Marguerida agreed.

Lady Javanne always managed to make her angry, but now she just felt slightly nauseated. She knew her mother-in-law was working against Mikhail, conniving with Francisco Ridenow to overset the agreement that had been reached years before. Javanne would do almost anything short of murder to unseat her youngest son from his position. And Francisco might even go that far, if he thought he could get away with it.

So much had fallen on her shoulders. It seemed unfair, and Marguerida banished that thought sternly. She was overseeing the arrangements for the public funeral, which would take place after the Council meeting. With all the servants in Comyn Castle, this should have been rather easy, but Regis' death had been a shock, and the servants were less useful than they might have been. Everyone from the coridom to the head cook seemed to need her direction, until she thought that just one more question would drive her mad. But dealing with mourning servants was simple compared to her other duties.

She had to keep Javanne from driving poor Lady Linnea mad with her attentions. Marguerida had to reassure Katherine that Herm was safe, without revealing anything about the actual nature of his mission. There were so many secrets she had to keep-Kate did not know that there was a Federation arrest warrant for her husband, and Mikhail wanted to keep it that way. The fewer people that knew about that, apparently, the better. And it was all for the good of Darkover! Men! Just at that moment she would have cheerfully consigned every male on the planet to Zandru's hells, even her beloved child, just to get a little peace and quiet, as long as she could have sent Javanne along with them.

Marguerida decided she couldn't put her present task off any longer. She knocked, and heard a voice answering. Marguerida opened the door and stepped into the room. It was a spacious chamber, with several windows facing to the north, and the wan sunlight of autumn spilling onto the stone floor. An easel, sent over the previous day from the Painters Guild, was set up near the windows, with a whitened board on it, ready to be painted. There was a cracked vase with brushes sticking out of it sitting on a small table, tubes of paint laid out on a wooden palette on another, and the unfamiliar scent of turpentine mingled with the more pleasant one of woodsmoke from the small fireplace burning in one wall.

Katherine Aldaran looked at her, then started to stand up from the chair where she had been sketching on a tablet. She was wearing a shabby brown tunic, a divided skirt of dark green, and an apron. Her long fingers were smeared with charcoal, and there was a dark, sooty mark on her high forehead, where she had brushed her black hair back.

"Oh, hello. Have you come to discover what I am doing and make me stop?" Katherine's question was both playful and a bit hostile. There were dark circles under her eyes, evidence of a poor night's sleep, and she looked as if she were afraid to hear what might be said.

Marguerida forced herself to laugh at this, and found that she felt better for it. "No, I have not! I would not have intruded at all, since I know how annoying it is when one of the children comes in while I am trying to compose. But I thought you might be worried about Herm, and came to tell you that, as of an hour ago, he was well."

"The devil take Hermes-Gabriel Aldaran! He is probably having the time of his life, and not thinking of me at all." The voice was sullen, and the words lacked conviction.

"Katherine, I doubt that very much. Well, I suppose he probably is glad to be out and about, since he struck me as the kind of man who likes to do unusual things, but I am sure he is thinking of you." Marguerida was not really certain of this, but it was a tactful thing to say.

"Only because I threatened to leave him last night, and I would, only I know that I cannot. He would not tell me anything, except that he was going away for a few days, and I could have strangled him, I was so furious." There was no tone of complaint in her voice now, just a righteous indignation which Marguerida thought was perfectly appropriate. This was not a woman given to self-pity.

"I know all this is hard for you. It was hard for me when I first came to Darkover as an adult."

"But you are a telepath, have this laran-stuff. I don't, and I never will."

"That is true, but it does not make me a different person than I was when I returned to Darkover. In fact, it nearly killed me."

"Now, that sounds like the start of a story." Her voice eased, as if she was glad to think about something other than herself, and she looked at Marguerida with guarded but not unfriendly eyes. "I forgot that you have not lived all your life here, but were at University."

The room was largely unfurnished but there was a stool standing in one corner, and Marguerida pulled it out and sat down a few feet away from Katherine. The other woman picked up the tablet again, settling it over her lap, and Marguerida made a mental note to get a proper worktable moved in as soon as possible. One more thing to remember-she was sure her brain was going to melt if she asked it to do much more.

Katherine had tucked the stick of charcoal into her hair, so it stuck out of the bun at the back of her head, and now she plucked it out, turned to a fresh page, and studied Marguerida. She started to sketch again, not looking at the paper at all, but moving her hand across it while appearing to give Marguerida her complete attention. She wondered how Katherine did it, and got the mental impression that the woman's eyes gave directions to her hand without any other part of her mind being engaged.

Marguerida forced herself to ignore her fascination with the movement of the fine hand across the paper, and marshaled her thoughts. "Yes, it is. I was born on Darkover, but I left when I was a little girl, and my father and stepmother deliberately concealed my history from me-for reasons that seemed logical to them at the time, but which caused me a great deal of trouble later." She sighed and then smiled at some of the memories. "The Old Man says he regrets it now, but that at the time it was all he could think of to do. Some things had happened when I was a child that were very bad, and one of them was that I had been overshadowed by a long dead ancestor of mine, which did some things to my mind I still have the occasional nightmare about."

"Overshadowed by a dead . . . and I thought the stories we had on Renney were fantastic! What is that-overshadowing?"

"Umm. It is hard to describe. This ancestor, Ashara Alton, lived and died over seven hundred years ago. She was an incredibly powerful leronis, and she managed not to die entirely when her body failed her. Instead, she left the imprint of her personality in a matrix array in the Old Tower of Comyn Castle. You can still see what remains of it-blackened and broken." Marguerida shuddered a little, remembering the sight of the ruined structure when she rode into Thendara just before Midsummer sixteen years before. She had gone into the overworld, torn a great jewel from a building that existed only on that plane, and in the process, she had destroyed the link that kept Ashara Alton tied to present-day Darkover. In some manner that no one could explain, she had absorbed the energy of that jewel onto her left hand, and brought across the boundaries between the worlds a matrix that was part of both. She glanced down at her mitted hand, then looked up again.

"Over the centuries, she . . . well, manifested is a reasonable word for it. She would latch onto the energy patterns of someone, and use them to fulfill her will. And she had a very, very strong will," she finished dryly, reflecting that she had at last reached the point in her life when she could speak of these events without starting to tremble. Marguerida did not feel the need to add that Ashara had a personal grudge against her, that she had foreseen the existence of one Marguerida Alton and had been determined to destroy her. Kate could only take so much information, and besides, she didn't need to know.

Katherine paused in her sketching and frowned. "Does that happen very often? I mean, do a lot of your people go around and muck in the minds of . . .?"

"No, it is rare, and considered extremely unethical. What Ashara managed to do to me, when I was still a child and too young to resist her, was reconfigure certain of my brain patterns, so that I did not go into the usual threshhold sickness at puberty. I almost did not go into puberty at all! I came back to Darkover a twenty-eight-year-old virgin, because her interference affected my sexuality." Marguerida gave a grin. "I have been trying to catch up for years now."

"That must make Mikhail a very happy man." There was no bite in the words, and Katherine sounded amused.

"A very tired one occasionally," Marguerida agreed. "But when I got here, I had no idea of any of this, and I thought I was losing my mind more than anything else. Then I did become sick, and let me tell you, adult-onset threshhold illness is not a pleasant experience. I nearly died, and I would have except that I was helped by several people, including Mikhail, and miraculously, I survived."

"I can see that. And your son Domenic said you and Mikhail went into the distant past, too-which I would have found utterly incredible two weeks ago. I keep having the dark suspicion that all of you are playing some trick on me, for reasons I cannot figure out."

Now why would we do such a cruel thing?

Katherine jumped and the charcoal slipped from her fingers and skittered away across the floor.

"What! How did you . . . what did you just do?"

"Damn! Forgive me, Katherine! I am very tired, and my control seems to be . . ."

"What did you do!" Oddly, there was no fear in the question, just a single-minded rage.

"I possess the Alton Gift, which is the ability to force rapport with another mind, even the mind of a nontelepath. But I did not intend to . . ." Marguerida was ashamed of herself, and very cross as well. She should never have come to see Katherine so soon after encountering Javanne. She was upset, more than she wanted to acknowledge, and that made her careless.

Katherine bent down and recovered the charcoal. "Don't do it again!" Her cheeks were pale, and she was breathing shallowly.

"No, I won't-unless necessity forces me to." One of the things she had learned over the years was never to make a promise that she could not be sure she could keep. "Still, I am curious. Why would you imagine that we would make up stories just to distress you?"

"Herm never told me much about Darkover, and certainly not about this whole laran business, Marguerida," Katherine began, drawing her brows together and looking troubled. "He says he could not have, and this is almost true, because in the Federation now, there are eyes and ears everywhere. They spy on everyone, and everyone is assumed to be up to no good! He dragged me out of bed in the middle of the night, told me to pack, and the next thing I knew, we were on a Big Ship." She drew a shaking breath.

"That was difficult, but Herm has always been rather secretive, and I just assumed that was his character. Now I discover he really has a secret-one that makes me . . . useless!"

"Useless?"

"Well-what do you call it . . . head-blind? Goddess, what a filthy term!"

"I think you should speak to Ida Davidson."

"Who?"

Marguerida shifted on the stool. It was hard and uncomfortable, and she added to her list of things to remember to have some nice chairs brought in soon. "The small elderly woman you have seen with me the past two evenings."

"Isn't she your nanny or something? There are so many people, and I haven't really been introduced to most of them-which I do understand, actually. I could have gone a whole lifetime without meeting Javanne Hastur," she finished rather bitterly.

"Quite," Marguerida answered dryly. "No, Ida is not a nanny or a servant. She is the widow of my mentor, Ivor, who died shortly after he and I came to Darkover. She is a musician, a fine one, and when she came to Darkover to reclaim her husband's body, she remained here, because things in the Federation were already becoming difficult. She has no laran, and she has felt many of the same emotions I know you must be going through. But she has lived here for fifteen years, and I think she can reassure you much more than anything I can say." And it will take some of the pressure off me. I should have thought of it sooner-if I were not so damn tired!

"Doesn't she mind being . . . how can she not feel like cripple?"

"Ask her."

"You are probably right-I am being overly anxious." Katherine swallowed hard. "I don't like things being out of my control," she admitted gruffly.

"Who does?"

"There is that, isn't there? I keep trying to keep my thoughts very . . . small."

Marguerida shook her head. "I am sorry to tell you this, Katherine, but you are not doing a very good job of it. And that is because you are afraid-fear is like mental yelling."

"So I should just relax and pretend that everything is wonderful!"

"I did not say that, and I wouldn't. What I want you to do is get enough information to ease your fears of being . . . examined."

She shivered all over for a second. "That is exactly it! And Herm wants me to be tested-he thinks I might have some latent paranormal talents or something-when Terese . . . I can't stand this! I don't want my little girl to hear my thoughts!"

"But, Katherine, she never would if she were trained properly. And if you really object to being checked out, then no one will force you. Do you know, I think you are actually more afraid of discovering you might have some sort of ability than of being . . . otherwise."

Marguerida was loath to use the term head-blind just then.

"Maybe," Katherine answered reluctantly. "Herm pointed out how often my portraits have elements in them that I have always thought were from my imagination, but which have turned out to be . . . significant to my subjects. I had never considered that, and, truthfully, I was disgusted by the idea. My Nana did not raise me to be a snoop!"

"I am sure she didn't." Marguerida paused, carefully considering her next words. "But does it occur to you that you might be overreacting somewhat because you are afraid you have been inadvertently . . . snooping on your sitters. I mean, if you thought all your life that you were an honest person, and then one day you found yourself in a shop putting a trinket into your purse, you would be horrified, wouldn't you?"

"Absolutely. You know, Marguerida, you are not doing a very good job of reassuring me right now."

"Well, perhaps you don't need reassurance as much as you need forthrightness. Tell me, do you know what empathy is?"

"Of course-it is the ability to share the emotions of others."

"That is one definition, and valid as far as it goes. But here, on Darkover, it is one of the Gifts, that of the Ridenow Domain, and it is much more than the intellectual capacity to agree with the feelings of another."

"I don't follow you."