Marion Zimmer Bradley - Darkover 19 by The Heritage Of Hastur

Author:The Heritage Of Hastur [Hastur, The Heritage Of]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-11-23T12:55:33+00:00

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Chapter FIFTEEN

For ten days the storm had raged, sweeping down from the Hellers through the Kilghard Hills and falling on Thendara with fury almost unabated. Now the weather was clear and fine, but Regis rode with his head down, ignoring the bright day.

He’d failed, he felt, having made a pledge and then doing nothing. Now he was being packed off to Neskaya in Gabriel’s care, like a sick child with a nanny! But he raised his head in surprise as they made the sharp turn that led down the valley toward Syrtis.

“Why are we taking this road?”

“I have a message for Dom Felix,” Gabriel said. “Will the few extra miles weary you? I can send you on to Edelweiss with the Guards … ”

Gabriel’s careful solicitude set him on edge. As if a few extra miles could matter! He said so, irritably.

His black mare, sure-footed, picked her way down the path. Despite his disclaimer to Gabriel, he felt sick and faint, as he had felt most of the time since his collapse in Kennard’s rooms. For a day or two, delirious and kept drugged, he had had no awareness of what was going on, and even now much of what he remembered from the last few days was illusion. Danilo was there, crying out in wild protest, being roughly handled, afraid, in pain. It seemed that Lew was there sometimes too, looking cold and stern and angry with him, demanding again and again, What is it that you’re afraid to know? He knew, because they told him afterward, that for a day or two he had been so dangerously ill that his grandfather never left his side, and when, waking once between sick intervals of fragmented hallucinations, he had seen his grandfather’s face and asked, “Why are you not at Council?” the old man had said violently, “Damn the Council!” Or was that another dream? He knew that once Dyan had come into the room, but Regis had hidden his face in the bedclothes and refused to speak to him, gently though Dyan spoke. Or was that a dream, too? And then, for what seemed like years, he had been on the fire-lines at Armida, when they had lived day and night with terror; during the day the hard manual work kept it at bay, but at night he would wake, sobbing and crying out with fear … That night, his grandfather told him, his half-conscious cries had grown so terrified, so insistent, that Kennard Alton, himself seriously ill, had come and stayed with him till morning, trying to quiet him with touch and rapport. But he kept crying out for Lew and Kennard couldn’t reach him.

Regis, ashamed of this childish behavior, had finally agreed to go to Neskaya. The blur of memory and thought-images embarrassed him, and he didn’t try to sort out the truth from the drugged fantasies. Just the same, he

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