Marion Zimmer Bradley - Darkover - Traitor' s Sun

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TRAITOR'S
SUN
A Novel of Darkover
MARION ZIMMER
BRADLEY
It has been fifteen years since Marguerida Alton returned to Darkover. Fifteen years since she
discovered the terrifying powers of her special laran, met and fell in love with Mikhail Lanart-
Hastur, heir designate to the throne of Darkover, and journeyed back in time to the Ages of Chaos
to answer the call of a long-dead Keeper. Through more than a decade of instruction and support
from Istvana Redenow, Keeper of Neskaya Tower, Marguerida has learned to control her powerful
telepathic Gift, and to a certain extent, has managed to work with her unique shadow matrix,
though its full nature still remains a mystery.
Now Marguerida's life is more settled, more proscribed—though no less hectic. As the seconds-in-
command to the aging Regent, Regis Hastur, and his consort Linnea, life in Comyn Castle for
Marguerida and Mikhail is far from serene. Helping to run the government as well as managing the
daily functioning of the vast castle itself, and raising three adolescent children would be enough
work for anyone, but they also have taken on the challenge of fostering their tempestuous niece,
Alana Alar, whose burgeoning powers are both formidable and difficult to control.
But the real root of the current tensions on Darkover has more to do with the Terran Federation
than anything internal to Darkover. The once pleasant relationship between Darkover's ruling
families and the Tarran envoys to Darkover—a relationship which Regis Hastur worked decades to
build—has been shattered, primarily due to the machinations of Lyle Belfontaine, the corrupt and
ambitious Station Chief at Federation Headquarters in Thendara. For nearly ten years, relations
between Federation Headquarters and the Comyn Council have been strained, with Belfontaine putting
ever increasing pressure on Darkover to relinquish its Protected status and join the Federation as
a full member planet. But this is something Comyn Council will never agree to do, for it would
mean the death of their culture and the rape of their planetary resources.
But the Terran central government has become increasingly totalitarian, and with a military coup
rocking the Federation, cutting off all communication with local Federation envoys, Lyle
Belfontaine becomes a free agent, no longer under the control of his superiors. And when the
sudden death of Regis Hastur leaves Comyn Council in turmoil, Belfontaine sees an opportunity to
wrest by force what he could not gain through diplomacy, and plans a violent takeover on Darkover.
Can Makhail and Marguerida, new Regent and consort on Darkover, face the might of Terran weapons
with only their combined telepathic laran powers?
PROLOGUE
Herm Aldaran snapped awake, his heart pounding and sweat streaming down his chest. He gasped for
air and struggled to push aside the bedclothes, his head throbbing. He sat there, blinking in the
faint light that came from the common room of the small apartment, and swallowed hard. His dry
mouth tasted like iron filings and his feet felt alien and disconnected from his body. Though his
nightrobe was almost drenched around his broad chest, part of the sleeve was still dry enough to
use to wipe the moisture off his face. As Herm stood up, the room spun, and he nearly sat down
again.
At last his body stopped shaking, and his heart slowed to a more normal rhythm. He glanced at
Katherine, his wife of more than a decade, still undisturbed by his movements. In the dim light
Herm could see her dark hair spread across the pillow, and the sweep of her brow below it, the
curve of her mouth beneath the strong nose. Not for the first time he wondered why such a
beautiful woman had consented to marry a plain fellow like himself. It was a puzzle, but he knew
it was not because he was wealthy—he was not—or had the ambiguous honor of being the Senator from
Cottman IV, as the Terran Federation designated Darkover, the world of his birth. He gazed at her,
letting his mind wander a bit, and felt himself settle into relative calm.
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Herm realized he would not be able to go back to sleep anytime soon, so he rose and left the
bedroom as quietly as possible, careful not to rouse Katherine. He peeped around the thin
partition that separated their sleeping quarters from those of their two children and found them
undisturbed. Then he padded across the dingy tiles in the small food preparation station and
opened the cool cabinet. The carafe of juice was cold in his fingers, and he had a desire to drink
right out of the lip of it. Until he held it, he had not realized he was still trembling slightly.
He forced himself to find a glass, and poured some of the yellow liquid into it. Then he gulped
down half the glass, letting the tart flavor of the juice wash away the nasty taste on his tongue.
The cold liquid hit his belly like a blow, and for a moment he felt as if he had swallowed acid.
Then the dreadful sensation vanished, although his stomach continued to protest for several
seconds. He knew it was only an illusion, but he had the feeling that he could sense the sugar in
the juice entering his bloodstream. His breathing deepened, and he shivered all over, chilled
where he had been burning only a few moments earlier.
Herm sank down onto one of the stools that stood beside the long counter which served as the
eating area, put the glass down before he dropped it, and forced himself to empty his mind. A
sense of utter wrongness played along his nerves, fretting like the discordant notes of some
classic industrial symphony. That style of music had enjoyed a resurgence during his first years
in the Chamber of Deputies of the Federation legislature, and he had been dragged to a few
concerts. It had stuck in his mind, much to his disgust, for it was not music as he had thought of
it, but more like noise, and rather unpleasant noise at that. He hated it, as he hated the stool,
the smallness of the room in which he sat, and the cramped quarters assigned him as Darkover's
Federation Senator.
When Lew Alton had still been Senator, he had had somewhat larger quarters, and a home on Thetis
as well. But those days were gone now, and few if any members of the legislature had off-world
places unless they were inherited ones. The Office of Finance had imposed strict travel
limitations a few years earlier, which restricted the movements of the members. They could go to
their home worlds for elections every five Terran years, but Herm never had returned to Darkover.
He had not been elected, but instead had been appointed by Regis Hastur, a man he had never
actually met, twenty-three years before. He had worked for eight years in the Chamber of Deputies,
and when Lew Alton had vacated the Senate seat, he had taken his place.
Policy changes imposed by the Office of Finance, and numerous other dictates over the years, had
ultimately left the legislature prisoner to the whims of Premier Sandra Nagy and her Expansionist
cronies. Despite its name, the Expansionists were an austere bunch of autocrats, and each year had
seen more and more restrictions imposed on everyone except the most favored members of the Party.
As he had told his wife once, on a rare occasion when he was moderately certain there were no
listening devices nearby, "The Expansionists say there are limited resources in the Federation—and
all of them are the rightful property of the Expansionists!" She had not even laughed.
The three-room apartment was a better domicile than most ordinary Terrans possessed, but Herm had
grown up in Aldaran Castle, with stone walls around him, and great, roaring hearths sending out
gusts of scent-laden sooty, heated air. An odd thing to miss, after more than two decades. But the
scentless, stifling atmosphere of the apartment, which was warm all the year round because of the
central controls of the building, still made him feel like a trapped animal. There were eight
billion people on the planet, and more every year. He had a great longing for space, for stretches
of conifers and the smell of mountain balsam, for the cry of the Hellers' hawks, their russet
plumage bright against a sky illuminated by a ruddy sun.
It was not simply a nostalgia for unsullied expanses of gleaming snow that stirred him. Even after
two decades, he remained uncomfortable with his situation—felt alien. Herm had never felt entirely
clean after using a sonic shower, although it removed all the dead skin and oil from his body.
Water, like everything else, was rationed and taxed, and he had a deep longing for a great wallow
in a tub of steaming water, scented with oil of lavender. A thick towel of Dry Town cotton to dry
with, and a robe of felted wool over his body completed the pleasant fantasy. No clammy synthetic
on his skin . . .
It made his heart ache to think of those things, and he wondered at himself. He had spent almost
half his life off Darkover, and felt he should have accustomed himself to it by now. But if
anything, his homesickness grew worse and worse. For a moment he remembered his younger self, a
yokel by Federation standards, arriving to represent his world in the lower chamber. He had been
awed by the huge buildings, the hives and skyscrapers, the presence of technologies unimaginable
on his far-distant world. Despite having grown up with various Terrans who were welcomed at
Aldaran Castle, and having a mother who claimed Terra as the planet of her birth, he had quickly
realized he was incredibly ignorant. He did not remember much about his mother, for she had died
when he was three. And certainly nothing he remembered her saying prepared him for the reality he
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experienced during his first year in the Chamber of Deputies. She had granted him a strange,
unDarkovan name which he understood now was ancient and unusual even by Terran standards, a
predisposition toward baldness, and beyond that only distant fragmented memories. Dom Damon
Aldaran's wives, all three of them, had perished—his father had been tragically unlucky.
It had been fortunate that Lew was there to help him through those first few years. He had learned
how to use the technology, how to access newsfeeds on a computer and communicate with people
almost instantly. More importantly, Lew Alton had set him to studying the literature and
philosophy of a hundred planets, and the complex history of the Federation itself. At first he had
been unsure of the purpose of these efforts, and had only read the texts in order to please the
older man. But slowly he had come to understand how uneducated he was for the task he had been
chosen to perform. With great difficulty he had started to understand the thinking of the
Federation, how it was founded on ancient ideas that had never taken root on Darkover—some of them
very good ideas.
But now he knew that these ideals were being abandoned, and that the Federation was moving into an
area of military dominance and oppression. It had happened before, in the history of humans, but
he wished it was not occurring during his own lifetime. And it was not something he could discuss
openly, as had been possible when he first came from Darkover. Like every other person on the
planet, he was subject to constant observation. And there was nothing he could do about it, since
disabling the spy eyes that watched and listened was a serious offense. He wondered what the
average person thought about it or if they thought at all. Likely they did not, hypnotized as they
were with mediafeeds and vidrams.
But Herm knew that the situation was bad and getting worse all the time. Trillions of credits were
disbursed every year to create new technologies. At the same time, very little was spent on the
day-to-day existence of ordinary people, whose lives became ever more difficult. He had tried to
understand this phenomenon, but it still made no sense to him, and, like most of his fellow
legislators, he was virtually powerless to change it.
He was being morbid. It must just be the strain of recent days. Regis Hastur had never filled his
original place in the Chamber of Deputies after Herm had vacated it, and he had not encountered
another native of his planet in sixteen years. This rarely weighed on him, but he was so tired now
that it seemed a heavy burden.
Of late, sleep had become a rare commodity, as the meetings, both public and private, in the two
chambers of the Federation legislature had gone far into what passed for night in this dreadful
place. Any of Zandru's frozen hells seemed preferable at that moment. The Senate, his labor of
almost sixteen years now, was a hornet's nest stirred with an Expansionist stick, and the Chamber
of Deputies was little better. But he had dealt with political crises before without waking up in
the middle of the night with his heart trying to hammer its way through his chest.
As much as Herm hated living in the Federation, he actually enjoyed the constant turmoil of
political life. Or he had until a few months before, when the Expansionist party had finally
achieved a slim majority in both houses, and begun to implement policies he opposed. New taxes had
been passed for all member planets of the Federation, to build a fleet of dreadnaughts, great
fighting ships, when there was no foe to defend against. Some worlds had protested, and even tried
to rebel, and combat troops had been sent in to "keep order." It had gone from being a game at
which he excelled, with his natural talent for verbal interplay, and the cunning which had always
been his mainstay, to a daily nightmare from which he feared he would never awaken.
Recently the flow of events had disturbed a few of the more moderate Senators in the Expansionist
Party itself. With what Herm regarded as enormous courage, these men and women had voted against
their own majority on a critical defense bill, effectively destroying it, and bringing both the
Senate and the Chamber to an impasse. Pressure had been brought, persuasion had been used, but to
no avail. Except for endless conferences, meetings, and some lengthy speeches on the floor, no
actual business had been conducted for nearly six weeks now, and it did not appear that any would
be in the near future. The leaders of the Expansionists were becoming more and more desperate, and
the only good that had come out of the mess was that no more new taxes had been passed in the
interim. But no benefit could ultimately come from a paralyzed parliament. A government unable to
act could inadvertently do more harm than good.
Herm tried to shake away the dour mood that enveloped his mind, and found himself remembering one
of the last conversations he had had with Lew Alton, just before Lew had resigned his office and
returned to Darkover. Lucky man. He wasn't balancing his bottom on a stingy stool, trying to make
sense out of a hysteria that had grown and grown over the past decade. What had he said? Ah, yes.
"There may come a time when the Federation loses its collective mind, Hermes, and when that
happens, if it does, I cannot really advise you what to do. But when that day arrives, you will
know it in your bones. And then you must decide whether to stay and fight, or run from the fracas.
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Believe me, it will be evident to your intelligence. Trust your instincts then, young man."
Good advice, and still sound. But things were different now than when Lew had still been
Darkover's Senator. Then Herm had not been married—what a singularly foolish thing to have done,
to wed a widow from Renney with a small son, Amaury. But he had been hopelessly in love! Now they
had their own child, his daughter Terese, a delightful girl of nearly ten. They were the light of
his life, and he knew that without the anchor of Kate and the children he would have been even
more miserable than he was. He realized he had not thought the matter through thoroughly when he
met her, fell totally in love, and married her a month afterward. Certainly he had not considered
the problems of a half-Darkovan child reaching an age where threshold sickness and the onset of
laran were real concerns. And he had never told Katherine about the peculiar inbred paranormal
talents of his people, although he had always intended to . . . someday. The moment just had never
seemed right. And what, after all, would he say? "Oh, by the way, Kate, I've been meaning to tell
you that I can read the minds of other people."
Herm shuddered at the imagined scene that would certainly follow. No, he had not told her the
truth, not clever Herm. He had just gone on, wheeling and dealing, keeping Darkover safe from
Federation predators, and put the matter off until another day. A wave of regret and guilt swept
through him, and his stomach felt full of angry insects.
After his mother's death, he had became a private child and had grown into a secretive adult, a
habit which had stood him in good stead during his years in the Federation. The very walls had
ears and eyes, even those in this miserable excuse for a kitchen—the so called FP Station. Well,
two counters, a tiny sink, a cool box and heating compartment were nothing like a vast stone
chamber with a beehive-shaped oven in one corner, one or two large fireplaces, and a long table
where the servants could sit and eat and gossip. The old cook at Aldaran Castle—she was probably
dead now—had had a way of fixing water fowl with vegetables that was wonderful, and his mouth
watered at the thought of it. He had not tasted fresh meat since he and Katherine had gone to
Renney nine years before. Vat-grown protein had no flavor, even if it did nourish his body.
He forced the delightful vision of a plump fowl running with fat and pinkish juices out of his
mind and tried to focus on his abrupt arousal. What had brought him out of his desperately needed
rest? He had no sense of a dream, so it must have been something else. Herm shivered all over, in
spite of the warmth of the room, and watched the flesh crinkle along his forearms. He had not been
dreaming at all. No, it was almost certainly an occurrence of the Aldaran Gift, a foresight he
would probably wish to avoid, once he remembered what it was. His laran was decent, good enough to
catch the occasional thoughts of the men and women he dealt with every day, an advantage he was
careful not to display or abuse. He relied much more on his native cunning than on his
telepathy—it was a more dependable talent, and less ethically dubious.
Besides, he was a diplomat, not a spy, and just because the Federation kept a watchful eye and ear
on his every movement did not seem sufficient reason to imitate them. But he did wonder what the
unseen auditors made of his love trysts with Kate. Nothing, most likely, since they must record
millions of such incidents every night. Still, the lack of real privacy rankled, the more so
because he was sure he was being observed even now. The things that human beings would do in the
name of order never failed to astound him.
Now, all he had to do was remember what had awakened him, and get back to sleep. Something was
most assuredly up, but it had felt that way for weeks. He had caught the occasional thoughts in
the minds of his fellow legislators, and they were deeply perturbed. This was not limited to the
opposition either, for he had noticed more than a few Expansionist Senators mentally squirming,
their thoughts giving lie to the words issuing from their mouths. Lacking the Alton Gift of forced
rapport, which had given his predecessor such an advantage, Herm made do with scraps of unguarded
thought, and what he mostly heard was more banal or self-serving than useful.
The halls and conference rooms of the Senate Building were permeated with fear these days, and
Herm had observed long-time allies eyeing one another suspiciously. There was good reason to be
afraid. Opposition to Expansionist strategies was dangerous, and more than a few Senators had had
unexplained accidents or sudden illnesses in the last few years. Trust and the capacity for
reasonable compromise, the foundation stones of representative government, had vanished almost
completely, replaced by a wariness and paranoia that was chilling to glimpse in the unguarded
minds of his fellows. It made the actions of people like Senator Ilmurit appear impossibly brave.
She had crossed the aisle with seven other moderates and unwound the tenuously held majority the
Expansionists had achieved with such enormous effort, and not a little treachery as well.
His eyes itched furiously, and his muscles twitched. It was infuriating, too, for he knew that he
would not have had a vision for any trivial matter. He did not have the Aldaran Gift very
strongly, but when it manifested itself, it was always important. Twice in the years he had served
as Darkover's Senator it had helped him avoid political traps and betrayals.
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He closed his eyes, feeling the tug of exhaustion, and tried to recall the warning that had
awakened him. It was muddled, a collection of voices, shouts of distress and words he could barely
make out. It took him several minutes of intense concentration to realize that it was not one
thing, but two separate events, shuffled together so it was difficult to distinguish between them.
Two women? Yes, that was right. Who? Neither was his Kate, nor the voices of any of the female
Senators or Deputies he knew. Then he recognized one, the very familiar voice of Sandra Nagy, the
current Premier of the Federation. He had not known it at first because he was accustomed to her
usually pleasant alto, the one in which she gave addresses which were broadcast throughout the
reaches of the Terran Federation, explaining why taxes would be raised again, or why combat troops
had been used against civilian populations.
Herm suddenly realized that he had had no vision, and no dream either, but instead the experience
of clairaudience, which was the rarest manifestation of the Aldaran Gift. He had heard the
future—if only he could remember the bedamned words! He tensed, knitting his brow fiercely,
willing his mind to cough up some clarity and sense. Concentrate on Nagy, he told himself, and
ignore the other sounds.
"I cannot permit the functioning of the Federation government to remain at a halt any longer,"
Herm heard at last. "Since it is clear that the opposition is determined to hold the legislature
hostage to their own inexplicable and selfish goals, I have no choice but to dissolve both the
Senate and the Chamber of Deputies until such time as new elections can be held and order
restored."
Herm sat stunned for a moment. When was this going to occur? The Aldaran foresight was never
exact, and it rarely offered such useful things as dates or times. He did not doubt the
forehearing, however, but could only try to think what it would mean for Darkover.
It was not a complete surprise, for it had always been a possibility, under the constitution of
the Federation. No Premier had disbanded the government in more than a century, since before the
Terrans had come to Darkover, but he had read the history of such events. What he knew did not
reassure him. As often as not, it was a first move to tyranny, oppression, and suffering. And the
Federation had already gone a good way in that direction, with their spy eyes in even the meanest
domicile, all in the name of security. There was an ever present fear of rebellion which had grown
over the past decade until it colored everything. Even those Senators who were reasonable men and
women seemed to have caught the contagion. As for the Expansionist members, they drank in their
imagined responses to such revolts like fine wine, getting tipsy on vintage visions of
retaliation. Sometimes he almost thought they enjoyed their fever dreams of a galaxy-wide
apocalypse.
Lew Alton had been right all those years before—the Federation was going to hell in a handcart.
The miracle was that it had taken this long. But what should he do now? And what of the other
voice, the less distinct one, the unknown woman who had cried in his mind?
Run!
The single word in his mind rang like a great bell, blotting out all other considerations for a
moment. Hermes-Gabriel Aldaran was afraid, and he felt no shame in confessing it to himself. He
half rose off the uncomfortable stool, then sank back again. There were eyes watching him, and
while it might be days or even weeks before any human eyes studied the record of this particular
moment, he must be careful not to behave in a manner that would draw attention to his actions. He
had Kate and the children to think of.
He went over the remembered words again, feeling more and more frustrated. When was she going to
make this devastating announcement? What good did it do him to have foreknowledge if he lacked any
clue as to whether the foreseen events would occur tomorrow or next week! Herm made himself
consider the immediate situation as calmly and objectively as he was able. A handful of worlds
were simmering on the edge of rebellion, and when the Premier disbanded the legislature, at least
one of them would use it as an excuse to try to break with the Federation. He understood that, but
he could not be sure that Nagy did. Her advisory council was made up almost entirely of the more
extreme voices in the Party, those who sincerely believed that they knew better how to run the
lives of everyone on Federation planets than their native peoples did themselves.
And what would the dissolution of the legislature mean for the governors, kings, and other ruling
bodies of the member planets? Without representation, they would lose their voices completely.
Would she suspend the Federation Constitution and institute martial law? Herm rubbed the short
beard around his mouth reflectively. No, she would not go that far—at least not immediately.
Instead, she and her cronies would wait for some planet to rebel, and use that as an excuse to
declare a state of emergency. This was the logical course.
Had troops already been deployed to those planets regarded as either dangerous or potentially
disloyal? Herm did not know, and there was no way he could gain access to the files where such
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information might exist without arousing immediate suspicion. He had better assume that portions
of the Fleet were in place or on their way, just to be safe. Hadn't there been something about
some war games in the Castor sector? He scratched his head and flogged his weary brain to
remember. Yes, it was Castor. There were two worlds there which he would focus on, if he were some
Expansionist strategist looking for trouble.
Satisfied for the instant that he had theorized as well as he could without any real information,
Herm tried to analyze his own situation. Where did he stand? He was the unaligned Senator of a
Protected Planet, and not an overt threat to anyone. He had been careful to cultivate an
unthreatening personality, and this had served him well enough during his years. But Herm knew the
tenor of the Expansionist mind well enough to realize that if you were not their ally, you were
regarded as an enemy. He had seen some of his friends in the Senate destroyed by scandals that he
knew were trumped up, and he did not want to wait around to find out if he would become the latest
victim. That was unlikely, because Darkover was not an important world. But he had Kate and the
children to consider, not just his own Aldaran hide. And once the Senate was disbanded, he would
no longer have the immunity of his office to protect him and his family. He could be arrested
then, or worse. If only he were not so weary and was able to think with a clear head. Instead, he
was just plain scared, and was attempting to resist the impulse to flee.
Herm decided that he had to try to discover when Sandra Nagy was actually going to drop her
political bomb, before he did anything more. He rose from the stool and padded across to the
household terminal, knowing that at least this action would not arouse much attention from the spy
eyes in the walls. He was in the habit of accessing the newsfeeds several times a day, and even at
night if he couldn't sleep, as he was now. Indeed, it was such a typical thing that it might allay
suspicion rather than otherwise.
He pressed his hand against the glassy surface of the comlink and waited. For several seconds
nothing happened and his heart began to beat a bit faster, fearing that he was too late, and that
events had rushed beyond his control, that he would be denied access and a goon squad of
Expansionist bully boys would come knocking at the door. Then he scolded himself silently. The
system had been sluggish for weeks now, due to power blackouts that occasionally blinded half a
continent for hours at a time.
Everything on the planet—from voting to food ordering—was dependent on these electronic links. But
the shortsightedness of the Expansionists had blocked the funds for improvements, and now the
system was beginning to fall apart. It was, Herm knew, symptomatic of all that was wrong in the
Federation. Infrastructures were decaying, and no one was able to get a bill through the
legislature to do anything about it. The population kept increasing, but the services that
supported the people were deteriorating, because the funds needed were being spent on armaments,
on the construction of military ships and the training of troops. It was folly, and he knew that
he was not the only one who was aware of it. Unfortunately, no one wanted to hear his voice, or
those of others who suggested that spending on defense over basic needs was unsupportable.
He thought about his studies of history. However reluctantly they had begun, they were now almost
an obsession. His love of history was one of the few pleasures outside his family that he had, an
escape from the dreadful present he was living through. For some reason he found himself
remembering the tale of a great empire which had existed on Terra just before the age of space
travel, a nation that covered most of what had been called Asia and Europe. For half a century it
had devoted itself to preparations for a war that never came, and finally it had collapsed into
bits and pieces, bankrupted by its own fear. Perhaps the Expansionist movement would run the same
course. This thought gave him cold comfort while he waited.
At last the terminal blinked into life. He scrolled the most recent newsfeeds, scanning the words
rapidly, looking for any clues that might tell him how much time he had. He ignored reports of
food shortages, yet another water riot in the Indonesian islands, the arrival of the Governor of
Tau Ceti III for a state visit, and several other items. Ah, here it was, a terse tidbit buried at
the end of the most recent feed. The Premier had announced a major speech before the combined
houses three days hence. So, that was how much time he had to get as far away as he could. Not
much, but enough. It felt right, down in his bones, just as Lew had said it would. And clever as
he was, he had always kept a means of escape open.
For an instant all he could think of was that he was, at last, going to go back to
Darkover—immediately. A wave of relief made him grin at the flashing screen. But, in all
likelihood, he was not coming back, and that presented a fresh set of problems. He must take Kate
and the children with him. That was simple enough, except that she would have questions about why
they were abandoning their home. And he could hardly tell her the truth, for that would alert the
monitors in the walls.
Hermes sighed. Life as a bachelor had been much simpler, but less satisfactory. Kate was an
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intelligent woman; she would just have to trust him because she would know he was thinking of
their best interests. He spent a futile moment worrying over uprooting the children, and then
forced it out of his mind. They were young and adaptable, and it was more important to keep them
from harm than to worry about anything else. Later, out of reach of constant surveillance, he
would explain things. It was not something he looked forward to. She would tear a strip off his
hide for not finding some way of telling her earlier and it was probably less than he deserved.
With a grunt, he keyed a program into the comlink, one that had been placed there years before. A
message popped up on the screen, with all the correct codes, telling him to return to Darkover
immediately. He suppressed a grin, knowing it for a clever fraud, and hoping that the information
ferrets had never discovered its existence. It certainly looked official, and if no one examined
it too closely, it should allow him to remove himself and his family from danger.
Herm looked at it, tried to appear startled, scratching his head fretfully and muttered. Then,
with a pleasure he had difficulty concealing, he keyed in another program. There was a further
delay, and sweat puddled under his arms and ran down his sides. Then, almost magicially, he found
an open passage across Federation space booked on the first departing ship, in perfect order. It
allowed him to use his privileged position to usurp the first available cabin, in the first class
section of a Big Ship.
He derived a grim pleasure from using his trapdoor. These days, with the Expansionist
restrictions, it sometimes took months to book passage, unless one had friends in the right
places. But as a Senator he could still pull rank, even though he knew it meant that he would
almost certainly disrupt some complete stranger's travel plans. He calmed his conscience by
remembering it would likely discomfort some Expansionist party loyalist, since these were the
people permitted travel for the most part.
The link scrolled and made a faint and not unpleasant humming noise as it worked. After several
minutes a display came up, a routing with a transfer to Vainwal. The system accepted it without
query, and he had the booking arranged. They had six hours to get their things together and go to
the port. It was not a great deal of time, and he prayed that Katherine would not argue too much.
He allowed his shoulders to slump a little, exhausted from the tension of his efforts. As he
relaxed, he heard the voices in his dream return, and realized that he still had not thought about
the second one, the unknown voice, fainter than Nagy's. Frustrated, he struggled to hear it. Herm
forced himself to take several deep breaths, to create some patience when what he most desired was
action. He had only deciphered half the puzzle, and the second voice was likely as important as
the first. He must not be hasty. It was hard. Focus, particularly when he was tired, was a
difficult discipline. He shut his eyes and balled his fists, willing his mind to bring back the
faint, distant words. There was nothing for a moment, and then a flood of images danced across his
eyelids. He saw sheets of paper with neat lines on them, and then a bottle of ink fell over,
spreading across the pages. Something has happened to Regis!
The words made him tremble. Herm forced himself to remain seated for a minute, calming his mind as
well as he could. Perhaps his false message from Darkover was truer than he had imagined. He had
no idea whose voice it was, reaching through time and space, across untold lightyears, to find him
in dream and rouse him to action. He was chilled to the bone, and the sweat on his chest was cold
on his skin.
Inertia seemed to paralyze him briefly, as his mind spun in tangles of fruitless speculation. Then
he made himself stand up, noticing that his knees protested a little, and cross the common room.
He poured himself another half glass of juice, then put the container back into the cool box. He
placed his empty glass in the rack for the sterilizer, took a deep breath, and prepared to go wake
up Katherine. He would have to rush her, not give her time to think, to ask questions—or else
abandon her and the children, and that was unthinkable. If only he was not so weary!
1
Marguerida Alton-Hastur sat at her desk and stared out the narrow window, unsettled for no reason
she could put a name to. A glorious early autumn sky, with several interesting cloud shapes in it,
filled the opening. She decided one resembled a camel, an animal that had never existed on
Darkover and was now alive only in a few wildlife refuges, and remembered how much fun she had had
when the children were little, trying to decide what clouds looked like. Once, several clouds had
seemed to her gaze to be a pod of delfins frolicking in the seas of Thetis, the planet on which
she had grown up. Marguerida had been unable to explain her sudden flood of tears, nor the nature
of the images. Her children had never seen the sea, let alone bathed in it, and they could not
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understand her aching desire for warm oceans and balmy breezes. Funny—she had not thought of that
day in ages. She must be getting old, wallowing in memories.
The children were all much too grown up for cloud-gazing now, even Yllana, the youngest, at
eleven, and she rather missed the innocent game. Last Midsummer, Domenic, her eldest, had been
declared his father's heir designate, despite the very vocal protects of Javanne Hastur, her
difficult mother-in-law. It hardly seemed possible—the time had passed so quickly. Before long she
might become a mother-in-law herself, and then a grandmother! She hoped that she would like her
yet undiscovered daughter-in-law more than Javanne liked her, that she would be kinder, or at
least more polite. But not too soon, she whispered to herself. As difficult as being a parent had
turned out to be, she was in no hurry to have her children leave her.
She looked around the small office she kept in her suite of rooms in Comyn Castle. The hearth was
ablaze, and the cozy room was fragrant with the smell of burning balsam. The paneled walls shone,
reflecting the dancing light from the fire, and the colors in the pattern of the rug on the stone
floor pleased her. The tang of fall penetrated even through the thick walls of Comyn Castle, a
fresh smell that never failed to liven her mind. It had taken a long while to get used to the
weather on Darkover, for Thetis was almost an endless summer. But now she actually looked forward
to changing seasons and the festivals which punctuated them.
From the next room, she could hear the delightful tinkle of a clavier, where Ida Davidson was
giving Yllana her music lessons. She smiled at the sound. It was not a syntheclavier of the sort
which Ida had used when Marguerida had lived in her house during her years at the University. Such
a device was prohibited on Darkover, since it used the advanced technologies of the Federation.
Instead, it was a reasonable imitation of the noble ancestor of that instrument, crafted wholly on
Darkover, of native woods and rare Darkovan metals, made from drawings Marguerida had obtained
with great difficulty from the University archives. There had never been such a keyboard
instrument on Darkover before, but now, after the struggle to create the first one, there were six
in Thendara. Members of the Musicians Guild were writing music specifically for them. Yllana was
not playing any of these home-grown compositions, but one of the Klieg Variations from the twenty-
fourth century—formal, structured and a challenge for ten small fingers.
There was nothing whatever to disturb the serenity of the moment, as a speedy mental sweep of
Comyn Castle assured her. The Alton Gift, which she had resented so bitterly when she first
discovered she had it, had turned out to have its uses, one of which was the ability to scan the
environment around her. Perhaps she was just being anxious for no reason. It had been a troubling
year, with a summer that was the warmest in recent memory. The farmers had fretted over the
possibility of drought, and the fire danger in the hills had been very great. There had been
disturbances of another kind as well—some small riots in the markets of Thendara and reports of an
uprising in Shainsa in the Dry Towns. But the rains had come in from the west at last, the balmy,
near-sixty degree temperatures had vanished, and there had not been any outbreak of large fires.
She really must get down to work! This woolgathering was wasting valuable time, and her time was
at a premium just now. Marguerida looked down at the stack of pages in front of her. They were
staff sheets, covered with musical notation and accompanying lyrics. After nearly two decades of
doubt and hesitation, she had finally succumbed to her great, secret ambition and written an
opera. It had taken all of her nerve and a great deal of encouragement from Ida to get started.
But once she began, it had been nearly impossible to stop. Mikhail Hastur, her beloved companion
and husband of nearly sixteen years, had complained that her composing was a greater rival than
any living man could be, and Marguerida knew he was only half joking.
Writing the music had been fairly easy, but finding the time—the peace and quiet to do so—had been
difficult. She had a great many duties, as wife of the heir designate to Regis Hastur, and the
mother of three children. Somewhat reluctantly, Marguerida had also taken over some of the task of
running Comyn Castle from Lady Linnea Storn-Lanart, Regis' consort. In the years since she had
been married to Mikhail Hastur, she had done so many things she had never imagined doing when she
had been a young career academic. Foremost among these things, she had learned how to manage her
unique and potentially dangerous laran talents, guided by the Keeper Istvana Ridenow. Her friend
and confidant had come to Thendara from Neskaya to help her and Mikhail right after they were
married, to train them and teach them. Istvana had remained in the city for eleven years, and they
had been wonderful ones for Marguerida. But now she was back in her own Tower, pursuing her own
calling, and Marguerida still had to work hard at not missing her.
Reflecting for a moment on years past, she decided she had not done so badly in facing her
challenges. She had read ancient texts written in the rounded alphabet of Darkover with one hand
while she cradled a baby at the breast with the other. She had learned to sit through Comyn
Council meetings without losing her fearsome temper, even in the presence of her mother-in-law,
Javanne Hastur, who remained an enduring thorn in her side. The shadow matrix which was blazed
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upon her left hand, the thing she had wrested from a Tower in the overworld, still remained
something of an enigma, but she had found ways to control it so that she was no longer afraid of
it. It remained beyond the considerable knowledge that had been amassed over the centuries by the
leroni of Darkover, a thing which was both real and unreal at the same time. She could heal with
it, and she could kill as well, and coming to grips with both extremes had been very difficult.
The years had been hard, but she had accomplished things she had never dreamed of, and she had a
deep sense of satisfaction in that.
During those years of study and motherhood, however, there had been no time for the music which
had once defined her life and still remained her ruling passion. Instead, she had channeled her
considerable energies into less personal efforts. With the help of Thendara House, the Renunciate
center in the city, she had founded a small printing house, and several schools for the children
of tradesmen and crafts people. She had helped the Musicians Guild get permission to erect a new
performance hall much larger than anything which had existed before, and encouraged the
preservation of the fine musical tradition of Darkover in any way she could.
Marguerida's choices had been neither altruistic nor uncomplicated. When she had returned to the
world of her birth over sixteen years before, there had been a great vogue for everything
concerning the Terran Federation, a condition which perturbed not only the more conservative
rulers of several Domains, but bothered the craftsmen and tradesmen as well. They feared their way
of life would be lost in a flood of Terran technology, and had gone so far as to petition Regis
Hastur to restore the Comyn Council, which had been disbanded two decades earlier. Their demand
had been unprecedented in the history of Darkover, and Regis had listened to their arguments, and
restored the Council. This had kept Darkover on a path that satisfied most of its inhabitants.
But a complete return to the pre-Federation past was impossible, although there were a few members
on the Council who sincerely believed otherwise. Javanne, for instance, seemed consumed with the
idea that if everyone would just do things as she wished, and make a real effort, then somehow the
glories of an earlier time would reappear, and the Federation would cease to trouble their minds.
Francisco Ridenow, the head of the Ridenow Domain, was almost as bad.
Marguerida understood both her mother-in-law's curious nostalgia for a time which she had never
actually known—for the Terrans had arrived four decades before Javanne had been born—and her
almost atavistic fear of change. She also knew it was much too late to turn back, and that
Darkover needed increased knowledge, not unlettered ignorance, in order to prosper. The Federation
was not going to go away just because Javanne Hastur wished it to, although there seemed no way to
make the woman grasp this fact.
The space madness which had possessed the previous generation of youngsters had faded, however,
and the populace had returned to their normal pursuits, with, Marguerida was sure, a silent sigh
of relief. The number of young men and women who wanted to learn the intricacies of Federation
technologies had diminished, too, and while there was always a pool of adolescents eager to obtain
employment at Federation Headquarters, they were principally the offspring of Federation people
who had married Darkovans.
The Federation itself was responsible for this. The political body she had been familiar with
during her years at University was gone, replaced by a tangle of bureaucracies, each jealously
guarding its own privileges, and unwilling to welcome newcomers into its ranks. This
reorganization, which had taken place twelve years before, had brought them Lyle Belfontaine, the
Station Chief at Headquarters. She had never actually met him, but her father had, and Lew Alton
had given her a very poor impression of the man. Belfontaine had made it quite clear that he
regarded the Darkovans as backward and useless. The organizational shift in the Federation had
made him the most powerful Terran on the planet, superseding even the Planetary Administrator,
who, while he still retained his position, had no voice in the actual running of things.
Belfontaine had closed the old John Reade Orphanage, out of pique at a decision of Regis', and
then closed down the Medical Center to any except Federation employees as well.
Much of this had passed by Marguerida unnoticed until recently. She had been much too busy rearing
her three children, and studying with Istvana. She had found an unexpected kind of satisfaction in
both activities, and had been happily willing to leave larger matters to her father, Lew, to
Regis, and to Mikhail. It had been enough, with her other more public activities. But now, finding
that she could compose music with the same hand that was her curse and her blessing, she had
discovered a depth of pleasure that nothing else afforded her.
She had never wanted to participate in the administration of Comyn Castle, but Lady Linnea had
persuaded her that she must. Eventually it would become her job, in some misty future time when
Regis Hastur had gone to his rest, or his consort was too old to continue. The idea remained
unreal in her mind, as if she could not bear the idea of their inevitable ends.
She had tackled her new duties as she had approached everything else in her life—by learning
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everything she could as quickly as possible. It had helped that she had spent ten years assisting
Ivor Davidson, her long-dead mentor, on his journeys around the backwaters of the Federation in
search of indigenous music history and tradition. More, Marguerida had the advantage of knowing
Comyn Castle in a way that no one else did. She had ancient memories of the building imprinted in
her mind, a leftover from her overshadowing by the long dead Keeper, Ashara Alton. These ancient
memories had cursed her youth and adolescence, appearing in dreams and nightmares. Only her return
to the planet of her birth had released her from the torment of inexplicable thoughts and images,
although for a time it had given her more problems than she had ever imagined. She had nearly died
from adult-onset threshold sickness—an experience Marguerida had mercifully almost forgotten.
Ashara had been present at the construction of Comyn Castle, and after she had died, her shade had
remained present in the now ruined Old Tower that stood on one side of the castle. So there were
forgotten byways and unremembered rooms and passages that were as familiar to Marguerida as her
own hand. It was a disquieting knowledge, one that she had to take pains to conceal because it
made the servants uneasy. Dealing with them had been a real challenge, since she was more
accustomed to doing things herself than to ordering them done. And the actual administration of
Comyn Castle was a much larger project than keeping travel papers and baggage in order. In many
ways the building was a self-contained small town, with its own brewery, bakery, and even a small
weaving loft. It was always stocked as if for a siege, and one of her duties had been to keep it
ready for any eventuality.
Although she had been born on Darkover forty-two years before, Marguerida had lived half of her
life off that world, and part of her still felt like an interloper. Her father said he often had
the same feeling, and sharing her sense of alienation with him was a comfort to her. She had been
estranged from him for all her years at University, but when they had met again, soon after her
return to Darkover, Marguerida had found him changed. Now she could not think of life without
him—his ironic sense of humor, his profound insights, and most of all, his steady affection for
her, for Mikhail, and for his grandchildren. He was no longer the drunken, tortured man who raged
in the night, and even the death of his wife, Diotima Ridenow, ten years ago had miraculously not
returned him to that earlier state.
But despite the understanding presence of her father, Marguerida's sense of being a stranger had
never entirely gone away. Part of this was the result of her difficult relationship with Javanne
Hastur. Mikhail's mother had never really accepted her into the family, although his father, Dom
Gabriel had finally broken down and welcomed her with genuine affection. Javanne always managed to
convey to Marguerida a sense that there was something wrong with her, and with Domenic, her oldest
child, whose conception had occurred under such unusual circumstances—during her journey back
through time to the Ages of Chaos. She might even be correct about Nico, although Marguerida would
have bitten her tongue rather than admit it. He was an odd lad, older than his years, self-
contained and remote. But the difference ran deeper than that, and Marguerida knew it. There was
something just a bit eerie about her oldest child, a quality of stillness that made it seem as if
he were listening to some distant voice. Maybe he was, or perhaps, as Dom Danilo Syrtis-Ardais had
once suggested, half seriously, he was the reincarnation of Varzil Ridenow. She rather hoped he
was not, for her single encounter with that long dead laranzu had not left her with any desire to
meet him in another form, and certainly not as her son.
She tried to accept and come to terms with her mother-in-law's dislike of her. After all, she was
Regis' older sister and part of the family. She took some comfort in the fact that Javanne treated
Gisela Aldaran, now the wife of Mikhail's older brother Rafael, with even less courtesy. It was
about the only thing she and Giz had in common, for she had never managed to become friends with
her sister-in-law, and having her in Comyn Castle all the time could, at times, be a real trial.
Marguerida had done her best to reconcile with her sister-in-law, taking an interest in Gisela's
researches into the geneologies of the Domain families, and also into the game of chess. She had
even managed to procure a three-dimensional chess set as a gift for her one Midwinter, and the
other woman had unbent for a brief time as a result.
But Gisela remained an aloof and disruptive presence in Comyn Castle, which already housed enough
strong personalities to overwhelm anyone. She understood some of Giz's melancholy and sizzling
rage. The woman had set her sights on Mikhail when she was only an adolescent, and had failed to
achieve her ambition. That was hard enough. But she and Rafael lived in the Castle, and had to see
both Mikhail and Marguerida almost every day. She was a kind of gentle hostage for the good
behavior of the Aldaran Domain. Regis had never come to trust Dom Damon Aldaran entirely, and as
difficult as having Gisela underfoot might be, it gave him a lever to hold the old man in check.
Marguerida managed to forgive her difficult relative much of her ill-temper, recognizing in her
both intelligence and ambition, and only wanted to strangle her once a tenday.
Her mother-in-law was another matter entirely, and even though she was not present at Comyn Castle
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file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/Bradley,%20Marion%20\Zimmer%20-%20Darkover%20-%20Traitor's%20Sun.txtTRAITOR'SSUNANovelofDarkoverMARIONZIMMERBRADLEYIthasbeenfifteenyearssinceMargueridaAltonreturnedtoDarkover.F\ifteenyearssinceshediscoveredtheterrifyingpowersofherspeciallaran,metan...

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