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much out of their orbit you know as well as I do that we mountain people
live under our own customs and ways.
 They rule? Doesn t the King rule in the lowlands?
 Oh, yes, there is a King in Thendara, ruling under the Comyn Council. The
kingship used to rest with the Hasturs, but they gave it up, a few generations
ago, in favor of another Comyn family, the Elhalyns, who are so intermarried
with the Hasturs that it doesn t make much difference. You know all this,
damn it, I remember telling you when you were a child, as well as about the
Aldarans.
 I m sorry, it all seemed very faraway. They sat on blankets and furs inside
the dark hut, crouched close to the fire, although to anyone accustomed to the
fierce cold of the mountains it was not really cold. Outside, sleety rain
whispered thickly along the slats of the hut.  What about the Aldarans?
Surely they re Comyn too?
 They used to be; they may have some Comyn powers. But they were kicked
out of Comyn Council generations ago; the story goes that they did something
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so horrible nobody knows or remembers what it was. Personally I suspect it
was the usual sort of political dogfight, but I can t say. No one alive knows,
except maybe the Lords of Comyn Council. He fell silent again. It was not
Comyn he feared, but Valdir, specifically, and that too-knowing, all-reading
gaze.
Storn did not have to be told how Melitta felt about what he had done. He felt
the same way himself. He, too, had been brought up in the reverence of this
Darkovan law against interfering with another human mind. Yet he justified
himself fiercely, with the desperation of the law-abiding and peaceful man
turned renegade. I don t care what laws I have broken, it was my sister and
my young brother in the hands of those men, and the village folk who have
served my family for generations. Let me see them free and I don t care if they
hang me! What good is an invalid s life, anyhow? I ve never been more than
half alive, before this!
He was intensely aware of Melitta, half-kneeling before the low fire, close to
him on the blankets. Isolated by the conditions of his life, as he had been till
now, there had been few women, and none of his own caste, about whom he
could care personally. To a developing telepath that had meant much. Habit
and low vitality had made him indifferent to this deprivation; but the strange
and newly vigorous body, in which he now felt quite at home, was more than
marginally aware of the closeness of the girl.
It crossed his mind that Melitta was extraordinarily beautiful, even in the
worn and stained riding clothes she had resumed when they left Carthon. She
had loosened her hair and removed the outer cloak and tunic; under it was a
loose rough linen shift. Some small ornament gleamed at her throat and her
feet were bare. Storn, weary from days of riding, was still conscious of the
reflex physical stir of awareness and desire. He let himself play at random
with the thought, perhaps because all his other thoughts were too disturbing.
Sexual liaisons between even full siblings in the mountains were not
prohibited, although children born to such couples were thought
unfortunate the isolated mountain people were too aware of the dangers of
inbreeding. With the grimmest humor he had yet felt, Storn thought, In a
stranger s body even that would not be anything to fear!
Then he felt a sudden revulsion. The stranger s body was that of an alien, an
Earthling, a stranger on their world and he had been thinking of letting such
a one share the body of his sister, a Lady of Storn? He set his jaw roughly,
reached out and covered the fire.
 It s late, he said.  We have far to travel tomorrow. You d better go to sleep.
Melitta obeyed without a word, rolling herself in her fur cloak and turning
away from him. She was aware of what he was thinking, and intensely sorry
for him, but she dared not offer him overt sympathy. Her brother would have
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r r
rejected it as he had done all her life, and she was still a little afraid of the
stranger. It was not the low-keyed throb of his desire, which Melitta could feel
almost as a physical presence, which disturbed her, of course. She did not
care about that. As with any mountain girl of her caste, she knew that,
travelling alone with any man, such a problem would in all probability arise.
With Storn s own person she might not have thought of it, but she was much
more aware of the stranger than Storn realized. She had been forced to think
about this eventuality and to make up her mind about it. She felt no particular
attraction to the stranger, although if his presence had been uncomplicated
by the eerie uncanniness of knowing that he was also her brother, she might
have found him intriguing; certainly he was handsome, and seemed gentle
and from the tones of his voice, likable. But if she had even inadvertently
roused desire in him, common decency, by the code of women of her caste,
demanded that she give it some release; to refuse this would have been wrong
and cruelly whorish. If she had been unalterably opposed to this possibility,
she would not have agreed to travel entirely alone with him; no mountain girl
would have done so. It would not have been impossible to find a travelling
companion in Carthon.
In any case, it seemed that at the moment the matter was not imminent, and
Melitta was relieved. It might have been entirely too uncanny; like lying with a
ghost, she thought, and slept.
It was still dark when Storn s hand on her shoulder roused her, and when
they saddled their horses and began to ride down the dark mountain path, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]