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like Callista and Ellemir, though his hair was redder, his curls more riotous, his freckles a thick golden splotchinstead of a faint gilt sprinkle. And Dezi, quiet and unregarded benind the wheeled chair, was like a palerreflection of Domenic. Domenic looked up and saw him there, giving him a friendly thump on theshoulder.
    “So you are here, cousin? I heard you had left the Tower. I don’t blame you. I spent forty days there a few years ago, being tested for   laran   , and I couldn’t get away fast enough! Did you get sick of it too, or did they chuck you out?”
    Dezi hesitated and looked away, and Callista interposed. “You learned nothing there of our courtesies, Domenic. That is a question which must never be asked. It is between a telepath and his own Keeper,and if Dezi chooses not to tell, it is inexcusably rude to ask.”
    “Oh, sorry,” said Domenic good-naturedly, and only Damon noticed the relief in Dezi’s face. “It’s just that I couldn’t get out of the place fast enough, and wondered if you felt the same way. Some people like it. Look at Callista, she had nearly ten years of it, and others—well, it wasn’t for me.”
    Damon, watching the two lads, thought with pain of Coryn, so like Domenic at this age! He seemed totaste again the half-forgotten days of his own boyhood, when he, the clumsiest of the cadets, had beenaccepted as one of them because of his sworn friendship with Coryn, who, like Domenic, had been thebest liked, the most energetic and outrageous of them all.
    That had been in the days before failure, and hopeless love, and humiliation had burned so deep… but,he thought, it was also before he knew Ellemir. He sighed and clasped her hand in his. Domenic, feeling Damon’s eyes on him, looked up and smiled, and Damon felt the weight of loneliness slip away. He had Ellemir, and he had Andrew and Domenic for brothers. The isolation and loneliness were gone forever.
    Domenic took Dezi’s arm in a companionable way. “Look here, cousin, if you get tired of hangingaround here at my father’s footstool, come to Thendara. I’ll get you a commission in the cadet corps—Ican do that, can’t I, Father?” he asked. At   Dom   Esteban’s indulgent nod, he added, “They always needlads of good family, and anyone can see to look at you that you’ve got Alton blood, haven’t you?”
    Dezi said quietly, “I have always been told so. Without it I could never have passed through the Veil at
    Arilinn.”
    “Well, it doesn’t matter a damn in the cadets. Half of us are some nobleman’s bastard”—he laughed again uproariously—“and the rest of us poor devils are some nobleman’s legitimate son suffering and sweating to prove ourselves worthy of our parents! But I lived through three years of it, and you will too, so come to Thendara and I’ll find you something. Bare is back that has no brother, they say, and since Valdir’s with the monks at Nevarsin, I’ll be glad to have you with me, kinsman.”

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    Dezi’s face flushed a little. He said in a low voice, “Thank you, cousin. I will stay here while your fatherhas need of me. After that, it will be my pleasure.” He turned quickly, attentively to Dom   Esteban. “Uncle, what ails you?” For the old man had gone white and slumped against the back of his chair.
    “Nothing,” Dom   Esteban said, recovering himself. “A moment of faintness. Perhaps, as they say in the hills, some wild thing pissed on the ground for my grave. Or perhaps it is only that this is my first day upright after lying flat for so long.”
    “Let me help you back to bed, then, Uncle, to rest until the wedding,” Dezi said. Domenic said, “I’ll come help,” and as they fussed around him, Damon noticed that Ellemir was watching them with a strange look of dismay.
    “What is it, preciosa   ?”
    “Nothing, a premonition, I don’t know,” said Ellemir, shaking, “but as he spoke I saw him lying like
    death here at