Traitor's Sun by Marion Zimmer Bradley Page B

Federation.”
    “Yes, I suppose it is.”
    She was able to hold the stiff posture for perhaps half a minute, then weakly sagged against him. He could smell her weariness and the stink of the ship on her skin. The knot of hair she had made slipped down, and he could feel the silkiness of it brush his hand. “What else? There is something more, isn’t there?”
    “Yes, there is. Regis Hastur, who has guided Darkover for two generations, is dying. At least Rafael says he is, and I do not think he would exaggerate such a terrible thing. That is why his consort, Lady Linnea, is not able to welcome us, as she would have under any other circumstances, and why Lew Alton deputized Rafael to greet us.”
    “Did you know that he—Herm, what really made you yank us out of our beds and rush here?”
    “A vision, my dearest, if hearing voices can be called that. I have what is called the Aldaran Gift, which is the occasional power of foreseeing, although in this case I fore-heard rather than foresaw. I suddenly knew that the legislature would be dissolved, and realized what the implications of that were. So I did the best thing I could think of, which was to get us all as far away from Federation territory as quickly as I could.”
    “Then you did not know that Regis was sick?” Nana knew he had the Sight—but this is too much . . . first telepaths and then clairvoyants. I wonder what else he is not telling me. No, I don’t want to know! Not now, not today. I could not bear another revelation.
    “I had an inkling, you might say, and while I got both the sense of some terrible thing about Regis and Nagy’s move at the same time, I did not have anything to tell me when. For all I knew, Regis’ illness might be weeks or years in the future, or might have already happened. The Aldaran Gift is not precise, and not all foreseeings come to pass. For instance, I might see that someone would be in an accident—an aircar crash, maybe—but on the day of it, this person decided to stay home instead. I was on fairly firm ground about the dissolution of the legislature, because we had not been able to do any real business in nearly two months, and everyone was sort of holding their breath, waiting for the ax to fall. I suspect that some of my colleagues with no paranormal abilities whatever were anticipating something of what happened to occur. I just had the advantage, if you can call it that, of a little more warning than they did. It was more a leap of faith on my part than anything else—that I believed what I foresaw and acted on it. That is the most I can tell you.”
    “Who will take over when Regis is gone?”
    Herm chuckled. “My brother-in-law, Mikhail, who is the younger brother of Rafael. I met him just before I left Darkover, when he was in his early twenties. A good man.”
    “The younger brother? Isn’t that a little odd?”
    “Yes, it is. You see, long ago, Regis named his youngest nephew as his heir, before he married Lady Linnea. Mikhail is the son of his sister, Javanne Hastur. Regis had other children, but they were murdered in their cradles, along with any number of other people, by the World Wreckers—a covert organization run by Terranan. Then he married Linnea, and they have three children: a son, Danilo, and two daughters.”
    “But, then, why is this Mikhail going to succeed him?” Katherine let herself be distracted almost unconsciously. She desperately wanted to think about something, anything, but telepaths. It was too much just now. And she had to keep talking, to keep herself from thinking.
    “It is a very complicated affair, but essentially Danilo Hastur abdicated the direct succession in favor of becoming the heir to the Elhalyn Domain, through his marriage to Miralys Elhalyn. The Elhalyn have been the kings of Darkover since the beginning of recorded history, but the power of rule has always remained in the hands of the Hastur family. The two families are related, and Regis’ mother was Alanna