To Save a World Read Free Page B

unknown; mostly due to the Compact, the law forbidding any weapon which can go beyond the hand's reach of the user; a law which allowed dueling and raiding but wholly prohibited the wide spread of battle or carnage. The question, addressed to Danilo, was purely rhetorical—every six-year-old child knew of the Compact—and the youth did not answer. But even before Regis' angry gaze—and the anger of a Hastur could kill—Danilo Syrtis did not drop his eyes.
    He said, "You're alive and unharmed. That's all I care about, Lord."
    "But what, in the name of any god you like, are we living for , Dani?"
    "I, to keep you alive."
    "And what are we living about? We are living, among other things, so that the Compact be kept on Darkover and the years of chaos and cowardly killing never come back to our people!" Regis sounded half wild with rage and despair, but Danilo did not quail from his angry stare. He said, "The Compact would be much worse kept with you dead, Lord Regis. I am your most loyal—" the boy's voice suddenly shook, "you know my life is yours to keep or spend, vai dom cario ; but do you really know what would become of this world or your people with you dead?"
    " Bredú ." Regis used the word which meant not only friend but sworn brother and reached out with both hands for Danilo's; a rare touch in a telepath caste. He said, "If this is true, my dearest brother, why should seven assassins want me dead?"
    He didn't expect an answer and didn't get one. Dando said, his face drawn, "I don't think they come from our people at all."
    "Is that—" Regis pointed to where the corpse had lain, "a Terran? Not as I know them."
    "Nor I. But face facts, Lord Regis. Seven assassins to you alone; and Lord Edric dead from a strange dirk; Lord Jerome of the Elhalyns dead in his own study and no man's footprints in the snow; three of the Aillard women dead in mishandled childbirth and the midwives dying of poison before they could be questioned; and—the gods deal with me for speaking of it—your two children."
    Regis' face, hard before, was bleak now, for although he had fathered the children without any love for their mothers, as a sworn duty to his caste, he had cared deeply for the two sons found dead in their cribs—from sudden illness, they said—not three months ago. He said, and the terrible control in his voice was worse than tears, "What can I do, Dani? Must I see a murderer's hand or the hand of conspiracy in every blow of fate?"
    "It will be worse for you if you don't than if you do, Lord Regis," said Danilo, but the deep compassion in his voice belied the harshness of the words. He added, still harshly, "You've had a shock. You'd better get along home. Your mourning at Lord Edric's funeral, such mourning as anyone could summon up for such as he, won't do his memory half as much good as you guarding your life to look after his womenfolk and people!"
    Regis' mouth thinned. "I doubt if they have spare murderers in reserve on one day," was all he said. But he went with Danilo, not protesting further.
    So it was a war, then, a complex conspiracy against the telepath caste.
    But who was the enemy, and why?
    Isolated incidents like this had never been uncommon on Darkover, although it was more common for an assassin to file what was known as an intent-to-murder; this placed it nominally under the age-old duello code of Darkover and the slayer enjoyed immunity; a slaying in fair duel was no murder.
    His lip curled faintly. He had carefully avoided embroiling himself in any of the warring alignments and factions on Darkover ever since he knew that Derik Elhalyn, nearest heir to the rulership of Comyn Council, was mad and could not take office.
    Thus, no living man on Darkover could justly claim that Regis Hastur of Hastur had wronged him. Furthermore, as Danilo had reminded him, there were few who could match him in the use of any legal dueling weapons.
    Who, then? Some of their own people who wanted the Comyn, with its complex