Traitor's Sun by Marion Zimmer Bradley

so unexpectedly, nor so soon. The old doubts nagged at him, fears he had thought were long gone. He was not ready to lead Darkover!
    The rustle of fabric behind him made him turn. Marguerida came into the chamber, carrying a tray with several mugs on it, doing a servant’s task in spite of all that she had learned through the years. There were dark circles beneath her golden eyes, and deep creases beside her normally smiling mouth. Her fine red hair lay slackly against her skull, the curls barely visible. Without a word, she handed him a mug, and he smelled the refreshing scent of mountain mint and the distinctive odor of Hali honey. Their eyes met for a moment, hers asking an unspoken question and his answering. No change.
    Lady Linnea glanced up from her study of the body of her beloved companion of more than three decades. Her shoulders drooped and she rubbed her eyes, as if they ached. They were the color of harebells, blue and pale, still as young as they had been when he was a lad. But there was no hope in them, only a sorrow that wrenched at him desperately.
    Marguerida went to her with the tray, and Linnea took a mug of tea in silence. Then she went to the man standing in the shadow of the bed hangings beside the carved headboard, Danilo Syrtis-Ardais, and offered him one. Mikhail watched the six-fingered hand of his uncle’s paxman slip into the handle of a mug and saw exhaustion and despair in the familiar face.
    Marguerida set the tray down on a small table and came to stand beside him. “Dani has just arrived,” she whispered. “He’ll be here in a moment.”
    “Good. I think Regis is hanging on for him. You look terrible, caria. ”
    “Probably—but have you glanced in the mirror lately? I finally got Father to lie down for a while. Oh, yes—Herm Aldaran has arrived in Thendara—with his wife and children. Rafael met them and took them to a suite.”
    “What? Why?” The world had stopped for him, four days before, and he had nearly forgotten that anything outside this room existed.
    He received no answer to his incredulous question, for at that moment, Danilo Hastur, Regis’s son, came into the room. He was wearing a brown tunic and heavy trousers, and he smelled of sweat and horse, a healthy scent against the stuffy air of the chamber. He was a sturdy man of thirty now, not the slender boy that Mikhail remembered so fondly. He and his wife and children lived in the Elhalyn Domain, which stretched from the west side of Lake Hali to the Sea of Dalereuth, and it was clear that he had ridden long and hard to get to Thendara.
    Linnea dropped her mug from nerveless fingers at the sight of her son, spilling tea down the front of her rumpled gown, tears welling in her blue eyes. Dani embraced her gently, as if afraid she might break in his grasp, and placed a soft kiss on her cheek. They stood together for a moment, her head resting on his shoulder. Then he released her and approached the bed.
    Dani Hastur stood beside the bed, looking at the still shape of his father beneath the linens. Then he sat down and took a hand in his own, stroking it softly. Regis did not stir. Only the subtle rise and fall of his sunken chest gave evidence that he still lived.
    “Father.” Dani’s voice broke over the word. “It’s me, Dani.”
    The silence in the room was disturbed only by the ragged sound of Dani’s breathing, and the sobs of Lady Linnea now beside him. Mikhail watched the tableau and sensed a slight change in the man in the bed. For a moment his heart clenched with the hope that Regis was going to rouse, to wake and speak to his son. But instead he saw a faint shudder ripple along the form beneath the covers, and knew that his desperate hope was in vain. Regis-Rafael Felix Alar Hastur y Elhalyn was no more.
    A strange sensation gripped him then, a brush of warmth on his face, and a tingling in his right hand. Mikhail looked down at the gleaming matrix on his finger, and watched in wonder as it flashed