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did not know where to find the other half of his soul.
    Lewis-Kennard Alton stood at the window of the main hall in the Alton suite in Comyn Castle. Bitter storms had lashed the ancient stone walls for the past tenday, and the courtyard garden glistened. Even so, the worst of the winter had passed, Snow no longer lay thick on the ground, and buds swelled on the bare branches.
    This room was one of the oldest in the Castle, the walls set with luminous stones from deep caves that charged with light all day and radiated a soft glow at night. Since Lew had last seen the place, someone, probably Marguerida, had covered the old stone seats with needle-pointed cushions in sea-wave patterns of blue and green.
    Lew sighed. In his late sixties, one-handed, his face etched with scars, he felt as weary in spirit as the wet, gray world outside. He would just as soon have remained at Armida, the family estate, where he had useful work to do, advising the younger Gabriel, gentling young horses, riding the pasture boundaries, savoring the peace and nostalgia of his childhood home. Marguerida had specifically asked him to attend the funeral for Javanne Lanart-Hastur. He could not have stayed away.
    This place is too full of ghosts.
    Memory stirred, unbidden. Many years ago, Lew had ridden with
     
    Regis Hastur on the road to Thendara to attend Comyn Council. Regis had been only fifteen then, slender and earnest. His grandfather, Dan-van Hastur, had been grooming him to take his place as Regent of the Comyn. Lew remembered the hunger in the younger man's eyes as he watched the Terran Federation ships roaring into the sky.
    That was when the Federation still maintained its Headquarters at Thendara, while men of good will on both sides worked together— and women, too, for the Renunciates had been training as midwives with the Terran Medical corps and working as guides and translators since the days of Magdalen Lome.
    … Before the illegal, immensely powerful matrix known as Sharra drew them all into madness… Before he had loved and lost Marjorie Scott…
    … Before interstellar civil war tore the Federation apart, before it closed its Base on Darkover, before the nightmarish Battle of Old North Road and its aftermath…
    But all of that was over, best forgotten.
    A chill crept along Lew's bones. With his one remaining hand, he clutched the front of his shirt, where his stars tone lay wrapped in triple-insulated silk. He dared not look into its luminescent blue depths.
    The past is too much with me.
    "Father, you are here at last!" Marguerida entered, wearing a shawl of the Alton tartan over a gown of green like the cool shade beneath a pine forest.
    He turned toward her, holding out his hand. She smiled, enveloping him with her special warmth, and stepped into his embrace.
    How good it is to have you with us again , she spoke with her mind to his.
    Lew broke the embrace, holding her at arm's distance to look into her eyes. Despite her outward poise, tension coiled through her muscles.
    "What troubles you, my dear?"
    "Come, sit down." Leading him into the smaller family parlor, she gestured to the cushioned seat beside the fireplace. The andirons were new, shaped like graceful, intertwined trees. The fire had burned down into a bed of glowing coals, radiating a gently seductive warmth. Marguerida offered her father a choice of jaco or hot mulled wine from the
    sideboard. He refused both, but she poured herself a cup of the bitter stimulant brew, stirred in a spoonful of fragrant sage honey to her taste, and sat facing him.
    "I am so glad to have you here to talk to. Mikhail's tied up—a message arrived two days ago and he won't tell me about it—but he'll join us later."
    Marguerida spoke lightly, but Lew sensed her distress at her husband's secrecy. Surely, any two married people as busy as Marguerida and Mikhail could not share every detail of their lives, but they had always been open with one another.
    Mikhail has burdens enough , she