Traitor's Sun Read Online Free PDF

wonderful ones for Marguerida. But now she was back in her own Tower, pursuing her own calling, and Marguerida still had to work hard at not missing her.
    Reflecting for a moment on years past, she decided she had not done so badly in facing her challenges. She had read ancient texts written in the rounded alphabet of Darkover with one hand while she cradled a baby at the breast with the other. She had learned to sit through Comyn Council meetings without losing her fearsome temper, even in the presence of her mother-in-law, Javanne Hastur, who remained an enduring thorn in her side. The shadow matrix which was blazed upon her left hand, the thing she had wrested from a Tower in the overworld, still remained something of an enigma, but she had found ways to control it so that she was no longer afraid of it. It remained beyond the considerable knowledge that had been amassed over the centuries by the leroni of Darkover, a thing which was both real and unreal at the same time. She could heal with it, and she could kill as well, and coming to grips with both extremes had been very difficult. The years had been hard, but she had accomplished things she had never dreamed of, and she had a deep sense of satisfaction in that.
    During those years of study and motherhood, however, there had been no time for the music which had once defined her life and still remained her ruling passion. Instead, she had channeled her considerable energies into less personal efforts. With the help of Thendara House, the Renunciate center in the city, she had founded a small printing house, and several schools for the children of tradesmen and crafts people. She had helped the Musicians Guild get permission to erect a new performance hall much larger than anything which had existed before, and encouraged the preservation of the fine musical tradition of Darkover in any way she could.
    Marguerida’s choices had been neither altruistic nor uncomplicated. When she had returned to the world of her birth over sixteen years before, there had been a great vogue for everything concerning the Terran Federation, a condition which perturbed not only the more conservative rulers of several Domains, but bothered the craftsmen and tradesmen as well. They feared their way of life would be lost in a flood of Terran technology, and had gone so far as to petition Regis Hastur to restore the Comyn Council, which had been disbanded two decades earlier. Their demand had been unprecedented in the history of Darkover, and Regis had listened to their arguments, and restored the Council. This had kept Darkover on a path that satisfied most of its inhabitants.
    But a complete return to the pre-Federation past was impossible, although there were a few members on the Council who sincerely believed otherwise. Javanne, for instance, seemed consumed with the idea that if everyone would just do things as she wished, and make a real effort, then somehow the glories of an earlier time would reappear, and the Federation would cease to trouble their minds. Francisco Ridenow, the head of the Ridenow Domain, was almost as bad.
    Marguerida understood both her mother-in-law’s curious nostalgia for a time which she had never actually known—for the Terrans had arrived four decades before Javanne had been born—and her almost atavistic fear of change. She also knew it was much too late to turn back, and that Darkover needed increased knowledge, not unlettered ignorance, in order to prosper. The Federation was not going to go away just because Javanne Hastur wished it to, although there seemed no way to make the woman grasp this fact.
    The space madness which had possessed the previous generation of youngsters had faded, however, and the populace had returned to their normal pursuits, with, Marguerida was sure, a silent sigh of relief. The number of young men and women who wanted to learn the intricacies of Federation technologies had diminished, too, and while there was always a pool of