The Heirs of Hammerfell by Marion Zimmer Bradley Read Free Book Online Page B

herbs, flowers, and fruit trees.
    Erminie was now thirty-seven years old, but she was still slender, swift-moving and bright-eyed, her splendid copper hair as new-polished as ever. She had lived alone with her only son all these years; no breath of scandal had ever touched her name or
    reputation. She was seldom seen in any company save that of her son, her lady
    housekeeper, or the great old rust-colored mountain dog who accompanied her
    everywhere.
    This was not because she was shunned by society; rather, it was she who shunned or seemed to scorn it. Twice she had been sought in marriage, once by the Keeper of the Tower, one Edric Elhalyn, and more recently by her cousin, Valentine Hastur, the same man who had come to her home in the hills so very long ago. This gentleman, close kin to the Hastur-lords of Thendara and Carcosa, had first asked her to marry him in her second year in the Tower. At that time she had refused him, pleading the recent-ness of her widowhood. Now, on an evening late in summer, some eighteen years after she had first come to the city, he renewed his suit.
    He found her in the garden of her town house, sitting on a rustic bench there, her fingers busy with needlework. The dog Jewel was at her feet, but she raised her head and
    growled softly as he approached her mistress.
    "Quiet; good girl," Erminie chided the dog gently. "I should think you would know my cousin well enough by now; he has been here often enough. Lie down, Jewel," she added sternly, and the dog subsided into a floppy rust-colored heap at her feet.
    Valentine Hastur said, "I am only glad you have so faithful a friend, since you have no other protector. If I have my way, she will know me better still," he added with a meaningful smile.
    Erminie looked into the deep gray eyes of the man who sat beside her. His hair was now woven through with silver, but otherwise he was unchanged―the same man who had
    offered her support and affection for nearly two decades. She sighed. "Cousin― Val, I am grateful to you as always; but I think you will know why I must still say no."
    "No, I'm damned if I do," Lord Valentine said fervently, "I know you cannot still be in mourning for the old duke though that may be what you would have people believe."
    Jewel rubbed against Erminie's knees and whined, demanding the attention she felt was being denied her. Erminie petted her distractedly.
    "Valentine, you know I care for you," the woman said, "and it is true, I mourn no longer for Rascard; though he was a good husband and a kind father to my children. But at the moment, I do not quite feel free to marry because of my son."
    "In Avarra's name, kinswoman," Valentine Hastur demanded, "how could it affect your son's fortunes other than well, should his mother marry into the Hastur kindred?
    Suppose he became Hastur rather than Hammerfell, or I swore to devote myself to
    restoring him to his proper rank and inheritance; what then?"
    "When first I came to Thendara, I owed my very life to you; and that of my child."
    Valentine waved that aside.
    "It would be a poor reward for your kindness to
    end by entangling you in this old unsettled blood feud," Erminie answered.
    "It was no more than owing to kin," he said. "And it is I who am everlastingly in your debt, my dear. But how can you still speak of this old feud as unsettled, Erminie, when there are no living men of the line of Hammerfell save for your son, who was but a year old when his father and all his household died ~ in the burning of the keep?"
    "Nevertheless, until my son is restored to his inheritance, I cannot enter into any other alliance," Erminie said. "I swore when I married his father that I would devote myself to
    "the well-being of the line of Hammerfell. And I will not forswear that pledge, nor will I draw others into it with me."
    "A promise to the dead holds no force," protested Valentine, quite beside himself. "I am living, and I think you owe more to me than to the dead."
    Erminie smiled