A cold, hard place for a cold, hard land, Regis thought gloomily. And not much warmer than Zandru’s hells. Yet men had found peace here, as well as useful work in service to their fellows. Who was he to judge them, based on a few tormented years as a student and an aversion to their narrow discipline?
The monk who greeted them at the gates looked overawed at the sight of so many armed men. He could not have been twenty, with a pale, homely face with a wine-colored mark over one side of his forehead.
“Come this way, vai dom Hastur, Dom Syrtis,” he stammered in accented casta. “Father Master, he awaits you. In fact, he warned me this very morning that you soon would be arriving. He instructed me to make you comfortable and to bring word to him. If you will please for to follow me—”
“Gladly, but first I must see to my men and our horses,” Regis pointed out.
The monk ran off to one of the stark gray stone buildings, leaving them standing in the paved courtyard. Regis glanced up at the buildings, remembering that the founders of the monastery prided themselves on placing every single stone by human hands without the use of laran. Such could not be said for any Comyn dwelling.
A few moments later, the young monk returned with several older brothers, who took away the horses and directed the Guardsmen to the kitchen.
Blinking and stammering, the young monk led Regis and Danilo to the Stranger’s Room, luxurious by monastery standards but modest compared to Comyn Castle. Unlike the other rooms in the monastery, it boasted a fireplace and cushioned chairs. Wood had been laid on the andirons, with flint and tinder nearby. The monk set about lighting the fire, then asked if he could be of further service.
Regis sent him off to let the Father Master know of their arrival. Shortly thereafter, Regis and Danilo found themselves in the study of the venerable old monk. Regis was struck by the sensation that time had been suspended since he had last passed the monastery gates. Sun flooded the room, touching the battered surface of the desk and the alcove where a statue of the Bearer of Burdens stood eternal vigil. The figure looked as if it had never been dusted, or perhaps it was so ancient and fragile that it might fall to pieces at the slightest touch.
“Lord Regis—Lord Hastur you are now, I bid you welcome back to St. Valentine’s.” The Father Master remained in his seat and gestured for Regis to take the single cushioned visitor’s chair. Danilo remained by the door.
“It has been a long time,” Regis replied with a practiced smile. “You must also remember Danilo Syrtis, my sworn paxman.”
The Father Master inclined his head in Danilo’s direction. “No doubt, you are eager to meet with Brother Valentine. You will find him in the scriptorium.”
Thanking the old monk for his kindness, the two young Comyn took their leave. They knew the way as intimately as the path to their own chambers. As they threaded their way along the narrow corridors, the stone walls rough and unadorned, they passed a number of monks. Almost all the brothers covered their faces with their cowls; they might have been the very same ones as years ago.
If anything, the scriptorium was brighter than the Father Master’s study, for the windows were situated to take advantage of every moment of daylight. A handful of students bent over their desks. A fat, elderly monk strolled up one aisle and down the next, pausing now and again to inspect a line of text, to reposition a pen in clenched fingers, or to draw a wandering gaze back to its purpose.
Regis remembered the hours that he, too, had labored to produce a legible document. Perhaps the Terrans, with their instruments for perfect duplicates or vocal recordings, had the right idea. Why, in this age of starfaring ships and technological marvels, must young boys strain their eyes at such a task?
The thought came to him that the benefit lay not only in the creation of beautiful letters but in the mastery of discipline and concentration.
At the far end of the chamber, beside the unlit fireplace, a monk sat alone at a copying table. Light streamed from a high window, bathing his tonsured head. For an instant, he looked like a carven figure, silver and palest gilt. Unlike the students, who fidgeted at their desks and cast surreptitious glances at the two lords who had just entered, this monk gave no sign he was aware of the intrusion.
The monk supervising the boys came forward, a smile lighting his wide, generous features. “Good friends,” he said, using the inflection of beloved comrades with a naturalness that touched Regis deeply, “you are most welcome.”
When Regis introduced himself and Danilo, the brother nodded in obvious delight. With a conspiratorial wink, he turned and clapped his hands three times. The boys scrambled to put aside their work, cap their inkwells, and file out of the room. Regis gathered, from their excited whispers, that their practice session had been cut short and that now they were at leisure for a few brief hours. He remembered how precious such times were.
The fat monk crossed the room to wait silently beside his brother at the fireplace. After a long moment, the other monk lifted his head. Bathed in the overhead light, his skin was as pale as milk, as if he had never walked beneath the sun, only in twilit forest. In those thin, almost delicate features, Regis saw echoes of the ethereal, nonhuman chieri, the ancient Beautiful People who had inhabited Darkover since before the lost colony ship crashed in these hills. They were now all but extinct, yet their blood and their telepathic abilities flowed in Comyn veins.
Rinaldo? Or rather, Brother Valentine?
No, the tall, thin man was no chieri, but that graceful hermaphroditic race had left their mark in other ways . . . in the six fingered hands of many of their descendants . . . and in the occasional emmasca. Was Rinaldo such a one?
Regis could not be sure. General appearance was not proof. Many Comyn were thin and pale, and decades indoors might bleach the color from any man’s face.
The emmasca condition was much rarer now than in former times, but the old attitudes lingered. Such individuals were said to be long- lived but sterile, and therefore in the past they had been barred from holding Domain-right. Regis thought it barbaric to measure the worth of a man by his reproductive performance. As to the requirement of fathering sons, or even being capable of lying with a woman, Regis had already provided Hastur with an heir, Mikhail, without doing either.
Yet the prejudice would explain why Danvan had hidden Rinaldo away, rather than raising him as a member of the family. The old man must have believed him to be emmasca, although male enough in appearance to be acceptable to the monks.
Regis ached for his brother. He determined not to add in any way to Rinaldo’s lifetime of shame and rejection.
Smiling with evident pleasure, the fat monk left them. Regis came forward. The other monk rose, tall and slender in his shapeless robe. His eyes, steely gray, had a slightly distracted expression. As he reached out to touch hands with Regis, he smiled.
“Good brother—” Regis began, then laughed, a little unnerved. “My brother in truth, as I understand.”
“True, indeed,” the monk replied with an air of composure. “Forgive my lack of manners. I know you already, you see, from the time you were a student here.”
Regis blinked in surprise. “Were—could it be—were you one of my teachers?”
“Indeed, I was privileged to instruct the younger boys how to read and write. If memory serves, you never achieved a very good hand, little brother. To compare it to the scratchings of a barnyard fowl would be unkind to the hen.”
Regis flushed, feeling once more the diffident, lonely boy he had once been. But Brother Valentine went on, without taking any notice of his discomfort.
“Your companion—Danilo Syrtis, is it not?—wrote a more acceptable hand.”
“And does so still,” Regis replied, grateful to change the subject from his own shortcomings. “Danilo serves as my paxman and attends to my official correspondence. In fact, it might be said that although the will of a Hastur might be law, without Danilo’s pen to set it down, no one would be able to read it.”
A flic
ker of emotion passed over the monk’s features. Regis sensed no trace of laran, no mental presence, so he could not tell what his brother might be thinking.
“You have the better of us, Brother Valentine,” Danilo interjected. “You remember the two of us well enough, but I have no memory of you at all.”
The monk turned to Danilo with a good- humored smile. “It would surprise me if you did. When I first came to St. Valentine’s, it was many months before I could tell the brothers one from another. No doubt, we looked as much alike as so many fleas.”
“Hardly fleas,” Danilo muttered.
“When I was here all those years ago,” Regis said, “why did you not make yourself known to me? I would have welcomed a brother’s company.”
“It was for you to speak, if you wished to claim me as kin.”
The first thing Regis thought was that this answer was very much what he himself might have said in like circumstances. Then the world slipped sideways for a heartbeat—
—b ut I didn’t know, and he did, I was a child and he was grown—
—and then resumed its normal course.
In that brief pause, Brother Valentine lifted his head in an attitude of listening. “It is time for prayer.”
Regis caught the deep, throbbing sound of a bell from afar.
“Our reunion must yield to a greater obligation.” Brother Valentine set aside his work materials. “You used to worship with us, little brother. Will you join us now?”
“I think not.” Regis did not add that as a son of Hastur and a member of the Comyn, he had been raised to follow the four traditional gods of Darkover. Aldones, Lord of Light, was reputed to be the ancestor of the first Hastur. But Regis could not say so aloud and risk the implication that his brother might have to choose between his heritage and the demands of his caste on the one hand and his religious vows on the other. How deep that commitment ran, Regis could not tell.
A man ought to be able to follow his own conscience!
Brother Valentine turned to Danilo. “Come, we must hurry.”
“I beg your leave,” Danilo replied with a stiff bow. “My duty is to my lord.”
The monk’s gaze swept from one to the other. Whatever he thought of Danilo’s refusal, he kept it to himself. “Then, with Father Master’s permission, I will come to you in the Stranger’s Room afterward.”
The monk’s sandals made no sound as he strode down the stone-floored corridor. Without discussion, Regis and Danilo headed back to the visitors’ quarters. Regis felt pulled by conflicting feelings. Certainly, he was disappointed and beset by memories of an unhappy childhood. He told himself that his brother was an exemplary monk, dutiful and observant, that these same qualities bespoke an honorable nature.
When they were alone, Regis lowered himself onto one of the cushioned chairs. In their absence, someone had left a tray with jaco and slices of coarse nut-bread.
“Well, Danilo, what do you think of my brother? Or have you formed an opinion from so brief an encounter? Did you truly not remember him from before?”
“Vai dom, he is not my brother, but yours. Therefore, your opinion is the only one that counts.”
Regis frowned. “Don’t go all vai dom on me! It’s clear you don’t like him, but I don’t understand why. He was perfectly polite.”
“He was perfectly glib.”
“What the devil do you mean by that?”
“Regis, you can’t have it both ways. If you ask for my opinion and I offer it against my better judgment, you have only yourself to blame if you dislike what you hear. Or would you have me bow and scrape and agree with every blockheaded thing you say, like a courtier?”
“I expect—” Regis realized he was on the edge of losing his temper. What was wrong with Danilo? Why was he acting this way? Regis drew in a breath and began again. “I expect you to give my brother a fair chance, taking into consideration his lack of worldly experience. If you won’t do it as a matter of fairness, then do it as a personal favor to me. He’s going to have enough difficulties adjusting to his new life without you censuring him before you even know him!”
With a snort of exasperation, Danilo got up and went to the door leading to the bedroom. From where he sat, Regis could see four narrow beds, straw-tick mattresses on simple wooden frames, a washstand and a couple of chairs. Their baggage had been stacked neatly beside the nearest bed. Without another word, Danilo began unpacking and making up two of the beds with a precision that would have made a Cadet Master proud.
Regis poured himself a mug of jaco and sipped it, staring into the fire. Why could there not be peace between the people he loved? Why did it always come down to a choice?
Regis was still turning over these depressing questions when Brother Valentine arrived. Danilo, having finished preparing for the coming night, joined them in the sitting room.
At the insistence of Regis, Valentine took one of the chairs. He smiled as he settled against the cushions, clearly enjoying the unaccustomed comfort.
“You may not remember me,” the monk said, once they had resumed their conversation, “but I have kept myself informed about you, little brother. Although they call me Valentine, after the holy saint who founded this order, I was named Rinaldo. You may call me that if you would claim me as kin.”
“I am in need of kinsmen, for we are so few,” Regis said with a sigh.
“Tell me, have you thought—would you be willing to come with me to Thendara, to take up your place as a Hastur?”
Rinaldo regarded him with those strange gray eyes. “Until your message arrived, I never expected to enter the world. I understood there is little acceptance for one such as I.”
“I intend to have you formally legitimatized,” Regis said quickly. “Then no one will question your right—”
“No, no, that is not what I meant.” Rinaldo protested. “Our grandfather could have done the same, but he chose not to, for reasons that seemed good to him.”
“Your . . . difference, you mean.”
“You are too courteous to ask,” Rinaldo said, “so I will tell you straight out. I would not have you think I withheld the truth in order to curry your favor. We do not speak of such things here at St. Valentine’s, but I believe I am emmasca. That is, I am shaped as other men, or I could not live among the brothers. Although I admit to being curious, I have never had the opportunity to lie with a woman, but I am not indifferent to the prospect. As to fathering a child, who can say, but from everything I know about my condition, I cannot believe it possible.”
Regis looked away. So his first impression was correct. Yet to be born emmasca and without laran would be very strange indeed, since the telepathic genes ran so strongly in their chieri ancestors.
Rinaldo paused. “Do you wish to withdraw your offer, now that you know what I am?”
“We are not living in the Ages of Chaos, when a man’s value was measured by his pedigree, his laran, his ability to father children, or anything else except the quality of his character,” Regis said with feeling.
Rinaldo gave him a long, measuring look. “Bare is a brotherless back, as they say?”
“As they say. Hastur does not need another stud horse to breed heirs, but I have need of a brother.”
“It seems that I am indeed called to be of service in the outer world. To my family . . . to my brother,” Rinaldo inflected the word with a warmth that brought a rush of pleasure to Regis. “In that case, I will petition Father Master for a release from my vows. He has already indicated he would do so if I wished.”
“I welcome you to the family with a joyful heart,” Regis said.
Rinaldo bowed his head in a gracious gesture. “As you know, we monks are not permitted to own property. Even my robe and sandals and the wooden bowl and spoon I eat with do not belong to me. You must provide me with clothing suitable to my rank and a means of transportation.”
Was there a hint of reproach beneath the words delivered with all civility? Although of equal blood, Regis had e
njoyed all the privileges and luxuries that the Heir to a Domain might expect, while his brother had languished in obscure poverty.
“It will be my pleasure to furnish you with all that you require,” Regis gently assured his brother. “Danilo, I leave the matter in your capable hands. There must be a stable or horse market where you can obtain a mount for my brother.”
“You can ride, I suppose?” Danilo asked Rinaldo, a little stiffly.
“I have made sure I could, although I learned on a stag- pony, not a proper horse. I will do my best not to disgrace you.”
As they sat at their ease, Regis went on, “I am afraid that any clothing to be found in Nevarsin will fall short of the elegance proper to a son of Hastur. Once we reach Thendara, I will order an appropriate wardrobe for you.”
“That is most generous of you, little brother.”
“It is no more than you deserve,” Regis returned with a smile.
“You have convinced me,” Rinaldo replied. “I believe you are right. I deserve the best, even if I must wait to receive it.”
In the presence of the monastery community, gathered together in the chapel, the Father Master performed the ceremony that formally released Rinaldo from his vows. He would no longer bear the name of Brother Valentine or be bound by the rules of the order. If only, Regis thought, there were such a Comyn ritual for himself.
The monks embraced their former brother for the last time, exchanging blessings and wishes for peace. The ceremony concluded with a speech by the Father Master exhorting Rinaldo and every other man present to faithfully and scrupulously adhere to the principles set forth by the holy saints, to emulate the Holy Bearer of Burdens, to keep themselves pure through the Creed of Chastity, and to redeem their sins by acts of charity and penance.
“Never stray from the path of righteousness!” The Father Master’s thunderous voice filled the chapel. “Accept your burdens . . . no, rejoice in them! Remember always—Righteousness flourishes under the lash of discipline!”
A lifetime of sitting through formal events had given Regis the ability to look interested no matter how bored or irritated he felt. He allowed the lecture to wash over him, paying little heed to its content. He was a guest here, an observer only.
Hastur Lord Page 12