Dougal jerked his chin over one shoulder. “M’wife died in birthing, so I headed out. Met these people on the trail, decided we’d be safer together. All kinds of reish abroad these days that’d cut your throat for a morsel of bread.”
Garin shuddered. “We’d be grateful if you’d let us travel with you.”
“No need to ask.” Dougal’s weathered face crinkled in a wide grin. “Looks like some of your youngsters are fair done in. We’ll let ’em ride in the wagons for a bit. Your woman there looks like she hasn’t had a decent meal since last fall.”
Garin turned back to the others and gestured them forward. “It’s all right, they’re friends. We’ll be traveling with them for safety. Dougal, where are you headed?”
“Nevarsin village, m’wife’s people. There’s bound to be work in the city.”
That sounded hopeful. If they could earn enough to buy seeds and a few goats, they might be able to return home.
Lina drew up to them, little Elena in her arms. She looked up at Dougal and said, “We are grateful for your company.”
Dougal blushed and ducked his head. Garin, watching them, thought that neither one would be lonely for long.
Together, they went on to Nevarsin, the City of Snows. Before they reached the outskirts, little Elena had begun to cough. When Garin touched her skin, she burned as if on fire. Lina, half out of her mind with worry, urged Dougal to hurry, for they could do little for her on the trail. At Nevarsin, there would be healers, warm food, blankets, safety.
The aged man posted at the city gates directed them to the Guildhall of the Society of Renunciates, who maintained a hospital for travelers. The Renunciates, hard-faced women with cropped hair and gold rings in their ears, wore men’s clothing as if they had no shame or decency. Nonetheless, they took the little girl into their care. Men could not stay within their compound, they said, but Lina might remain, and they would have news of how the child fared on the morrow.
Garin passed the night in the rented stable that was all he could afford. When he knocked at the Guildhouse the following morning, he was told that the little girl was no better. Not only that, but Lina, too, had fallen ill.
BOOK I
1
The year before…
On the day his grandmother died, Domenic Alton-Hastur spent the morning in the solarium of Edelweiss, reading aloud to her. Although bitter cold still clung to the shadows cast by the drifted snow, the little room with its thick mullioned windows stayed bright and warm. The house was unassuming, cozy compared to the great family estate at Armida, with old-fashioned, intimate rooms, lovingly worn furniture, and nooks that still resonated faintly with the laughter of children. Here Javanne had passed the happiest years of her life. When she became gravely ill, with little hope of recovery, her husband had taken her home to Edelweiss, surrendering the management of Armida to his oldest son.
Javanne Lanart-Hastur lay on a couch, propped up on pillows stitched in a pattern of ice-daisies and kireseth blossoms. Against the colorful embroidery, her skin looked chalky, her lips dry and cracked. Age and pain had withered her flesh, rendering the hand resting on the blanket as fragile as a songbird’s foot.
Domenic sat in his usual place, a high-backed chair placed so that he could readily lift a goblet of water to her lips or stroke her hair if she became agitated. At twenty, he was tall and gracefully built, wiry rather than muscular, with a trace of the exquisite masculine beauty of the Hasturs in his eyes and mouth. His hair swept back from his forehead like an ebony cascade, unbound as he had always preferred to wear it. His eyes were gold-flecked gray, the irises ringed in black. A book lay open on his lap between his graceful, long-fingered hands. It was one of his mother’s translations of fishermen’s tales and song lyrics from Thetis, chosen because the softly musical rhythms calmed the old woman.
It wouldn’t be long now, Domenic thought with a pang. He should tell Dom Gabriel.
How easy it would have been to miss this time together, Domenic thought. He had every reason to resent his grandmother. From the moment of Domenic’s conception, the old woman had set herself up as the enemy of his father, Mikhail Lanart-Hastur. No member of the family had been immune to her vicious attacks. By the time the leroni at Arilinn had identified the cause of her increasing debility, the damage to her brain was irreversible.
Another outrage to lay at the feet of the World Wreckers, Domenic thought. Minute, deadly in their slow insidious action, the tumor-generating particles had lain hidden until it was too late. What other weapons remain, waiting only to be triggered?
At times, Domenic could sense a lingering taint in soil and rock. Since his laran had awakened during his adolescence, he had been able to sense the subtle changes in the planetary crust. The Gift, he understood from his teachers at Neskaya Tower, was related to the ability to detect precious metals below the surface, used in laran mining operations. Domenic’s talent allowed him to reach deeper and farther. Sometimes it seemed that Darkover itself sang to him.
Domenic closed the book and brushed his fingertips over his grandmother’s wrist. The featherlight touch brought a rush of laran impressions. Her life forces had sunk very low, guttering like a candle in its final hour. Barely a trickle of energy flowed through her channels. Focusing his mind through the starstone that hung on its silver chain, bare against his chest, Domenic embraced her with a wave of love and felt the faint, poignantly grateful response.
The impulse that had brought him here had been rebellion, escape from a life of courtly responsibility laid down for him by his elders, rather than any fondness for his distant, critical grandmother. Why should he care, when she had done everything she could to harm him?
And yet…
The first time he sat beside her and silently took her hand in his, something had changed. She had gazed upon him with pain-riddled eyes, and by some grace, some wholly unanticipated insight, he had glimpsed the young woman she had once been, tall and graceful, Gifted with laran, pressured by her family and caste to marry a man she barely knew and to bear him a host of children. He saw her wasted talent, her withered dreams, the love she had lavished upon her children, the tiny redemptive moments of contentment. Then had come the slow, creeping doubts, the fears gnawing upon her like leeches of the soul, the moments of shock as her own voice spewed venom upon those she once loved. Finally, her own body had turned traitor, and she fled here to Edelweiss, to the only place she had known happiness.
That moment of compassion had touched a chord deep within Domenic. All his resentment at the demands of his rank, his longing to choose his own path, all these had fallen away. He had seen himself in the mirror of Javanne’s sacrifice and found himself wanting.
A tap on the door drew Domenic from his reverie. He set down the book and went quietly to the door. The Edelweiss coridom stood there, an anxious look upon his features. “Master Domenic, a rider in the uniform of the City Guards has come from Thendara. He insists upon giving his message only to you.”
“I’ll see him,” Domenic replied. “Would you have one of the maids sit with my grandmother and call me if there’s any change?”
Domenic went down to the ancient wooden gates. Even in the sheltered courtyard, bounded by stables and the stone walls of the house itself, the wind cut like a whetted knife. A Guardsman, his face reddened, stood holding the reins of a lathered horse. The animal pawed at the snow-laced ground.
“I was to give this to you and no other.” The Guardsman held out a creased envelope.
Domenic thanked him. “Come in and warm yourself. I’ll have the kitchen send you something hot to drink at once.”
Having made sure both man and horse were properly attended to, Domenic took the letter into the little family chapel to read. It was an old room in the depths of the house, the four old god-forms painted crudely on the walls, lights burning before them even during the day.
Instantly, Domenic recognized his mother’s angular script. She had learned to read and write Darkovan
as an adult, and she had never mastered the smoothly looping calligraphy.
“Nico my dear,” the letter began. Domenic smiled at her use of his childhood nickname.
“I hope this letter finds you well, although I understand there is small likelihood the same is true for Domna Javanne. I cannot tell you how proud I am of your kindness in going to her. I hope with all my heart that you two have been able to achieve some measure of understanding on behalf of all of us. No one should end their life with such bitterness and unhealed wounds.”
How like his mother, to look for a reconciliation even though her own relationship with Mikhail’s mother had never been close. Over the years, Marguerida had borne the brunt of Javanne’s rages and had done her best to shield her husband from the old woman’s vicious schemes.
“As much pride as your visit gives us, your father and I hope that your absence will not be long.”
Domenic looked up from the letter. Even the gray light that filtered through the window seemed too bright. On the surface, he read his mother’s gentle reminder that he was missed. She had already given him more freedom than he had any right to expect as the Heir to Hastur and, most likely, the next Regent of Darkover. Most of his last three years had been spent in study at the Tower of Neskaya, with occasional visits home or with his mother’s Aldaran friends. He loved the way the mountains hummed through his mind, the sweet wild stillness of the glacial peaks, the lilting dance of the snowmelt streams.
“You must take all the time you need to sort out the priorities in your life,” Marguerida had said the night before he left for Neskaya. “Please consider this, Nico. None of us are truly free to follow our own wishes. As ruling Comyn, we have great power to shape our world, but at the same time, our world shapes us. There is an old saying that we are as the gods have made us, but I believe the truth is that we constantly remake ourselves in striving to fulfill our destiny.”
“Your father and I look forward to seeing you before the next Council season. I shall not rest easy until I have you once again home with us.
“Your loving mother,
“Marguerida.”
Thoughtfully, Domenic refolded the letter. There was something more in the words than a mere wish to see him again or a hint that his presence was expected at Council season later in the year. Something troubled his mother.
Among Marguerida’s psychic talents was the ability to sense the future, at least as it affected her and those she loved. She called it her Aldaran Gift. Had she received another such premonition? Did some vision of disaster lie behind the half-spoken plea?
Javanne slipped away in her sleep that same day. The same messenger who delivered Marguerida’s letter returned to Thendara with the news of her passing. It took the better part of a tenday to complete the preparations. A casket had to be built and a wagon procured to take her body to Thendara, so that she might lie at the rhu fead beside her ancestors. An ordinary woman might rest in the family cemetery, but Javanne was Comynara, sister to the late Regis Hastur and mother of the current Regent. In addition, Domenic, as the Hastur heir, could not travel without a suitable escort. Supplies, pack animals, suitably warm clothing, and attendants all must be arranged.
Old Dom Gabriel was almost beside himself with grief. He had not loved Javanne when they wed, but a deep affection had grown between them over the years. A chill had settled in his lungs, and his coughing echoed through the house at night. He sat in the little parlor where once Javanne had nursed their children, staring into the fire.
The state of the old man’s health worried Domenic. He seated himself on the footstool beside the broad patchstone hearth and took his grandfather’s hands in his own.
For a long moment there was no response. Firelight reflected off the old man’s fever-bright eyes. His shoulder bones jutted through the tartan shawl. The carpets and tapestries that had once warmed the room now seemed muted and threadbare.
“I know, I know,” Gabriel muttered, “I should be attending to the leave-taking. But there is—Javanne used to—” A spasm of coughing cut off his words.
Domenic waited until the fit had passed. “You are ill…”
“I have been so before and will be again.”
“Grandfather, I do not mean to be impertinent, but there is no one else to tell you the truth. You are not well, and travel in this weather will only make you worse. I would not have your death on my hands. What purpose would it serve to lay you in the earth at Grandmother’s side?”
Except to bring an added measure of grief to your family.
Domenic thought his grandfather would brush away his arguments. Phlegm rumbled in Gabriel’s lungs, and his head sank onto his chest. “She was my wife for all these long years, a good mother and a noble lady. How should I not show her proper respect?”
“You will honor her best by caring for yourself as she would have,” Domenic said gently. “In fact, my mother will say you have learned common sense at last.”
“Yes, she would say that, wouldn’t she? She always did speak her mind.”
“When winter has passed and you have recovered, then you can come to Thendara. I will ride with you to the rhu fead, and you can bid Grandmother a proper farewell. She would not want you to risk your life in order to say those words a few months earlier.”
“At which grave shall I stand? How will I know where she lies, when none bears any marking?”
Does it matter whether you say your prayers over Grandmother’s remains, or those of Great-Uncle Regis? Or your own father, or Lorill Hastur, or any of the generations of Comyn who lie there? They are all at peace now.
A shudder passed through Gabriel’s body, and he drew the shawl more tightly around his shoulders. “The day will come, all too soon, when I will make that journey.”
“Not for some years, if you stay here now, in safety and comfort,” Domenic said. “Let your people tend to you.”
“I suppose an old man would slow you down. I do not ride as swiftly as I once did.”
Wrapped in fur, Gabriel came down to bid farewell to Domenic on the day of his departure. Domenic’s fine-boned gray mare, a gift from his mother out of her own Armida-bred favorite, pranced and pulled at the bit, eager to be gone. The gates stood open, the wagon and mounted attendants waiting. The breaths of the animals made white puffs in the chill air. Above, clouds scudded across a brightening sky.
“You’re a good lad,” Gabriel said, “and you’ll make a fine Regent for the Domains in your time. Your father must be proud of you. Now get along, ride while you have good daylight. Give your mother my regards. Come back in summer, and we’ll ride together.”
2
The journey to Thendara passed uneventfully, except for the expected miseries of travel in early spring. Most days, rain lashed down, but there was little snow, and Domenic and his party were able to find an inn or travel shelter each night. The horses, accustomed to harsh weather, plodded on stoically, with lowered heads and tails clamped against their rumps. The wagon carrying Javanne’s casket got bogged down in the mud several times, prolonging the journey.
Yet, through the damp and chill, Domenic heard a silver-bright melody. Men and beasts might shiver, but the land itself rejoiced in the fluid dance of seasonal renewal.
In the hills, they skirted blackened areas where forest fires had raged the previous year, abandoned orchards, stunted hedgerows, empty livestock pens, and farm houses whose roofs had fallen in. Here the wordless song of the land twisted, turning harsh, like the groaning of a living creature in pain.
As they came down into the Lowlands, they met travelers bent under heavy burdens, sometimes whole families with little children. Domenic asked the Guardsman why these people were on the road in such weather. The Guard shook his head and said they were most likely seeking work in Thendara.
The party clattered into the outer courtyard of Comyn Castle late in the morning. The great stone walls provided a little shelter, but it had been raining steadily since sunrise, the wind gusting
in slashes of sleet, and they were nearly soaked through. Mud spattered the animals up to their knees. The porter, who had been sheltering in an arched doorway that looked as if it dated from the days of Varzil the Good, called out a greeting.
A moment later Domenic’s father, Mikhail Lanart-Hastur, emerged from the doorway, flinging on a thick cloak. In his late forties, Mikhail still had the same strong shoulders, the same body kept trim by regular sword practice, the same penetrating blue eyes. Silver hairs now frosted the pale gold, and lines of care bracketed his mouth. The skin around his eyes held shadows, like hidden bruises.
At Mikhail’s shouted orders, grooms rushed about, unharnessing and attending to the horses, wagon, and baggage. His voice sounded hoarse against the rattle and clatter of wagon wheels and shod hooves on the paving stones.
Domenic kicked his feet free from the stirrups, slid to the ground, and handed the reins to a waiting groom. He turned, to be caught up in his father’s hard embrace.
“Son, it’s good to have you back with us again. Thank you for bringing her home.”
Through the brief contact, Domenic sensed the depth of his father’s grief. Whatever she had done in later life, this woman had borne him, nursed him, sung to him…loved him.
Memories, like motes of firelit poignancy, flashed from Mikhail’s mind into Domenic’s…
Mikhail lying snug beneath his blankets on his cot, with an infant’s drowsy awareness of the rhythms of the house around him…
Edelweiss, Domenic thought, recognizing the indelible character of the place, but long ago.
Voices, edged with emotions beyond young Mikhail’s understanding…his mother…a stranger…
“One thing more, sister,” the man said. “I go where I may never return. You must give me one of your sons for my heir.”
Javanne uttered a low, stricken cry. “Come then, Regis, and choose…”
The Alton Gift Page 2
