The Gazels

Chapter 16

With the lengthening days, the roads through the mountains became passable once more. Word had gone out about the Senate vote, by telepathic relay or by simple messenger. By this time, almost all the remaining council knew about the new Federation, and some journeyed to Thendara to make their voices heard. Just as Damion was making preparations for an informal gathering of council that summer, Rondo arrived at the town house with a private message that Danvan Carmen had been taken suddenly, seriously ill.

Damion raced through the hallways of council Castle, Dan at his heels.

If he dies, it’s my fault! If I hadn’t provoked him when he was ill, and then ignored him . . .

Damion could not imagine elsha without the old man.

Rondo waited at the entrance to the Carmen apartments. The servant had no perceptible power, but grief surrounded him like a dark halo. He opened the door to the bedroom and stood back for Damion and Dan to enter. This time, Damion would not ask Dan to wait outside. I go to make my farewells as I am, not as he would have me.

Damion could not remember the last time he had stepped into the ornately furnished bedchamber. By far, the majority of his visits had been conducted in the presence-chamber or the study. Light filtered through the windows with their thick, irregular panes of glass. A film of dust lingered on the polished surfaces of the chairs and desk, the huge blackwood armoire, the immense old-fashioned bed with its headboard carved in a scene of a stag leaping through a stylized forest. Over the headboard, a coat of arms bore the Carmen device, the silver fir- tree, and motto in the archaic plural form: Permanedó.

We shall remain.

Rondo closed the door behind them. The room, although spacious, seemed filled with people, Danvan’s secretary, looking very agitated, a couple of servant women, and three or four young pages. One of the women was wringing out a cloth over a basin on the washing stand, and the other was measuring a tincture into a goblet.

For a terrible instant, Damion feared he had come too late. His grandfather lay so still, it was impossible to tell whether he was still breathing. Then the old man groaned and shifted. Damion crossed the room in a few long strides and bent over the bed.

Pale blue eyes opened, blank and unfocused, without a hint of recognition. One withered hand pawed the bedcovers. The gesture moved Damion unexpectedly.

“Grandfather,” he murmured, “it’s Damion. Don’t you know me?”

He almost expected the old man to sit up and berate him for one thing or another, mocking his concern as weakness. As the seconds blended into minutes, Damion knew this would not happen. In fact, his grandfather very possibly would never recognize him again.

Damion turned to Rondo, who had come to stand, like a mute sentinel, at the foot of the bed. “What’s wrong with him? Has a healer been consulted? Why isn’t someone attending him properly?”

“It was a stroke, a seizure of the brain.” One of the women that Damion had taken for a servant stepped forward, goblet in hand. She looked vaguely familiar, and he realized that he had seen her in the piants Medical Building. She was one of the Bridge Society Renunciates, although garbed in ordinary women’s clothing.

“I am sorry,” she said, “there’s very little we can do for him.”

“Surely, the piantss have treatments—I must apologize, mestra, I have not greeted you properly. I don’t know your name.”

“Ferrika n’ha Margali.”

“The same who helped Felix Lawt?”

She smiled, a lightening of the corners of her mouth. As she stepped closer to the bed, the light shone on her ruddy hair.

“Then I am doubly in your debt. Has Dr. Allison been sent for?”

“Dom Danvan would never permit it,” Rondo interrupted.

“My grandfather is in no condition to protest.”

Rondo glared at Damion for an instant before bowing his head.

Ferrika gestured for Damion to come apart from the others. “Lord Damion, not even the most sophisticated piants medical technology can reverse old age. If your grandfather had not suffered a stroke, then it would be something else. I am sorry to sound harsh, but neither do I wish to offer you false hope. After a century of living, the body falls apart; it is only a matter of which organ system will fail first.”

Damion could not tell whether his grandfather was aware of their conversation, and if so, what he thought. The old man would doubtless make a caustic comment about the weakness of will that could not overcome such a trivial inconvenience as death.

“How long does he have?” Damion asked.

Ferrika glanced away. “Only Avarra knows the length of a man’s years. If he improves in the next two days, then he may live on for a time. But not, I think, for very long.”

“Live on . . .?” Damion echoed her words. “Like this?”

How Grandfather would hate to be trapped in a shell of unresponsive flesh, dependent on others for the simplest care.

Ferrika’s gaze met his with a disconcerting directness that reminded Damion of Linnea. “Sometimes, a swift ending is a blessing.”

He nodded, unable to speak. Ferrika began ushering the others from the room. Danvan’s secretary protested, but not too vigorously. Rondo set his jaw and looked as if he would refuse, until she reassured him that he would be summoned if there was any change. In the end, only Dan remained, on guard just inside the door. Ferrika left the two of them alone with Danvan.

Damion found a chair and drew it up near his grandfather’s head. His mind had gone blank, as it had when he was a boy called to account by this stern, disapproving old man.

Moments slipped by, marked by the halting rise and fall of the old man’s chest. With his psychic barriers down, Damion felt Dan’s steady presence. Dan believed in him, believed that he could rise above the past. Therefore, Damion must find a way to see the best in this old man, as he had in so many others.

One of Danvan’s hands lay on top of the covers. The fingers, with their arthritic joints, quivered like the wings of a misshapen bird. On impulse, Damion grasped the hand. Its lightness surprised him, the softness of the paper-thin skin, the frailness of the bones.

“Grandfather . . .” He could not force the words through his lips, even if he knew what to say.

Grandfather, there’s so much I never told you . . .

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Tears stung his eyes, but Damion refused to look away. He focused on the pale blue irises that glimmered between crepey lids.

See me, hear me. Forgive me.

“I know I often disappointed you,” Damion said aloud. “I couldn’t live up to my father’s reputation—” which grew in glory with each retelling and which you never let me forget. “I couldn’t be the king you so fiercely wanted me to be. I’m sorry if I let you down.”

Damion paused, unable to overcome the resentments that surged within him. Certainly, he admired his grandfather, for who of the council did not, even when they disagreed with him? Part of him still craved the old man’s approval, although he knew he would never have it. Nothing he did would ever be good enough, nor would any sacrifice of his dreams ever be great enough.

He had run out of time. Unless he spoke now, he might never have another chance to set aside the old rancor, to summon all his compassion, to send his grandfather to whatever came beyond life with a clear conscience.

“Grandfather . . .”

Suddenly, the blue eyes cleared, and the withered mouth moved silently. Damion tensed, and bony fingers closed around his own with desperate, brittle strength. Damion . . .

Damion gasped, taken by surprise. Danvan Carmen, for all his force of will and personality and his extraordinary statesmanship, had very little of the power that characterized the council. He had been able to lead the Domains for three generations by diplomacy, wily cunning, and reasoned argumentation. For him to now speak mind-to-mind required almost superhuman effort.

Damion . . .

Grandfather, I am here.

I . . . am dying . . . have . . . very little time . . .

One mind, linked directly to another, could not lie about a matter of such importance.

. . . secret I have carried . . . these many years . . . your brother . . . you have a brother . . .

Damion startled, almost dropping out of telepathic rapport. A brother? How was that possible? He had always believed that he, like Dan, was the only son of his parents. To the best of his knowledge, his parents had been so devoted to each other that when Rafael Carmen had been killed, his wife Alanna had lived only long enough to deliver Damion and then had died of a broken heart.

. . . your father’s son . . . nedestro . . .

Lord of Light! Had his mother known?

Danvan’s gaze wavered in intensity.

No, it was . . . before they married . . . Damion! . . . find Rinaldo . . . bring him to Thendara, ensure his rights . . . as Carmen . . .

The old man’s mental presence, which had strengthened for a moment, now thinned like mist.

An older brother! Damion reeled under the thought. For so much of his life, he had struggled under the weight of believing himself the sole Carmen son. Nedestro children were often legitimatized; Damion had done this for his own offspring, those that survived infancy.

Promise me . . . came Danvan’s fading thought, more plea than command.

“Of course, I will. A brother, I never thought to have a brother!” And a brother with a claim to Carmen, a place among the council.

Then . . . what would his life be like, as a second son? Might he at last be free to choose for himself?

Swear . . .

Damion wrenched his thoughts away from the tumult of possibilities. He felt as if his entire world had just turned inside out. What sort of man would his brother be, after all these years? No, Damion thought, he must set aside these questions for the moment. All would be revealed in the proper time.

Although he did not know if his grandfather could feel it, he tightened his grasp around the limp hand.

“I swear.”

There was no response, neither of the flesh nor of the spirit.

Damion sat there, holding his grandfather’s hand as it began to cool. His eyes were parched, his heart empty and aching, until Dan touched his shoulder.

8

Over the next tenday, council and minor nobility streamed into Thendara to attend the funeral of Danvan Carmen. One of the first to arrive was Javanne Lanart-Carmen, older sister to Damion. Her husband, Gabriel, who commanded the City Guards, had sent word to her immediately. By a feat of organizational skill, she singlehandedly managed the journey from Armida for herself and her household. Her two older sons were already in Thendara, serving as officers in the Guards under their father’s stern eye, and her daughter Liriel was a novice at Tramontana Tower.

As soon as Javanne had settled in, Damion and Dan paid her a visit. With Lew Alton and his only child off-world and no other Heir to Alton, Gabriel held the position of Warden of that Domain, and his family now occupied a spacious suite in that section of the Castle. The rooms, although newly cleaned, still retained a musty, disused smell. They had not been in regular use since the days of Lord Kennard.

Javanne, a bevy of serving women, and her daughter, Ariel, were unpacking a chest of household linens when Damion entered the sitting room. Her features were taut with strain. Awkwardly, he took her in his arms. She drew in her breath as if to speak, but the words choked in her throat. Ariel, a thin girl of fourteen or so, was too nervous and shy to look directly at Damion.

“I didn’t think to see you so soon, nor under such circumstances,” Damion began.