The Gazels

Chapter 20

As soon as a suitable escort could be arranged, Damion and Dan set out for Nevarsin. Damion dispensed with the banner bearers, taking only a few Guards, men trained and selected by Gabriel for their discretion.

Dan frowned as the Castle grooms led out Melisande, the Armida-bred mare that Kennard Alton, Lew’s father, had given to Damion many years ago. White frosted the mare’s muzzle, and her coat, once solid black, was now the color of pewter. She pricked up her ears as she recognized Damion.

“Are you sure it’s wise to take so old a horse into the Hellers?” Dan said. His own mount, a big-boned gelding, its white hide flecked with irregular brown spots, was old enough to have good trail sense and yet young enough to endure the mountain journey.

“Probably not.” Damion grinned as he checked the girth and blanket, making sure there were no wrinkles to cause saddle sores. Affectionately, he rubbed the mare’s forehead. She lipped his hand, searching for morsels of apple. “It will be the old girl’s last journey, that’s certain. But there’s no need to push our pace. We’ll go slow enough for her.”

The towers and ramparts of Thendara fell behind as they climbed into the Venza Hills. As happy as Damion was to be away from court and Castle, he could not entirely enjoy the journey. What would he find at Nevarsin, what sort of man might his brother be after so many years among the monks? His own time there had been both lonely and rewarding. A few of his teachers had been kind to the shy, awkward boy he had been, but most had been demanding, often harsh.

Dan had endured the same discipline but to a greater degree. As heir to a great Domain, Damion had been allowed certain privileges, including better food and exemption from religious observances. But Dan, born into the cristoforo faith, had been subject to every requirement. The monks had hammered a rigid set of moral rules into their charges.

Including the absolute condemnation of homosexuality. Damion had never asked Dan how he reconciled the doctrines of his faith and their enduring bond. He had never understood why a faith that espoused compassion for all one’s fellows should single out and

forbid one particular expression of love.

Damion sensed Dan’s concern as their first meeting with Rinaldo drew nearer. For most of his life, Damion had lived with the knowledge that he was the last living son of Carmen. Now that situation had changed, although in what way remained to be seen.

How would Rinaldo react to his relationship with Dan after a lifetime of being taught that s****l or romantic love between men was sinful? In public, Damion and Dan behaved discreetly, with only that degree of intimacy proper for lord and paxman, but most of Thendaran society knew they were lovers. Sooner or later, Rinaldo would hear rumors, if such had not already reached the monastery.

Damion did not want to antagonize his brother with a premature confrontation. They should get to know one another before facing such a sensitive issue. The topic must be introduced carefully. With time and patience, Rinaldo would surely accept that not everyone followed the same stern code and that all men—even his own brother—had the right to follow their own hearts.

They left the Lowlands, climbing higher into the mountains. Snow-l aced peaks rose on either side. Inns became scarcer and fellow travelers few. There seemed to be no end to the mountains, for as soon as they scaled one pass, another line of cragged heights came into view. The air grew thinner, and the black mare stumbled with fatigue toward the end of each day.

Around midmorning, they reached the village of Nevarsin. Markets offered ice-melons, furs, and small items of carved chervine antler. Vendors did a brisk business in statues of St. Christopher bearing the World Child on his shoulders. Dan pointed out an old woman selling leaf-cones of roasted nuts, a treat they had relished as students.

The monastery itself lay some distance beyond the village, up a narrow trail. Glacial snow covered the rocks above. Indeed, with its gray stone walls, weathered by centuries, the monastery seemed to spring from the mountain itself.

A cold, hard place for a cold, hard land, Damion 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 Carmen, 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,” Damion pointed out.

The monk ran off to one of the stark gray stone buildings, leaving them standing in the paved courtyard. Damion 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 power. Such could not be said for any council 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 Damion and Dan to the Stranger’s Room, luxurious by monastery standards but modest compared to council 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.

Damion sent him off to let the Father Master know of their arrival. Shortly thereafter, Damion and Dan found themselves in the study of the venerable old monk. Damion 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 Damion—Lord Carmen you are now, I bid you welcome back to St. Valentine’s.” The Father Master remained in his seat and gestured for Damion to take the single cushioned visitor’s chair. Dan remained by the door.

“It has been a long time,” Damion replied with a practiced smile. “You must also remember Dan Syrtis, my sworn paxman.”

The Father Master inclined his head in Dan’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 council 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.

Damion remembered the hours that he, too, had labored to produce a legible document. Perhaps the piantss, 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 Damion deeply, “you are most welcome.”

When Damion introduced himself and Dan, 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. Damion 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, Damion saw echoes of the ethereal, nonhuman chieri, the ancient Beautiful People who had inhabited elsha 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 council 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?

Damion could not be sure. General appearance was not proof. Many council 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. Damion 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, Damion had already provided Carmen 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.

Damion 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. Damion 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 Damion, he smiled.

“Good brother—” Damion 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.”

Damion 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.”

Damion 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—Dan Syrtis, is it not?—wrote a more acceptable hand.”