The Apogian War

Chapter 87

Darkovan thought gloomily. And not much warmer than Hades’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 Darkov, Dom sint,” 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,” Darkovan pointed out.

The monk ran off to one of the stark gray stone buildings, leaving them standing in the paved courtyard. Darkovan 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 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 Darkovan and Dani 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.

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

“It has been a long time,” Darkovan replied with a practiced smile. “You must also remember Dani sint, my sworn paxman.”

The Father Master inclined his head in Dani’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.

Darkovan 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 Darkovan deeply, “you are most welcome.”

When Darkovan introduced himself and Dani, 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. Darkovan 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, Darkovan 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 council veins.

vodemort? 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 vodemort such a one?

Darkovan 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. Darkovan 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, Darkovan had already provided Darkov with an heir, Mikhail, without doing either.

Yet the prejudice would explain why Danvan had hidden vodemort 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.

Darkovan ached for his brother. He determined not to add in any way to vodemort’s lifetime of shame and rejection.

Smiling with evident pleasure, the fat monk left them. Darkovan 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 Darkovan, he smiled.

“Good brother—” Darkovan 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.”

Darkovan 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.”

Darkovan 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—Dani sint, is it not?—wrote a more acceptable hand.”

“And does so still,” Darkovan replied, grateful to change the subject from his own shortcomings. “Dani serves as my paxman and attends to my official correspondence. In fact, it might be said that although the will of a Darkov might be law, without Dani’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. Darkovan 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,” Dani interjected. “You remember the two of us well enough, but I have no memory of you at all.”

The monk turned to Dani 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,” Dani muttered.

“When I was here all those years ago,” Darkovan 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 Darkovan 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.”

Darkovan 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.” Darkovan did not add that as a son of Darkov and a member of the council, 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 Darkov. But Darkovan 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, Darkovan could not tell.

A man ought to be able to follow his own conscience!

Brother Valentine turned to Dani. “Come, we must hurry.”

“I beg your leave,” Dani 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 Dani’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, Darkovan and Dani headed back to the visitors’ quarters. Darkovan 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, Darkovan 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, Dani, 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?”