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 emmascacondition 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 flicker 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 jacoand 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 domon 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 expectyou 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!”