The ceremony, conducted by the new Father Master, a tall, soft-spoken man named Conn, was brief. Regis found himself unexpectedly moved. After all that had gone before, he feared the traditional words might ring hollow. The priest recited the prayers with such tenderness that even Danilo had tears in his eyes when the final “May it be so”drew the mourners together. Afterward, Regis waited with Danilo as each monk and novice paused to say a word of consolation. Some had barely known Rinaldo, but others remembered him as a youth, a child, a teacher, a friend.
How they loved him,Regis thought with a heavy gladness. I should never have taken him away.
He and Danilo were in light rapport, as they had been almost continually during this pilgrimage. Danilo said aloud, “Do not take that sorrow on yourself, bredhyu.A hundred things might have happened differently. Old Lord Hastur could have educated him as befitted a Comyn or else buried all record of his existence, leaving him to a life of contemplative prayer. Rinaldo himself made many choices along the way.”
Rinaldo could have resisted Valdir’s seductive offer of power and Tiphani Lawton’s delusions as well.
“Sometimes I think the saddest thing in this whole affair is how few people in Thendara will remember him in the years to come,” Regis sighed. The procession of monks was already winding their way down to the monastery. Although it was still full afternoon, a frigid wind swept down over the ice.
They stayed that night in the monastery’s guest house, warmed by a fire, hot food, and thick blankets. Neither felt the need for speech. When the fire had died into glowing embers, Regis lay in his single bed, waiting for sleep, listening to Danilo’s breathing.
I shall never return to Nevarsin.
Once he could not wait to be free of this place, its harsh discipline and creed of chastity, not to mention its climate. Now he thought of all he had been given, not just the education of books and writing, but the struggle within himself, the clarity to discern the truth and the strength to act upon it. The condemnation of homosexuality had all but destroyed him, and yet, was he not a stronger, more honest person for having wrestled with it? If he had not come to terms with his feelings for Danilo, would he have had the resolve to insist upon a wife for whom he felt genuine love and respect?
For a tenday, Regis scoured the hills in search of the Yellow Forest, and he did so alone. Danilo had been reluctant to allow Regis to ride off by himself, but Regis refused to explain what he was doing or why he must go alone. Kierestelli’s safety no longer depended on no one else knowing where she was hiding, but in all likelihood, the continued existence of the chieridid. Regis in no way distrusted Danilo, but the secret was not his to divulge. The Yellow Forest, sanctuary for a dwindling and near-magical race, had been revealed to him alone.
Revealed once, but not now. Every time he thought he recognized a hillside, a mountain or grove of green-leafed trees, the path led only to more of the same. The Yellow Forest had turned invisible, its entrance just beyond human senses. He called out until his throat was raw as he trotted his horse up and down the place where he thought it must be.
Nothing.
Nothing, like an echo that betrayed something.
Each passing day fueled his anxiety. He imagined Danilo, waiting for him at the village on the far side of the Kadarin, fretting and fearful. Imagined Linnea back in Thendara, her heart aching for the loss of her daughter, and then that strange resignation.
Had she known what would happen?
She would never ask, never cast even a whisper of blame on him. She understood, as he was only now beginning to, that Kierestelli, like her namesake, had never belonged to the world of greed and betrayal, hatred and manipulation, the world that kidnapped children for dogmatic ends. The world that so callously obliterated the brightest of hopes.
The world he must return to and serve as best he could.
When Regis arrived home, he learned that Valdir and Francisco had departed for Serrais, but not Bettany. Her kinswoman, Istvana Ridenow, had come to Thendara, packed up the girl and her belongings, and taken her back to Neskaya Tower.
“Really, it was Danilo’s doing,” Linnea told Regis.
Danilo, coming into the parlor where breakfast was laid out, mumbled that he deserved no credit.
“It was kindly done,” Regis said. “From what you’ve told me, no one at Serrais cares about her.”
“Or is equipped enough to deal with such severe mental trauma,” Linnea put in. “Did you know she’d survived a Ghost Wind? Danilo suspected, and Istvana confirmed it. There’s strength in that young woman and more than a trace of empathy.”
“I couldn’t stand by and see her life thrown away,” Danilo said.
“You have feelings for her?” Regis asked, surprised.
“No more than for any human creature in pain,” Danilo explained, “although Bettany fancied herself in love with me. Poor thing, with no one to love. She’d been rejected and betrayed so many times, I couldn’t turn my back on her.”
“Danilo was marvelous,” Linnea said. “She wouldn’t have anything to do with me, but he kept her talking—”
“—and crying,” Danilo added.
“—until Istvana came. Kinswoman or not, when Istvana sees a poor lost chick, she swoops in like a mother hen. We trained together for a time, and I know. Bettany ate up all that attention as if she were starving.”
“She was,” Danilo said quietly.
You could not give her the affection she needed, so you—and Linnea—found someone who could.Regis felt a rush of pride and love. He did not need to ask what Linnea’s part had been. How she’d gotten word so quickly to Neskaya, he didn’t know and suspected he never would.
Above the city of Thendara, the great crimson sun of Darkover crept toward midday. Winter was drawing to a close. Shadows stretched like pools of darkness from the walls of Comyn Castle.
Regis Hastur, the Lord of his Domain and Regent of the Comyn, stood on a balcony of the Castle and gazed over the spires of the Old Town to the Terran Trade city, the rising steel edifice of the Terran Empire Headquarters complex and, still further, the spaceport.
Even without the sounds of hushed footsteps, Regis knew by the lightening of his heart that Danilo and Linnea had come into the room behind him. He closed his eyes, opening the space in his mind where their thoughts met. Linnea’s skirts whispered as she moved. She interlaced her fingers with his. With a click of the latch, Danilo closed the door and came to stand beside them both.
They would, none of them, be the same people they were before Rinaldo had touched and twisted their lives, but they no longer lived in the same world. The Terran Federation remained a vastly powerful, unstable force. Regis now took up the role of Regent, with everything that implied. The questions of his marriage and the heritage of Hastur were settled, although how the relationship between Mikhail and little Dani might evolve, no one could say.
As for Kierestelli, enfolded into the hidden world of the chieriand warned never to reveal her identity, Regis could only pray that her life would be as rich as his and as blessed with love.