“Where is his matrix? Damon, it should be buried with him.”
Damon frowned. “Cathal?”
The boy, at the very threshold of the chapel, stopped. “Sir?”
“Who laid him out for burial? Why did they take his matrix from his body?”
“Matrix?” The blue eyes were uncomprehending. “I heard him say often enough that he had no interest in such things. I didn’t know he had one.”
Callista’s fingers strayed to her throat. “He was given one when he was tested. He had laran, though he used it but seldom. When I last saw him it was around his neck, in a little bag like this.”
“Now I remember,” Cathal said. “He did have something around his neck, I thought it a lucky charm or some such thing. I never knew what it was. Perhaps whoever laid him out for burial thought it too shabby a trinket to bury with him.”
Damon let Cathal go. He would ask who had prepared Domenic’s body for burial. Surely it should be buried with him.
“How could anyone take it?” Andrew asked. “You have told me, and shown me, that it is not safe to touch another’s matrix. When you took Dezi’s, it was nearly as painful for you as for him.”
“In general, when the owner of a keyed matrix dies, the stone dies with him. After that it is only a dead piece of blue crystal, without light. But it is not suitable that it should remain to be handled.” The chances were overwhelming that some servant had simply thought it, as Cathal said, a shabby trinket not fit to bury with a Comyn heir.
If Master Nicol, not understanding, had touched it, perhaps loosened it, trying to give Domenic air, that could have killed him, but no, Dezi was there. Dezi would have known, being Arilinn-trained. If Master Nicol had tried to remove the matrix, Dezi, who, as Damon had cause to know, could do a Keeper’s work, would surely have chosen to handle it himself, as he could do so safely.
But if Dezi had taken it…
No. He would not believe that. Whatever his faults, Dezi had loved Domenic. Domenic alone in the family, had befriended him, had treated Dezi like a true brother, had insisted on his rights.
Brother had slain brother, before this, but no. Dezi had loved Domenic, he loved his father. It would have been hard, indeed, not to love Domenic.
For a moment Damon stood beside the bier of the dead boy. Come what might, this was the end of the old days at Armida. Valdir was so young, and if he must be heir so soon, there would be no time for the usual training of a Comyn son, the years in cadet corps and Guardsmen, the time spent in a Tower if he was fit for it. He and Andrew would do their best to be sons to the aging Lord Alton, but despite their best intentions, they were not Altons steeped in the traditions of the Lanarts of Armida. Whatever happened, it was the end of an era.
Callista followed Andrew as he went to examine the paintings on the walls. They were very old, done with pigments that glowed like jewels, depicting the legend of Hastur and Cassilda, the great myth of the Comyn. Hastur in his golden robes wandering by the shores of the lake; Cassilda and Camilla at their looms; Camilla surrounded by her doves, bringing him the traditional fruits; Cassilda, a flower in her hand, proffering it to the child of the God. The drawings were ancient and stylized, but she could recognize some of the fruits and flowers. The blue and gold blossom in Cassilda’s hand was the kireseth, the blue starflower of the Kilghard Hills, colloquially called the golden bell. Was this sacred association, she wondered, why the kireseth flower was taboo to every Tower circle from Dalereuth to the Hellers? She thought, with a pang of regret, how she had lain in Andrew’s arms, unafraid, during the winter blooming. They used to make jokes about it at weddings, if the bride were reluctant Her eyes stung with tears, but she swallowed them back. While the heir of the Domain, her dearly loved younger brother, lay dead, was this any time to be fretting about her private troubles?
Chapter Eighteen
It was a gray morning, the sun hidden behind banks of fog and little spits and drizzles of sleet blowing around the heights, as the funeral procession rode northward from Thendara, bearing the body of Domenic Lanart-Alton to lie beside his forefathers of the Comyn. The rhu fead at Hali, the holy place of the Comyn, lay an hour’s ride northward from the Comyn Castle, and every lord and lady of Comyn blood who could come to the Council in the last three days rode with them to do honor to the heir to Alton, killed by tragic mischance so young.
All except Esteban Lanart-Alton. Andrew, riding with Cathal Lindir and young Valdir, remembered the scene which had broken out that morning when Ferrika, summoned by the old man to give him something to strengthen him for the journey, had flatly refused.
“You are not fit to ride, vai dom, not even in a horse-litter. If you follow him to his grave, you will lie there beside him before a tenday is out.” More gently, she had added, “The poor lad is beyond all helping or hurt, Lord Alton. We must think now of your own strength.”
The old man had flown into such a rage that Callista, hastily summoned, had feared that his very anger would bring on whatever catastrophe Ferrika feared for him. She had tried to mediate, saying tentatively, “Can it harm him as much as this kind of disturbance?”
“I will hear no woman’s ruling,” Dom Esteban had shouted. “Send for my body-servant and get out of here, both of you! Dezi—” He had turned to the lad for confirmation, and Dezi said, his smooth face flushing with color, “If you will ride, Uncle, I will go with you.”
But Ferrika had slipped away, and returned in a moment with Master Nicol, the hospital officer of the Guards. He felt the old man’s pulse, turned down his eyelid to look at the small veins there, then said curtly, “My lord, if you ride out today, you are not likely to return. There are others here who can bury the dead. Your heir has not even been formally accepted by Council, and in any case he is but a lad of twelve years. Your task, vai dom, is to save your own strength till that boy is grown to manhood. By a last sentimental service for your dead son, will you risk leaving your living one fatherless?”
Before these unwelcome truths there was nothing to say. Dismayed, Dom Esteban had allowed Master Nicol to put him back to bed. He clung to Dezi’s hand and the boy remained docilely at his side.
Now, riding northward to Hali, Andrew recalled the calls of condolence, the long talks with other members of the Council which had taxed Lord Alton’s strength to the utmost. Even if he survived the coming Council season and the homeward journey, could he live until Valdir was declared a man at fifteen? And how could a boy of fifteen possibly cope with the complex policies and politics of the Domain? Certainly not this sheltered, scholarly lad from a monastery!
Valdir rode at the head of the procession, in drab formal mourning, his face very pale against the dark garments. Beside him rode his sworn friend Valentine Aillard, who had come with him from Nevarsin, a big, sturdy boy with hair so blonde it looked white. Both boys looked solemn, but not deeply grieved. Neither of them had known Domenic well enough for that.
On the shores of the Lake of Hali, where legend said that Hastur, son of Light, had first come to Darkover, Domenic’s body was laid in an unmarked grave, as the custom demanded. Callista leaned heavily on Andrew as they stood beside the opened grave, and he picked up her thought: It does not matter where he lies, he has gone elsewhere. But it would have comforted my father, if he could rest in Armida soil.
Andrew looked around the burying ground and shivered. Here beneath his feet lay all that was mortal of countless generations of Comyn, with no sign to tell where they lay except for the irregular mounding of the ground, thrust into heaps by spring thaw and winter snow. Would his own sons and daughters lie here one day? Would he, himself, some day rest here under the strange sun?