Hawkmistress! A DARKOVER NOVEL by Marion Zimmer Bradley

“If Carolin’s claim to the throne is so just,” Romilly asked, “Why has Rakhal won so much support?”

Orain shrugged. “Greed, no doubt. My lands are now in the hands of the chief of Rakhal’s councillors. Men support the man who enriches them, and right has little to do with it. All these men-” he gestured behind them at the followers, “are small-holders whose lands should have been inviolate; they had done nothing but hold loyal to their king, and they should not have been involved in the struggles of the highborn and powerful. Alaric is bitter, aye – know you what was his crime? The crime for which he lost his lands, and was flung into Rakhal’s prison under sentence of losing a hand and his tongue?”

Romilly shuddered. “For such a sentence it must have been a great crime indeed!”

“Only before that cagavrezu Rakhal,” said Orain grimly, “His crime? His children shouted ‘Long live King Carolin’ as one of Rakhal’s greatest scoundrels passed by their village. They meant no harm – I do not think the poor brats knew one king from the other! So the great scoundrel, Lyondri Hastur, said that he must have taught his little children treason – he took the children from Alaric’s house, saying they should be reared by a loyal man, and sent them to serve in his Great House, and flung Alaric into prison. One of the children died, and Alaric’s wife was so distraught with what had befallen her man and her babies that she threw herself from a high window and died. Aye, Alaric is bitter, and thinks good of no one, lad; it is not you he hates, but life itself.”

Romilly looked down toward her saddle, with a deep breath. She knew why Orain had told her this, and it raised still further her admiration of the man; he had tolerance and sympathy even for the man who had spoken such ugly things of him. She said quietly, “I will try not to think half so evil of him as he thinks of me, then, Uncle.”

But still she felt confused. Alderic had spoken of the Haste-kin as descended from Gods, great and noble men, and Orain spoke as if the very word “Hastur” were an insult.

“Are all the Hastur-kin evil men, then?”

“By no means,” Orain said vehemently, “A better man than Carolin never trod this earth; his only fault is that he thought no evil toward those of his kin who were scoundrels, and was all too kind and forgiving toward-” his mouth stretched in what should have been a smile, “bastards with ambition.”

And then he fell silent, and Romilly, watching the lines in his face, knew his thoughts were a thousand leagues away from her, or his men, or Dom Carlo. It seemed that she could see in his mind pictures of a beautiful city built between two mountain passes, but lying low, in a green valley, on the shores of a lake whose waves were like mist rolling up from the depths. A white tower rose near the shores, and men and women passed through the gateways, tall and elegant as if wrapped in a silken glamour, too beautiful to be real . . . and she could sense the great sorrow in him, the sorrow of the exile, the homeless man….

I too am homeless, I have cast away all my kin . .. but it may be that my brother Ruyven awaits me in Tramontana Tower. And Orain, too, is alone and without kin….

They rode through the great, frowning gates of Nevarsin just as dusk was falling and the swift night of this time of year had begun to blur the sky with rain. Dom Carlo rode at their head, his cowled hood drawn over his head concealing his features; along the old cobbled streets of the city, and upward along steep paths and narrow winding lanes toward the snow-covered paths that led to the monastery. Romilly thought she had never felt such intense chill; the monastery was situated among the glacier ice, carved from the solid rock of the mountain, and when they paused before the inner gates, under the great statue of the Bearer of Burdens bowed beneath the world’s weight, and the smaller, but still larger-than-life image of Saint-Valentine-of-the-Snows, she was shivering again in spite of the extra warm clothing.

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