He said quietly, “I have a designated heir.” He beckoned to Gabriel Lanart-Hastur, who stepped into the hallway, taking from a nurse’s arms the small plump body of Mikhail. Gabriel carried him to Regis, and Regis set the child down in the center of the rainbow lights. He said, “Bear witness that this is my nedestro heir, a child of Hastur blood, known to me. He is the son of my sister Javanne Hastur, who is the daughter of my mother and of my father, and of her lawful consort di catenas, Gabriel Lanart-Hastur. I have given him the name of Danilo Lanart Hastur. Because of his tender years, it is not yet lawful to ask him for any formal oath. I will ask him only, as it is my duty to do: Danilo Lanart Hastur, will you be a good son to me?”
The child had been carefully coached for the ceremony but for a moment he did not answer and Regis wondered if he had forgotten. Then he smiled and said, “Yes, I promise.”
Regis lifted him and kissed his chubby cheek; the little boy flung his arms around Regis’ neck and kissed him heartily. Regis could not help smiling as he handed him back to his father, saying quietly, “Gabriel, will you pledge to foster and rear him as my son and not your own?”
Gabriel’s face was solemn. He said, “I swear it on my life and my honor, kinsman.”
“Then take him, and rear him as befits the heir to Hastur, and the Gods deal with you as you with my son.”
He watched Gabriel carry the child away, thinking soberly that his own life would have been happier if his grandfather had given him entirely up to Kennard to foster, or to some other kinsman with sons and daughters, Regis vowed not to make that mistake with Mikhail.
And yet he knew his grandfather’s distant affection, and the harsh discipline at Nevarsin, too, had contributed to what he had become. Kennard was fond of saying, “The world will go as it will, not as you or I would have it.” And for all Regis’ struggles to escape from the road laid out before birth for the Hastur heir, it had brought him here, at the appointed time. He turned to the Regent, thinking with pain that he did not have to do this. He was still free. He had promised three years. But after this he would never again be wholly free.
He met Danilo’s eyes, felt that somehow their steady, affectionate gaze gave him strength.
He said, “I am ready to repeat my oath, Lord Hastur.” Hastur’s old face was drawn, tense with emotion. Regis felt his thoughts, unbarriered, but Hastur said, with the control of fifty years in public life, “You have arrived at years of manhood; if it is your free choice, none can deny you that right.” “It is my free choice,” Regis said. Not his wish. But his will, his choice. His fate. The old Regent left his place, then, came to the center of the prismed lights. “Kneel, then Regis-Rafael.” Regis knelt. He knew he was shaking. “Regis-Rafael Hastur, will you swear allegiance to Comyn and this Council, pledge your life to serve it? Will you .. .” He went on. Regis heard the words through a wavering mist of pain: never to be free. Never to look at the great ships bound outward to the stars and know that one day he would follow them to those distant worlds. Never to dream again. . . .
“,.. pledge yourself to be a loyal son to me until I yield my place through age, unfitness or infirmity, and then to serve as Regent-heir subject to the will of this Council?”
Regis thought, for a moment, that he would break into weeping as Danilo had done. He waited, summoning all his control, until he could lift his head and say, in a clear, ringing voice, “I swear it on my life and honor.”
The old man bent, raised Regis, clasped him in his arms and kissed him on either cheek. His hands were trembling with emotion, his eyes filled with tears that ran, unheeded, down his face. And Regis knew that for the first time in his life, his grandfather saw him, him alone. No ghost, no shadow of his dead son, stood between them. Not Rafael. Regis, himself.