We talked for a little while about Armida, about horses and hawks, while Regis finished the stew in his bowl. He picked up an apple and went to the fireplace, where a pair of antique swords, used only in the sword-dance now, hung over the mantel. He touched the hilt of one and I asked, “Have you forgotten all your fencing in the monastery, Regis?”
“No, there were some of us who weren’t to be monks, so Father Master gave us leave to practice an hour every day, and an arms-master came to give us lessons.”
Over wine we discussed the state of the roads from Nevarsin.
“Surely you didn’t ride in one day from the monastery?”
“Oh, no. I broke my journey at Edelweiss.”
That was on Alton lands. When Javanne Hastur married Gabriel Lanart, ten years ago, my father had leased them the estate. “Your sister is well, I hope?”
“Well enough, but extremely pregnant just now,” Regis said, “and Javanne’s done a ridiculous thing. It made sense to call their first son Rafael, after her father and mine. And the second, of course, is the younger Gabriel. But when she named the third Mikhail, she made the whole thing absurd. I believe she’s praying frantically for a girl this time!”
I laughed. By all accounts the “Lanart angels” should be named for the archfiends, not the archangels; and why should a Hastur seek names from cristoforo mythology? “Well, she and Gabriel have sons enough.”
“True. I am sure my grandfather is annoyed that she should have so many sons, and cannot give them Domain-right in Hastur. And I should have told Kennard; her husband will be here in a few days to take his place in the Guard. He would have ridden with me, but with Javanne so near to her time, he got leave to remain with her till she is delivered.”
I nodded; of course he would stay. Gabriel Lanart was a minor noble of the Alton Domain, a kinsman of our own, and a telepath. Of course he would follow the custom of the Domains, that a man shares with his child’s mother the ordeal of birth, staying in rapport with her until the child is born and all is well. Well, we could spare him for a few days. A good man, Gabriel.
“Dyan seemed to take it for granted that you would be in the cadets this year,” I said.
“I don’t know if I’ll have a choice. Did you?”
I hadn’t, of course. But that the heir to Hastur, of all people, should question it—that made me uneasy.
Regis sat on the stone bench, restlessly scuffing his felt ankle-boots on the floor, “Lew, you’re part Terran and yet you’re Comyn. Do you feel as if you belonged to us? Or to the Terrans?”
A disturbing question, an outrageous, question, and one I had never dared ask myself. I felt angry at him for speaking it, as if taunting me with what I was. Here I was an alien; among the Terrans, a freak, a mutant, a telepath. I said at last, bitterly, “I’ve never belonged anywhere. Except, perhaps, at Arilinn.”
Regis raised his face, and I was startled at the sudden anguish there. “Lew, what does it feel like to have laran?”
I stared at him, disconcerted. The question touched off another memory. That summer at Armida, in his twelfth year. Because of his age, and because there was no one else, it had fallen to me to answer certain questions usually left to fathers or elder brothers, to instruct him in certain facts proper to adolescents. He bad blurted those questions out, too, with the same kind of half-embarrassed urgency, and I’d found it just as difficult to answer them. There are some things it’s almost impossible to discuss with someone who hasn’t shared the experience. I said at last, slowly, “I hardly know how to answer. I’ve had it so long, it would be harder to imagine what it feels like not to have laran.”
“Were you born with it, then?”
“No, no, of course not. But when I was ten, or eleven, I began to be aware of what people were feeling. Or thinking. Later my father found out—proved to them—that I had the Alton gift, and that’s rare even—” I set my teeth and said it, “even in legitimate sons. After that, they couldn’t deny me Comyn rights.”