The door slid open. “Regis—Lord Hastur! This is an unexpected pleasure! Please come in. I had no idea you intended to make us a visit.” Dan Lawton stepped back to gesture them inside.
Instead of his formal uniform, Dan wore a Darkovan shirt falling in loose folds from a shoulder yoke and trimmed with simple geometric embroidery at collar and cuffs, Terran-style pants, and low house boots. He ushered them through a mirror-lined passage that Regis had no doubt was laden with security devices and into a large chamber, a parlor of sorts. Windows faced west. The carpet was dense and springy but drab in color, mottled tones of mud and ash, a combination of luxury and unimaginative ugliness. There was no fireplace, but the air was uncomfortably warm by Darkovan standards.
The room was not without beauty. Against one interior corner stood a display case of carved red- hued wood. Shaped like a tree, its branches interlaced to create niches for polished crystals, too large and clear to be anything but quartz, little porcelain statues of unfamiliar animals or hooded, cloaked dancers, and on the topmost, a stylized cristoforosymbol of yellowed bone. Rinaldo glanced at it, a peculiar expression lighting his features.
As they entered, Tiphani Lawton rose from the divanlike structure on which she’d been sitting beside Felix. Felix looked pale, but the gaze that greeted Regis was steady.
The divan, it turned out, was mechanized, so that with a touch of a few panels, it rearranged itself into seating for everyone. Mikhail, although still on his best adult behavior, looked as if he would like to see how many different configurations were possible.
“I’d heard about your discovery, Lord Hastur,” Dan said, “and was looking forward to meeting—” turning to Rinaldo, “Please forgive me, is the proper form of address for you, DomRinaldo?”
“Just Rinaldo, please.” With a faint smile: “It is difficult enough answering to that name after so many years as Brother Valentine. I doubt I would recognize myself as Domanything.”
“Since we are here informally, let’s leave Lord Hasturoutside, too,” Regis said. Everyone laughed. “Dan, you and I have known each other for too many years to insist upon protocol in your own home. And you know my nephew, Mikhail Lanart-Hastur.”
Tiphani peered at Rinaldo, pointedly ignoring Mikhail as someone of little consequence. “Brother Valentine, you said. I don’t understand.”
“Forgive me,” Regis said, “I felt sure the gossip must have reached you by now. Rinaldo is indeed a brother, but he is mine. He was once called Brother Valentine after the cristoforosaint, because he was a monk. Grandfather kept his existence a secret until shortly before died.”
Since the original introductions, Felix had been sitting quietly, but now he began to fidget. Regis doubted the boy had any interest in Rinaldo’s religious calling. At that age, Regis would have been desperately bored. He interrupted the conversation long enough to ask if he might have a word with the boy about his progress. Mikhail glanced at Regis as if to protest being left with sole responsibility for Rinaldo, and then he solved the problem by inquiring where the sanitary facility was.
The three went into the hallway leading deeper into the apartment toward the bathroom and, presumably, the sleeping areas. Mikhail disappeared through an open doorway, leaving Regis and Felix to themselves.
Regis smiled encouragingly at Felix. “How have you been getting on? Any more trouble with threshold sickness?”
“I’m feeling much better now, thank you, sir. As long as—” Felix’s hand went to the front closure of his shirt, where his starstone made a small bulge in the clinging off-world fabric.
At least the boy was keeping it close to him. “May I see your matrix?” Regis asked.
Felix opened the top of his shirt. Regis noted with approval that neither the cord nor its clasp was made of energy-conducting metal. Layers of gray silk cushioned the stone, acting as a psychic insulator. When Felix removed the stone and held it up, a pattern of blue light flickered in its heart. The facets were clear, not clouded. As far as Regis could tell, the stone was properly keyed, betraying no illness of the mind to which it was linked, nor could he detect any distortions of laranenergy in its depths.
From the parlor came the sound of a chime and Dan’s voice, “I’m sorry, I must take this call,” and another door whispering closed.
“I am no Keeper,” Regis told Felix, “but to my eyes, this looks as it should.”
Felix closed his fingers around the matrix stone. “I can’t do much with it. Ferrika is nice, and I appreciate everything she’s done, but she doesn’t know very much about—about what laranis good for. Except healing.”
Behind the boy’s awkward words, Regis heard a hunger. It was not the same one he had known at that age, but it was yearning nonetheless. If only Linnea were here to teach him, if only—
No. He would notthink about her.
From the parlor, he caught Tiphani’s voice raised in excitement. “Those are almost the same words from the sacred texts of Megaera!”
Regis and Felix exchanged conspiratorial glances. The brief respite was over. Regis led the way back to the others. Rinaldo, seeing him, called, “Brother, the wonders of the world are many! Here is DomnaTiphani from a distant world, speaking the same eternal truths as taught by our own saints.”
Regis had never seen Tiphani Lawton so animated. Her eyes glowed, and a high color suffused her cheeks. Were she other than she was and were Rinaldo any other man, Regis could have sworn the two had just fallen in love.
“Is it possible,” she said breathlessly, “that your St. Christopher is St. Christopher of Centaurus? From what you just told me, his teachings are not precisely the same, but the moral bedrock upon which they are founded—the law of righteousness, the promise of salvation and the certainty of damnation—all these are mirrors of one another!”
As she spoke, Rinaldo nodded. Mikhail came back and stood quietly listening. From the wetness on his neck and shirt front, he had been experimenting with the washing fixtures.
“It is very possible,” Regis said temperately. “The first humans to settle Darkover came from a lost colony ship millennia ago. I believe the Nevarsin monastery dates from that time and has been relatively isolated from the larger world. Many of the traditions and beliefs of the first cristoforosmay have come down to us with very little change.”
“Look,” Rinaldo exclaimed, “here is a holy reliquary, in form and symbolic ornament very like our own. If I saw it in the chapel at St. Valentine’s, I would not think it out of place. I cannot believe the resemblance is accidental . . . Now I know why I have been brought here to Thendara! I might have lived my entire life at Nevarsin without learning the universal truth of our teachings.”
He turned to Tiphani. “We must pray for guidance and knowledge of the work we are called to accomplish.”
Although Regis was glad his brother had discovered a way to integrate his religious and worldly lives, he was also disturbed that the connection should be a woman who had shown herself to be so volatile of temper.
Rinaldo, as if sensing his brother’s mood, hastened to say, “Our work will become a powerful instrument of understanding between our two planets or rather between Darkover and the Federation. I can think of no better way to serve my people.”
Having no ready answer, Regis said nothing. Mikhail looked politely uninterested. Felix shuffled from one foot to the other.
“Brother Valentine—Rinaldo, that is,” Tiphani rushed on, oblivious, “will you help me to build a chapel where people of faith from both our communities may worship together?”
“Most gladly, lady. That is, if my brother consents.”