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Mikhail looked into the face of his daughter. Infinitely precious she seemed to the childless man; the more so if the curse should be true. She was rigid in his arms, squalling, her small face contorted as if she were trying to outshout the rage of the storm outside, her tiny pink fists clenched with rage. Yet already he could see in her face a miniature blurred copy of Aliciane’s - the arched brows and high cheekbones, the eyes blazing blue, the fuzz of red hair.
“Aliciane died to give me this great gift. Shall we give her her mother’s name, in memory?”
Deonara shuddered and flinched. “Would you bestow on your only daughter the name of the dead, my lord? Seek a name of better omen!”
“As you will. Give her what name pleases you, domna .”
Deonara said, faltering, “I would have named our first daughter Dorilys, had she lived long enough to be named. Let her bear that name, in token that I will be a mother to her.” She touched the rose-petal cheek with a finger. “How do you like that name, little woman? Look - she sleeps. She is weary with so much crying…”
Beyond the windows of the birth-chamber the storm muttered into silence and died away, and there was no sound but the slow dripping of the last raindrops outside.
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CHAPTER THREE
Eleven Years Later
It was the dark hour before dawn. Snow fell silently over the monastery of Nevarsin, already buried under deep snow.
There was no bell, or if there was, it rang silently, unheard, in Father Master’s quarters. Yet in every cell and dormitory, brothers and novices and students moved silently, as if on that single noiseless signal, out of sleep.
Allart Hastur of Elhalyn came awake sharply, something in his mind tuned and receptive to the call. In his first years he had often slept through it, but no one in the monastery might waken another; part of the training here was that the novices should hear the inaudible and see what was not there to be seen.
Nor did he feel cold, though he was covered, by rule, only with the outer cowl of his long robe; he had by now disciplined his body so that it would generate heat to warm him as he slept. With no need of light, he rose, drew the cowl over the simple inner garment he wore night and day, and thrust his feet into rude sandals woven of straw. Into his pockets he thrust the small bound prayer book, the pen case and sealed ink-horn, his own bowl and spoon; now in the pockets of the robe were all the items which a monk might own or use. Dom Allart Hastur was not yet a fully sworn brother of Saint-Valentine-of-the-Snows at Nevarsin. It would be a year before he could achieve that final detachment from the world which lay below him - a troubling world, and one which he remembered every time he fastened the leather strap of his sandals; for in the world of the Domains below him, sandal-wearer was the ultimate insult for a male, implying effeminate behavior, or worse. Even now, as he fastened the sandal-strap, he was forced to calm his mind from that memory by the three slow breaths, pause, three more breaths paced to a murmured prayer for the cause of the offense; but Allart was painfully aware of the irony in this.
To pray for peace for my brother, who put this insult on me, when it was he who drove me here, for my very sanity’s sake ? Aware that he still felt anger and resentment, he did the breathing ritual again, firmly dismissing his brother from his mind, remembering the words of the Father Master.
“You have no power over the world or the things of the world, my son; you have renounced all desire for that power. The power you have come here to attain is the power over the things within. Peace will come only when you become fully aware that your thoughts are not from outside yourself; they come from within, and thus are wholly yours, the only things in this universe over which it is legitimate to have total power. You, not your thoughts and memories, rule your mind, and it is you, no other, who bid them to come