THE ALTON GIFT snippet
Dec. 4th, 2005 06:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deborahjrossHere is a section from early in the book. Domenic, introduced in TRAITOR'S SUN, is the son of Marguerida Alton and Mikhail Lanart-Hastur. He's now about 15.
Domenic Alton-Hastur had spent the morning in the solarium with his grandmother. Although bitter cold still clung to the shadows cast by the drifted snow, the little room with its thick mullioned windows was bright and warm. Javanne Hastur lay on a couch, propped up with pillows stitched in a pattern of ice-daisies and kireseth blossoms. Against the colorful embroidery, her skin was chalky, her lips dry and cracked. Her flesh had withered, so that the hand resting on the blanket looked as frail as a songbird's tiny foot. Age and illness had erased all traces of her youthful beauty, leaving only the stark architecture of bone and suffering.
Domenic sat in his usual place, a high-backed chair close enough so that he could readily lift a goblet of water to her lips, or stroke her hair if she became agitated. A book lay open on his lap, one of his mother's translations of folk-tales from Thetis, where she had passed much of her own childhood. The musical rhythms seemed especially calming to the old woman.
It wouldn't be long now, Domenic thought with a pang of sadness. He should tell Dom Gabriel, although the old man had been prepared for his wife's death since he had brought her home to Edelweiss.
How easy it would have been to miss this time. From the moment of Domenic's conception, the old woman had set herself up as the enemy of his father, her own son, and of Domenic himself. Marguerida had borne the brunt of the attacks, even when Javanne had allied herself with Francisco Ridenow in trying to oust Mikhail from the Regency. No one know then that it was Javanne's illness and not her conscious will that made her behave with such irrational hostility. By the time the leroni at Arilinn had identified the cause of her increasing debility, the damage to her brain was irreversible.
Another outrage to lay at the feet of the World Wreckers, he thought. Minute, deadly in their slow insidious action, the tumor-generating particles had lain hidden until it was too late. What other weapons remain, waiting?
Domenic closed the book and brushed his fingertips over his grandmother's wrist. The feather-light touch brought a rush of laran impressions. Her life energies had sunk very low, guttering like a candle in its final hour. Almost no psychic energy flowed through her channels. Focusing through the starstone that hung on a silver mounting, bare against his chest, he embraced her with a wave of love and felt the faint, poignantly grateful response.
The impulse that had brought him here the previous summer had been rebellion, escape from the life of courtly responsibility laid down for him by his elders, rather than family feeling. Why should he attend her, when she had done everything she could to harm him?
She had gazed upon him with pain-riddled eyes, and by some grace, some wholly unanticipated insight, he had glimpsed the young woman she had once been, tall and graceful, Gifted with laran, pressured by her family and caste to marry a man she barely knew and to bear him a host of children. He saw her wasted talent, her withered dreams, the love she had lavished upon her children, the tiny redemptive moments of contentment. Then had come the slow creeping doubts, the fears gnawing upon her like leeches of the soul, the moments of shock as her own voice shouted out venomous curses upon those she once loved. Finally, her own body turned traitor, and she had run to the only place she had known happiness.
That moment of compassion had touched a chord deep within Domenic. All his resentment at the demands of his rank, his restlessness with life in Thendara, his longing to choose his own path, all these had fallen away. He had seen himself in the mirror of Javanne's sacrifice, and found himself wanting.
Domenic Alton-Hastur had spent the morning in the solarium with his grandmother. Although bitter cold still clung to the shadows cast by the drifted snow, the little room with its thick mullioned windows was bright and warm. Javanne Hastur lay on a couch, propped up with pillows stitched in a pattern of ice-daisies and kireseth blossoms. Against the colorful embroidery, her skin was chalky, her lips dry and cracked. Her flesh had withered, so that the hand resting on the blanket looked as frail as a songbird's tiny foot. Age and illness had erased all traces of her youthful beauty, leaving only the stark architecture of bone and suffering.
Domenic sat in his usual place, a high-backed chair close enough so that he could readily lift a goblet of water to her lips, or stroke her hair if she became agitated. A book lay open on his lap, one of his mother's translations of folk-tales from Thetis, where she had passed much of her own childhood. The musical rhythms seemed especially calming to the old woman.
It wouldn't be long now, Domenic thought with a pang of sadness. He should tell Dom Gabriel, although the old man had been prepared for his wife's death since he had brought her home to Edelweiss.
How easy it would have been to miss this time. From the moment of Domenic's conception, the old woman had set herself up as the enemy of his father, her own son, and of Domenic himself. Marguerida had borne the brunt of the attacks, even when Javanne had allied herself with Francisco Ridenow in trying to oust Mikhail from the Regency. No one know then that it was Javanne's illness and not her conscious will that made her behave with such irrational hostility. By the time the leroni at Arilinn had identified the cause of her increasing debility, the damage to her brain was irreversible.
Another outrage to lay at the feet of the World Wreckers, he thought. Minute, deadly in their slow insidious action, the tumor-generating particles had lain hidden until it was too late. What other weapons remain, waiting?
Domenic closed the book and brushed his fingertips over his grandmother's wrist. The feather-light touch brought a rush of laran impressions. Her life energies had sunk very low, guttering like a candle in its final hour. Almost no psychic energy flowed through her channels. Focusing through the starstone that hung on a silver mounting, bare against his chest, he embraced her with a wave of love and felt the faint, poignantly grateful response.
The impulse that had brought him here the previous summer had been rebellion, escape from the life of courtly responsibility laid down for him by his elders, rather than family feeling. Why should he attend her, when she had done everything she could to harm him?
She had gazed upon him with pain-riddled eyes, and by some grace, some wholly unanticipated insight, he had glimpsed the young woman she had once been, tall and graceful, Gifted with laran, pressured by her family and caste to marry a man she barely knew and to bear him a host of children. He saw her wasted talent, her withered dreams, the love she had lavished upon her children, the tiny redemptive moments of contentment. Then had come the slow creeping doubts, the fears gnawing upon her like leeches of the soul, the moments of shock as her own voice shouted out venomous curses upon those she once loved. Finally, her own body turned traitor, and she had run to the only place she had known happiness.
That moment of compassion had touched a chord deep within Domenic. All his resentment at the demands of his rank, his restlessness with life in Thendara, his longing to choose his own path, all these had fallen away. He had seen himself in the mirror of Javanne's sacrifice, and found himself wanting.
