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The Hawkmaster's Son [Darkover series]
by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Category: Fantasy/Science Fiction
Description: Dyan wanted every happiness for his best friend--didn't he?
eBook Publisher: Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust, 1980 The Keeper's Price
eBookwise Release Date: January 2007
 
43 Reader Ratings:
Available eBook Formats: OEBFF Format (IMP) [35 KB]
Words: 6808
Reading time: 19-27 min.
Dyan Ardais laid down his pack on the narrow cot, covered with a single rough blanket, which would be his in the cadet barracks, and started to transfer his gear into the wooden chest standing at the foot of the bed. Third year; the final year as a cadet. He was just enough older than the others to put him out of step as a cadet; he had spent his first two cadet years here before his father's inexplicable decision--and all of his father's decisions were inexplicable to Dyan--that he should spend several years in Nevarsin Monastery. Now, an equally inexplicable whim had brought him back here. He thought, with resignation so deep that he did not fully realize how bitter it was, that his family did not seem to care where he was--Nevarsin, the cadet corps, in one of Zandru's nine hells--so long as he was not at Ardais. He had been glad to leave Nevarsin, however. He had learned much there, including the mastery of laran denied him when the Keeper of Dalereuth Tower had refused to admit him to a Tower circle; he had seriously wished to study the healing arts and medicine, and he had been given ample opportunity, at Nevarsin, to study these things normally denied to a son of the Comyn. More than this; he had been able to forget himself there, giving himself up to his first love, music and singing in the great Nevarsin choir. The Father Cantor had admired his clear treble voice and gone to some trouble to have it trained; the saddest day of Dyan's life had been the day his voice broke, and his mature singing voice turned out to be a clear, tuneful but undistinguished baritone. But it was not really suitable, that a Comyn heir should live among cristoforos. He had accepted their discipline with calm, cynical obedience, as a means to an end, without the slightest intent of taking their rules of life into his personal world-view; and when the time came, he had left them without much regret. Tempting as it might be, to give his life to music and healing, he had always known that his real vocation, the path laid out for every Comyn son, was here; to serve, and later to rule, among the Comyn. There was a Council seat awaiting him, as soon as he was old enough to take it.
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