“Why ever not?” Leonie’s frustration, fueled by her sense of the approaching winds, broke through her words.
“Because they do not believe you.”
Leonie looked at her in stone silence.
Irmelin smiled. “Oh, they’ve come up here, all right. Because you’ve offered shelter in the manor. Not the caves. And they expect that you’ll feed them all, too. They don’t like your high and mighty ways, Lady Leonie. You’re not from here and you have no idea of these storms and what they do. You’re just some outsider who thinks she knows better than us because she’s Comyn and Tower-trained is all. You don’t know anything about the sea or our ways.”
Leonie strode out of the kitchen, through the hall and through her bedchamber to the balcony facing the sea. She had had no idea that Irmelin had held such contempt for her.
Already she could feel the tendrils of wind caressing her cheeks, tossing the neck strings of her shift around not quite wildly, but well enough that their tassels flashed.
She greeted the people of Hannoth in the courtyard of the manor, the open cliffside that overlooked the ocean, now still and withdrawn in a way that terrified Leonie. “You know a great storm is coming,” she began with no preamble. “It is powerful and dangerous and could tear down every building in Hannoth. The only safe place in here in the manor, in the cliffs.”
“How do you know?” one of the widows challenged her. “You are not from here. You don’t know.”
“The signs are right,” someone in the crowd protested.
“Oh, there’ll be a big blow, no doubt. But why abandon the town? Why listen to her that it’s going to be so strong? Could be running from just a baby blow and this land girl doesn’t know the difference.”
“I am a leronis,” Leonie said, and spread her arms wide. “And I carry the Rockraven Gift and I know the storm.”
“You know nothing.”
“You lie,” another of the old women shouted.”
“I do not lie.” The Rockraven power, driven by the storm, filled her and poured out of her slight form.
Although not one of the villagers in that cavern had any laran to speak of, everyone in that place, even the animals, had no doubt that Leonie spoke the truth. She opened herself to the storm as she had always desired and let the power of it surge through her. Her experience of the might of the winds, of the surging sea, filled the great cavern.
The hurricane rolled through her and over them for only a moment, but that moment was long enough. It struck to the heart of Hannoth.
“We stay,” the eldest of the widows said in the silence, and the people set camp in the solid shelter of the obsidian cavern.
Leonie barely felt their presence, their feeble life- sparks against the eternity of the rock, the magnificent strength of the ancient cliff , and the fury of the storm. She wanted to go to the peak of the rock wall and open her arms to the storm, to become one with it, and draw strength from it. Sea and sky called her now and she wanted to answer. Rock and fire rose within her and all four merged in one glorious moment of perfect unity.
And then it was done and she was only Leonie again and had to come in from the rain.
The storm raged throughout the night and all the next day, and did not clear until just before dawn upon the second day. Leonie dared not venture to the cavern again, but stayed in the manor itself, mostly between her own chambers and the kitchen. Irmelin remained strangely silent as she served Leonie such delicacies as she could, the seed-paste sweets and tiny blue-grain cakes spread with some local fruit jam Leonie could not identify but found delicious.
Dika told her when the people left the manor in a subdued and almost deferential tone. But Leonie thought that they cared only to help her as she recovered from the backlash of the laran she had expended, over and over, with the storm. Though much of it, she knew, had been her own desire to explore her abilities with the storm.
True enough, she could control nothing of it. Nor could she communicate through it. But she could feel it rise and fall, the nuances of many bands as they came together, and she understood that this single glorious and deadly tempest was, in truth, hundreds of smaller squalls united. She was driven to go into it again and again, to study and learn until it exhausted her, and she wasn’t yet quite recovered when the fleet came in.
Kieran returned with the fleet, Rian at his side, both of them subdued but still pleased. “We lost very few for a hurricane of such strength,” Kieran told her.
“Even in my father’s life I think only one or two stories of storms so strong have be told,” Rian said.
“And you! Do you not see the tribute?” Kieran asked.
“Tribute?” Leonie asked.
“Can you walk?” Kieran asked.
Leonie rose from her bed and found that she could hardly bear her weight. Kieran came to support her from her side, and Rian took the other. The three of them walked out of the door, down the stairs and through the Great Hall.
“Her shoes,” Dika called after them, but Kieran and Rian kept going, past the door onto the great terrace before the sweeping steps downward.
The terrace and the steps were all covered with black cloth, some of it fine and most of it coarse and faded. Leonie was confused as Kieran and Rian helped her down the stairs, one after another, her bare feet treading on the long lengths of black, fiberplant for the most, with hard wool and some finely spun wool, and a very few lengths of deep black spidersilk. But all had one edge cut off.
Only near the very end of the stairs did Leonie recognize what they were. The veils. The widow’s veils.
At the very end sat a thick package wrapped in a blanket against the black sand.
“From your people,” Kieran said with awe.
“I have heard of this from my grandfather, who heard of this from his grandfather, but it has not happened in living memory. Everyone in Hannoth thought the custom dead,” Rian explained.
Leonie opened the blanket and let it fall to the sand. Inside she found a veil of as many colors as she could imagine, each stripe separated with a strip of a different black cloth. From a different widow’s veil. The front and sides, and a bit in the middle had been trimmed with bobbin lace in a riot of colors. On the fourth side, the long one, the various stripes were not sewn together, but fluttered apart as ribbons.
Leonie turned it in her hands, barely able to breathe.
Dika came up after her, looked upon the veil, and fell to her knees. “Domna, may I put it on you?”
Leonie nodded.
“You will wear it always,” Kieran said. “As a symbol of who you have become. Not simply the domna of this place, but as something far more.”
“I don’t understand,” Leonie said after Dika had attached the huge veil to her hair. It fell to her feet and over her shoulders like a great cape, and the bobbin lace hung over her forehead like a ceremonial crown.
Kieran and Rian looked at each other. “You are become the Hurricane, the Mother Protector of Sea, She Who Will Never Wear Black, the Shield of the People. You will warn the people of the storms at sea, and there will be far fewer widows on the wharf.”
“The widows approve of me?”
Kieran laughed. “The widows of Hannoth have declared you their demi-goddess, my love. My loves.”
The three embraced on the shore as the white wavelets lapped the black sand.
ABOUT THE EDITOR
Deborah J. Ross is an award-nominated author of fantasy and science fiction. She’s written a dozen traditionally published novels and somewhere around six dozen pieces of short fiction. After her first sale in 1983 to Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress, her short fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Asimov's, Star Wars: Tales from Jabba's Palace, Realms of Fantasy, Sisters of the Night, MZB’s Fantasy Magazine, and many other anthologies and magazines. Her recent books include Darkover novels Thunderlord and The Children of Kings (with Marion Zimmer Bradley); Collaborators, a Lambda Literary Award Fin
alist/James Tiptree, Jr. Award recommended list(as Deborah Wheeler); and The Seven-Petaled Shield, an epic fantasy trilogy based on her “Azkhantian Tales” in the Sword and Sorceress series. Deborah made her editorial debut in 2008 with Lace and Blade, followed by Lace and Blade 2, Stars of Darkover (with Elisabeth Waters), Gifts of Darkover, Realms of Darkover, and a number of other anthologies. She has served as Secretary to the Science Fiction Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) and chaired the jury for the Philip K. Dick Award. When she's not writing, she knits for charity, plays classical piano, and studies yoga.
DARKOVER® ANTHOLOGIES
THE KEEPER’S PRICE, 1980
SWORD OF CHAOS, 1982
FREE AMAZONS OF DARKOVER, 1985
OTHER SIDE OF THE MIRROR, 1987
RED SUN OF DARKOVER, 1987
FOUR MOONS OF DARKOVER, 1988
DOMAINS OF DARKOVER, 1990
RENUNCIATES OF DARKOVER, 1991
LERONI OF DARKOVER, 1991
TOWERS OF DARKOVER, 1993
MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY’S DARKOVER, 1993
SNOWS OF DARKOVER, 1994
MUSIC OF DARKOVER, 2013
STARS OF DARKOVER, 2014
GIFTS OF DARKOVER, 2015
REALMS OF DARKOVER, 2016
MASQUES OF DARKOVER, 2017
CROSSROADS OF DARKOVER, 2018
CITADELS OF DARKOVER, 2019
The Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust publishes a quarterly newsletter with news of Darkover and the Trust’s other projects. To subscribe, go to www.mzbworks.com.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2019 by the Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust. All Rights Reserved
Darkover® is a registered trademark of the Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust
Cover design by Dave Smeds
All characters and events in this book are fictitious.
All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.
The distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Also by Deborah J. Ross
Darkover Anthology
Gifts of Darkover
Realms of Darkover
Masques of Darkover
Crossroads of Darkover
Citadels of Darkover (Coming Soon)
Stars of Darkover
Lace and Blade
Lace and Blade
Lace and Blade 2
Lace and Blade 4
Lace and Blade 5
Sword and Sorceress
Sword and Sorceress 33
Watch for more at Deborah J. Ross’s site.
Citadels of Darkover Page 31