The Ages of Chaos

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “I knew you had once said so, in the sickness of your adolescence,” Dom Stephen Hastur said, “but I thought it would pass when you were restored to health of body and mind. How is it with you, Allart? You look well and strong. It seems that these cristoforo madmen have not starved you nor driven you quite mad with deprivations—not yet.”

  Allart said amiably, “Indeed they have not, sir. My body, as you can see, is strong and well, and my mind at peace.”

  “Is it so, son? Then I shall not begrudge the years you have spent here; and by whatever methods they achieved this miracle, I shall forever be grateful to them.”

  “Then compound your gratitude, vai dom, by giving me leave to remain here where I am happy and at peace, for the rest of my life.”

  “Impossible! Madness!”

  “May I ask why, sir?”

  “I had forgotten that you did not know,” Lord Elhalyn said. “Your brother Lauren died, three years ago; he had your laran, only in worse form still, for he could not manage to distinguish between past and future; and when it came upon him in all strength, he withdrew inside himself and never spoke again, or responded to anything outside, and so died.”

  Allart felt grieved. Lauren had been the merest child, a stranger, when he left home; but the thought of the boy’s sufferings dismayed him. How narrowly he himself had escaped that fate! “Father, I am sorry. What pity you could not have sent him here; they might have been able to reach him.”

  “One was enough,” Dom Stephen said. “We need no weakling sons; better die young than pass on such a weakness in the blood. His Grace, my brother Regis, has but a single heir; his elder son died in battle against those invaders at Serrais, and his only remaining son, Felix, who will inherit his throne, is frail in health. I am next, and then your brother Damon-Rafael. You stand within four places of the throne, and the king is in his eightieth year. You have no son, Allart.”

  Allart said, with a violent surge of revulsion, “With such a curse as I bear, would you have me pass it to another? You have told me how it cost Lauren his life!”

  “Yet we need that foresight,” Stephen Hastur said, “and you have mastered it. The leroni of Hali have a plan for fixing it in our line without the instability which endangered your sanity and killed Lauren. I tried to speak of this to you before you left us, but you were in no shape to think of the needs of the clan. We have made compact with the Aillard clan for a daughter of their line, whose genes have been so modified that they will be dominant, so that your children will have the sight, and the control to use it without danger. You will marry this girl. Also she has two nedestro sisters, and the leroni of the Tower have discovered a technique which will assure that you will father only sons on all of these. If the experiment succeeds, your sons will have the foresight and the control, too.” He saw the disgust in Allart’s face and said, enraged, “Are you no more than a squeamish boy?”

  “I am a cristoforo. The first precept of the Creed of Chastity is to take no woman unwilling.”

  “Good enough for a monk, not a man! Yet none of these will be unwilling when you take her, I assure you. If you wish, the two who are not your wives need not even know your name; we have drugs now which will mean that they carry away only the memory of a pleasant interlude. And every woman wishes to bear a child of the lineage of Hastur and Cassilda.”

  Allart grimaced in revulsion. “I want no woman who must be delivered to me drugged and unconscious. Unwilling does not only mean fighting in terror of rape; it would also mean a woman whose ability to give, or refuse, free consent had been destroyed by drugs!”

  “I would not suggest it,” said the old man angrily, “but you have made it clear that you are not ready to do your duty by caste and clan of your own free will! At your age, Damon-Rafael had a dozen nedestro sons by as many willing women! But you, you sandal-wearer—”

  Allart bent his head, fighting the reflex of anger which prompted him to take that frail old neck between his hands and squeeze the life out of it. “Damon-Rafael spoke his mind often enough on the subject of my manhood, Father. Must I hear it from you as well?”

  “What have you done to give me a better opinion of you? Where are your sons?”

  “I do not agree with you that manhood must be measured by sons alone, sir; but I will not argue the point with you now. I do not wish to pass on this curse in my blood. I know something of laran. I feel you are wrong in trying to breed for greater strength in these gifts. You can see in me—and in Lauren, even more—that the human mind was never intended to bear such weight. Do you know what I mean if I speak of recessives and lethal genes!”

  “Are you going to teach me my business, youngster?”

  “No, but in all respect, Father, I will have no part in it If I were ever to have sons—”

  “There is no if about it. You must have sons.”

  The old man’s voice was positive, and Allart sighed. His father simply did not hear him. Oh, he heard the words with his ears. But he did not listen; the words went through and past him, because what Allart was saying did not agree with the fixed belief of Lord Elhalyn—that a son’s prime duty was to breed the sons who would carry on the fabled gifts of Hastur and Cassilda, the laran of the Domains.

  Laran, sorcery, psi power, which enabled these families to excel in the manipulation of the matrix stones, the starstones amplifying the hidden powers of the mind; to know the future, to force the minds of lesser men to their own will, to manipulate inanimate objects, to compel the minds of animal and bird—laran was the key to power beyond imagining, and for generations the Domains had been breeding for it.

  “Father, hear me, I beg you.” Allart was not angry or argumentative now, but desperately in earnest. “I tell you, nothing but evil can come of this breeding program, which makes of women only instruments to breed monsters of the mind, without humanity! I have a conscience; I cannot do it.”

  His father sneered, “Are you a lover of men, that you will not give sons to our caste?”

  “I am not,” Allart said, “but I have known no woman. If I have been cursed with this evil gift of laran—”

  “Silence! You blaspheme our forefathers and the Lord of Light who gave us laran!”

  Now Allart was angry again. “It is you who blaspheme, sir, if you think the gods can be bent to human purposes this way!”

  “You insolent—” His father sprang up, then, with an enormous effort, controlled his rage. “My son, you are young, and warped by these monkish notions. Come back to the heritage to which you were born, and you will learn better. What I ask of you is both right and needful if the Hasturs are to prosper. No”—he gestured for silence when Allart would have spoken—“on these matters you are still ignorant, and your education must be completed. A male virgin”—try as he might, Lord Elhalyn could not keep the contempt from his voice— “is not competent to judge.”

  “Believe me,” Allart said, “I am not indifferent to the charms of women. But I do not wish to pass on the curse of my blood. And I will not.”

  “That is not open to discussion,” Dom Stephen said, menace in his voice. “You will not disobey me, Allart. I would think it disgrace if a son of mine must father his sons drugged like some reluctant bride, but there are drugs which will do that to you, too, if you leave us no choice.” Holy Bearer of Burdens, help me! How shall I keep from killing him as he stands here before me?

  Dom Stephen said more quietly, “This is no time for argument, my son. You must give us a chance to convince you that your scruples are unfounded. I beg of you, go now and clothe yourself as befits a man and a Hastur, and make ready to ride with me. You are so needed, my dear son, and—do you not know how much I have missed you?” The genuine love in his voice thrust pain through Allart’s heart. A thousand childhood memories crowded in on him, blurring past and future with their tenderness. He was a pawn to his father’s pride and heritage, yes, but with all this, Lord Elhalyn sincerely loved all his sons, had been genuinely afraid for Allart’s health a
nd sanity—or he would never have sent him to a cristoforo monastery, of all places on the face of this world! Allart thought, I cannot even hate him; it would be so much easier if I could!

  “I will come, Father. Believe me, I have no wish to anger you.”

  “Nor I to threaten you, lad.” Dom Stephen held out his arms. “Do you know, we have not yet greeted one another as kinsmen? Do these cristoforos bid you renounce kin-ties, son?”

  Allart embraced his father, feeling with dismay the bony fragility of the old man’s body, knowing that the appearance of domineering anger masked advancing weakness and age. “All the gods forbid I should do so while you live, my father. Let me go and make ready to ride.”

  “Go, then, my son. For it displeases me more than I can say, to see you in this garb so unfitting for a man.”

  Allart did not answer, but bowed and went to change his clothes. He would go with his father, yes, and present the appearance of a dutiful son. With certain limits, he would be so. But now he knew what Father Master had meant. Changes were needful in his world, and he could not make them behind monastery walls.

  He could see himself riding forth, could see a great hawk hovering, the face of a woman… a woman. He knew so little of women. And now they meant to deliver up to him not one but three, drugged and complaisant… that he would fight to the end of his will and conscience; he would be no part of this monstrous breeding program of the Domains. Never. The monkish garb discarded, he knelt briefly, for the last time, on the cold stones of his cell.

  “Holy Bearer of Burdens, strengthen me to bear my share of the world’s weight…” he murmured, then rose and began to clothe himself in the ordinary dress of a nobleman of the Domains, strapping a sword at his side for the first time in over six years.

  “Blessed Saint-Valentine-of-the-Snows, grant I may bear it justly in the world…” he whispered, then sighed, and looked for the last time on his cell. He knew, with a sorrowful inner knowledge, that he would never set eyes on it again.

  Chapter Four

  The chervine, the little Darkovan stag-pony, picked its way fastidiously along the trail, tossing its antlers in protest at the new fall of snow. They were free of the mountains now, Hali no more than three days’ ride away. It had been a long journey for Allart, longer than the seven days it had taken to ride the actual distance; he felt as if he had traveled years, endless leagues, great chasms of change; and he was exhausted.

  It took all the discipline of his years at Nevarsin to move securely through the bewilderment of what he now saw, legions of possible futures branching off ahead of him at every step, like different roads he might have taken, new possibilities generated by every word and action. As they traveled the dangerous mountain passes, Allart could see every possible false step which might lead him over a precipice, to be smashed, as well as the safe step he actually took. He had learned at Nevarsin to thread his way through his fear, but the effort left him weak and weary.

  And another possibility was always with him. Again and again, as they traveled, he had seen his father lying dead at his feet, in an unfamiliar room.

  I do not want to begin my life outside the monastery as a patricide! Holy Bearer of Burdens, strengthen me… ! He knew he could not deny his anger; that way lay the same paralysis as in fear, to take no step for fear it would lead to disaster.

  The anger is mine, he reminded himself with firm discipline. I can choose what I will do with my anger, and I can choose not to kill. But it troubled him to see again and again, in that unfamiliar scene which grew familiar as he traveled with the vision, the corpse of his father, lying in a room of green hangings bordered with gold, at the foot of a great chair whose very carvings he could have drawn, so often had he seen it with the sight of his laran.

  It was hard, as he looked upon the face of his living father, not to look upon him with the pity and horror he would feel for the newly and shockingly dead: and it was a strain on him to show nothing of this to Lord Elhalyn.

  For his father, as they traveled, had put aside his words of contempt for Allart’s monkish resolution, and ceased entirely to quarrel with him about it. He spoke only kindly to his son, mostly of his childhood at Hali before the curse had descended on Allart, of their kinfolk, the chances of the journey. He spoke of Hali, and the mining done in the Tower there, by the powers of the matrix circle, to bring copper and iron and silver ore to the surface of the ground; of hawks and chervines, and the experiments which his brother had made breeding, with cell-deep changes, rainbow-colored hawks, or chervines with fantastic jewel-colored antlers like the fabled beasts of legend.

  Day by day Allart recaptured some of his childhood love for his father, from the days before his laran and the cristoforo faith had separated them, and again he felt the agony of mourning, seeing that accursed room with the green hangings and gold, the great carven chair, and his father’s face, white and stark and looking very surprised to be dead.

  Again and again on this road other faces had begun to come out of the dimness of the unknown into the possible future. Most of them Allart ignored as he had learned in the monastery, but two or three returned repeatedly, so that he knew they were not the faces of people he might meet, but people who would come into his life; one, which he dimly recognized, was the face of his brother Damon-Rafael, who had called him sandal-wearer and coward, who had been glad to be rid of his rivalry, that he alone might be Elhalyn’s heir.

  I wish that my brother and I might be friends and love one another as brothers should. Yet I see it nowhere among all the possible futures…

  And there was the face of a woman, returning continually to the eyes of his mind, though he had never seen her before. A small woman, delicately made, with eyes dark-lashed in her colorless face and hair like masses of spun black glass; he saw her in his visions, a grave face of sorrow, the dark eyes turned to him in anguished pleading. Who are you? he wondered. Dark girl of my visions, why do you haunt me this way?

  Strange for Allart after the years in the monastery, he had begun to see erotic visions, too, of this woman, see her laughing, amorous, her face lifted to his own for a caress, closed under the rapture of his kiss. No! he thought. No matter how his father should tempt him with the beauty of this woman, he would hold firm to his purpose; he would father no child to bear this curse of his blood! Yet the woman’s face and presence persisted, in dreams and waking, and he knew she was one of those his father would seek as a bride for him. Allart thought it would indeed be possible that he would be unable to resist her beauty.

  Already I am half in love with her, he thought, and I do not even know her name!

  One evening, as they rode down toward a broad green valley, his father began to speak again of the future.

  “Below us lies Syrtis. The folk of Syrtis have been Hastur vassals for centuries; we will break our journey there. You will be glad to sleep in a bed again, I suppose?”

  Allart laughed. “It is all one, Father. During this journey I have slept softer than ever I did at Nevarsin.”

  “Perhaps I should have had such monkish discipline, if old bones are to make such journeys! I will be glad of a mattress, if you will not! And now we are but two days’ ride from home, and we can plan for your wedding. You were handfasted at ten years old to your kinswoman Cassandra Aillard, do you not remember?”

  Try as he might, Allart could remember nothing but a festival where he had had a suit of new clothes and had been made to stand for hours and listen to long speeches by the grown-ups. He told his father so, and Dom Stephen said, genial once more, “I am not surprised. Perhaps the girl was not even there; I think she was only three or four years old then. I confess I, too, had doubts about this marriage. Those Aillards have chieri blood, and they have an evil habit of bearing, now and then, daughters who are emmasca—they look like beautiful women, but they never become ripe for mating, nor do they bear children. Their laran is strong, though, so I risked the handfasting, and when the girl had become a woman, I had our own house
hold leronis examine her in the presence of a midwife, who gave it as her opinion that the girl was a functioning female and could bear children. I have not seen her since she was a tiny girl, but I am told she has grown up to be a fine-looking maiden; and she is Aillard, and that family is a strong alliance to our clan, one we need greatly. You have nothing to say, Allart?”

  Allart forced himself to speak calmly.

  “You know my will on that matter, Father. I will not quarrel with you about it, but I have not changed my mind. I have no wish to marry, and I will father no sons to carry on this curse in our blood. I will say no more.”

  Again, shockingly, the room with the green and gold hangings, and his father’s dead face, swam before his mind, so strongly that he had to blink hard to see his father riding at his side.

  “Allart,” his father said, and his voice was kind, “during these days when we have journeyed together, I have come to know you too well to believe that. You are my own son, after all, and when you are back in the world where you belong, you will not long keep these monkish notions. Let us not speak of it, kihu caryu, until the time is upon us. The gods know I have no will to quarrel with the last son they have left me.”

  Allart felt his throat tighten with grief.

  I cannot help it. I have come to love my father. Is this how he will break my will at last, not with force but with kindness? And again he looked on his father’s dead face in the room hung with gold and green, and the face of the dark maiden of his visions swam before his blurring eyes.

  Syrtis Great House was an ancient stone keep, fortified with moat and drawbridge, and there were great outbuildings of wood and stone, and an elaborate courtyard, under shelter of a glasslike canopy of many colors; underfoot were colored stones, laid together with a precision no workman could have accomplished, so that Allart knew the Syrtis folk were of the new-rich, who could make full use of the ornamental and difficult matrix technology to have such beautiful things constructed. How can he find so many of the laran-gifted to do his will?