The Ages of Chaos

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “It is true that I had such thoughts for a time. I dwelt for six years among the brethren of Saint-Valentine-of-the-Snows, and would gladly have remained there.”

  If I love this woman, I will destroy her … I will father children who will be monsters… she will die in bearing them… Blessed Cassilda, foremother of the Domains, let me not see so much, now, of my destiny, since I can do so little to avert it…

  “I am neither ill nor mad, damisela; you need not fear me.”

  “Indeed,” said the young woman, meeting his eyes again. “You do not seem demented, only very troubled. Is it the thought of our marriage which troubles you, then, cousin?”

  Allart said, with a nervous smile, “Should I not be well-content, to see what beauty and grace the gods have given me in a handfasted bride?”

  “Oh!” She moved her head, impatient. “This is no time for pretty speeches and flatteries, kinsman! Or are you one of those who think a woman is a silly child, to be turned away with a courtly compliment or two?”

  “Believe me, I meant you no discourtesy, Lady Cassandra,” he said, “but I have been taught that it is unseemly to share my own troubles and fears when they are still formless.”

  Again the quick, direct look from the dark-lashed eyes.

  “Fears, cousin? But I am harmless and a girl! Surely a lord of the Hasturs is afraid of nothing, and surely not of his pledged bride!”

  Before the sarcasm he flinched. “Would you have the truth, Lady? I have a strange form of laran; it is not foresight alone. I do not see only the future which will be, but the futures which might come to pass, those things which may happen with ill luck or failure; and there are times when I cannot tell which of them are generated by causes now in motion, and which are born of my own fear. It was to master this that I went to Nevarsin.”

  He heard her sharp indrawn breath.

  “Avarra’s mercy, what a curse to carry! And have you mastered it, then, kinsman?”

  “Somewhat, Cassandra. But when I am troubled or uncertain, it rushes in upon me again, so that I do not see only the joy which marriage to one such as you might bring me.” Like a physical pain in his heart, Allart felt the bitter awareness of all the joys they might know, if he could bring her to return his love, the years ahead which might turn to brightness… Fiercely he slammed the inner door, closing his mind against it. Here was no riyachiya, to be taken without thought, for a moment’s pleasure!

  He said harshly, and did not know how his own pain brought a rasp to his voice and coldness to his speech, “But I see, as well, all the griefs and catastrophe which may come; and till I can see my way through the false futures born of my own fears, I can take no joy in the thought of marriage. It is intended as no discourtesy to you, my lady and my bride.”

  She said, “I am glad you told me this. You know, do you not, that my kinsmen are angry because our marriage did not take place two years ago, when I was legally of age. They felt you had insulted me by remaining in Nevarsin. Now they wish to be sure you will claim me without further delay.” Her dark glance glinted with humor. “Not that they care a sekal for my wedded bliss, but they are never done reminding me how near you stand to the throne, and how fortunate I am, and how I must captivate you with my charm so you will not escape me. They have dressed me like a fashion puppet, and dressed my hair with nets of copper and silver, and loaded me with jewels, as if you were going to buy me in the market. I half expected you to open my mouth and look at my teeth to be sure my loins and withers were strong!”

  Allart could not help laughing. “On that score your kinfolk need have no fear, Lady; surely no man living could find any flaw in you.”

  “Oh, but there is,” she said ingenuously. “They were hoping you would not notice, but I will not try to hide it from you.” She spread her narrow, ringed hands before him. The slender fingers were laden with jewels, but there were six of them, and as his eyes fell on the sixth, Cassandra colored deeply and tried to draw them under her veil. “Indeed, Dom Allart, I beg you not to stare at my deformity.”

  “It seems to me no deformity,” he said. “Do you play the rryll? It seems to me that you could strike chords with more ease.”

  “Why, so it does—”

  “Then let us never again think of it as defect or deformity, Cassandra,” he said, taking the slight six-fingered hands in his own and pressing his lips to them. “In Nevarsin, I saw children with six or seven fingers where the extra fingers were boneless or without tendons, so that they could not be moved or flexed; but you have full control of them, I see. I, too, am something of a musician.”

  “Truly? Is it because you were a monk? Most men have no patience for such things, or little time to learn them with the arts of war.”

  “I would rather be musician than warrior,” Allart said, pressing the narrow fingers again to his lips. “The gods grant us enough peace in our days that we may make songs instead of war.” But as she smiled into his eyes, her hand still against his lips, he noted that Ysabet, Lady Aillard, was watching them, and so was his brother Damon-Rafael, and they looked so self-satisfied that he turned sick. They were manipulating him into doing their will, despite his resolve! He let her hand go as if it had burned him.

  “May I conduct you to your kinswoman, damisela?”

  As the evening progressed, the festivities decorous but not somber—the old lord had been decently laid to rest, and he had a proper heir, so there was no doubt the Domain would prosper—Damon-Rafael sought out his brother. Despite the feasting, Allart noticed he was still quite sober.

  “Tomorrow we ride for Thendara, where I shall be invested Lord of the Domain. You must ride with us, brother; you must be warden and heir-designate for Elhalyn. I have no legitimate sons, only nedestro; they will not legitimate a nedestro heir until it is certain that Cassilde will give me none.” He looked across the room at his wife, a cold, almost bitter look. Cassilde Aillard-Hastur was a pale, slight woman, sallow and worn.

  “The Domain will be in your hands, Allart, and in a sense I am at your mercy. How runs the proverb? ‘Bare is back without brother.’”

  Allart wondered how, in the name of all the gods, brothers could be friends, or anything but the crudest of rivals, with such inheritance laws as these? Allart had no ambition to displace his brother as head of the Domain, but would Damon-Rafael ever believe that? He said, “I would indeed that you had left me within the monastery, Damon.”

  Damon-Rafael’s smile was skeptical, as if he feared that his brother’s words concealed some devious plot. “Is it so? Yet I watched you speaking with the Aillard woman, and it was obvious you could hardly await the ceremony . You are like to have a legitimate son before I do; Cassilde is frail, and your bride looks strong and healthy.”

  Allart said with concealed violence, “I am in no hurry to wed!”

  Damon-Rafael scowled. “Yet the Council will not accept a man of your years as heir unless you agree to marry at once; it is scandalous that a man in his twenties should be still unwedded and without even any natural sons.” He looked sharply at Allart. “Can it be that I am luckier than I think? Are you, perhaps, an emmasca? Or even a lover of men?”

  Allart grinned wryly. “I grieve to disappoint you. But as for being emmasca, you saw me stripped and shown to Council when I came to manhood. And if you wished for me to become a lover of men, you should have made certain that I never came among the cristoforos. But I will return to the monastery, if you like.”

  He thought, for a moment, almost in elation, that this would be the answer to his torment and perplexities. Damon-Rafael did not want him to breed sons who might be rivals to his own; and so perhaps he could escape the curse of fathering sons who would carry his own tragic laran. If he were to return to Nevarsin… he was surprised at the pain of the thought.

  Never to see Cassandra again…

  Damon-Rafael shook his head, not without regret. “I dare not anger the Aillards. They are our strongest allies in this war; and they are vexed that Cas
silde has not cemented the alliance by giving me an heir of Elhalyn and Aillard blood. If you avoid the marriage I will have another enemy, and I cannot afford the Aillards for enemies. Already they fear I have found a better match for you. But I know our father had reserved two nedestro half-sisters of the Aillard clan for you, with modified genes, and what will I do if you should have sons by all three of them?”

  Revulsion, as when Dom Stephen had first spoken of this, surged in Allart again. “I told my father I had no wish for that.”

  “I would rather that any sons of Aillard blood should be mine,” Damon-Rafael said, “yet I cannot take your pledged wife; I have a wife of my own, and I cannot make a lady of such an exalted clan into my barragana. It would be a matter for blood-feud! Although if Cassilde were to die in childbirth, as she has been likely to do any time these past ten years, and may do at any time in the future, then—” His eyes sought out Cassandra where she stood near her kinswomen, appraisingly moving up and down her body; and Allart felt a quite unexpected anger. How dare Damon-Rafael talk that way? Cassandra was his!

  Damon-Rafael said, “Almost I am tempted to delay your marriage for a year. Should Cassilde die in bearing the child she now carries, I would be free to make Cassandra my wife. I suppose they would even be grateful, when she came to share my throne.”

  “You speak treason,” Allart said, genuinely shocked now. “King Regis still sits on the throne, and Felix is his legitimate son and will succeed him.”

  Damon-Rafael’s shrug was contemptuous. “The old king? He will not live a year. I stood by his side today by our father’s grave; and I, too, have some of the foresight of the Hasturs of Elhalyn. He will lie there before the seasons turn again. As for Felix—well, I have heard the rumors, and no doubt you have heard them, too. He is emmasca; one of the elders who saw him stripped was bribed, they say, and another had faulty eyesight. Whatever the truth, he has been married seven years, and his wife looks not like a woman who has been well treated in her marriage bed; nor has there ever been so much as a rumor that she was breeding. No, Allart. Treason or no, I tell you I will be on the throne within seven years. Look with your own foresight.”

  Allart said very quietly, “On the throne, or dead, my brother.”

  Damon-Rafael looked at him with enmity and said, “Those old she-males of the Council might prefer the legitimate son of a younger brother to the nedestro of the elder. Will you thrust your hand within the flame of Hali and pledge to support the claim of my son, legitimate or no?”

  Allart fought to find the true sight through images of a kingdom raging in flames, a throne within his grasp, storms raging across the Hellers, a keep tumbling as if blasted by earthquake—no! He was a man of peace; he had no will to fight with his brother for a throne, see the Domains run red with the blood of a terrible fratricidal war. He bowed his head.

  “The gods ordained it, Damon-Rafael, when you were born my father’s eldest son. I will swear what oath you require of me, my brother and my lord.”

  In Damon-Rafael’s look triumph mingled with contempt. Allart knew that if their positions had been reversed, he would have had to fight to the death for his inheritance. He tensed with dislike as Damon-Rafael embraced him and said, “So, I will have your oath and your strong hand to guard my sons; then perhaps the old saying is true, and I need not feel my back bare and brotherless.”

  He looked with regret across the room again at Cassandra, wrapped in her blue veil. “I suppose—No, I am afraid you must take your bride. All the Aillards would be offended if I made her barragana, and I cannot keep you both unwed for another year against the possibility that Cassilde might die and I should be free to wed again.”

  Cassandra—in his hands? Damon-Rafael, who thought of her only as a pawn for a political alliance, to cement the support of her kinfolk? The thought sickened him. Yet Allart recalled his own resolve: to take no wife, to father no sons to bear the curse of his laran. He said, “In return for my support, then, brother, spare me this marriage.”

  “I cannot,” Damon-Rafael said regretfully, “though I would willingly take her myself. But I dare not offend the Aillards that way. Never mind, you may not long be burdened with her; she is young, and many of those Aillard women have died in bearing their first child. It is likely she will do so, too. Or she may be like Cassilde, fertile enough, but bearing only stillborn babes. If you keep her breeding and miscarrying for a few years, my sons will be safe and no one would claim you had not done your best for our clan; it will be her fault, not yours.”

  Allart said, “I would not want to treat any woman so!”

  “Brother, I care not at all how you treat her, so that you wed her and bed her and the Aillards are bound to us by kin-ties. I did but suggest a way you might be rid of her without discredit to your own manhood.” He shrugged, dismissing the matter. “But enough of this. We will ride for Thendara tomorrow, and when the heirship is settled, then we will ride here for your wedding again. Will you drink with me?”

  “I have drunk enough,” Allart lied, eager to avoid further contact with his brother. His foresight had seen truly. Not in all the worlds of probability was it written anywhere that he and Damon-Rafael would be friends, and if Damon-Rafael should come to the throne—and Allart’s laran told him that might very well be—it might be that Allart must even guard his life, and the lives of his sons.

  Holy Bearer of Burdens, strengthen me! Another reason I should father no sons to come after me—that I must fear for them, too, at my brother’s hands!

  Chapter Seven

  In amiable mood, eager to do honor to his young kinsman, His Grace Regis II had agreed to perform the ceremony of marriage; his lined old face glowed with kindliness as he spoke the ritual words and locked the copper-chased bracelets, the catenas, first on Allart’s wrist and then on Cassandra’s.

  “Parted in fact,” he said, unlocking the bracelets, “may you never be so in spirit or in heart.” They kissed, and he said, “May you be forever one.”

  Allart felt Cassandra trembling as they stood, hands joined by the precious metal.

  She is afraid, he thought, and no wonder. She knows nothing of me; her kinsmen sold her to me as they might have sold a hawk or brood mare.

  In earlier days (Allart had read something of Domain history at Nevarsin), marriages like this would have been unthinkable. It had been considered a form of selfishness for women to bear children to one man alone, and the gene pool had been broadened by increasing the number of possible combinations. Briefly Allart wondered if that had been how they first bred the accursed laran into their race; or was it true that they were descended from the children of gods who came here to Hali and fathered sons to rule over their kindred? Or were the tales true of crosses with the nonhuman chieri, who gave their caste both the sexless emmasca, and the gift of laran?

  Whatever had happened, these long-past and mostly forgotten days of group marriage had vanished as families began to climb to power; inheritance, and the breeding program, had made exact knowledge of paternity important. Now a man Is judged only by his sons, and a woman by her abilities as a breeder of sons—and she knows it is only for this that she has been given to me!

  But the ceremony had come to a close, and Allart felt his wife’s hands cold and shaking in his as he bent to touch her lips, briefly, in the ritual kiss which ended it, and led her out to dance in an explosion of congratulations, goodwill, and applause from his gathered kinsmen and peers. Allart, hypersensitive, felt the sharp-edged overtones in the congratulatory words, and thought that few of them meant their goodwill. His brother Damon-Rafael probably meant his goodwill sincerely. Allart had stood before the holy things at Hali that morning, thrusting his hand into the cold fire that did not burn unless the speaker knew himself forsworn, and pledged his honor as Hastur to support his brother’s wardenship of the clan, and his sons’ succession to the throne. The other kinsmen congratulated him because he had made a politically powerful alliance with the strong clan of the Aillards
of Valeron, or because they hoped to ally themselves with him by marriage through the sons and daughters this marriage might engender, or simply because they took pleasure in the sight of a wedding, and the drinking and dancing and revelry, making a welcome break from the official mourning for Dom Stephen.

  “You are silent, my husband,” Cassandra said.

  Allart started, hearing a pleading note in her voice. It is worse for her, poor girl. I was consulted—somewhat—about this marriage; she was not even allowed to say yea or nay. Why do we do this to our women, since it is through them that we keep these precious inheritances which have come to mean so much to us!

  He said gently, “My silence was not meant for you, damisela. This day has given me much to think about; that is all. But I am churlish to think so deeply in your presence.”

  The level eyes, so deeply lashed that they appeared dark, met his, with a gleam of humor in their depths. “Again you are treating me like a maiden to be flattered into silence with a pretty compliment; and I presume to remind you, my lord, that it is hardly seemly to call me damisela when I am your wife.”

  “God help me, yes,” he said, despairing, and she looked at him, a faint frown stitching itself across her smooth brow.

  “Is it so unwilling that you have been wed? I was brought up since childhood to know I must marry as my kinsmen bade me; I thought a man more free to choose.”

  “I think no man is free; at least, not here in the Domains.” He wondered if this was why there was so much revelry at a wedding, so much dancing and drinking—in order that the sons and daughters of Hastur and Cassilda might forget they were being bred like stud-animals and brood-mares for the sake of the accursed laran that brought power to their line!

  But how could he forget? Allart was again in the grip of the out-of-focus time sense which was the curse of his laran, futures diverging from this very moment with the land flaming in war and struggle, hovering hawks like those which had flung clingfire at his air-car, great broad-winged gliders with men hanging from them, fires rising in the forests, strange snowcapped peaks from the ranges beyond Nevarsin which he had never seen, the face of a child surrounded with the pale blaze of lightnings… Are all these things coming into my life, truly, or are they only things which may come?