The Ages of Chaos

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Allart came toward them, troubled. “Are you ill, Cassandra?”

  Renata answered for her. “Overwearied, no more, and in need of food and rest.” Mira had gone to a cupboard at the far end of the room and was setting out some of the food and wine kept there so that the circle members could refresh themselves at once from the tremendous energy-drains of their work. Renata went and searched among the provisions for a long bar of compressed nuts, sticky with honey. She put it into Cassandra’s hand, but the dark-haired woman shook her head.

  “I do not like sweets. I will wait for a proper breakfast.”

  “Eat it,” Renata said, in command voice. “You need the strength.”

  Cassandra broke off a piece of the sticky confection and put it unto her mouth. She grimaced at the cloying taste, but chewed it obediently. Arielle joined them, and throwing down the tool and taking a handful of dried fruits, she put them greedily into her mouth. When she could speak plain she said, “The last full dozen of the batteries are not charged, and the last three we finished will have to be done again; they are not to full capacity.”

  “What a nuisance!” Coryn glared at Cassandra.

  “Let her alone!” Renata insisted. “We have all been beginners!”

  Coryn poured himself some wine and sipped it. “I am sorry, kinswoman,” he said at last, smiling at Cassandra, his normal good nature taking over again. “Are you wearied, cousin? You must not exhaust yourself for a few batteries.”

  Arielle wiped her fingers, sticky with the honeyed fruit. “If there is any work more tedious from Dalereuth to the Hellers than charging batteries, I cannot imagine it.”

  “Better that than mining,” Coryn said. “Whenever I work with metals, I come out exhausted for half a moon. I am glad there is no more work to be done this year. Every time we go into the earth for mining, I come back to consciousness feeling as if I had lifted every spoonful of it with my own two hands!”

  Allart, disciplined by the years of arduous physical and mental training at Nevarsin, was less weary than the others, but his muscles were aching with tension and inactivity. He saw Cassandra break another piece of the sticky honey-nut confection, felt her grimace as she put it into her mouth. They were still in rapport and he felt her revulsion for the oversweet stuff as if he were eating it himself.

  “Don’t eat that if you don’t like it. Surely on the shelves there is something more to your liking,” he said, and turned to rummage in them.

  Cassandra shrugged. “Renata said this would restore me more quickly than anything else. I don’t mind.”

  Allart took a piece of it himself. Barak, who had been sipping a cup of wine, finished it and came toward them.

  “Are you recovered, kinswoman? The work is indeed fatiguing when you are new to it, and there are no suitable restoratives here.” He laughed aloud. “Perhaps you should have a spoonful or so of kireseth honey; it is the best of all restoratives after long weariness, and you especially should—” Abruptly he coughed and turned away, pretending he had choked on the last swallow in his glass, but they all heard the words in his mind as if he had spoken them aloud. You especially should take such restoratives, since you are so new-made a bride and have more need of them… but before the words had escaped his tongue, Barak had recalled what indeed they all knew, having been in close telepathic rapport with Allart and Cassandra: the real state of affairs between them.

  The only amend he could make for the tactless jest was to turn away, pretend the words unthought as they had been unspoken. There was a brief silence in the matrix chamber and then they all began talking very loudly and all at once about something else. Coryn took up the metal tool and checked a couple of the batteries himself. Mira rubbed her cold hands and said she was ready for a hot bath and a massage.

  Renata put an arm around Cassandra’s waist.

  “You, too, sweetheart. You are cold and cramped. Go down now; send for some proper breakfast and have a hot bath. I will send my own bath-woman; she is extra skilled at massage, and can loosen those tight muscles and nerves of yours so you can sleep. Don’t feel guilty. All of us overworked in our first season here. No one likes to admit weakness, and we have all done it. When you have had some hot food and a bath and massage, then lie down and sleep. Have her put hot bricks at your feet and cover you well.”

  Cassandra demurred. “I do not like to deprive you of her services.”

  “Chiya, I do not let myself get into such a state anymore. Go now. Tell Lucetta I said to tend you as she does me when I am out of the circle. Do as you are told, cousin. This is my business, to know what you need even when you do not know it yourself,” she said. Allart thought she sounded motherly, as if she were a generation Cassandra’s senior, instead of a girl Cassandra’s own age or less.

  “I will go down, too,” Mira said. Coryn drew Arielle’s hand through his arm and they left together. Allart was about to follow when Renata laid a feather-light hand on his arm.

  “Allart, if you are not too weary, I would like a word with you.”

  Allart had been thinking of his luxurious room on a lower floor, and a cool bath, but he was not really weary; he said so, and Renata nodded.

  “If this is the training of the Nevarsin brethren, perhaps we should acquire it for our circles. You are as steady and unwearied as Barak, and he has been part of our circles almost as long as I have been alive. You should teach us something of your secrets! Or do the brethren pledge you to secrecy?”

  Allart shook his head. “It is only a discipline of breathing.”

  “Come. Shall we walk outdoors in the sunshine?” Together they went down to the ground level, stepped through the force-field which protected the Tower circle against intrusion when they were working, and went into the growing brilliance of the morning. Allart walked silently beside Renata. He was not unduly tired, but he was tense and sleepless, his nerves jangling. As always when he relaxed his barriers even a little, his laran wove conflicting futures around him, diverging but just as perceptible as the green lawns sloping away toward the lake and the cloudy shores of Hali.

  Silent, they walked side by side along the shore. Liriel, the violet moon, just past full, was setting dimly over the lake. Green Idriel, the palest of crescents, hung high and pale over the faraway rim of mountains.

  Allart knew—he had known when first he set eyes on Renata—that this was the other of the two women he had seen again and again, and again, in the diverging futures of his life. From that first day in the Tower he had been on guard against her, speaking no more than the barest courtesies, avoiding her as much as it was possible to avoid anyone in the close quarters of the Tower. He had come to respect her competence as a monitor, to value her quick laughter and good humor, and this morning, watching her ministering to Cassandra’s collapse, he had been touched by her kindness.

  But until this moment they had never exchanged a single word outside the line of their duties in the circle.

  Now hampered by fatigue he saw Renata’s face, not as it was—gentle, impersonal, withdrawn, the look of a Tower-trained monitor at work, speaking of professional things—but as it might be in any of the diverging, fanning futures which might come to pass. Although he had barricaded himself against it, never allowing such thoughts freedom, he had seen her warmed by love, known the tenderness she could summon, had possessed her as if in a dream. This, overlaid upon the real state of affairs between them, confused and embarrassed him, as if he must face a woman about whom he had dreamed erotically, and conceal it from her. No. No woman had any part in his life except Cassandra, and he had firmly resolved how limited that part should be. He steeled himself against any lowering of these barriers and looked on Renata with the cold, impersonal gaze, almost hostile, of the Nevarsin monk.

  They walked together, hearing the whispering sound of the soft cloud-waves. Allart had grown up on the shores of Hali, and had heard it all his life, but now he seemed to hear it freshly through Renata’s ears.

  “I never tire of th
is sound. It is so like, and so unlike, water. I suppose no one could swim in this lake?”

  “No, you would sink. Slowly, it is true, but you would sink; it will not hold you up. But you can breathe it, you know, so it does not matter if you sink. Many times in my boyhood I have walked along the lake-bottom to watch the strange things within it.”

  “You can breathe it? And you will not drown?”

  “No, no, it is not water at all—I do not know what it is. If you breathe it too long, you will become faint, and feel too weary even to take breaths, and there is some danger that you will become unconscious and die without remembering to breathe. But for a little while it is exhilarating. And there are strange creatures. I do not know whether to call them fish or bird, nor could I say whether they swim in the cloud or fly through it, but they are very beautiful. They used to say that to breathe the cloud of the lake conferred long life and that was why we Hasturs are long-lived. They say, too, that when Hastur, the son of the Lord of Light, fell to the shores at Hali, he gave immortality to those who dwelt there, and that we Hasturs lost that gift because of our sinful lives. But these things are all fairy tales.”

  “You think so being a cristoforo?”

  “I think so being a man of reason,” Allart said, smiling. “I cannot conceive of a god who would meddle with the laws of the world he created.”

  “Yet the Hasturs are long-lived, in truth.”

  “I was told at Nevarsin that all those of the blood of Hastur bear chieri blood; and the chieri are all but immortal.”

  Renata sighed. “I have heard, too, that they are emmasca, neither man nor woman, and thus free of the perils of being either. I think I envy them that.”

  It struck Allart that Renata gave tirelessly of her own strength; yet there was none to care if she herself was overwearied.

  “Go and rest, kinswoman. Whatever you have to say to me, it cannot be so urgent that it cannot wait till you have had the food and rest to which you were so quick to send my dear lady.”

  “But I would rather say it while Cassandra is sleeping. I must say it to one of you, and though I know you will think it an intrusion, you are older than Cassandra and better able to endure what I must say. Well, enough of apology and preamble… You should not have come here with Cassandra new-made a bride and your marriage still unconsummated.”

  Allart opened his mouth to speak, but she gestured him to silence. “I warned you, remember, that you would think it an intrusion of your privacy and hers. I have been in the Tower since I was fourteen; I know the courtesies of such things. But also I am monitor here, and responsible for the well-being of everyone in the Tower. Anything which interferes— no, hear me out, Allart—anything which impairs your functioning, disrupts us all. I knew before you had been here three days that your bride was virgin still, but I did not intrude, not then. I thought perhaps you had been married for political reasons and did not like one another. But now, after half a year, it is obvious that you are madly in love. The tension between you is disrupting us all, and making Cassandra ill. She is so tense all the time that she cannot even properly monitor the state of her own nerves and body, which she should be able to do by now. I can do it for her, a little, when you are in the circle, but I cannot do it all the time and I ought not to do for her what she should learn to do for herself. Now, I am sure you had some good reason for coming here in this state, but whatever your reasons, you knew too little of how a Tower circle must function. You can endure this; you have had the Nevarsin training and you can function even when you are unhappy. Cassandra cannot. It is as simple as that.”

  Allart said defensively, “I did not think Cassandra was so unhappy.”

  Renata looked at him and shook her head. “If you do not know, it is only that you have not allowed yourself to know. The wisest thing would be to take her away until things are settled between you; then, if you wish, you can return. We are always in need of trained workers, and your training at Nevarsin is very valuable. As for Cassandra, I think she has the talent to become a monitor, even a technician if the work interests her. But not now. This is a time for the two of you to be alone, not disrupting us all with your unsolaced needs.”

  Allart listened, cold with dismay. His own life had been lived so long under iron discipline that it had never occurred to him that his own needs, or Cassandra’s unhappiness, could interfere to a hair’s weight with the circle. But of course he should have known.

  “Take her away, Allart. Tonight would not be too soon.”

  Allart said through mounting misery, “I would give all I possess, I think, if I were free to do that. But Cassandra and I have pledged one another—”

  He turned away, but the thoughts were clear in his mind, and Renata looked at him in dismay.

  “Cousin, what could prompt you to a vow so rash? I do not speak only of your duty to kinsmen and clan.”

  “No,” said Allart. “Don’t speak of that, Renata, not even in friendship. I have heard all too much of that and I need no one to remind me. But you know what kind of laran I have and what a curse it has been to me. I would not perpetuate it in sons and grandsons. This breeding program among those families with laran, which prompts you to speak of duty to caste and kin, it is wrong, it is evil. I will not pass it on!” He spoke vehemently, trying to blot out the sight of Renata’s face, not as it was, grave with kindly concern, but as it might be, all pity wakened, tenderness and passion.

  “A curse indeed, Allart! I, too, have many fears and doubts about the breeding program. I do not think any woman in the Domains is ever free of them. Yet, Cassandra’s unhappiness, and yours, is needless.”

  “There is more, and worse,” Allart said desperately. “At the end of every road I can foresee, it seems, Cassandra lies dead in bearing my child. Even if I could compromise my conscience to father a child who might bear this curse, I could not bring that fate on her. So we have pledged to live apart.”

  “Cassandra is very young and a virgin,” Renata said, “and may be excused for knowing no better than that, though it seems wicked to me to keep a woman in ignorance of anything which may so closely affect her life. But surely the choice you have made is too extreme, since it is apparent even to outsiders that you love each other. You can hardly be unaware that there are ways—” She turned her face away, embarrassed, as she spoke. Such things were not spoken of much even between husband and wife. Allart was embarrassed, too.

  She cannot be older than Cassandra! In the name of all the gods, how does a young woman, gently reared, of good family and still unmarried, come to know of such things?

  The thought was very clear in his mind, and Renata could not help picking it up. She said dryly, “You have been a monk, cousin, and for that reason alone I am willing to admit that perhaps you really do not know the answer to that question. Perhaps you still believe that it is men alone who have such needs, and that women are immune to them. I do not want to scandalize you, Allart, but women in the Tower need not, and cannot, live by the foolish laws and customs of this time, which pretend that women are no more than toys to serve men’s desires, with none of their own, save to breed sons for their clans. I am no virgin, Allart. Any one of us— man or woman—must learn, before we have been long in the circle, to face our own needs and desires, or we cannot put all our strength into the work we do. Or, if we try, such things happen as befell this morning—or worse, much worse.”

  Allart looked away from her, embarrassed. His first, almost automatic thought was pure reaction to his childhood teachings. The men of the Domains know this, and still let their women come here?

  Renata shrugged, answering the unspoken question.

  “It is the price they pay for the work we do—that we women shall to some extent be freed, for our term here, of the laws which emphasize inheritance and breeding. I think most of them choose not to inquire too closely. Also, it is not safe for a woman working in the circles to interrupt her term with pregnancy.” She added after a moment, “If you wish, Mira can
instruct Cassandra—or I myself. Perhaps she would take it more easily from a girl her own age.”

  If anyone had told me, while I dwelt at Nevarsin, that there was any woman alive with whom I could speak openly of such things, and that woman neither wife nor kinswoman, I would never have believed it. I had never thought there could be simple honesty between man and woman, this way.

  “That would solve our worst fears, indeed, while we dwelt in the Tower. Perhaps we can have—this much. Indeed, we spoke of this, a little.” Cassandra’s words echoed in his mind as if they had been spoken only moments ago, not half a season gone by:

  “I can bear it, as things are now, Allart, but I do not know if I could hold to such a resolve. I love you, Allart. I cannot trust myself. Sooner or later I would want your child, and it is easier this way, without the possibility and the temptation…”

  Hearing the echo in his mind, Renata said indignantly, “Easier for her, perhaps—” and stopped herself. “Forgive me, I have no right. Cassandra, too, is entitled to her own needs and desires, not to what you or I think she ought to feel. When a girl has been taught, since she was old enough to understand the words, that a woman’s reason for living is to bear children to her husband’s caste and clan, it is not easy to change that, or to find some other purpose for living.” She fell silent, and Allart thought her voice sounded too bitter for her youth. He wondered how old she was, and they were so close in rapport that Renata answered the unspoken question.

  “I am only a month or two older than Cassandra. I am not yet free of the desire to bear a child someday, but I had fears very like yours about this breeding program. Of course it is only men who are allowed to voice such fears and qualms; women are not supposed to think of such things. I sometimes feel that women in the Domains are not supposed to think at all! But my father was indulgent with me, and I won the promise that I should not marry till I was twenty, and that I might have training in a Tower, and I have learned much. For instance, Allart, if you and Cassandra chose to have a child, and she became pregnant, then with the aid of a monitor she could probe the unborn deeply, into the very germ plasm. If it should bear the kind of laran you fear, or any lethal recessive which could kill Cassandra in bearing it, she need not bring it to birth.”