Allart said violently, “It is evil enough that we Hasturs meddle with the stuff of life of breeding riyachiyas and such abominations by genetic manipulation of our seed! But to do that with my own sons and daughters? Or to destroy, willingly, a life I myself have given? The thought sickens me!”
“I am not the keeper of your conscience, or of Cassandra’s,” Renata said. “This is only one choice; there must be others more to your liking. Yet I think it a lesser evil. I know that someday I shall be forced to marry, and if I am pledged to bear children to my caste, I will find myself caught between two choices which seem to me almost equally cruel: to bear, perhaps, monsters of laran to my caste, or to destroy them unborn in my womb.” Allart saw her shudder.
“It was for this I became a monitor, that I might not contribute, unknowing, to this breeding program which has brought these monstrosities into our race. Now, knowing what I must do has made it the less endurable; I am not a god, to determine who will live and who will die. Perhaps you and Cassandra have done right after all, to give no life you must take away again.”
“And while we await these choices,” Allart said bitterly, “we charge batteries that idle folk may play with air-cars, and light their homes without dirtying their hands on resin and pitch, and mine metals to spare others the labor of bringing them from the ground, and we create weapons ever more fearful, to destroy lives over which we have no shadow of right.”
Renata went very white. “No! Now, that I had not heard. Allart, is this your foresight, is war to break out again?”
“I saw, and spoke unthinking,” Allart said, staring at her in dread. The sounds and sights of war were already around him, blurring her presence, and he thought, Perhaps I will be killed in battle, be spared further wrestling with destiny or conscience!
“It is your war and none of mine,” she said. “My father has no quarrel with Serrais and no allegiance to Hastur; if the war breaks out anew, he will send for me, demanding again that I return home to marry. Ah, merciful Avarra, I am filled with good advice as to how you and your lady shall conduct your marriage and I have neither courage nor wisdom to face my own! Would that I had your foresight, Allart, to know which of many evil choices would bring the least of wrong.”
“Would that I could tell you,” he said, taking her hands for a moment. With the gesture Allart’s laran clearly showed Renata and himself riding away northward together… where? For what purpose? The image faded and was gone, to be replaced by a whirl of images: The swooping flight of a great bird—or was it truly a bird? A child’s face terrified, frozen in the glare of lightnings. A rain of clingfire falling, a great tower breaking, crumbling, smashing into rubble. Renata’s face all ablaze with tenderness, her body under his own… Dazed with the swirling pictures, he struggled to shut away the crowding futures.
“Perhaps this is the answer!” Renata said with sudden violence. “To breed monsters and let them loose on our people, make weapons ever more fearful, wipe out our accursed race and let the gods make another, a people without this dreadful, monstrous curse of laran!”
In the aftermath of her outburst it was so still that Allart could hear somewhere the morning sounds of wakening birds chirping, the soft wet sounds of the cloud-waves along the shores of Hali. Renata drew a long, shuddering breath. But when she spoke again she was calm, the disciplined monitor.
“But this is afar from what it was laid on me to say to you. For the sake of our work, you and Cassandra must not again work in the same matrix circle until all is well with you; till you have given and received your love and come to terms with it, or until you have decided for all time that it shall never be so, and you can be friends without indecision or desire. For the time, perhaps, you can be placed in different circles for working; after all, there are eighteen of us here, and you can work separately. But if you do not go away together, one of you must go. Even in separate circles, there is too much tension between you for you to dwell together under this roof. I think you should be the one to go. You have had, at Nevarsin, some teaching to master your laran, and Cassandra has not. But it is for you to say, Allart. In law, your marriage has made you Cassandra’s master, and if you wish to exercise the right, the keeper of her will and conscience, too.”
He ignored the irony. “If you think it would profit my lady to remain,” he said, “then she shall stay and I will go.” Bleakness came over him. He had found happiness at Nevarsin and been driven forth, never to return. Now he had found useful work here, the full possession of his laran gift, and was he to go forth from here, too?
Is there no place for me on the face of this world? Must I forever be driven, homeless, by the winds of circumstance? Then he was wryly amused at himself. He complained because his laran showed him too many futures, now he was dismayed because he saw none. Renata, too, was driven by choices not under her own control.
“You have worked all the night, cousin,” he said, “and then you have stayed here and wrestled with my troubles and my wife’s, and taken no thought for your own weariness.”
Her smile glinted deep in her eyes, though it did not reach her mouth. “Oh, it has eased me to think of troubles other than my own; didn’t you know that? The burdens of others are light to the shoulders. But I will go and sleep. And you?”
Allart shook his head. “I am not sleepy. I think perhaps I will go and walk in the lake for a little while, look at the strange fish or birds or whatever they may be and try to decide again what they are. Did our forefathers breed them, I wonder, with their passion for breeding strange things? Perhaps I, too, will find peace in regarding something afar from my own troubles. Bless you, kinswoman, for your kindness.”
“Why? I solved nothing. I have given you more worries, that is all,” she said. “But I will go and sleep, and perhaps dream an answer to all our troubles. Is there such a laran as that, I wonder?”
“Probably,” Allart said, “but no doubt it has been given to someone who knows not how to use it for his own good; that is how these things happen in this world. Otherwise we might somehow find our way out of these worries and be like the game-pawn which manages to wriggle off the board without being captured. Go and sleep, Renata. All gods forbid you should bear the burden of our fears and worries, even in dreams.”
Chapter Twelve
That evening, when Allart joined the members of his circle in the lower hall at Hali, he found them all talking excitedly, the six who had worked with him that morning, and all the others. Across the room he caught Renata’s eyes; she was pale with dread. He asked Barak, who stood at the edge of the circle, “What is it, what’s happened?”
“The war is upon us again. The Ridenow have launched an attack with bowmen and clingfire arrows, and Castle Hastur, in the Kilgbard Hills, is under siege by air-cars and incendiaries. Every able-bodied man of Hastur and Aillard allegiance is out to combat the fire raging in the forests, or to defend the castle. We had word from the relays at Neskaya. Arielle was in the relay nets and heard—”
“Gods above,” Allart said, and Cassandra came and stood looking up at him, troubled.
“Will the lord Damon-Rafael send for you, my husband? Must you go to the war?”
“I do not know,” he said. “I was long enough in the monastery that my brother may think me too little skilled in campaign and strategy, and wish another of his paxmen to command the men.” He fell silent, thinking, If one of us must go, perhaps it is better if I go to war. If I do not come back, then she will be freed, and we will be out of this hopeless impasse. The woman was looking up at him, her eyes filled with tears, but he kept his face cold, impassive, the disciplined and impersonal glance of the monk. He said, “Why are you not resting, my lady? Renata said you would be ill. Should you not keep your bed?”
“I heard the talk of war and I was frightened,” she said, seeking for his hand, but he gently drew it away, turning to Coryn.
The Keeper said, “I would think you better employed here, Allart. You have the strength that makes
our work easier, and since the war has broken out again, we are sure to be asked to make clingfire for weapons. And since we are to lose Renata—”
“Are we to lose Renata?”
Coryn nodded. “She is a neutral in this war; her father has already sent word on the relays that she must be sent home under a safe-conduct. He wishes her out of the combat area at once. I am always sorry to lose a good monitor,” Coryn added, “but I believe, with training, Cassandra will be equally skillful. Monitoring is not difficult, but Arielle is better as a technician. Do you think, Renata, that you will have time to instruct Cassandra in the techniques of monitoring before you go?”
“I will try,” Renata said, coming toward them, “and I will stay as long as I can. I do not want to leave the Tower—” and she looked up at Allart helplessly. He remembered what she had told him only that morning.
“I shall be sorry to see you go, kinswoman,” he said, taking her hands gently in his own.
“I would rather stay here with you,” she said. “Would that I were a man like you and free to choose.”
“Ah, Renata,” he said, “men are not free either, not free to refuse war and dangers. I who am a Hastur lord can be sent unwilling into battle as if I were the least of my brother’s vassals.”
They stood for a moment, hands clasped, unaware of Cassandra’s eyes on them, nor did either of them see her leave the hall. Then Coryn came up to them.
“How we shall need you, Renata! Lord Damon-Rafael has sent to us already for a new supply of clingfire and I have devised a new weapon that I am eager to experiment with.” He took a careless seat in the window, as merrily as if he were devising a new sport or game. “A homing device set to a trap-matrix to kill only a particular enemy, so that if we aim it—for instance—at Lord Ridenow, it will do no good for his paxman to throw himself in front of his lord’s body. Of course we would have to get his thought-pattern, resonances from some captured article of his clothing, perhaps, or better yet, jewelry he has worn next to his body. Or by probing some captured man of his. Such a weapon will harm no one else, for nothing but the particular pattern of his mind will detonate it; it will fly to him, and him only, and kill him.”
Renata shuddered, and Allart absentmindedly stroked her hand.
“Clingfire is too hard to make.” Arielle said. “I wish they could find some better weapon. First we must mine the red stuff from the ground, then separate it atom by atom by distilling at high heat, and that is dangerous. Last time I worked with it, one of the glass vessels exploded; fortunately I was wearing protective clothing, but even so—” She thrust out her hand, showing a wicked scar, round, cicatrized, a deep depression in the flesh. “Only a fragment, only a grain, but it burned to the bone and had to be cut away.”
Coryn lifted the girl’s hand to his lips and kissed it. “You bear an honorable scar of war, preciosa. Not many women do. I have devised vessels which will not break at whatever heat; we have all put a binding spell on them so that they cannot shatter no matter what happens. Even if they should crack or break, the binding spell will hold them so that they stay in their shape and will not fly and shatter and injure the bystanders.”
“How did you do that?” Mira asked.
“It was easy,” Coryn said. “You set their pattern with a matrix so they can take no other shape. They can crack, and their contents can leak out, but they cannot fly asunder. If they are smashed the pieces will sooner or later settle gently down—we cannot put gravity wholly in abeyance—but they will not fly with enough strength to cut anyone. But to work with a ninth-level matrix, as we must do when refining clingfire, we need a circle of nine, and a technician, or better yet, another Keeper, to hold the binding spell on the vessels. I wonder,” Coryn added, gazing at Allart, “would you make a Keeper, given training?”
“I have no such ambitions, kinsman.”
“Yet it would keep you away from the war,” Coryn said frankly, “and if you feel guilt at that, remember you will be better employed here, and not without risk. None of us is free of scars. Look,” he added, holding up his hands, showing a deep, long-healed burn. “I took a backflow once, when a technician faltered. The matrix was like a live coal. I thought it would burn to the bones of my hands like clingfire. As for suffering—well, if we are to be working circles of nine, night and day, for the making of weapons—well, we will suffer, and our women with us, if we must spend so much time in the circles.”
Arielle colored as the men standing around began to chuckle softly; they all knew what Coryn meant: the major side effect of matrix work, for men, was a long period of impotence. Seeing Allan’s stiff smile, Coryn chuckled again.
“Perhaps we should all be monks, and trained to endure that, with cold and hunger,” he said, laughing. “Allart, tell me. I have heard that on your way from Nevarsin you were attacked by a clingfire device which exploded—but you managed to wrest it loose so that it exploded at a distance. Tell me about that.”
Allart told what he could remember of the episode, and Coryn nodded gravely. “I had thought of such a missile, making it superfragile, to be filled either with clingfire or with ordinary incendiaries. I have one which will set an entire forest ablaze, so that they must withdraw fighting men to fight the fire. And I have a weapon which is like those fancy drops our artisans make, which can be struck with hammers or trodden on by beasts, and will not break, but the merest touch against the long glass tail and they shatter into a thousand fragments. This one cannot be prematurely exploded as you did with the one sent against your father, because nothing, nothing, will explode it except the detonating thoughts of the one who sent it. I am not sorry for the end of the truce. We must have a chance to try these weapons somewhere!”
“Would they might stay forever untried!” Allart said with a shudder.
“Ah, there speaks the monk,” Barak said. “A few years will cure you of such treasonous nonsense, my lad. Those Ridenow usurpers who would crowd their way into our Domain are many and fertile, some of the fathers with six or seven sons, all land-hungry and quarrelsome. Of my father’s seven sons, two died at birth and another when laran came on him at adolescence. Yet it seems to me almost worse to have many sons who survive to manhood, so that an estate must be cut into slivers to support them all; or they must range outward, as those Ridenow have done, seeking lands enough for them to rule, and conquer.”
Coryn smiled without even a trace of mirth. “True,” he said. “One son is needful, so needful they will do anything to insure that one survives; but if two should live, it is too many. I was the younger son, and my elder brother is well pleased that I should dwell here as Keeper, powerless in the great events of our time. Your brother is more loving, Allart—at least he has given you in marriage!”
“Yes,” Allart said, “but I have sworn to uphold his claim to the throne, should anything befall King Regis—may his reign be long!”
“Already his reign has been overlong,” said a Keeper from one of the other circles. “But I am not looking forward with any pleasure to what will come when your brother and Prince Felix begin to struggle for the throne. War with Ridenow is evil enough, but a war of brethren within the Hastur Domain would be far worse.”
“Prince Felix is emmasca, I have heard,” Barak said. “I do not think he will fight to keep his crown—eggs can’t fight stones!”
“Well, he is safe enough while the old king lives,” Coryn said. “But after that it is only a matter of time till he is challenged and exposed. Who, I wonder, did they bribe, to let him be named as heir in the first place? But perhaps you were fortunate, Allart, for your brother needed your support badly enough to find you a wife, and a lovely and winning lady she is indeed.”
“I thought I had seen her here but a moment ago,” said the other Keeper, “but now she is gone.”
Allart looked around, suddenly filled with a nameless foreboding. A group of the younger women of the Tower were dancing at one end of the long room; he had thought her among them. Again he saw h
er lying dead in his arms… but he dismissed the picture as an illusion born of fear and his mental disquiet.
“Perhaps she has gone upstairs to her room again. Renata bade her keep her bed, for she was not well, and I was surprised she had come down at all tonight.”
“But she is not in her room,” Renata said, coming to them, picking up his thought, her face white. “Where can she have gone, Allart? I went to ask if she wished me to instruct her as a monitor, and she is not within the Tower at all.”
“Merciful Avarra!” Suddenly the diverging futures crashed in upon him again and Allart knew where Cassandra had gone. Without a word of leavetaking he turned away from the men and hurried out, going through halls and corridors, stepping through the force-field and out of the Tower.
The sun, a great crimson ball, hung like fire on the distant hills, coating the lake with flame.
She saw me with Renata. I would not touch her hand, though she was weeping; yet I kissed Renata before her eyes. Only in friendship, as I might have comforted a sister, only because I could touch Renata without that agony of love and guilt. But Cassandra saw and did not understand…
He shouted Cassandra’s name, but there was no reply, only the soft splashing sound of the cloud-waters. He flung off his outer garment and began to run. At the very edge of the sand he saw two small high-heeled sandals, dyed blue, not kicked this way and that but lined up with meticulous care, as if she had knelt here, delaying. Allart kicked off his boots and ran into the lake.
The Ages of Chaos Page 16