The Ages of Chaos

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Allart rode silently, apart from the rest, tormented by the memory of Cassandra at the moment of their parting, her lovely eyes filled with the tears she had struggled so valiantly not to shed before him. At least he had not left her pregnant; so far the gods had been merciful.

  If there were any gods, and if they cared what befell mankind…

  Ahead he could hear Renata chatting lightheartedly with Donal. They seemed so young, both of them. Allart knew he was only three or four years older than Donal, but it seemed he had never been as young as that. Seeing what will be, what may be, what may never be, it seems I live a lifetime in every day that passes. He envied the boy.

  They were riding through a land bearing the scars of war, blackened fields with traces of fire, roofless houses, abandoned farms. So few travelers passed them on the road that after the first day Renata did not even bother to keep her cloak modestly folded about her face.

  Once an air-car flew low overhead; it circled, dipped low to scrutinize them, then turned about and flew back southward. The guardsman with the truce-flag dropped back to ride at Allart’s side.

  “Truce-flag or not, vai dom, I wish you had agreed to an escort. Those bastards of Ridenow may choose not to honor a truce-flag; and seeing your banners, it might occur to them that it would be worth much to capture the heir to Elhalyn and hold him to ransom from his Hastur kinfolk. It would not be the first time such a thing had happened.”

  “If they will not honor a flag of truce,” Allart said reasonably, “it will avail us nothing to defeat them in this war, either, for they would not honor our victory or the terms of surrender. I think we must trust our enemies to abide by the rules of war.”

  “I have had small faith in the rules of war, Dom Allart, since first I saw a village burned to ashes by clingfire—not soldiers alone, but old men and women and little children. I would prefer to trust in the rules of war with a considerable escort at my back!”

  Allart said, “I have not foreseen it with my laran, that we will be under attack.”

  The Guardsman only said dryly, “Then you are fortunate, vai dom. I have not the consolation of foresight or other sorcery,” and fell into stubborn silence.

  On the third day of the journey, they crossed a pass which led downward to the Kadarin River, which separated the Lowland Domains from the territories held by the mountain folk—Aldaran, Ardais, and the lesser lords of the Hellers. Before they rode downward, Renata turned back to look over the lands from which they had come, where most of the Domains lay spread out before them. Renata looked on the distant hills and Towers, then cried out in dismay—forest fire was raging across the Kilghard Hills away south.

  “Look where it rages!” she cried. “Surely it will trespass on Alton lands.” Allart and Donal, both telepaths, picked up her thought. Will my home, too, lie in flames down there in a war which is none of ours? Aloud she only said, her voice shaking, “Now I wish I had your foresight, Allart.”

  The panorama of the Domains below them blurred before Allart’s eyes and he closed them in a vain attempt to shut out the diverging futures of his laran. If the powerful clan of the Altons was drawn into this war by an attack on their home country, no homestead or estate anywhere in the Domains would be safe. It would not matter to the Altons whether their homes were burned by fires deliberately set, or by those raging out of control after being set to attack elsewhere.

  “How dare they use forest fire as a weapon,” Renata demanded furiously, “knowing it cannot be controlled, but is at the mercy of winds over which they have no power.”

  “No,” said Allart, trying to comfort her. “Some of the leroni—you know that—can use their powers to raise clouds and rain to dampen the fires, or even snow to smother them.”

  Donal drew his mount close to Renata’s. “Where lies your home, Lady?”

  She pointed a slender hand. “There, between the lakes of Miridon and Mariposa. My home is beyond the hills, but you can see the lakes.”

  Donal’s dark face was intent, as he said, “Have no fear, damisela. See—it will move upward along that ridge”—he pointed—“and there the winds will drive it back upon itself. It will burn out before tomorrow’s sunset.”

  “I pray you are right,” she said, “but surely you are only guessing?”

  “No, my lady. Surely you can see it, if you will only calm yourself. Certainly you, who are Tower-trained, can have no difficulty in reading how the air currents there will move this way, and the wind will rise there. You are a leronis; you must see that”

  Allart and Renata regarded Donal in wonder and amazement. Finally Renata said, “Once when I was studying the breeding program, I read something of such a laran as that, but it was abandoned because it could not be controlled. But that was not in the Hastur kin, nor in the Delleray. Are you perhaps akin to the folk of Storn or Rockraven?”

  “Aliciane of Rockraven—she who was fourth daughter to old Lord Vardo—was my mother.”

  “Is it so?” Renata looked at him with open curisoity. “I believed that laran extinct, since it was one of those which came on a child before birth and usually killed the mother who bore such a child. Did your mother survive your birth?”

  “She did,” Donal said, “but she died in bearing my sister Dorilys, who is to be in your care.”

  Renata shook her head. “So the accursed breeding program among the Hastur kin has left its mark in the Hellers, too. Had your father any laran?”

  “I do not know. I cannot recall that I ever looked on his face,” Donal said, “but my mother was no telepath, and Dorilys—my sister—cannot read thoughts at all. Such telepathy as I have must be the gift of my father.”

  “Did your laran come on you in infancy, or suddenly, in adolescence?”

  “The ability to sense air currents, storms, has been with me as long as I can remember,” Donal said. “I did not think it laran then, merely a sense everyone had to greater degree or less, like an ear for music. When I grew older I could control the lightning a little.” He told how in childhood he had diverted a bolt of lightning which might, otherwise, have struck the tree under which he and his mother had sheltered. “But I can do it only rarely and in great need, and it makes me ill; so I try only to read these forces, not to control them.”

  “That is wisest,” Renata confirmed. “Everything we know of the more unusual laran has taught us how dangerous it is to play with these forces; rain at one place is drought at another. It was a wise man who said, ‘It is ill done to chain a dragon for roasting your meat.’ Yet I see you bear a starstone.”

  “A little, and only for toys. I can levitate and control a glider, such things as that. Such small things as our household leronis could teach me.”

  “Were you a telepath from infancy, too?”

  “No; that came on me when I was past fifteen, when I had ceased to expect it.”

  “Did you suffer much from threshold sickness?” Allart asked.

  “Not much; dizziness, disorientation for half a season or so. Mostly I was distressed because my foster-father forbade me my glider for that time!” He laughed, but they could both read his thoughts: I never knew how deeply my foster-father loved me, till I felt how deeply he feared then to lose me when I fell ill with threshold sickness.

  “No convulsions?”

  “None.”

  Renata nodded. “Some strains have it more severely than others. You seem to have the relatively minor one, and Lord Aldaran’s kin the lethal form. Is there Hastur blood in your family?”

  “Damisela, I have not the faintest notion,” Donal said stiffly, and the others heard his resentment as if he had spoken the words aloud: Am I a racing chervine or a stud animal to be judged on my pedigree?

  Renata laughed aloud. “Forgive me, Donal. Perhaps I have dwelt too long in a Tower and had not considered how offensive another might consider such a question. I have spent so many years studying these things! Although indeed, my friend, if I am to care for your sister I must indeed study her li
neage and pedigree as seriously as if she were a racing animal or a fine hawk, to find out how this laran came into her line, and what lethals and recessives she may be carrying. Even if they are quiet now, they could cause trouble when she comes to womanhood. But forgive me, I meant no offense.”

  “It is I should beg your pardon, damisela, for being churlish when you are studying ways to help my sister.”

  “Let us forgive one another then, Donal, and be friends.”

  Allart, watching them, felt sudden bitter envy of these young people who could laugh and flirt and enjoy life even when burdened with impending disasters. Then he was suddenly ashamed of himself. Renata had no light burden; she could have placed all the responsibility on father or husband, yet she had worked since her childhood to know what she should do, how best to take responsibility, even if it meant destroying the life of an unborn child and bearing the reproach toward a barren woman in the Domains. Donal had had no careless youth either, living with the knowledge of his own strange laran which could destroy him and his sister.

  He wondered if every human being, indeed, walked through life on a precipice as narrow as his own. Allart realized that he had been acting as if he alone bore an intolerable curse, and all others were lighthearted, carefree. He watched Renata and Donal laughting and jesting, and then he thought, and it was a new and strange thought to him, Perhaps Nevarsin gave me too exaggerated a seriousness about life. If they can live with the burdens they bear, and still be light of heart and enjoy this journey, perhaps they are wiser than I.

  When he rode forward to join them he was smiling.

  They came to Aldaran late in the afternoon of a gray and rainy day, little spits of sleet hiding in the wind and rain. Renata had wrapped her cloak over her face and protected her cheeks with a scarf, and the banner-bearer had put away his flag to protect it and rode muffled in his thick cape, looking dour. Allart found that the increasing altitude made his heart pound, so that he felt light-headed. But with every day’s ride Donal had seemed to cast off care and to look merry and youthful, as if the altitude and the worsening weather were only a sign of homecoming; even in the rain he rode bareheaded, the hood of his riding-cloak cast back, disregarding the sleet on his face, which was reddened with the wind and cold.

  At the foot of the long slope that led upward to the castle, he paused and waved in a signal, laughing. Renata’s nurse grumbled, “Are we to ride ordinary animals up that goat-track, or do they think we are hawks that can fly?” Even Renata looked a little daunted by the last steep path.

  “This is the Aldaran keep? It seems as inaccessible as Nevarsin itself!”

  Donal laughed. “No, but in the old days, when my foster-father’s forebears had to keep it by force of arms, this made it impregnable—my lady,” he added, with sudden self-consciousness. During the days of the journey they had become

  “Allart” and “Renata” and “Donal” to one another; Donal’s sudden return to formal courtesy made them realize that whatever happened, this period of forgetfulness was ended and the burden of their separate destinies lay upon them again.

  “I trust the soldiers on those walls know we are not come to attack,” grumbled the guardsman who had borne the truce-flag.

  Donal laughed and said, “No, we should be small indeed for a war party, I think. Look—there is my foster-father on the battlement, with my sister. Evidently he knew of our arrival.”

  Allart saw the blank look slide down over Donal’s face, the look of the telepath in contact with those out of earshot.

  A moment later Donal smiled gaily and said, “The horse path is not so steep, after all. On the far side of the castle there are steps carved from the rock, two hundred and eighty-nine of them. Would you prefer to climb up that way, perhaps? Or you, mestra?” he added to the nurse, and she made a sound of dismay. “Come, my foster-father awaits us.”

  During the long ride, Allart had made use of the techniques he had learned at Nevarsin, to keep the crowding futures at a distance. Since he could do nothing whatever about them, he knew that allowing himself to dwell upon them, with morbid fears, was a form of self-indulgence he could no longer give mental lease. He must deal with whatever came, and look ahead only when he had some reasonable chance of deciding which of the possible futures could be rationally affected by some choice actually within his own power to control. But as they reached the top of the steep slope, coming in out of the sleet and winds of the height into a sheltered courtyard, with servants crowding about to take the horses, Allart knew he had lived this scene before in memory or foresight. Through the momentary disorientation he heard a shrill childish voice crying out, and it seemed to him that he saw a flare of lightnings, so that he physically shrank from the voice, in the moment before he actually heard it clearly. It was simple after all, no danger, no flare of strange lightning, nothing but a joyous child’s voice calling out Donal’s name—and a little girl, her long plaits flying, ran from the shelter of an archway and wrapped him in her arms.

  “I knew it must be you, and the strangers. Is this the woman who is to be my guardian and teacher? What is her name? Do you like her? What is it like in the Lowlands? Do flowers truly bloom there all year as I have heard? Did you see any nonhumans as you traveled? Did you bring me back any gifts? Who are these people? What kind of animals are they riding?”

  “Gently, gently, Dorilys,” reproved a deep voice. “Our guests will think us mountain barbarians indeed, if you chatter like an ill-taught gallimak! Let your brother go, and greet our guests like a lady!”

  Donal let his sister cling tightly to his hand as he turned to his foster-father, but he let her go as Mikhail of Aldaran took him into a close embrace.

  “Dearest lad, I have missed you greatly. Now will you not present our honored guests?”

  “Renata Leynier, leronis of Hali Tower,” Donal said. Renata made a deep curtsy before Lord Aldaran.

  “Lady, you lend us grace; we are deeply honored. Allow me to present my daughter and heir, Dorilys of Rockraven.”

  Dorilys lowered her eyes shyly as she curtsied.

  “S’dia shaya, domna,” she said bashfully.

  Then Lord Aldaran presented Margali to Renata. “This is the leronis who has cared for her since she was born.”

  Renata looked sharply at the old woman. Despite her pale, fragile features, her graying hair and the lines of age in her face, she still bore the indefinable stamp of power. Renata thought, If she has been in the care of a leronis since she was born, and Aldaran felt still that she needed stronger care and control—what, in the name of all the gods, does he fear for this charming little girl?

  Donal was presenting Allart to his foster-father. Allart, bowing to the old man, raised his eyes to look into the hawklike face of Dom Mikhail, and knew abruptly that he had seen this face before, in dreams and foresight, knew it with mingled affection and fear. Somehow this mountain lord held the key to his destiny, but he could see only a vaulted room, white stone like a chapel, and flickering flames, and despair. Allart fought to dismiss the unwelcome, confusing images until some rational choice could be made among them.

  My laran is useless, he thought, save to frighten me!

  As they were being led through the castle to their rooms, Allart found himself nervously watching for the vaulted room of his vision, the place of flames and tragedy. But he did not see it, and he wondered if it was anywhere at Castle Aldaran at all. Indeed, it might be anywhere—or, he thought bitterly, nowhere.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Renata woke to sense the presence of an outsider; then she saw Dorilys’s pretty, childish face peeping around a curtain.

  “I am sorry,” Dorilys said. “Did I wake you, domna?”

  “I think so.” Renata blinked, grasping vaguely at fragments of a disappearing dream, fire, the wings of a glider, Donal’s face. “No, it does not matter, child; Lucetta would have waked me soon to go down to dinner.”

  Dorilys came around the curtain and sat on the edge of the bed.
“Was the journey very tiring, domna? I hope you will have recovered soon from your fatigue.”

  Renata had to smile at the mixture of childishness and adult courtesy. “You speak casta very well, child; is it spoken so much here?”

  “No,” Dorilys said, “but Margali was schooled in the Domains, at Thendara, and she said I should learn to speak it well so that if I went to Thendara there would be none who could call me mountain barbarian.”

  “Then Margali did well, for your accent is very good.”

  “Were you trained in a Tower, too, vai leronis?”

  “Yes, but there is no need to be so formal as all that,” Renata said, spontaneously warming to the girl. “Call me cousin or kinswoman, what you will.”

  “You look very young to be a leronis, cousin,” Dorilys said, choosing the more intimate of the two words.

  Renata said, “I started when I was about your age.” Then she hesitated, for Dorilys seemed childish for the fourteen or fifteen she looked. If she was to educate Dorilys, as a nobleman’s daughter, she must quickly put a stop to so big a girl running about the courtyards with her hair flying, racing and shouting like a little girl. She wondered if, indeed, the girl was somewhat lacking in wit. “How old are you… fifteen?”

  Dorilys giggled and shook her head. “Everyone says I look so, and Margali wearies me night and day with telling me I am too old to do this and too big to do that, but I am only eleven years old. I shall be twelve at summer harvest.”

  Abruptly Renata revised her perceptions of the girl. She was not, then, a childish and ill-educated young woman, as she looked, but a highly precocious and intelligent preadolescent girl. It was perhaps her misfortune that she looked older than her years, for everyone would expect Dorilys to have a degree of experience and judgment she could hardly possess at that age.