The Ages of Chaos

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Cruel, arrogant old man! Renata found herself thinking. It would serve you right if that came, indeed, to pass! His pride is stronger than his love for Dorilys, or he would spare her this terrible destiny!

  She bowed. “Then there is no more to be said, my lord. I will do what I can for Dorilys. Yet I beg you to remember, sir, that the world will go as it will, and not as you or I would have it go.”

  “Kinswoman, I beg you, be not angry. I beg you not to let your anger at this sharp-tongued old man make you any less a friend to my little girl.”

  “Nothing could do that,” Renata said, softening against her will to the old man’s charm. “I love Dorilys, and I will guard her as much as I may, even against herself.”

  When she had left Aldaran, she walked for a long time on the battlements, troubled. She faced a very serious ethical problem. Dorilys probably could not survive childbirth. Could she reconcile it to her own strict code, to let the girl come unknowing to womanhood with that shocking curse? Should she warn Dorilys of what lay ahead for her?

  She thought, angry again, that Lord Aldaran would expose Dorilys to such a death rather than accept the knowledge that his brother of Scathfell might inherit his domain.

  Cassilda, blessed mother of the Hastur kin, she thought All gods be praised that I am not lord of a Domain!

  Chapter Seventeen

  Summer in the Hellers was beautiful; the snows receded to the highest peaks, and even at dawn there was little rain or snow.

  “A beautiful season, but dangerous, cousin Allart,” Donal said, standing at the height of the castle. “We have fewer fires than the Lowland Domains, for our snows remain longer, but our fires rage longer because of the resin-trees, and in the heat of these days they give off the volatile oils which ignite so quickly when the summer lightning storms rage. And when the resin-trees ignite—” He shrugged, spreading his hands, and Allart understood; he, too, had seen the volatile trees catch fire and go up like torches, throwing off showers of sparks which fell in liquid rain, spreading flame through the whole forest.

  “It is a miracle that there are any resin-trees left, if this happens year after year!”

  “True; I think if they grew less swiftly, these hills would be bare and the Hellers a wasteland from the Kadarin to the Wall around the World. But they grow swiftly, and in a year the slopes are recovered.”

  Allart said, fastening the straps of the flying-harness around his waist, “I have not flown in one of these since I was a boy. I hope I have not lost the knack!”

  “You never lose it,” Donal said. “When I was fifteen and ill with threshold sickness, I could not fly for almost a year. I was dizzy and disoriented and when I was well again I thought I had forgotten how to fly. But my body remembered, as soon as I was airborne.”

  Allart drew the last buckle tight. “Have we far to fly?”

  “Riding, it would be more than most animals could do in two days; it lies by paths mostly straight up and down. But as the kyorebni fly, it is little more than an hour’s flight.”

  “Would it not be simpler to take an air-car?” Then Allart remembered he had seen none in the Hellers.

  Donal said, “The folk of Darriel experimented with such things. But there are too many crosscurrents and crossdrafts among the peaks here; even with a glider you must pick your day carefully for flying, and be wary of storms and changes in the wind. Once I had to sit on a crag for hours, waiting for a summer storm to subside.” He chuckled with the memory. “I came home as bedraggled and sad as a rabbithorn who has had to yield his hole to a tree-badger! But today, I think, we will have no such trouble. Allart, you are Tower-trained, do you know the folk at Tramontana?”

  “Ian-Mikhail of Storn is Keeper there,” Allart said, “and I spoke with all of them in the relays, from time to time, during my half-year at Hali. But I have never been to Tramontana in the flesh.”

  “They have always welcomed me there; indeed, I think they are always glad of visitors. They sit like hawks in their aerie, seeing no one from midsummer festival to midwinter night. It will be a pleasure for them to welcome you, cousin.”

  “And for me,” Allart said. Tramontana was the most distant and farthest northward of the Towers, in almost total isolation from the others, though its workers passed messages through the relay-nets and exchanged information about the work they had done in developing new uses for matrix science. It had been the workers at Tramontana, he remembered, who devised the chemicals for fire-fighting, where they could be found in the deep caves under the Hellers, refining them, devising new ways to use them, all with the matrix arts.

  “Is it not true that they have worked with matrixes to the twenty-fifth level?”

  “I think so, cousin. There are thirty of them there, after all. It may be the farthest of the Towers, but it is not the smallest.”

  “Their work with chemicals is brilliant,” Allart said, “although I think I would be afraid to do some of the things they have done. Yet their technicians say that once the lattices are mastered, a twenty-sixth-level matrix is no more dangerous than a fourth-level. I do not know if I would wish to trust myself to the concentration of twenty-five other people.”

  Donal smiled ruefully. “I wish I knew more of these things. I know only what Margali has taught me, and what little they have had leisure to tell me, when I visit there, and I have seldom been given leave to stay more than a single day.”

  “Indeed, I think you would have made a mechanic, or perhaps even a technician,” Allart said, thinking of how swiftly the lad had responded to his teaching, “but you have another destiny.”

  “True; I would not abandon my father, nor my sister, and they need me here,” Donal said. “So there are many things I shall never do with a matrix, for they need the safety of a Tower. But I am glad to have learned what I could, and for nothing am I more glad than this,” he added, touching the leather-and-wood struts of the glider. “Are we ready to go, cousin?”

  He stepped to the edge of the parapet, fluttered the long extended leather flaps of the glider wings to catch the air current, then stepped off into the air, soaring upward. Allart, his senses extended, could just feel the edge of the current; he stepped to the parapet edge, feeling an inner cramping at the height, the glimpse of the fearful gulf below him. Yet if a boy like Donal could fly without fear over that height… He focused on the matrix, stepped free, and felt the sudden dizziness of the long drop and swoop outward, the tug of the current that bore him upward. His body swiftly balanced itself, lying along the inner struts, leaning this way and that as he mastered the balance of the toy. He saw Donal’s glider, soaring hawklike above him, and caught an updraft carrying him along until they, flew side by side.

  For the first minutes Allart was so preoccupied with the mastery of the glider that he did not look down at all, his entire consciousness caught up into the delicate balances, the pressure of the air and the energy currents he could dimly sense, all around him. Somehow it made him think of his days at Nevarsin, when he had first mastered his laran and had learned to see human beings as swirls, energy-nets of force like streaming currents, without the awareness of flesh and blood, of his solid body. Now he sensed that the insubstantial air was filled with the same streaming currents of force. If I have taught Donal much, he has given me no less in return, teaching me this mastery of air currents and the streams of force which permeate the air as they do the land and the waters… Allart had never before been aware of these currents in the air; now he could almost see them, could pick and choose among them, riding them up, up to a height where the winds dashed against the frail glider, racing along on the tremendous airstream, then picking a convenient current to dip down again to a safer height. He began, as he lay along the struts now, leaving a fragment of his consciousness to control the glider, to look down at the mountain panorama laid out below him.

  Below them a quiet mountainous countryside stretched out, slope after slope of hills covered with dark forest, now and then the thickness
giving way to slanted rows of trees, marching mechanically up and down a hillside—nut-farms, or plantations of edible fungus in the forest. Hillsides had been cleared for grasses where herds grazed, dotted with small huts where the herd-keepers lived, and now and again, beside the course of a racing mountain stream, a waterwheel set up for the making of cheeses, or the fibers which, matrix-enhanced, could be extracted from the bulk of the milk after whey and curds had been pressed out. He smelled the odd reek of a felt-ing-mill, and another of a mill where the scraps left after timbering were pressed into paper. On a rocky slope, he saw the entrance to a network of caves where the forge-folk lived and saw the glow of their fires, where flying sparks could not endanger forests or populated areas.

  As they flew on, the hills became higher and more deserted. He felt Donal’s touch on his thoughts—the boy was developing into a skilled telepath who could attract his attention without troubling it— and Allart followed him down a long draft between two hills, to where the white glareless stone of Tramontana Tower gleamed in the noonlight. He saw a sentry on the heights raise his hand in greeting, and followed as Donal swooped down, folding the wings of his glider as he landed on his feet, sinking gracefully to his knees and rising in a single controlled movement, whipping off the glider wings in a long trail behind him; but Allart, less skilled at this game, found himself knocked off his feet, in a disorderly tangle of struts and ropes. Donal, laughing, came to help him disentangle himself.

  “Never mind, cousin, I have landed that way many times myself,” he said, though Allart wondered how many years it had been since he had done so. “Come, Arzi will take your glider and keep it safe against our return,” he added, gesturing to the bent old man who stood beside him.

  “Master Donal,” said the old man, in a dialect so thick that even Allart, who knew most of the Hellers dialects, found it hard to follow. “A joy, as ever, to welcome ye back among us. Y’ lend us grace, dom’yn,” he added, including Allart in his rude bow.

  Donal said, “This is my old friend Arzi, who has served the Tower since before I was born, and welcomed me here three or four times a year since I was ten years old. Arzi— my cousin, Dom Allart Hastur of Elhalyn.”

  “Vai dom.” Arzi’s bow was almost comical in its depth and deference. “Lord Hastur lends us grace. Ah, it’s a happy day—the vai leronyn will be glad indeed to welcome ye, Lord Hastur.”

  “Not Lord Hastur,” Allart said gently, “only Lord Allart, my good man, but I thank you for your welcome.”

  “Ah, it’s been many, many years since a Hastur came among us,” Arzi said. “Be pleased’t’ follow me, vai domyn.”

  “Look what the winds have brought us,” called a merry voice, and a young girl, tall, slender, with hair as pale as snow on the distant peak, came running toward Donal, holding out her hands to him in welcome. “Donal, how glad we all are to see you again! But you have brought a guest to us!”

  “I am glad to return, Rosaura,” Donal said, embracing the girl as if they were long-lost kin. The girl stretched out her hands to welcome Allart, with the swift touch of telepaths to whom this was more natural than the touch of fingertips. Allart, of course, had known who she was even before Donal spoke the name, but as they brushed against one another her face lighted again with a quick smile.

  “Oh, but you are Allart, who was at Hali for half a year. I had heard you were in the Hellers, of course, but I had no notion fortune would bring you here to us, kinsman. Have you come to work with Tramontana Tower?”

  Donal was watching with amazement at this meeting. “But you have not been here before, cousin,” he said to Allart.

  “That is true,” Rosaura said. “Until this hour, none of us have looked upon our kinsman’s face, but we have touched him in the relays. This is a glad day for Tramontana, kinsman! Come and meet the rest of us.” Rosaura took them inside, and quickly they were surrounded by more than a dozen young men and women—some of the others were at work in the relays, others asleep after a night of work—all of whom welcomed Donal almost as one of themselves.

  Allart’s emotions were mixed. He had managed not to think too much about what he had left behind at Hali Tower, and now he was meeting, face to face, minds he had touched in the relays there, putting faces and voices and personalities to people he had known only in the elusive, bodiless touch of mind to mind.

  “Are you coming to Tramontana to stay, cousin? We can use a good technician.”

  Regretfully, Allart shook his head. “I am committed elsewhere, though nothing would please me more, I think. But I have been long at Aldaran, without much news from the outside world. How goes the war?”

  “Much as before,” said Ian-Mikhail of Storn, a slight, dark young man with curling hair. “There was a rumor that Alaric Ridenow, him they call the Red Fox, had been slain, but it was false. King Regis lies gravely ill, and Prince Felix has summoned the Council. If he should die, may his reign be long, there will be need for another truce while Felix is crowned, should he ever be crowned. And among your own kinsmen, Allart, word came through the relays that a son was born to your brother’s lady in the first tenday of the rose month. The boy does well, though the lady Cassilde has not recovered her strength and could not suckle him herself. There is some fear that she will not recover. But the boy has been proclaimed your brother’s heir.”

  “The gods be thanked, and Evanda the merciful smile on the child.” Allart spoke the formula with real relief.

  Now Damon-Rafael had a legitimate son; there was no question whether the Council would choose a legitimate brother over a nedestro son.

  Yet, among the crowding futures, Allart saw himself crowned at Thendara. Angrily he tried to slam the door on his laran and the unwelcome possibilities. Have I some taint of my brother’s kind of ambition, after all?

  “And,” said Rosaura, “I spoke with your lady but three days ago, in the relays.”

  Allart’s heart seemed to clutch painfully and knock against his ribs. Cassandra! How long had it been since he had called her image to mind? “How does my lady?”

  “She seems well and content,” Rosaura said. “You knew, did you not, that she has now been appointed full monitor for Coryn’s circle at Hali?”

  “No, I had not heard.”

  “She is a powerful telepath in the relay-nets. I wonder you could bring yourself to leave her behind. You have not been long married, have you?”

  “Not yet a year,” Allart said. No, not long, a painfully short time to leave a beloved wife… He had forgotten that he was among trained telepaths, a Tower circle; for a moment he had dropped his barriers, saw the pain in his thoughts reflected all around him.

  He said, “The fortunes of war, I suppose. The world will go as it will and not as you or I would have it.” He felt sententious, prim, as he mouthed the cliché, but they displayed the bland unrevealing non-contact, the mental turning-away which is the courtesy among telepaths when truths too revealing have been shown. He recovered his composure while Donal spoke of their errand.

  “My father sent me for the first of the fire-chemicals to be taken to the station at the heart of the resin-tree forest; the others can be sent more slowly, with pack-animals. We are building a new fire station on the peak.” The talk became general, of fire-fighting, of the season and the early storms. One of the leronyn took Donal to make up a packet of the chemicals which could be carried back on the gliders, and Rosaura drew Allart aside.

  “I regret the necessities which parted you so soon from your bride, kinsman; but if you like, and if Cassandra is in the relays, you can speak with her.”

  Faced with the possibility, Allart felt his heart clench. He had resigned himself, told himself that if he never saw Cassandra again, at least they avoided the grimmest of the futures he had seen. Yet he knew he could not forbear this chance to speak with her.

  The matrix chamber was like any other, the vaulted roof and blue window-lights below it admitting soft radiance, the monitor screen, the great relay lattice. A yo
ung woman in the soft loose robe of a matrix worker knelt before it, her face blank and calm with the distant look of a matrix technician with the mind attuned elsewhere, thoughts caught up in the relay-nets that linked all the telepaths in all the Towers of Darkover.

  Allart took his place beside the girl in the relays, the inner part of his thoughts still troubled.

  What shall I say to her? How can I meet her again, even this way?

  But the old discipline held, the ritual breaths to calm his mind, his body locking itself in one of the effortless postures which could be maintained indefinitely without too much fatigue.

  He cast himself into the vast spinning darkness, like the swoop of the glider over the great gulf. Thoughts whirled and spun past him like distant conversation in a crowded room, meaningless because he was unaware of their origin or context. Slowly, as he became more aware of the structure of the relay-net tonight, he felt a more definite touch, Rosaura’s voice.

  Hali…

  We are here, what would you have?

  If the lady Cassandra Aillard-Hastur is among you, her husband is with us at Tramontana and begs a word with her…

  Allart, is it you? As recognizable as her bright hair, her gay girlish smile, he touched Arielle. I think Cassandra is sleeping, but for this she will be glad to be wakened. Bear my greetings to my cousin Renata; I think of her often with love and blessings. I will waken Cassandra for you.

  Arielle was gone. Allart was back in the floating silence, messages slipping past him without impinging on any part of his mind which could remember or register them. Then, without warning, she was there, beside him, around him, a presence almost physical… Cassandra!

  Allart, my beloved….

  The texture of tears, of amazement, disbelief, reunion; an instant, timeless (three seconds? three hours?), of absolute, ecstatic joining, like an embrace. It was like nothing except the moment when he had first possessed her and in that moment felt the barriers drop, felt her mind yield and blend into his, a joining more complete, a mutual surrender more total than the union of their bodies. Wordless, but complete; he was lost in it, felt her lose herself in it.