The Ages of Chaos

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  But that Damon-Rafael had died long ago, long ago—if he had ever lived outside Allart’s own imagination!

  Faint thunder rumbled in the sky, and Cassandra started, then, looking at the rain falling, a dark streak, across the valley on the peaks, she said, “I think it is only a summer storm. Yet I can never hear lightning now—” She broke off. “Allart! Do you think Renata was right? Should you have persuaded Dom Mikhail to let Renata destroy her laran as she slept?”

  “I do not know,” Allart said, troubled. “After what has befallen, I am not eager to trust my own foresight now. But I, too, found my laran a curse, when I was a boy on the threshold of manhood. Had any offered me such a release then, I think I would have taken it with gladness. And yet—and yet—” He reached out for her, drew her to him, remembering those agonized days when he had cowered, paralyzed, under the laran which had become such a dreadful curse. It had stabilized when he came to manhood; he knew now that he would never have been more than half alive without it. “When she comes to maturity, Dorilys, too, may find stability and strength, and be the stronger for these trials.” As I have been. And you, my beloved. “I should go to her,” Cassandra said uneasily, and Allart laughed.

  “Ah, that is like you, love—you who are to be queen, to rush off to the bedside of a sick maiden, and one who is not even to be one of your subjects!”

  Cassandra raised her small head proudly. “I was monitor, and healer, before ever I thought of being a queen. And I hope I shall never refuse my skill to anyone who stands in need of it!”

  Allart raised her fingertips to his lips and kissed them.

  “The gods grant, beloved, that I shall be as good a king as that!”

  Within the castle, Renata heard the thunder, and thought of Dorilys as she readied herself for the victory feast.

  “If you have any influence with her at all, Donal,” she said, “you will try to persuade her that I mean her well. Then, perhaps, I can work with her, to rebuild the control I had begun to teach her. It would be easier to retrace what she and I had done than to begin again with a stranger.”

  “I will do that,” Donal said. “I do not fear for her; never once has she turned on me, nor on her father, and if she has control enough for that, I have no doubt she can learn control in other things. She is weary now, and frightened, and in the grip of threshold sickness. But when she is well again, she will recapture her control. I am sure of it.”

  “God grant you are right,” she said, smiling, trying to hide her fears.

  Abruptly, he said, “At the victory feast, beloved—I want to tell my father, and Dorilys, how it stands with us.”

  Renata shook her head vehemently. “I do not think it is the right time, Donal. I do not think she can bear it yet.”

  “Yet,” Donal said, frowning, “I am reluctant to lie to her. I wish it had been you, rather than Cassandra, who saw how she clung to me, when I carried her to her bed. I want her to know that I will always cherish her and protect her, but I do not want her to misunderstand, either, or to have a false impression of how things are to be between us. At this feast— when she sits at my side as my wife—” He stopped, troubled, thinking of the kiss Dorilys had given him, which was not a sister’s kiss at all.

  Renata sighed. At least a part of Dorilys’s trouble was threshold sickness, the emotional and physical upheaval which often disturbed a developing telepath in adolescence. Aldaran had lost three nearly grown children that way. Renata, a monitor, and Tower-trained, knew that part of the danger in threshold sickness was the enormous upsurge, at the same time, of telepathic forces, mingled with the stresses of developing, not yet controlled, sexuality. Dorilys had come young to that, too. Like a plant in a forcing-house, the use of her laran powers had created all the other upheavals and upsurges, too. Was it any wonder, filled with all this new power and awareness, that she turned to the older boy who had been her special champion, her idol since she was a baby, her protector—and now, by this cruel farce she was too young to understand, her husband as well?

  “It is true that she survived her first attack of threshold sickness, and the first attack is often the worst. Perhaps, if she wakes well and coherent—but at this victory feast, Donal? When first she sits at your side, acknowledged your wife? Would you spoil her pleasure in that, then?”

  “What better time?” Donal asked, smiling. “But even before Dorilys, I want you to tell my father how it is to be with us. He should know that you bear my nedestro child. It is not the heir he wants for Aldaran. But he should know that this child will be shield-arm and paxman to Aldaran house as I have been since my mother brought me here as a child. Truly, my dear love, we cannot keep it secret much longer. Pregnancy, like blood-feud, grows never less with secrecy. I would not have it thought that I am cowardly, or ashamed of what I have done. Once known and acknowledged, beloved, your status is protected. Even Dorilys, by civilized custom, knows it is a wife’s duty to see to the well-being of any child her husband may father. At this point in her life, I think, any duty properly belonging to a wife will please Dorilys. She was so pleased when Father said she should sit as heir at the victory feast, beside her consort.”

  “Perhaps you are right,” Renata said, remembering Dorilys, who hated sewing, proudly embroidering a holiday shirt for Donal—a traditional bride’s task. Donal was right; his marriage to Dorilys was a legal fiction, but custom should be observed, and it was his duty to tell Dorilys that another woman bore his child.

  Donal remembered that he had been present—a boy just turned ten years old—when Dom Mikhail had informed Lady Deonara that Aliciane of Rockraven was pregnant with his child. Deonara had risen, embraced Aliciane before all the house-folk, and led her from the women’s table to the high seat, formally sharing a drink of wine from the same cup, in token that she would accept the coming child. Renata laughed uneasily at the thought of this ritual with Dorilys.

  “Yet you have loved her tenderly,” Donal urged, “and I think she will remember that. Also there is this to consider. Dorilys is impulsive and given to fierce tempers, but she is also very conscious of her dignity before the house-folk, as Lady of Aldaran. Once she has been forced to be polite to you at a formal occasion, like this, she will remember how kind you have been to her. Nothing would please me more than to see you reconciled. She will know that I love her, I honor her, I will always care for her. I will even, if it is really her will, give her a child. But she will know what she can expect from me, and what she cannot.”

  Renata sighed and took his hands.

  “As you will, then, beloved,” she said. “I can refuse you nothing.”

  There was a time, not a year past, when I was proud to say to Cassandra Aillard that I did not know what it was to love a man, to suspend my own better judgment to do his will. Do all women come to this, soon or late? And I dared to judge her for that!

  Later that evening, when Donal met her at the door of the feasting hall, and himself conducted her to her seat at the women’s table, Renata thought that she might as well have shouted it aloud before all the assembled house-folk of Castle Aldaran. She did not care. If all had gone rightly, she and Donal would have been married at midwinter night, and worn the catenas. Aldaran had forced another marriage on Donal, but she was neither the first woman nor the last to cling to a lover forced into an expedient marriage with someone else.

  She watched Donal as he took his seat at the high table. He had looked handsome to her even in the old rubbed-leather riding-breeches and faded jerkin he had worn during the siege, but now he had put on his finest garments. Firestones hung gleaming at his throat and a jeweled sword at his side. His hair was curled and there were rings on his fingers; he looked handsome and princely. Old Dom Mikhail, in his long furred robe of dark green, with wide sleeves and a jeweled belt, looked proud, but benevolent, too. Dorilys’s chair was empty, and Renata wondered if she were still in her drugged sleep. No doubt sleep would do her more good than feasting. Beside Donal and Lord Aldaran at the h
igh table were only Allart and Cassandra, as honored guests of highest rank, and the leronis Margali, who was a noblewoman and Dorilys’s foster-mother. Under ordinary conditions, Renata sat there herself, as Dorilys’s companion and teacher, and so did the coridom or estate steward, the chief of the hall-stewards, the castellan, and three or four other functionaries of Castle Aldaran. But at such a solemn feast, only the immediate family and any guests of rank equal to Aldaran’s own, or higher, were seated beside the lord Aldaran. The nobles and functionaries were seated either at the women’s table where Renata sat, with Lady Elisa and the other women of the estate, or at the men’s table with the household knights and important men of the castle.

  The lower hall was crowded with those of lower rank, soldiers, guardsmen, servants, everyone down to the stablemen and dairy-women.

  “Why are you looking like that at Dorilys’s empty chair?” Cassandra asked.

  “I thought for a moment that she was there,” Allart murmured, disquieted. He had seen for a moment a strange flare of lightning, and thought, I am weary. I still start at shadows. Perhaps it is only the aftermath of the siege!

  Dom Mikhail leaned toward Margali, asking what had delayed Dorilys. After a moment he nodded, rose from his chair, and addressed the folk assembled in the Great Hall.

  “Let us give thanks to the gods that the armies which surrounded us are vanquished and gone to their own place. What they have destroyed will be rebuilded; what they have broken shall be mended.” He raised his cup. “First let us drink to honor those who have given their lives in this warfare.”

  Allart rose with the others, drinking silently from his cup in honor to the dead.

  “Now I shall speak of the living,” Lord Aldaran said. “I hereby state that any child of any man who died in the siege of this castle shall be fostered in my house, or the household of one of my vassals, according to his father’s rightful station, commoner or noble.”

  There was an outcry of thanks for the lord Aldaran’s generosity; then he spoke again.

  “Furthermore, if their widows wish to marry again, my stewards shall see to finding them suitable husbands, and if not, they shall be helped to respectable livelihoods.”

  When the outcry had died down this time, he said, “Now let us eat and drink, but drink first in honor of him who best defended the castle—my foster-son Donal of Rockraven and husband of my daughter, Dorilys, Lady of Aldaran.”

  Under the cover of the cries of acclamation, Cassandra said, “Would that Dorilys were here, to know herself so honored.”

  “I do not know,” Allart said slowly. “I think perhaps she has already too much pride in her own power and station.”

  Dom Mikhail glanced to where Allart sat with Cassandra. “I would that you might remain to help me set my Domain in order, cousin. Yet I have no doubt that before very long they will summon you to Thendara. With your brother dead, you are heir to the Domain of Elhalyn.” He looked at Allart, suddenly cautious. Dom Mikhail had become aware that he was no longer dealing with a kinsman, a friend, a fellow noble, but with a future ruler with whom he must one day soon have careful, tactical diplomatic dealings. A Hastur lord, one who might before midsummer day sit on the throne of Thendara.

  It seemed to Allart that every word Dom Mikhail spoke was fenced about with sudden caution.

  “I hope we will always be friends, cousin.”

  Allart said, heartfelt, “I hope, indeed, that there will always be friendship between Thendara and Elhalyn.” But he wondered, Can I never again know any real friendships, any simple personal relationships? The thought depressed him.

  Dom Mikhail said, “It will take us half a year to clear away the rubble of the fallen tower; perhaps twice that to rebuild, if we do it by ordinary means. What do you think, Donal—shall we send for a matrix crew, perhaps from Tramontana, perhaps from the Lowlands, to come and clear away this rubble?”

  Donal nodded. “We must think of the folk who have had to be away from their homes because of the armies; already the spring planting is delayed, and if it must wait much longer, we will have hunger in these hills at harvest.”

  Dom Mikhail said, “Yes, and they can design the tower anew, and raise it again by matrix. It would be costly and long, but it would give pride to Castle Aldaran, and when your children and Dorilys’s rule here someday, you will wish for a point of vantage to command the country around. Though, indeed, I think it will be long, very long, before anyone sends armed might against the stronghold of Aldaran!”

  “May that day be far,” Donal said. “I hope you will sit in this high seat for many years to come, my father.” He rose and bowed. “By your leave, sir,” he said, and left his seat, going to the women’s table where Renata sat

  “Come with me, love, and speak with my father. Then, when Dorilys comes later to join us, he will know the truth, and there will be honesty among us all.”

  Renata smiled and took his offered hand. Part of her felt naked and exposed by the way in which he had sought her out, but she realized that this was a part of the price she paid for her love. She could have chosen to go away, to return to her family, when Donal was married to another. A conventional woman would have done so. She had chosen to remain here as Donal’s barragana, and she was not ashamed of it. Why should she hesitate to cross the little space between the women’s table and the high seat, to sit at Donal’s side?

  Allart watched with apprehension, wondering what would happen when Renata and Dorilys came face to face. No… Dorilys was not here; she had not come into the hall. Yet his laran showed him weird out-of-focus pictures of Dorilys’s face, of Renata, distraught. He started to rise from his seat, then realized in despair that there was nothing he could do, nothing to focus on, nothing had happened yet; but the noise and confusion in the ball, pictured by his laran, paralyzed him. He stared around, bewildered by the pandemonium of his laran, and the actual present Great Hall, with only the cheerful noises of many people loudly eating and drinking at a holiday feast.

  Renata said, “I love Dorilys well. I would not for worlds step on the hem of her garment. I still feel we should not tell her this until we are sure that she is free of threshold sickness.”

  “But if she finds it out of herself, she will be very angry, and rightly so,” Donal argued, leading Renata toward the high seat. “We should tell my father, even if there is no need to tell Dorilys at once.”

  “What is it that you will say to my father and not to me, my husband?”

  The light, childish voice dropped into the silence, shattering it like breaking glass. Dorilys, in her holiday gown of blue, her hair coiled low on her neck, and somehow looking more childish than ever in her woman’s garments, came walking across the floor, dazed, almost as if she were sleepwalking. Allart and Margali rose, and Dom Mikhail held out his hand to Dorilys, saying, “My dear child, I am glad you are well enough to join us,” but she paid no attention, her eyes fixed on Donal and Renata, hand in hand before her.

  She cried out suddenly, “How dare you speak like that about me, Renata!”

  Renata could not conceal a start of surprise and guilt. But she looked at Dorilys and smiled.

  “Dear child,” she said, “I have said nothing about you except what shows my love and concern, as always. If there is anything we have not told you, it has been only to save you distress while you were overwearied and ill with threshold sickness.” But her heart sank as she saw the look in Dorilys’s eyes, dark, strained, clutching sanity about her with painful concentration, and she realized that Dorilys, as she had done on the day of her festival, was reading thoughts again; not clearly like a skilled telepath, but erratically, with crazy, patchy imcompleteness. Then Dorilys cried out in rage and sudden comprehension, turning on Donal.

  “You!” she cried, in a frenzy. “You have given to her what you denied to me! Now you think—you scheme that she will bear the new heir to Aldaran!”

  “Dorilys, no,” Renata protested, but Dorilys, beside herself, would not hear.
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  “Do you think I cannot see it? Do you think I do not know that my father has always schemed that your child should be heir? He would let you father a child on some outsider to supersede mine.”

  Donal reached for her hands, but she wrenched them away.

  “You promised, Donal,” she cried shrilly. “You promised, and tried to soothe me with lies, as if I were a child to be petted and told fairy tales, and while you lied to me, all that time you planned that she should bear your first son. But she shall not, I swear it! I will strike her first!”

  Lightning flared in the hall, a crash of thunder, loud and almost deafening. In the shocked silence as it died away, Cassandra rose, taking a frantic step toward Dorilys.

  “Dorilys, dear child, come to me.”

  “Don’t touch me, Cassandra!” Dorilys shrieked. “You have lied to me, too. You are her friend, not mine! You schemed with her, knowing what she planned behind my back. I am alone here; there is none to love me.”

  “Dorilys, there is none here does not love you,” Donal said.

  But Dom Mikhail had risen, somber and angry. He raised a hand and said, using command-voice, “Dorilys! I say, be still!”

  The girl stood motionless, shocked into silence.

  “This is an outrage!” Lord Aldaran said, towering over the child. “How dare you create such an unseemly uproar at a festival? How dare you speak so to our kinswoman? Come and sit here in your proper place by me, and be silent!”

  Dorilys took a step toward the high table, and Renata thought, her heart churning with relief, After all, even with her power, she is a child; she is accustomed to obey her elders. She is still young enough to obey her father without question.

  Dorilys took another step under the command-voice; then she broke free.

  “No!” she cried out, whirling, stamping her foot in the willful fury Renata had seen so often in her first days at the castle. “I will not! I will not be humiliated this way! And you, Renata, you who have dared to step on my garment this way, in pride of what you have had from my husband when I have had only empty words and promises and a child’s kiss on the forehead, you shall not flaunt your belly at me. You shall not!” She whirled, her face ablaze with the lightning flare.