The Ages of Chaos

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  He must be well-born enough, anyhow, if he had been foster-brother to the exiled Carolin. Her father, she knew, would have welcomed him and treated him with honor as a noble, and though Dom Carlo did not quite treat him as an equal, he showed him affection and respect and sought his advice in everything.

  As the twilight gathered, Orain found a cookshop and commanded a meal. Romilly felt inclined to protest.

  "You should not - I can pay my share-"

  Orain shrugged. "I hate to dine alone. And Dom Carlo made it clear he has other fish to fry this night...."

  She bent her head, accepting graciously. She had never been in a public tavern or cookshop before, and she noted there were no women present except for the bustling fat waitress who came and slapped crockery hi front of them and fussed away again. If Orain had known her true sex he would never have brought her here; if a lady, unimaginably, came in here, there would have been all sorts of deferential fuss made, they would never have taken her quite simply for granted. Far less would she be able to lounge here at ease, her feet propped on the bench across from her, sipping from a tankard of cider, while the good smell of cooking gradually filled the room.

  No, it was better to remain a boy. She had respectable work, three silver bits for a tenday; no cook-woman or dairymaid could hope to command such pay for any work she could do, and she remembered that Rory's grandmother, telling of her lost affluence, had spoken of the fact that when her husband did not seek her bed, he was sent, quite without worrying about what the dairymaid thought about it, to sleep with the dairymaid as a matter of course. Better to spend all her life in breeches and boots than have that added to the regular duties of a dairymaid's work!

  She found herself wondering if Luciella made such routine demands of her women. Well, he must at some times - there was Nelda's son. It made Romilly uncomfortable to think of her father that way, and she reminded herself that he was a cristoforo . . . but would that make such a difference? In the world where she had been brought up it was taken for granted that a nobleman would have bastards and nedestro sons and daughters. Romilly had never really thought about their mothers.

  She shifted uneasily in her seat, and Orain said with a grin, "Getting hungry? Something smells good in the kitchen yonder." Half a dozen men were flinging darts at a board hung at the back of the tavern, a few others playing dice. "Shall we have a game of darts, lad?"

  Romilly shook her head, protesting that she did not know the game. "But don't let me stop you."

  "You'll never learn younger, then," Orain said, and Romilly found herself standing, urged to fling the darts.

  "Hold it this way," Orain instructed, "and just let it go - you don't have to push it."

  "That's the way," said one of the men standing behind her in the crowd, "Just imagine the circle painted on the wall is the head of King Carolin and you have a chance at the fifty copper reis offered for his head!"

  "Rather," said a bitter voice somewhere behind the first speaker, "that the head is of that bloodthirsty wolf Rakhal - or his chief jackal Lyondri, the Hastur-Lord!"

  "Treason," said another voice and the speaker was quickly hushed, "That kind o' talk's not safe even here beyond the Kadarin - who knows what kind of spies Lyondri Hastur may be sending into the city?"

  "I say, may Zandru plague'em both with boils and the bald fever," said another, "What matters it to free mountain men which great rogue plants his backside on the throne or what greater rogue tries to pry his arse loose from the seat? I say Zandru take'em both off to his hells and I wish 'im joy of their company, so that they stay south o' the river and leave honest men to go about their business in peace!"

  "Carolin must ha' done something or they'd never kicked him off the throne," someone said, "Down there, the Hali'imyn think the Hastur are kin to their filthy Gods - I've heard some tales when I travel down there, I could tell you-"

  The darts had been forgotten; no one came to take a turn from Romilly. She whispered to Orain, "Are you going to let them talk that way about King Carolin?"

  Orain did not answer. He said, "Our meat's on the table, Rumal. Neighbors, maybe we'll have another round later, but the dinner's getting cold while we stand here gabbing," and gestured to Romilly to put down the darts and go to their seat. When the food arrived, and Orain was cutting the meat into portions, he muttered under his breath, "We're here to serve Carolin, lad, not defend him to fools in taverns. Eat your dinner, boy." And after a moment, he added, still in a half-whisper, "Part of my reason for walking about town is to hear how the folk think - see how much support there is here for the king. If we're to raise men for him here, it's urgent there must be popular support so no one will betray us - a lot of things can be done in secret, but you can't raise an army that way!"

  Romilly put her fork into the roast meat, and ate in silence. She noted that when he spoke to her, Orain had, without thinking, dropped the rough up-country accent and spoken again like an educated man. Well, if he was the king's foster-brother, as she had heard, that was not surprising. Carlo too must have been high in those councils and one of his loyal men - no doubt he too had lost lands and possessions when Carolin was deposed and fled to the hills. Which reminded her again-

  I do not know if Carolin has enemies in the city, but he certainly has at least one in the monastery. I do not think a child like Caryl would do him any great harm, he said the king had shown him kindness; but if Carlo and Orain are expecting to meet the king within monastery watts, there is at least one pair of eyes who would recognize him. They must prevent him from coming there. And Romilly wondered why it should matter to her what happened to the exiled king. As her father had said so often, what did it matter what great rogue sat on the throne, or what worse rogue tried to unseat him?

  Orain and Carlo could not follow an evil master. Whichever king they follow, he is my king too! And the story she had heard of the evil Hastur-lord Lyondri had filled her with revulsion. She thought, wryly, that without knowing it, she had somehow become a partisan of Carolin.

  "Take that last cutlet, lad; you're a growing boy, you need your food," Orain said, grinning, and called to the serving-woman for more wine. Romilly reached for another cup, but Orain slapped her hand away.

  "No, no, you've had enough - bring the boy some cider, woman, he's too young for your rotgut here! I don't want to have to carry you home," he added, good-naturedly, "and lads your age have no head for this kind of thing."

  Her face burning, exasperated, Romilly took the huge mug of cider the woman set before her. Sipping it, she acknowledged to herself that she liked it better than the strong wine, which burned her mouth and her stomach and made her head swim. She muttered, "Thank you, Orain."

  He nodded and said, "Think nothing of it. I wish I'd had a friend to knock my head out of the winepot when I was your age! Too late now," he added with a grin, and lifting his tankard, drank deep.

  Romilly sat listening, full and sleepy, as Orain went back to the dart board; when asked to join him, she shook her head, feeling drowsy, listening to the talk around the bar.

  "Well thrown! Whang in the eye of whichever king you don't favor!"

  "I heard Carolin's in the Hellers because the Hairimyn are too soft to search for him up here - they might freeze their dainty tailbones!"

  "Whether Carolin's here or no, there are enough supporters for his rule - he's a good man!"

  "Whatever Carolin's like, I'll join anything which gets that bastard Lyondri the rope's end he deserves! Did ye' hear what he did to old Lord di Asturien? Burned over his head, poor old man, and him and the old lady by the side of the road in their night-gear and bedslippers, if one of their woodsmen hadn't taken 'em in and given 'em a place to lie down in...."

  After a time Romilly fell into a doze, in which Carolin and the usurper Rakhal wandered in dreams with the faces of great mountain cats, slinking through the woods and tearing at one another, and the shrill cry of hawks, as if she were soaring far above and watching the battle. She flew over a w
hite Tower, and Ruyven was waving to her from the summit, and then he somehow took wing and was flying beside her, telling her gravely that Father would not approve of it. He said solemnly, "The Bearer of Burdens said that it is forbidden for man to fly and that is why I have no wings." and saying it, he fell like a stone; Romilly started awake, to feel Orain lightly shaking her.

  "Come, lad, it's late, they're closing the doors - we must go back to the monastery!"

  His breath was heavy with wine, his speech slurred; she wondered if he was able to walk. However, she laid his cloak over his shoulders, and they went out into the crisp, frosty darkness. It was very late; most of the houses were dark. Somewhere, a dog barked in a frenzy, but there was no other sound, and little light in the street; only the pale and frosty light of blue Kyrrdis, low on the rooftops of the city. Orain's steps were unsteady; he walked with one hand on the nearest house-wall, steadying himself, but when the narrow streets opened into a stair, he tripped on the cobbles and went flailing down full-length on the stone, howling with drunken surprise. Romilly helped him up, saying in amusement, "You had better hold on to my arm." Had he made certain his companion would stay sober, so that he would have someone to guide him back to the monastery? Romilly was fairly good at finding a path she had once travelled; she managed to direct their steps upward into the shadow of the monastery.

  "Do you know if Carolin is truly in the city, Orain?" she asked at last in a low voice, but he peered with drunken suspicion into her face and demanded, "Why d'ye' ask?" and she shrugged and let it go. When he was sober she would talk to him about that; but at least the wine he had drunk would not unseal his mouth and he would not babble of his mission or plans. As they climbed the last steep street, which led into the courtyard of the monastery guest-house, he held tightly to her arm, sometimes putting a drunken arm around her shoulders; but Romilly edged away - if he held her too close he might, as Rory had done, discover that she was a woman beneath the heavy clothes she wore.

  I like Orain, I would rather respect him, and if he knew I were a woman he would be like all the others. ...

  As they climbed he leaned on her arm more and more heavily. Once he turned aside from her, and, unbuttoning his trousers, relieved himself against a house wall; Romilly was, not for the first time, grateful for her farm upbringing which had made this something she could accept unblushing - if she had been a housebred woman like Luciella or her younger sister, she would have been outraged a dozen times a day. But then, if she had been a housebred woman, she would probably never have thought to protest the marriage her father had arranged, and she would certainly never have been able to travel with so many men without somehow revealing herself.

  At the monastery gates Orain tugged at the bell-pull which announced their presence to the porter at the guest-house. It was very late; for a moment Romilly wondered if they would be admitted at all, but finally the Brother Porter appeared at the gates and, grumbling, let them inside. He frowned and sniffed disapprovingly at the reek of wine which hung around them, but he did let them in, and shook his head when Orain offered him a silver bit.

  "I am not allowed, friend. I thank you for the kind thought. Here, your door is this way," he said, and added audibly to Romilly, "Can you get him inside?"

  "This way, Orain," said Romilly, shoving him to the door of his room. Inside, Orain looked around, fuzzily, like an owl in daylight "Whe-"

  "Lie down and go to sleep," Romilly said, pushed him down on the nearer of the two beds and hauled at his heavy boots. He protested incoherently ... he was drunker than she had realized.

  He held her by one wrist. "You're a good boy," he said, "Aye, I like you, Rumal - but you're cristoforo. Once I heard you call on the Bearer of Burdens . . . damn . . ."

  Gently Romilly freed her hand, pulled his cloak around him, went quietly away, wondering where Dom Carlo was. Not, surely, still closeted with the Father Master? Well, it was none of her affair, and she must be up early to care for the animals and the sentry-birds. She shrank from sharing the sleeping quarters of the men who attended on Carlo and Orain, so she had chosen to sleep on the hay in the stables - it was warm and she was unobserved; she need not be quite so careful against some accidental revealing of her body. She had not realized, until she was alone again, quite what a strain it was to be always on guard against some momentary inadvertent word or gesture which might betray her. She pulled off her boots, glad of the thick stockings under them, rolled herself into a bundle in the hay and tried to sleep again.

  But she found herself unexpectedly wakeful. She could hear the stirring of the birds on their perches, the soft shifting hooves of horses and chervines; far away inside the depths of the monastery she heard a small bell and a faraway shuffle of feet as the monks went their way to the Night Offices, when all the world around them slept. Had Orain some feud with the cristoforos that he would say he liked her, but she was cristoforo! Was he bigoted about religion? Romilly had never really thought much about it, she was cristoforo because her family was, and because, all her life, she had heard tales of the good teachings of the Bearer of Burdens, whose teachings had been, so the cristoforos said, brought from beyond the stars in days before any living man could remember or tell. At last, hearing the muffled chanting, far away, she fell into a restless sleep, burrowing herself into the hay. For a time she dreamed of flying, soaring on hawk-wings, or on the wings of a sentry-bird; not over her own mountains, but over a lowland country, green and beautiful, with lakes and broad fields, and a white tower rose above a great lake. Then she came half awake as a bell rang somewhere in the monastery. She thought, a little ruefully, that if she had had supper within the monastery she would have heard the choir singing-perhaps the only woman who would ever do so.

  Well, they would be there for days, it seemed; there would be other nights, other services to hear. How lucky Darren was no longer here at the monastery - even from his seat within the choir, he would have seen and recognized her.

  If King Carolin comes to the monastery, young Caryl will recognize him - Dom Carlo must warn him....

  And then she slept again, to dream confused dreams of kings and children, and someone at her side who spoke to her in Orain's voice and drowsily caressed her. At last she slept, deep and dreamlessly, waking at first light to the screams of the sentry-birds.

  Life in the monastery quickly fell into routine. Up at early light to tend the animals, breakfast in the guest-house, occasionally an errand to be done for Dom Carlo or Orain. Two days later she had her new boots, made to her own measure, and with the pay they gave her - for now she had been in their service ten days - she found a stall where warm clothing was sold, and bought warm stockings so that she could wash and change the ones she had been wearing since Orain had given them to her. In the afternoon she wandered alone around the city of Nevarsin, enjoying a freedom she had never had in the days when she was still the ladylike daughter of The MacAran; in the evenings, when the birds had been tended and exercised again, after a frugal supper in the guesthouse, she would slip into the chapel and listen to the choir of men and little boys. There was one soprano among the boys, with a sweet, flutelike voice; she strained her eyes to see the singer and realized at last that it was small Caryl, the son of Lyondri Hastur.

  He wished King Carolin no ill. Romilly hoped that Orain had passed along his message to Dom Carlo and that he, somehow, had gotten word to the king, that Carolin had not come to the city.

  Once or twice during the tenday that followed, she went again with Orain to the tavern, or to another, though never again did he drink more than a mug or two of the local wine, and seemed not even a little befuddled by it. Dom Carlo she had not seen again; she supposed he was about whatever business for King Carolin had brought him to this city. For all she knew to the contrary, he had left Nevarsin and gone to warn Carolin not to come here - there was one who would recognize him. She did not think the child would betray Carolin - he had said the king had been kind to him - but his loyalties, naturally, wo
uld be to his own father. She did not question Orain. It was none of her business, and she was content to have it that way.

  Shyly, she began to wonder; if her father had chosen to marry her to one like Orain, would she have refused him? She thought not. But that was conflict too.

  For then would I have stayed at home and been married, and never known this wonderful freedom of city and tavern, woods and fields, never have worked free and had money in my pockets, never really known that I had never been free, never flown a sentry-bird.

  She was growing fond of the huge ugly birds; now they came to her hand for their food as readily as any sparrow-hawk or child's cagebird. Either her arm grew stronger or she was more used to it, for now she could hold them for a considerable time and not mind the weight. Their docility and the sweetness she felt when she went into rapport with them, made her think with regret of Preciosa; would see ever see the hawk again?

  She seldom saw the other men; she slept apart from them, and encountered them only morning and night, when they all came together for meals in the monastery guest-house. She was quite content that it should be so; she was still a little afraid of Alaric, and the others seemed strange and alien too. It seemed sometimes that the only person to whom she spoke these days, aside from the man who delivered the bird-food and fodder for horses and chervines, was young Caryl, who came whenever he could escape for a few minutes from his lessons, to look at the birds, hold them, croon lovingly to them. With Caryl she was always a little troubled, lest he should forget and thoughtlessly address her again as vai domna - it was a heavy weight of secrets for a child to bear. Once Orain came to the chapel to hear the singing; he took a seat far back and in the shadows, and she was sure that the little boy, in the lighted choir, could not see the face of a solitary man in the darkest part of the chapel, but she remembered that the child knew Carolin and would certainly recognize one of the king's men; she was so agitated that she rose quietly and went out, afraid that the telepathic child would sense her agitation and know its cause.