The Ages of Chaos

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Join with us! In the name of the Gods, everyone who has laran, join us to hold this image ... on and on the racing cloud of dust, in which Romilly could now see indistinct shapes, horses' heads like great grey skulls, the burning visages of skeletons, glowing with devil-fire inside the hidden cloud of dust and sorcery....

  She heard a voice she had never heard before, reverberating within her mind, bellowing; "Stand firm! Stand firm!" But that could not stand against the assault of the ghostly army; Rakhal's men broke and charged down the hill, riding straight into the cloud of magical images, screaming in terror, and their line faltered, broke in a dozen places. Fire struck up through the ground, licking, curling, green and blue flames rising . . . then it was as if a river of blood flowed up the hill, through the horses' feet, and they stopped short, snorting, screaming in terror, stamping. Some of their riders fell, a few men held their ground, crying out, "No smell of blood, no smell of burning, it's a trick, a trick-" but the line was broken; horses stampeded, colliding with one another, trampling their riders, and the officers struggled wildly to rally the broken line, to gather the men into some semblance of order.

  "Now! Carolin!"

  "A Hastur! A Hastur!" Carolin's men charged, the main body of the army, flowing like water up the hill and into the broken ranks of the horsemen. Right over Rakhal's outer defenses they flowed, and then they were fighting at close quarters, but Ranald and Alderic broke and dashed right through to the center of the armies, where the guarded wagon stood with the clingfire. Men were gathered, hastily dipping their arrows in the stuff, but Alderic and Orain and their little band rode right over them and toward the wagon. Swiftly, like a running tide of energy, they linked minds, and a band of blue fire rolled out toward the wagon with the clingfire. It struck, blazed upward, and then a roaring column of fire burst skyward, blazing so fiercely that Rakhal's men scattered and ran for their lives. Burning droplets fell on some of them and they blazed up like living torches and died screaming; the fire ran through Rakhal's own armies, and, panicked, they ran, scattered, and ran right on Carolin's spears and swords.

  Although a part of Romilly was still linked with the bird, she knew there was no more need of it. She found herself closely linked in mind with Sunstar, as Carolin urged him forward; she knew the terror of fire, shuddering with the smell of burning grass and burning flesh; even in the rain which had begun to drizzle down again in the fitful sunlight, the clingfire burned on. But the great stallion, bravely overcoming that inborn fear, carried his rider forward ... or was it Romilly herself, bearing the king into the heart of the fleeing enemy.

  "See where Rakhal flies with his sorcerers!" cried out Orain, "After them, men! Take them now!"

  Romilly let Temperance fly upward out of range of the fire; it was burning inward now, with a ring round it where there was nothing left to bum - so much had the leronyn of Carolin's armies accomplished; but she, with Carolin, was away with the stallion Sunstar, forging to the heights, where the last remnant of Rakhal's men, cut off between Carolin and the raging remnant of clingfire, fought with their backs to the fire. Sunstar seemed to fly forward with Carolin's own will to take the height, and Romilly felt that it was she herself who bore him on to the last moment of success....

  Then she stumbled - for a moment Romilly was not sure it was not she herself who had stumbled - recovered, and reared high in the air, Carolin's hand guiding him up, then down, to trample the man who had risen, sword in hand, before him. His great hooves were like hammers pounding the man into the ground. Romilly felt the man go down, his head splitting like a ripe fruit beneath her hooves – Sunstar’s hooves - felt Carolin fighting for balance in the saddle. And then another man reared up with a lightning-flash of steel, she felt Carolin slip back in the saddle and fall, and in that moment Romilly felt sharp shearing pain as the sword sliced through neck and throat and heart, and blood and life spurted away....

  She never felt herself strike the ground.

  . . . rain was falling, hard cold rain, pounding down; the ground was awash with it, and even the smell of the clingfire had been washed away. The sky was dark; it was near nightfall. Romilly sat up, dazed and stunned, not even now fully aware that it was not she who had been felled by the sword.

  Sunstar! She reached out automatically for his mind, found-

  Found nothingness! Only a great sense of vacancy, emptiness where he had been. Wildly she looked around and saw, lying not far away, the stallion's body, his head nearly severed, and the man he had killed lying beneath his great bulk. The rain had washed the blood clear so that there was only a great gaping wound in his neck from which the blood had soaked into the ground all around him. Sunstar, Sunstar-dead, dead, dead! She reached out, again, dazed, to nothingness. Sunstar, whose life she had shared so long....

  And whom she had betrayed by leading him to death in a war between two kings . . . neither of them is worth a lock of his black mane . . . ah, Sunstar . . . and I died with you ... Romilly felt so empty and cold she was not sure that she was still alive. She had heard tales of men who did not know they were dead and kept trying to communicate with the living. Dazed, drained of all emotion except fury and grief, she managed to sit up.

  Around her lay the bodies of the dead, Rakhal's men and Carolin's; but of Carolin himself there was no sign. Only the body of Sunstar showed where Carolin had once been. Vaguely, not caring, she wondered if all Carolin's men were dead and Rakhal victor. Or had Orain's party captured or killed Rakhal? What did it matter?

  What matters it which great rogue sits on the throne....

  She began to get her bearings a little. As before the previous battle, the field was covered with the dark shapes of kyorebni, hovering. One lighted, with a harsh scream, on Sunstar's head, and Romilly rushed at it, flapping her arms and crying out The bird was gone, but it would come back.

  Sunstar is dead. And I trained him with my own hands for this war, betrayed him into the hands of the one who would ride him into this slaughter, and the noble horse never faltered, but bore Carolin to this place and to his death. I would have done better to kill him myself when he ran joyously around our green paddock behind the hostel of the Sisterhood. Then he would never have know fire and fear and a sword through his heart.

  Dark was falling, but far away at the edge of the battlefield, a lantern bobbed, a little light wandering over the field. Grave-robbers? Mourners seeking the slain? No; intuitively Romilly knew who they were; the women of the Sisterhood, seeking their fallen comrades, who must not lie in the common grave of Carolin's soldiers.

  As if it mattered to the dead where they lay....

  They would come here soon, thinking her dead - when she had fallen from her horse, stricken down by Sunstar's death, no doubt they had left her for dead. Now they would come to bury her, and find her living, and they would rejoice....

  And then Romilly was overcome with rage and grief. They would take her back to themselves, reclaim her as a warrior-woman. She had fled from the company of men, come among the Sisterhood, and what had they done? Set her to training horses, not for their own sake or for the service of men, but to be slaughtered, slaughtered senselessly in this strife of men who could not keep their quarrels to themselves alone but involved the innocent birds and horses in their wars and killings. ...

  And I am to go back to that? No, no, never!

  With shaking hands, she tore the earring of the Sisterhood from her ear; the wire caught and tore her ear but she was unconscious of the pain. She flung it on the ground. An offering for Sunstar, a sacrifice offered to the dead! She could hardly stand. She looked around, and saw that riderless horses were wandering here and there on the battlefield. It took only the slightest touch of her laran to bring one to her, his head bent in submission. It was too dark now to see whether it was mare or gelding, grey or black or roan. She climbed into the saddle, and crouched over the pommel, letting the horse take his own way . . . -where? It matters not. Away from this place of death, away, friend. I will serve no
more, not as soldier nor Swordswoman nor leronis. From henceforth I shall serve no man nor woman. Blindly, her eyes closed against streaming hot tears, Romilly rode alone from the battlefield and into the rain of the night.

  All that night, she rode, letting the horse find his own pathway, and never knew where she went or what direction she took. The sun rose and she was still unaware, sitting as if lifeless on the animal's back, swaying now and again but always recovering herself before she quite fell. It did not seem to matter. Sunstar was dead. Carolin and Orain had gone she knew not where, nor did it matter, Orain wanted nothing of her . . . she was a woman. Carolin, like the Sisterhood, sought only to have her use her laran to betray other innocent beasts to the slaughter! Ruyven . . . Ruyven cared little for her, he was like a monk from the accursed Tower where they learned devilry like clingfire. . . .

  There is no human who shall mean anything to me now.

  She rode on, all day, across a countryside ravaged and deserted, over which the war had raged. At the edge of the forest, she slid from her horse, and set him free.

  "Go, my brother," she whispered, "and serve no man or woman, for they will only lead you to death. Live free in the wild, and go your own way."

  The horse stared down at her for a moment; she gave it a final pat and pushed it away, and, after a moment of motionless surprise, it turned and cantered awkwardly away. Romilly went quietly into the darkness of the forest. She was soaked to the skin, but it seemed not to matter, any more than the horse minded his wet cloak of hair. She found a little hollow between the roots of a tree, crawled into it, drew her cloak tightly around her, covering her face; curled herself into a ball and slept like the dead.

  At dawn she woke to hear birds calling, and it seemed, mixed with their note, she could hear the harsh screams of the kyorebni, still feeding on the waste of the battlefield. She did not know where she was going; somewhere away from the sound of those screams. She got numbly to her feet and walked, not caring in which direction, further into the wood.

  She walked most of that day. She was not conscious of hunger; she moved like a wild thing, silently, avoiding what was in her path and whenever she heard a noise, freezing silently in her tracks. Late in the day she nearly stumbled into a small stream, and cupping her hands, drank deeply of the clear sweet water, then laid herself down in a patch of sunlight that came between the leaves and let the sun dry the remaining damp from her clothes. She was still numb. As darkness fell, she curled up under a bush and slept. Some small thing in the grasses brushed against her and she never thought to turn aside.

  The next morning she slept late and woke with the sun's heat across her back. Before her, a spider had spun its web, clear and jewelled with the dew; she looked on its marvelous intricacy and felt the first pleasure she had felt in many days. The sun was bright on the leaves; a bushjumper suddenly bolted on long legs, followed by four miniature babies, their bushy tails standing up like small bluish flags riding high. Romilly heard herself laugh aloud, and they stopped, tails quivering, dead silent; then, as the silence fell around them, with a burst of speed all four of the tiny flags popped down a hole in the grass.

  How quiet it was within the woods! There could certainly be no human dwelling nearby, or nothing could have been so peaceful, the wild things so untroubled and unafraid.

  She uncurled herself from sleep, lazily stretching her limbs. She was thirsty, but there was no stream nearby; she licked the dew from the low leaves of the tree over her head. On a fallen log she found a few old woody mushrooms, and ate them, then found some dried berries hanging to a stem and ate them too. After a little while, as she wandered lazily through the wood, she saw the green flags of a root she knew to be edible, grubbed it up with a stick, rubbed off the dirt on the edge of her tunic, and chewed it slowly. It was stringy and hard, the flavor acrid enough to make her eyes water, but it satisfied her hunger.

  She had lost the impetus that had kept her moving restlessly from place to place; she sat in the clearing of the fallen log most of the day, and when night fell again she slept there.

  During her sleep she heard someone calling her name; but she did not seem to know the voice. Orain? No, he would not call her; he had wanted her when he thought her a boy, but had no use for the woman she really was. Her father? He was far away, across the Kadarin, safe at home. She thought with pain of the peaceful hills of Falconsward. Yet it was there she had learned that evil art of horse-training by which she had betrayed the beloved to his death. In her dream she seemed to sit on Sunstar's back, to ride like the wind across the grey plain she once had seen, and she woke with her face wet with tears.

  A day or two later she realized that she had lost shoes and stockings, she did not remember where, that her feet were already hardening to the dirt and pebbles of the forest floor. She wandered on aimlessly, ever deeper into the forest, eating fruits, grubbing in the earth for roots; now and again she cooled her feet in a mountain stream but she never thought of washing. She ate when she found food; when once for three days together she found nothing edible, she was dimly aware of hunger, but it did not seem important to her. She no longer troubled to rub the dirt from the roots she ate; they seemed just as good to her in their coats of earth. Once she found some pears on an abandoned tree and their taste was so sweet that she felt a rush of ecstasy. She ate as many as she could but it did not occur to her to fill her pockets or to tie them into her skirt.

  One night she woke when the purple face of Liriel stood over her in the sky, seeming to look down and chide her, and thought, I am surely mad, where am I going, what am I going to do? I cannot go on like this forever. But when she woke she had forgotten it again. Now and again, too, she heard, not with her ears but within her mind, voices that seemed to call, Romilly, where are you? She wondered faintly who Romilly was, and why they were calling her.

  She came to the end of the woods, the next day, and out into open plains and rolling hills. Waving grasses were covered with seeds ... all this country must once have been settled and planted to grain, but all around the horizon which stretched wide from west to east, from the wall of the forest behind her to the mountains which rose greyish-pink in the distance, there was no human dwelling. She picked a handful of the seeds, rubbed their coats from them, and chewed them as she walked.

  High in the sky, a hawk soared, a single hawk, and as she watched, it dropped down, down, down, falling toward her with folded wings, it alighted on her shoulder. It seemed to speak in her mind, but she did not know what it was saying, yet it seemed that once she had known this hawk, that it had a name, that once she had flown beside it in the sky ... no, that was not possible, yet the hawk seemed so sure that they knew one another. She reached out to touch it, then stopped, there was some reason she should not touch it with her finger . . . she wished she could remember why. But she looked into the hawk's eyes, and wished she knew where she had seen the hawk before this.

  She woke again that night, and again she was aware that she was certainly quite mad, that she could not wander forever like this. But she had no idea where she was, and there was no one to ask. She knew who she was, now, she was Romilly, and the hawk, the hawk which had perched on the low limb of a nearby tree, the hawk was Preciosa, but why had she sought her out here? Did she not know that she, Romilly, set the touch of her mind on bird or horse only to train it to follow humankind meekly to its own death?

  It took her five days to cross the plain; she counted them, without thinking, as the face of Liriel grew toward full. When last the moon was full, she had followed Sunstar - she slammed the memory shut; it was too painful. There were plenty of the grainlike seeds to eat, and water to drink. Once the hawk brought a bird down from the sky and lighted on her shoulder, screaming in frustration; she looked at the dead bird, torn by the hawk's beak, and shuddered. It was the hawk's nature, but the sight of the Wood made her feel sick, and at last she flung it to the ground and walked on.

  That night she came beneath the edges of another patch
of forest. She found a tree heavy with last year's nuts, and by now she had sense enough to fill her pockets with them. She was still not certain where she was going, but she had begun to turn northward when there was a choice. She moved noiselessly now through the woods, driven restlessly onward ... she did not know why.

  Overhead, toward evening, she heard the cry of waterfowl, flying toward the south. She looked up, soaring with them in their dizzy flight, seeing from afar where a tall white tower rose, and the glimmer of a lake. Where was she?

  The moons were so bright that night, four of them shining down on her, Uriel and Kyrrdis round and full, and the . other two shining pale and gibbous, that she could not sleep. It seemed to her that when last she had seen four moons in the sky, something had happened ... no, she could not remember, but her body ached with desire and hunger unslaked, and she did not know why. After a time, lying in the soft moss, she began to range outward, feeling hungers like her own all round her....

  A cat crawled along a branch, and she felt the tug of the light within her, too, the flow of the life of the world, and herself with it. She could see the gleam of the great eyes, followed it with her mind while she prowled around the foot of the tree. There was a sweet, sharp, musky scent in the air now and, in the mind of the cat, she followed it, not knowing whether or not she moved or whether only the cat moved . . . closer and closer she came, and heard herself make a small snarling, purring cry of hunger and need . . . turned with a lashing of the great tail as the cat's mate pounced down the tree trunk, with cries and frisking sounds. Her body ached and hungered and as the cat seized her mate, Romilly twisted on the moss of the ground and dug her hands into the ground, gasping, crying out...