Thunderlord

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Fire showered the narrow valley. Thunder crackled and boomed overhead. More lightning, and yet more, each bolt filling him, mind and body, with brightness too intense to bear. He could no longer see—he felt the devastation going on below him. Despite the deluge, the Scathfell army wagons were burning, as were men here and there, torches in the gathering darkness. Distantly he heard wailing and howling and wordless shrieks of agony. Men rushed about, a few stopping to lift their fallen comrades.

  A thought stirred, faint and distant, in his mind, that this was not what he wanted. That these were men like himself, helpless against the immensity of the storm.

  He tried to draw back, to withhold the next surge of lightning, but the storm had him in its grip. He no longer directed it with his will. Elemental power poured forth from him.

  Thunder crashed, peal after deafening peal. Electrical bolts split the sky and lanced down toward the surviving soldiers. A single man stood firm, trying to rally the troops, bidding them to hold fast. A few men clambered to their feet. The earth around them had turned into a pool of mud. A flash flood was forming as a torrent of rain sluiced down the hillsides.

  Raw power surged through Edric, hurling toward the group of men and their leader. Even as it leapt from the clouds, from his mind, he tried to hold it back. He had nothing to grasp it with. As it shot earthward, he managed to redirect it. Only a fraction of a degree, but enough that it struck beside the group of men, not in their midst. The next instant, they scrambled back the way they had come, some on their feet, others dragged along.

  Then, as if the great red sun had at last had burned itself out, darkness suffused the firmament. At first, he felt only a diminishing of the incandescent flashes inside him. Then came pauses like the swift falling of night, and ever weaker bolts. No longer thick trunks of light, the strikes appeared as delicate threads that fanned out and fell away.

  He heard a distant voice—a woman’s voice—but what she was saying and what meaning it held for him, he did not know. Then even that fell into oblivion.

  38

  Kyria sat on a cushioned footstool, hugging her knees to her chest and trying not to cry. A short distance away, Alayna played with the twins. The nursery was warm and bright, and the familiar baby-smell tugged at Kyria’s heart. Her body wanted to give in to the intense, overwhelming feeling of well-being, but her mind would not let go. Her laran linked her to Edric, and through her storm sense, she had followed his frenzied psychic flight. She had felt the lightning rampage through him, emanate from him and, worst of all, remain within him. The exact details of where he had aimed the storm were hidden from her. In his delirium, he might well have attacked Scathfell’s forces, but there was no way to be certain. If that were the case, he had inflicted horrific damage, as bad or worse than the scarred areas around Aldaran Castle. Or perhaps what she had experienced was primarily hallucination, an effect of his fever.

  Roderic had sent a party on a reconnaissance mission to the likely location of the Scathfell forces, and Francisco had gone with them. They might be gone perhaps a tenday, depending on what they found and how quickly the wounded, if any, could be brought to Aldaran. Kyria could not bring herself to worry about Gwynn-Alar Scathfell. It must have been dreadful for him, finding out she was alive, married, and a mother, but that did not excuse bringing his army to conquer Aldaran. In a sense, he deserved what happened to him, although she would not say so aloud for fear of distressing her sister.

  What had happened to Edric was another matter. If his brain had been permanently damaged by the energies that had been channeled through him, if he was now like his kinswoman, the Witch-Child of Aldaran, then it was not safe to allow him to wake.

  If only Dorilys had been born without laran. Then there would never have been a war with Scathfell and everyone would be happy today.

  No, that was not true. The fight had been complicated by royal politics. If Dorilys had not defeated the besieging armies of Old Lord Scathfell and King Allart’s brother, then who knows what might have happened? Aldaran might have fallen. Edric might never have been born—nor their amazing, wonderful sons, surely the most perfect babes ever created. And if she kept thinking this way, she would surely break into tears.

  Edric is strong. He learned discipline at Tramontana Tower. He is a grown man, not a child, she chanted silently to herself.

  She could not stop remembering how dreadfully ill he’d looked. He had cried out in his sleep, and she’d rushed into their bedchamber. The comforters she had tucked around him so carefully had been thrown off. He writhed, as if trying to free himself from the tangled sheets. His skin glistened with sweat, and his eyes jerked this way and that behind half-closed lids. When she’d called his name, he had not responded. And when she’d touched him—dear gods, his skin had been as hot as if he’d just raced through a forest fire. Nothing she’d said or done, even straining to reach him through their laran rapport, had made the slightest difference in his frantic tossing and turning, or in the barely human moans that forced their way through his clenched teeth.

  He hadn’t known her. Out of desperation and not trusting any of the servants with the message, Kyria herself had gone to fetch Lady Renata. If anyone could help Edric, it would be someone trained in a Tower and skilled in healing; someone who loved him. Renata, sensing Edric’s distress, had already been on her way. She had taken one look at her son, and her entire manner had changed. Firmly but not unkindly, she had shoved Kyria out the door.

  Now Kyria could not feel Edric with her mind. She was sure she would know if he had died—no, she must not even think that—but where he had once been a constant, living presence in the very core of her being, she sensed only a blankness. A wall of flannel and chalk. Kyria felt a rush of despair, not for the first time nor the fifteenth since she had left her husband to Renata’s care. Thoughts boiled up, images of Edric soaring into a violent thunderstorm, of grasping the lightning and absorbing it into himself, of flinging bolt after bolt at the approaching army. Just as Dorilys had done.

  He would not suffer the same fate, burned out from elemental energies no human mind could contain. Nor would he be contained within a laran field, neither alive nor dead.

  Alayna looked up from where she sat on the carpet. Her delight in the twins filled the room like her music. She seemed serene, except for a faint tension between her brows.

  Donal, ever the more adventuresome, rocked forward on his hands and knees, grasping for the wooden ball in Alayna’s hands. Instead of giving it to him, she placed it just beyond his reach. Cooing, he lunged for it, then shrieked with delight when his chubby fingers touched it, then howled with dismay as it rolled away. Kyria could not help smiling. Both boys, but Donal especially, made their feelings known without reservation.

  “He’ll be crawling soon,” Alayna said, catching the ball and handing it to Donal.

  “You’re wonderful with them.” Kyria thought it was a shame that Alayna could not have a dozen babes of her own. Perhaps if she had, Lord Scathfell would have better things to do than make war on his neighbors. From the instant Alayna had laid eyes on the twins, she’d doted on them. They, in their turn, responded to her as if they had always known her, especially Pietro.

  “Are you worrying about your husband?” Alayna asked. “You have the most peculiar expression on your face.”

  “Both our husbands, although for different reasons. Here we are, two sisters married to men who cannot find their way to even being polite to one another. If Donal and Pietro behave so”—the ball escaped Donal’s grasp and rolled toward his brother, who grabbed it with a gurgle of pleasure—“it is because they are too young to know better.”

  “We did not always agree,” Alayna pointed out. “I distinctly remember at least one occasion of pulled hair and stolen dolls.”

  “Let’s not forget the rather inventive name-calling that went with it. But we were children. Even though we squabbled, we alw
ays made up.”

  Now Donal wanted the ball back, but Pietro merely clutched it tighter. Kyria snatched up a stuffed cloth horse and offered it to Donal, who settled happily to chewing on the horse’s yarn mane.

  Alayna sighed. “Somehow, I doubt it will be this simple to get grown men to see reason.”

  “As much as I hate to admit it, I believe you are right. The world, and the affairs of men, go as they will, not as you and I would have them.”

  “We must wait for word of my husband.” Alayna sounded strained and careworn. “The principle thing now is what has happened to yours.”

  Meaning, Kyria thought, whether he has gone the way of our kinswoman. Whether there is any hope for him at all.

  As if summoned by Kyria’s renewed anxiety, Renata entered the room. Lines bracketed her mouth, and the skin around her eyes looked bruised. She paused inside the door, and Kyria saw the twins had the same effect on her as they did on everyone who saw them. The tension in Renata’s features softened, so that she looked weary rather than desolate.

  Kyria struggled to her feet. “How fares my husband? Is he out of danger?”

  “I have done what I can for him.” Renata lowered herself into the rocking chair where Kyria often sat to sing lullabies. “I can detect no trace of the storm’s electrical energy in the laran centers of his brain, and his channels are clear. We cannot know for sure whether there is any damage until he wakes. I fear—I believe he may be unconscious for some time.”

  “Oh, no.”

  Renata shook her head. “Don’t say that, for this is a good thing. Body and mind need to rest deeply to replenish themselves. As difficult as it is for us to wait, this is truly for the best.”

  “How—how long?”

  “A few days. Perhaps longer.” Renata did not add what would happen if Edric’s period of unconsciousness stretched beyond that.

  “I know it is a very foolish thing to go flying in a thunderstorm,” Alayna said, almost shyly. “But Edric seemed to be all right when he returned. What happened to him? Was it the same thing that happened to Great-Aunt Dorilys?”

  Renata flinched, and Kyria remembered that she had known Dorilys personally, having come to Aldaran for the purpose of teaching her to control her laran.

  “Exposure to the elements at a time when Edric was already expending vast amounts of laran energy caused him to become ill.” Now Renata sounded dispassionate, as if discussing a clinical case and not her own son. “It was the resulting fever that allowed the storm Gift to escape his control.”

  “But that is terrible,” Alayna cried, then recovered herself. “Please forgive me, Lady Renata. I did not mean that to be as insensitive as it sounded. I truly wish no harm to my brother-in-law. He was not the originator of this calamity.”

  “Child, we are all of us grieved by what has come to pass. But we have reason to hope. My son’s training as a laranzu served him well, for the electrical energy was confined to the areas of his brain associated with his storm Gift. And those are areas he has used in a disciplined manner over the years; even racked with fever, such training shielded him from the worst.” Renata closed her eyes, resting her head against the high back of the chair.

  Kyria had come to love her mother-in-law, and Edric would never forgive her if she allowed Renata to become ill, too. “Lady Renata, I fear you have overtired yourself. Do you need assistance to your own chamber? Shall I call for your ladies? And food! You always have food prepared after laran work!”

  Renata opened her eyes, a faint smile brightening her face. “I suppose I deserve to be lectured about the proper safeguards. I will take myself to my quarters, and if you will be so kind to have a platter of whatever is sweet and easily eaten sent up—dried fruit, honey pastries, the like. And some jaco. I don’t care if it’s fresh so long as it’s heavily sweetened.” Sighing, she stood. “But you must promise to let me know the minute Edric stirs, in case he requires additional healing.”

  Kyria promised. Immediately after Renata left, she ordered food and drink to be sent to her chambers.

  “It is all my fault, you know.” Alayna lifted tear-bright eyes to Kyria. “If only I’d helped Gwynn more, been more sympathetic to what he was suffering, then he might have been able to leave the dead in their graves and see that your Edric meant him nothing but good. There would have been no cause to go to war. But it was too much for him.”

  “I fear that all our gestures of friendship could not overcome a lifetime of suspicion,” Kyria said with a sigh. “Scathfell suffered terribly in the last conflict, and that was not your doing.”

  Alayna drew in a shuddering breath, and Kyria feared she would burst into tears, but she calmed herself.

  “Perhaps Lord Scathfell survived,” Kyria said. “The scouts will report soon, and then we will render what aid we can. We will not leave a single man or beast to perish from cold or their wounds.”

  “You are very forgiving.”

  “Why, would you not do the same for Aldaran, if our positions were reversed?”

  “How can you ask such a thing? You know that I would.”

  Kyria could not help smiling. “What a pity it is that the affairs of our two realms must be left to the men, for I am sure that if we had anything to say, Aldaran and Scathfell would soon be as brothers.”

  “Mmm,” Alayna replied, looking pensive.

  “Now I should go to my husband,” Kyria said, pausing on her way to the door. “I must see for myself how he fares, and of course be there when he wakes. Shall I call for the nurse to take care of the children?”

  “If you wish, but really it is no trouble at all to look after these two angels,” Alayna replied. As if on cue, Pietro reached up to her. She lifted him into her lap, where he leaned against her, sucking his thumb. Alayna laid her cheek against the top of his head.

  Kyria was not at all sure what she would find when she entered the chamber where Edric had been moved. It was not their shared bedroom, for Renata had felt the bustle and noise from the adjacent nursery would not be helpful. If it had been up to Renata, Kyria suspected, she would have chosen the tower room as the best place for laran work, but Kyria had insisted he be closer at hand. They had compromised on the bedchamber that once belonged to Old Lord Aldaran. It had not been used since his death, but had the virtue of being sufficiently apart from the rest of the living quarters.

  And a gloomy old place it is, Kyria thought as she sped along the corridor. Still, it could not be helped. If Edric was asleep, he would not care, and once he woke, he would be free of that dark room.

  A guardsman stood on duty outside the massive carved door. He bowed as Kyria passed. Inside, Edric’s body-servant, Correy, sat in a chair beside the enormous bed, ready should his master need anything. The room was indeed gloomy; with the draperies drawn, the only light came from the fire in the wide hearth and a few candles in either wall sconces or holders placed here and there. Kyria sniffed, detecting a hint of dust, but thankfully no mildew. At least the fire chased off the worst of the chill, and a handful of aromatic wood chips perfumed the air.

  Edric’s skin looked waxen in the light from the candles. He was breathing slowly but regularly. When Kyria bent to kiss his forehead, he felt slightly cool but not worrisomely so. At least he no longer burned with fever.

  “Beloved,” she murmured, stroking his hair back from his face. Closing her eyes, she tried to imagine him gazing at her with the tender expression that never failed to move her.

  He did not respond, not in the slightest, and that told her he must be very deeply asleep. In all the time they had been together, no matter how weary he was, he always roused at the sound of her voice. Perhaps it would be better to not put that to too great a test. Renata had insisted he needed rest. Yet Kyria imagined the distinct traces of his personality, quiescent but resilient.

  “It looks like I’ll be here awhile,” she murmured, most
ly to herself. In short order, she hauled the draperies open, admitting a flood of late afternoon light. And, unfortunately, revealing the dust that a cursory cleaning of the room had missed.

  Correy assisted her in moving the least uncomfortable-looking of the chairs. Settling in it at Edric’s side, she wished she were as musical as Alayna. Playing the rryl would have soothed her nerves and been a lovely thing to waken to. She considered and discarded the idea of a wooden flute and the needlework that every lady was supposed to have at hand for moments like this. Mending a harness would have suited her mood, but that wasn’t practical for other reasons. In the end, she settled for sending Correy to fetch a book—any book—from the castle library. He returned a short time later with a treatise on the care and breeding of chervines, which was as good a subject as any. Kyria fell asleep during the second chapter.

  She startled awake at the sound of the door closing softly. Her first thought was that night had fallen. The windows looked out into darkness, although the fire burned even more brightly than before. Her second thought brought her to her feet, gazing down at Edric, who had rolled onto his side facing her. Surely that was a good thing, that he’d moved?

  And the third, which had woken her, turned out to be Alayna carrying a tray with several covered dishes and a pot of jaco, recognizable from the distinctive aroma.

  “You didn’t need to—” Kyria cut herself off, rather than say fetch and carry like a servant. At home, neither of them would have thought anything of taking a meal to the other.

  “Nonsense,” was Alayna’s response. “I’ve had so many trays like this brought to me that I couldn’t compensate if I spent the next year doing nothing else.”