Never to see Cassandra again…
Damon-Rafael shook his head, not without regret. “I dare not anger the Aillards. They are our strongest allies in this war; and they are vexed that Cassilde has not cemented the alliance by giving me an heir of Elhalyn and Aillard blood. If you avoid the marriage I will have another enemy, and I cannot afford the Aillards for enemies. Already they fear I have found a better match for you. But I know our father had reserved two nedestro half-sisters of the Aillard clan for you, with modified genes, and what will I do if you should have sons by all three of them?”
Revulsion, as when Dom Stephen had first spoken of this, surged in Allart again. “I told my father I had no wish for that.”
“I would rather that any sons of Aillard blood should be mine,” Damon-Rafael said, “yet I cannot take your pledged wife; I have a wife of my own, and I cannot make a lady of such an exalted clan into my barragana. It would be a matter for blood-feud! Although if Cassilde were to die in childbirth, as she has been likely to do any time these past ten years, and may do at any time in the future, then—” His eyes sought out Cassandra where she stood near her kinswomen, appraisingly moving up and down her body; and Allart felt a quite unexpected anger. How dare Damon-Rafael talk that way? Cassandra was his!
Damon-Rafael said, “Almost I am tempted to delay your marriage for a year. Should Cassilde die in bearing the child she now carries, I would be free to make Cassandra my wife. I suppose they would even be grateful, when she came to share my throne.”
“You speak treason,” Allart said, genuinely shocked now. “King Regis still sits on the throne, and Felix is his legitimate son and will succeed him.”
Damon-Rafael’s shrug was contemptuous. “The old king? He will not live a year. I stood by his side today by our father’s grave; and I, too, have some of the foresight of the Hasturs of Elhalyn. He will lie there before the seasons turn again. As for Felix—well, I have heard the rumors, and no doubt you have heard them, too. He is emmasca; one of the elders who saw him stripped was bribed, they say, and another had faulty eyesight. Whatever the truth, he has been married seven years, and his wife looks not like a woman who has been well treated in her marriage bed; nor has there ever been so much as a rumor that she was breeding. No, Allart. Treason or no, I tell you I will be on the throne within seven years. Look with your own foresight.”
Allart said very quietly, “On the throne, or dead, my brother.”
Damon-Rafael looked at him with enmity and said, “Those old she-males of the Council might prefer the legitimate son of a younger brother to the nedestro of the elder. Will you thrust your hand within the flame of Hali and pledge to support the claim of my son, legitimate or no?”
Allart fought to find the true sight through images of a kingdom raging in flames, a throne within his grasp, storms raging across the Hellers, a keep tumbling as if blasted by earthquake—no! He was a man of peace; he had no will to fight with his brother for a throne, see the Domains run red with the blood of a terrible fratricidal war. He bowed his head.
“The gods ordained it, Damon-Rafael, when you were born my father’s eldest son. I will swear what oath you require of me, my brother and my lord.”
In Damon-Rafael’s look triumph mingled with contempt. Allart knew that if their positions had been reversed, he would have had to fight to the death for his inheritance. He tensed with dislike as Damon-Rafael embraced him and said, “So, I will have your oath and your strong hand to guard my sons; then perhaps the old saying is true, and I need not feel my back bare and brotherless.”
He looked with regret across the room again at Cassandra, wrapped in her blue veil. “I suppose—No, I am afraid you must take your bride. All the Aillards would be offended if I made her barragana, and I cannot keep you both unwed for another year against the possibility that Cassilde might die and I should be free to wed again.”
Cassandra—in his hands? Damon-Rafael, who thought of her only as a pawn for a political alliance, to cement the support of her kinfolk? The thought sickened him. Yet Allart recalled his own resolve: to take no wife, to father no sons to bear the curse of his laran. He said, “In return for my support, then, brother, spare me this marriage.”
“I cannot,” Damon-Rafael said regretfully, “though I would willingly take her myself. But I dare not offend the Aillards that way. Never mind, you may not long be burdened with her; she is young, and many of those Aillard women have died in bearing their first child. It is likely she will do so, too. Or she may be like Cassilde, fertile enough, but bearing only stillborn babes. If you keep her breeding and miscarrying for a few years, my sons will be safe and no one would claim you had not done your best for our clan; it will be her fault, not yours.”
Allart said, “I would not want to treat any woman so!”
“Brother, I care not at all how you treat her, so that you wed her and bed her and the Aillards are bound to us by kin-ties. I did but suggest a way you might be rid of her without discredit to your own manhood.” He shrugged, dismissing the matter. “But enough of this. We will ride for Thendara tomorrow, and when the heirship is settled, then we will ride here for your wedding again. Will you drink with me?”
“I have drunk enough,” Allart lied, eager to avoid further contact with his brother. His foresight had seen truly. Not in all the worlds of probability was it written anywhere that he and Damon-Rafael would be friends, and if Damon-Rafael should come to the throne—and Allart’s laran told him that might very well be—it might be that Allart must even guard his life, and the lives of his sons.
Holy Bearer of Burdens, strengthen me! Another reason I should father no sons to come after me—that I must fear for them, too, at my brother’s hands!
* * *
CHAPTER SEVEN
« ^ »
In amiable mood, eager to do honor to his young kinsman, His Grace Regis II had agreed to perform the ceremony of marriage; his lined old face glowed with kindliness as he spoke the ritual words and locked the copper-chased bracelets, the catenas, first on Allart’s wrist and then on Cassandra’s.
“Parted in fact,” he said, unlocking the bracelets, “may you never be so in spirit or in heart.” They kissed, and he said, “May you be forever one.”
Allart felt Cassandra trembling as they stood, hands joined by the precious metal.
She is afraid, he thought, and no wonder. She knows nothing of me; her kinsmen sold her to me as they might have sold a hawk or brood mare.
In earlier days (Allart had read something of Domain history at Nevarsin), marriages like this would have been unthinkable. It had been considered a form of selfishness for women to bear children to one man alone, and the gene pool had been broadened by increasing the number of possible combinations. Briefly Allart wondered if that had been how they first bred the accursed laran into their race; or was it true that they were descended from the children of gods who came here to Hali and fathered sons to rule over their kindred? Or were the tales true of crosses with the nonhuman chieri, who gave their caste both the sexless emmasca, and the gift of laran?
Whatever had happened, these long-past and mostly forgotten days of group marriage had vanished as families began to climb to power; inheritance, and the breeding program, had made exact knowledge of paternity important. Now a man Is judged only by his sons, and a woman by her abilities as a breeder of sons—and she knows it is only for this that she has been given to me!
But the ceremony had come to a close, and Allart felt his wife’s hands cold and shaking in his as he bent to touch her lips, briefly, in the ritual kiss which ended it, and led her out to dance in an explosion of congratulations, goodwill, and applause from his gathered kinsmen and peers. Allart, hypersensitive, felt the sharp-edged overtones in the congratulatory words, and thought that few of them meant their goodwill. His brother Damon-Rafael probably meant his goodwill sincerely. Allart had stood before the holy things at Hali that morning, thrusting his hand into the cold fire that did not burn unless the spea
ker knew himself forsworn, and pledged his honor as Hastur to support his brother’s wardenship of the clan, and his sons’ succession to the throne. The other kinsmen congratulated him because he had made a politically powerful alliance with the strong clan of the Aillards of Valeron, or because they hoped to ally themselves with him by marriage through the sons and daughters this marriage might engender, or simply because they took pleasure in the sight of a wedding, and the drinking and dancing and revelry, making a welcome break from the official mourning for Dom Stephen.
“You are silent, my husband,” Cassandra said.
Allart started, hearing a pleading note in her voice. It is worse for her, poor girl. I was consulted—somewhat—about this marriage; she was not even allowed to say yea or nay. Why do we do this to our women, since it is through them that we keep these precious inheritances which have come to mean so much to us!
He said gently, “My silence was not meant for you, damisela. This day has given me much to think about; that is all. But I am churlish to think so deeply in your presence.”
The level eyes, so deeply lashed that they appeared dark, met his, with a gleam of humor in their depths. “Again you are treating me like a maiden to be flattered into silence with a pretty compliment; and I presume to remind you, my lord, that it is hardly seemly to call me damisela when I am your wife.”
“God help me, yes,” he said, despairing, and she looked at him, a faint frown stitching itself across her smooth brow.
“Is it so unwilling that you have been wed? I was brought up since childhood to know I must marry as my kinsmen bade me; I thought a man more free to choose.”
“I think no man is free; at least, not here in the Domains.” He wondered if this was why there was so much revelry at a wedding, so much dancing and drinking—in order that the sons and daughters of Hastur and Cassilda might forget they were being bred like stud-animals and brood-mares for the sake of the accursed laran that brought power to their line!
But how could he forget? Allart was again in the grip of the out-of-focus time sense which was the curse of his laran, futures diverging from this very moment with the land flaming in war and struggle, hovering hawks like those which had flung clingfire at his air-car, great broad-winged gliders with men hanging from them, fires rising in the forests, strange snowcapped peaks from the ranges beyond Nevarsin which he had never seen, the face of a child surrounded with the pale blaze of lightnings… Are all these things coming into my life, truly, or are they only things which may come?
Did he have any control over any of them at all, or would some relentless fate thrust them all upon him? As they had thrust Cassandra Aillard upon him as his wife, this woman standing before him… A dozen Cassandras, not one, looking up at him—aglow with love and passion he knew he could arouse, torn with hatred and loathing (yes, he could rouse that, too), limp with exhaustion, dying with a curse, dying in his arms… Allart closed his eyes in a vain effort to shut out the faces of his wife.
Cassandra said, in real alarm, “My husband! Allart! Tell me what is wrong with you, I beg!”
He knew he had frightened her, and sought to control the crowding futures, to put to practice the techniques he had learned at Nevarsin, to narrow down the dozen women she had become—might become, would become—into the one who stood before him now.
“It is not anything you have done, Cassandra. I have told you how I am cursed.”
“Is there nothing that can help you?”
Yes, he thought savagely, it would have helped most of all if neither of us had ever been born; if our ancestors, may they freeze forever in Zandru’s darkest hell, could have refrained from breeding this curse into our line! He did not speak it, but she picked up the thought, and her eyes widened in dismay.
But just then kinsmen and kinswomen burst in on their momentary solitude. Damon-Rafael claimed Cassandra for a dance with an arrogant, “She will be all yours soon enough, brother!” and someone else thrust a glass into his hand, demanding that he join in the revelry which, after all, was in his honor!
Trying to conceal rage and rebellion—after all, he could not blame his guests for the whole system!—he let himself be persuaded to drink, to dance with young kinswomen who evidently had so little to do with his future that their faces remained reassuringly one, not altered continually by the crisscrossing probabilities of his laran. He did not see Cassandra again until Damon-Rafael’s wife Cassilde, and their kinswomen, were leading her from the hall for the formal bedding.
Custom demanded that the bride and husband be put to bed in the presence of their assembled peers, as proof that the marriage had been duly made. Allart had read at Nevarsin that there had been a time, soon after the establishment of marriage for inheritance and the catenas, when public consummation had been required, too. Fortunately Allart knew that would not be demanded of him. He wondered how anyone had ever managed it!
It was not long before they led him, in a tumult of the usual jokes, into the presence of his bride. Custom demanded, too, that a bride’s bedding-gown should be more revealing than anything she had ever worn before—or would ever wear again. In order, Allart thought cynically, that all might see she had no hidden flaw that would impair her value as breeding-stock!
The gods grant they have not drugged her into complaisance… He looked sharply to see if her eyes were drug-blurred, whether they had dosed her with aphrodisiacs. He supposed this was merciful for a girl given unwilling to a complete stranger; no one, he supposed, would have much heart for fighting a terrified girl into submission. Again conflicting futures, conflicting possibilities and obligations crowded into his mind with images of lust fighting for place with other futures in which he saw her lying dead in his arms. What had Damon-Rafael told him? That all of her sisters had died with the birth of their first child…
With a chorus of congratulations, the kinsmen withdrew, leaving them alone. Allart rose and threw down the bar of the lock. Returning to her side, he saw the fear in her face and the gallant effort she made to hide it
Does she fear I shall fall on her like a wild animal? But aloud he said only, “Have they drugged you with aphrosone or some such potion?”
She shook her head. “I refused it. My foster-mother would have made me drink it, but I told her I did not fear you.”
Allart asked, “Then why are you trembling?”
She said, with that flash of spirit he had seen in her before, “I am cold, my lord, in this near-naked gown they insisted I must wear!”
Allart laughed. “It seems I have the better of it, then, being robed in fur. Cover yourself, then, Lady—it would have not needed that for me to desire you—I forgot, you do not like to be complimented, or flattered!” He came up and sat on the edge of the great bed beside her. “May I pour you some wine, domna?”
“Thank you.” She took the glass, and as she sipped he saw the color come back into her face. Gratefully she tugged the fur robe up, to her shoulders. He poured some for himself, turning the stem of the goblet in his fingers, trying to think how he must say what must be said without offending her. Again the crowding futures and possibilities threatened to overwhelm him, so that he could see himself ignoring his scruples, taking her into his arms with all the pent-up passion of his life. How she would come alive with passion and love, the years of joy they would share… and again, confusingly, blurring the face of the woman and the moment before him, another woman’s face, tawny and laughing, surrounded by masses of copper hair…
“Cassandra,” he said, “did you want this marriage?”
She did not look at him. “I am honored by this marriage. We were handfasted when I was too young to remember. It must be different for you, you are a man and have choice, but I had none. Whatever I did as a child, I heard nothing but this or that will or will not be suitable when you are wed to Allart Hastur of Elhalyn.”
He said, the words wrung from him, “What joy it must be to have such security, to see only one future instead of a dozen, a hundred, a t
housand… not to have to tread your way among them like an acrobat who dances upon a stretched rope at Festival Fair!”
“I never thought of that. I thought only that your life was more free than mine, to choose…”
“Free?” He laughed without amusement. “My fate was as sealed as yours. Lady. Yet we may still choose among the futures I can see, if you are willing.”
She said in a low voice, “What is left for us to choose now, my lord? We are wedded and bedded; it seems to me that no more choice is possible. Only this; you can use me cruelly or gently, and I can bear all with patience or disgrace my caste by fighting you away and forcing you, like the victim of some old bawdy song, to bear the marks of my nails and teeth. Which indeed,” she said, her eyes glinting up at him in a laugh, “I would think it shameful to do.”
“The gods forbid you should have cause,” he said. For a moment, so poignant were the images roused by her words, it seemed that all other futures had really been wiped out. She was his wife, given to him consenting, even willing, and wholly at his mercy. He could even make her love him.
Then why do we not yield together to our destiny, my love…?
But he forced himself to say, “A third choice remains still, my lady. You know the law; whatever the ceremony, this is no marriage until we make it so, and even the catenas can be unlocked, if we petition.”
“If I should so anger my kinsmen, and bring the wrath of the Hasture upon them, then the string of alliances on which the reign of the Hasturs is built will come crashing down. If you seek to return me to my kinsmen because I found no favor with you, there will be no peace for me, and no happiness.” Her eyes were wide and desolate.
“I thought only— A day might come when you could be given to one more to your liking, my girl.”
She said shyly, “What makes you think I could find one more to my liking?”
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