Stormqueen!

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  She said, her voice shaking, “It’s Darren… I hurt him. I don’t know what’s wrong; he just lies there and will not speak to me. He kissed me too roughly. At first I wanted him to kiss me, but then he grew rough and I made him stop, and he hit me—and I was angry and I—I made the lightning come, but I didn’t want to hurt him, really I didn’t. Please, Donal, come and see what is wrong with him.”

  Avarra, merciful goddess! Donal, his breath coming in gasps, followed his sister onto the dark balcony, kneeling beside Darren, but already he knew what he should find. Darren, his face raised to the dark sky, lay motionless, his body already growing cold.

  “He’s dead, Dorilys; you’ve killed him,” he said, drawing her into his arms in fierce protectiveness, feeling her whole body shaking like a tree in the wind. Around the heights of Castle Aldaran the thunders crashed and rolled, slowly fading into silence.

  * * *

  CHAPTER TEN

  « ^ »

  And now,” said Lord Scathfefl somberly, “if the gods will, we shall hear the truth of this dreadful business.”

  The guests had been cleared away, escorted to their rooms or to their horses. Over the heights of Castle Aldaran the great red sun was beginning to show a wet crimson face through the heavy banks of cloud. Darren’s body had been carried to the chapel deep in tht heart of the castle. Donal had never liked Darren, but he could not keep back pity as he saw the young man lying stark and astonished, his clothing disarrayed, his head flung back in the spasm of agony and terror which had ended his life. He came to an undignified end, Donal thought, and would have arranged the young man’s clothing in more seemly fashion; then it occurred to him that this would remove all traces of Dorilys’s only defense.

  Blood-guilt on so young a child, he thought with a shudder, and stepped back from the corpse and went out to Lord Aldaran’s presence-chamber.

  Margali had been roused from the heavy sleep which had fallen over her at the cessation of pain; she was there, a thick shawl thrown over her night-robe, Dorilys sobbing in her arms. The girl looked like an exhausted child now, her face blotched with long crying, her hair coming down in stray locks and tendrils, her swollen eyelids drooping sleepily over her eyes. She had almost stopped crying, but every now and then a renewed spasm of sobs would shake her thin shoulders. She was sitting in Margali’s lap like the child she was, though her long legs dragged on the floor. Her elaborate gown was bedraggled and crushed.

  Over the child’s head Margali looked at Lord Mikhail of Aldaran and said, “Will you have truthspell, then, my lord? Very well, but let me at least call her nurse and put the child to bed. She has been awake all night, and you can see—” She moved her head, indicating the weeping, disheveled Dorilys, clinging to her.

  “I am sorry, mestra. Dorilys must remain,” Aldaran said. “We must hear what she has to say, too, I fear, and under truthspell… Dorilys”— his voice was gentle—“let go of your foster-mother, my child, and go and sit there beside Donal. No one will hurt you; we only want to know what happened.”

  Reluctantly, Dorilys loosed her grip from Margali’s neck. She was rigid, gripped with terror. Donal could not help but think of a rabbithorn before a pack of mountain beasts. She came and sat on the low bench beside him. Donal put out his hand to her and the childish fingers gripped it, painfully tight. With her free hand she wiped her smeared face on the sleeve of her gown.

  Margali took her matrix from the silken bag around her throat, gazed for a moment into the blue jewel, and her low, clear voice was distinctly audible, though she was almost whispering, in the silence of the presence-chamber.

  “In the light of the fire of the jewel, let the truth lighten this room where we stand.”

  Donal had seen the setting of truthspell many times, and it had never ceased to awe him. From the small blue jewel, a glow began, slowly suffused the face of the leronis, crept out into the room, creeping slowly from face to face. Donal felt the shimmer of the light on his own face, saw it glowing on the blotched face of the child at his side, saw it lightening the face of Rakhal of Scathfell and the paxman who stood motionless at his back. In the blue light Mikhail of Aldaran looked more than ever like some aged and molting bird of prey, motionless on his block, but when he raised his head the power and the menace were there, silent potential.

  Margali said, “It is done, my lord. The truth alone may be spoken here while this light endures.”

  Donal knew that if falsehoods were knowingly spoken under the truthspell, the light would vanish from the face of the speaker, showing instantly that he lied.

  “Now,” said Mikhail of Aldaran, “you must tell us what you know of this, Dorilys. How came Darren to die?”

  Dorilys raised her face. She looked pitiable, her face smeared and blotched with weeping, her eyes swollen, and again she wiped her nose on the elaborate sleeves of her gown. She clung hard to Donal’s hand, and he could feel her trembling. Aldaran had never before used the commanding voice on his daughter. After a moment she said, “I—I didn’t know he was dead,” and blinked rapidly as if she were about to cry again.

  Rakhal of Scathfell said, “He is dead. My eldest son is dead. Have no doubt about that, you—”

  “Silence!” With the sound of the commanding voice, even Lord Scathfell let his voice die into quiet. “Now, Dorilys, tell us what befell between Darren and you. How came the lightnings to strike him?”

  Dorilys slowly gained command of her voice. “We were warm from dancing, and he said we should go out on the balcony. He began to kiss me, and he—” Her voice shook again, uncontrollably. “He unlaced my gown and touched me, and he would not stop when I bade him.” She blinked hard, but the truthlight on her face did not falter. “He said I should let him take me now so that Father could not delay the marriage. And he kissed me roughly; he hurt me.” Her hands went up to cover her face, and she shook with a fresh outburst of sobs.

  Aldaran’s face was set like stone. He said, “Don’t be afraid, my daughter; but you must let our kinsmen see your face.”

  Donal took Dorilys’s hands in his. He could feel the agony of her fear and shame as if it were pulsing out through her small hands.

  She said, stammering, into the unflickering truthlight, “He—he hit me hard when I pushed him away, and he knocked me down on the floor, and then he got down on the floor beside me, and I was—I was scared, and I hit him with the lightnings. I didn’t want to hurt him; I only wanted him to take his hands off me!”

  “You! You killed him, then! You struck him with your witch-lightnings, you fiend from hell!” Scathfell rose, advanced from his seat, his hand raised as if to strike.

  “Father! Don’t let him hurt me!” Dorilys cried out in shrill terror. A blue blaze of lightning struck outward, and Rakhal of Scathfell reeled back, stopped dead in his tracks, clutching at his heart. The paxman came and supported his faltering lord to his seat.

  Donal said, “My lords, if she had not struck him down, I would myself have called challenge on him! To seek to ravish a girl of eleven!” His hand clutched at his sword as if the dead man stood before him.

  Aldaran’s voice was filled with sorrow and bewilderment as he turned to Lord Scathfell. “Well, my brother, you have seen. I regret this, more than I can say; but you have seen the truthlight on the child’s face, and it seems to me there is little fault in her, either. How came your son to attempt a thing so unseemly at his own handfasting—to try to rape his intended bride?”

  “It never occurred to me that he would need to rape,” Scathfell said, anger beating through his words. “It was I who told him, simply, to make sure of her. Did you truly think we would agree to wait for years while you sought out a more advantageous marriage? A blind man could have seen that the girl was marriageable, and the law is clear: if a handfasted couple lie together, the marriage is legal from that moment. It was I who told my son to make sure of his bride.”

  “I should have known,” Aldaran said bitterly. “You did not trust me, brother? Bu
t here stands the leronis who brought my daughter to the light. Under truthspell, Margali, how old is Dorilys?”

  “It is true,” the leronis said into the blue truthlight. “I took her from Aliciane’s dead body eleven summers ago. But even if she had been of marriageable age, my lord of Scathfell, why should you connive at the seduction of your own niece?”

  “Yes, we should hear that, too,” Mikhail of Aldaran said. “Why, my brother? Could you not trust the dues of kin?”

  “It is you who have forgotten kinship’s dues,” Scathfell flung at him. “Need you ask, brother? When you would have had Darren wait years while you schemed to find some way to give all to the bastard of Rockraven, whom you call fosterling. That bastard son you will not even acknowledge!”

  Without stopping to think, Donal rose from his seat and stepped to the paxman’s place, three steps behind Mikhail of Aldaran. His hand hovered a few niches above his sword-hilt Lord Aldaran did not look around at Donal, but the words were wrenched from him.

  “Would to all the gods that your words were true! Would that Donal had been born of my blood, lawfully or unlawful! No man could ask more in kinsman or son! But alas—alas, with grief I say it—and in the light of truthspell, Donal is not my son.”

  “Not your son? Truly?” Scathfell’s voice was contorted with fury. “Why, then, why else would an old man so forget kinship’s dues if he were not unseemly besotted with the boy? If not your son, then it must be he is your minion!”

  Donal’s hand flashed to sword-hilt. Aldaran, sensing his intent, reached out and gripped Donal’s wrist in steel fingers, squeezing until Donal’s hand relaxed and he let the sword slide back into the scabbard, undrawn.

  “Not beneath this roof, foster-son; he is still our guest.” Then he let Donal’s wrist go, advancing on the lord of Scathfell, and Donal thought again of a hawk swooping on his prey. “Had any man but my brother spoken such words I would tear the lie from his throat. Get out! Take up the body of that foul ravisher you called son, and all your lackeys, and get you gone from my roof before indeed I forget the dues of kin!”

  “Your roof indeed, but not for long, my brother,” Scathfell said between his teeth. “I will tear it down stone from stone around your head, ere it goes to the bastard of Rockraven!”

  “And I will burn it over my own head, before it goes to any son of Scathfell,” Lord Aldaran retorted. “Be gone from my house before high noon, else my servants shall drive you forth with whips! Get you back to Scathfell, and think lucky I do not harry you forth from that stronghold as well, which you hold by my favor. I make allowance for your grief, or I would have revenge in your heart’s blood for what you have said and done here today! Get you gone to Scathfell, or where you will, but come into my presence no more, nor call me again brother!”

  “Brother no more, nor overlord,” Scathfell said in a rage. “The gods be thanked, I have other sons, and a day will come when we hold Scathfell of our own right, and not by your leave and favor. A day will come when we hold Aldaran as well, and yonder murdering sorceress who hides behind the mask of a weeping girl-baby shall be held to account with her own blood! From hence, Mikhail of Aldaran, look to yourself, and your witch-daughter, and to the bastard of Rockraven whom you will not own your son! The gods alone know what hold he has on you! Some filthy spell of witchcraft! I will breathe no longer this air polluted with the foul sorceries of this place!” Turning, his paxman at his heels, Lord Scathfell went forth, with a slow and measured step, from Aldaran’s presence-chamber. His last look was for Dorilys, a look so full of loathing that Donal turned cold.

  When brethren are at odds, enemies step in to widen the gap, Donal thought. Now his foster-father had quarreled with all his kin. And I, who alone stand by him now—I am not even his son!

  When the folk of Scathfell had departed, Margali said firmly, “Now, my lord, by your leave, I shall take Dorilys away to her bed.”

  Aldaran, starting out of a brooding apathy, said, “Yes, yes, take the child away, but return to me here when she sleeps.”

  Margali took the sobbing child away, and Aldaran sat motionless, head down, lost in thought.

  Donal forbore to disturb him, but when Margali returned, he asked, “Shall I go?”

  “No, no, lad, this concerns you, too,” Aldaran said, sighing as he looked up at the leronis. “No blame to you, Margali, but what are we to do now?”

  Margali said, shaking her head, “I cannot control her anymore, my lord. She is strong and willful, and soon the stresses of puberty will be upon her. I beg you, Dom Mikhail, to place her in charge of someone stronger than I, and better fitted to teach her control of her laran, or worse things than this may follow.”

  Donal wondered, What could be worse than this?

  As if picking up the unspoken question, Aldaran said, “Every other child I have fathered has died in adolescence of the threshold sickness which is the curse of our line. Must I fear that for her, too?”

  Margali said, “Have you thought, my lord, of sending her to the vai leroni of Tramontana Tower? They would care for her, and teach her the uses of her laran. If anyone alive could bring her through adolescence unharmed, it is they.”

  Donal thought, That is certainly the right solution. “Yes, Father,” he said eagerly. “You will remember how kind they were to me whenever I went there. They would have been glad to have me among them, if you could have spared me from your side. Even so, they always welcomed me among them as guest and friend, and they taught me much about the use of my laran, and would have gladly taught me more. Send Dorilys to them, Father.”

  Aldaran’s face had brightened imperceptibly; then he frowned again. “To Tramontane? Would you shame me before my neighbors, then, Donal? Am I to show my weakness, that they can spread the word abroad to all the folk in the Hellers? Am I to be made the subject of gossip and scorn?”

  “Father, I think you wrong the folk of Tramontana,” Donal said, but he knew it would do no good. He had reckoned without Dom Mikhail’s pride.

  Margali said, “If you will not entrust her to your neighbors at Tramontana, Dom Mikhail, then I beg of you to send her to Hali or Neskaya, or to one of the Towers in the Lowlands. I am no longer young enough, or strong enough, to teach her or control her. All the gods know, I have no wish to part with her. I love her as if she were my own child, but I cannot handle her anymore. In a Tower they are schooled to do so.”

  Aldaran thought about that for some time. Finally he said, “I think she is too young to be sent to a Tower. But there are‘ old ties of friendship between Aldaran and Elhalyn. For the sake of that old friendship, perhaps the lord of Elhalyn will send a leronis from Hali Tower to care for her. This would excite no comment. Any household with laran has need of some such person, to teach the young people of that household. Will you go, Donal, and ask that someone shall come to Aldaran to dwell in our household and teach her?”

  Donal rose and bowed. The thought of Dorilys, safe in Tramontana Tower among his friends, had attracted him; but perhaps it had been too much to ask that his foster-father should make his weakness known to his neighbors. “I shall ride today, if you will, my lord, as soon as I can assemble an escort befitting your rank and dignity.”

  “No,” Aldaran said, heavily. “You will ride alone, Donal, as befits a suppliant. I have heard that there is a truce between the Elhalyn and the Ridenow; you will be safe enough. But if you go alone, it will be clear that I am beseeching their help.”

  “As you will,” Donal said. “I can ride tomorrow, then. Or even this night.”

  “Tomorrow will be time enough,” Aldaran said. “Let the folk of Scathfell get well away to their homes. I want no word of this to get around the mountains.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  « ^ »

  At the far end of the Lake of Hali, the Tower rose, a narrow, tall structure, made of pale translucent stone. Most of the more demanding work of the matrix circle was done at night. At first Allart had not understood th
is, thinking it superstition or meaningless custom. As time passed, however, he had begun to realize that the night hours, while most people slept, were the most free of intruding thoughts, the random vibrations of other minds. In the deserted night hours, the matrix circle workers were free to send their conjoined minds into the matrix crystals which enormously amplified the electronic and energon vibrations of the brain, transforming power into energy.

  With the tremendous power of the linked minds and the giant artificial matrix lattices which the technicians could build, these mental energies could mine deep-buried metals to the surface in a pure molten flow; could charge batteries for the operation of air-cars or the great generators which lighted the castles of Elhalyn and Thendara. Such a circle had raised the glistening white towers of the castle at Thendara from the living rock of the mountain peak where it stood. From the many Towers like this one flowed all the energy and technology of Darkover, and it was the men and women of the Tower circles who created it.

  Now, in the shielded matrix chamber—shielded, not only by taboo and tradition, and the isolation of Hali, but by force-fields which could strike an intruder dead or mindless—Allart Hastur sat before a low, round table, hands and mind linked with the six others of his circle. All the energies of his brain and body were concentrated into a single flow toward the Keeper of the circle. The Keeper was a slight, steel-strong young man; his name was Coryn, and he was a cousin of Allart’s, about his own age. Seated before the giant artificial crystal, he seized the massed energon flows of the six who sat around the table, pouring them through the intricate inner crystal lattices, directing the stream of that energy into the rows of batteries ranged before them on the low table. Coryn did not move or speak, but as he pointed a narrow, commanding hand toward one battery after another, the linked, blank-faced members of the circle poured every atom of their focused energies into the matrix and through the body of the Keeper, sending enormous charges of energy into the batteries, one by one.