Stormqueen!

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  I should never have left Nevarsin, he thought. Would that I had flung myself from the highest crag before I let them force me away!

  * * *

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  « ^ »

  Renata hesitated at the door of the room, then, knowing that Cassandra was aware of her presence, went in without knocking. Cassandra was out of bed, although she still looked pale and exhausted. She had some needlework in her hands, and was setting small precise stitches in the petal of an embroidered flower, but as Renata’s eyes fell on it Cassandra colored and put it aside.

  “I am ashamed to waste time on so foolish and womanly a pastime.”

  Renata said, “Why? I, too, was taught never to let my hands sit idle, lest my mind find nothing to occupy itself but too much brooding on my own problems and miseries. Although my stitches were never so fine as yours. Are you feeling better now?”

  Cassandra sighed. “Yes, I am well again. I suppose I can take my place among you. I suppose—” Renata, the empath, knew that Cassandra’s throat closed, unable to speak the words. I suppose they all know what I tried to do; they all despise me…

  “There is not one of us feels anything for you save sympathy, sorrow that you could have been so unhappy among us, and none of us spoke or tried to ease your suffering,” Renata said gently.

  “Yet I hear whispers around me; I cannot read what is happening. What are you concealing from me, Renata? What are you all hiding?”

  “You know that the war has broken out afresh,” Renata began.

  “Allart is to go to war!” It was a cry of anguish. “And he did not tell me.”

  “If he has hesitated to say this, chiya, surely it is only that he fears you might be overcome again by despair, and act rashly.”

  Cassandra lowered her eyes; gently as the words were spoken, they were a reproof, and well-deserved. “No, that will not happen again. Not now.”

  “Allart is not to go to war,” Renata said. “Instead, he is being sent outside the combat area. A messenger has come from Caer Donn, and Allart is being sent to escort him, under a truce-flag. Lord Elhalyn has sent him on some mission to the mountain people there.”

  “Am I to go with him?” Cassandra caught her breath, a flush of such pure joy spreading over her face that Renata was reluctant to speak and banish it.

  At last she said gently, “No, cousin. That is not your destiny now. You must stay here. You have great need of the training we can give, to master your laran, so that you will never again be overcome like that. And since I am to leave the Tower, you will be needed as a monitor here. Mira will begin at once to teach you.”

  “I? A monitor? Truly?”

  “Yes. You have worked long enough in the circle so that your laran and your talents are known to us. Coryn has said that you will make a monitor of great skill. And you will be needed soon. With Allart’s and my departure, there will hardly be enough trained workers here to form two circles, and not enough trained to monitor.”

  “So.” Cassandra was silent a moment. “In any case, I have an easier lot than other women of my clan, who have nothing to do but watch their husbands ride forth to battle and perhaps death. I have useful work to do here, and Allart need have no fear that he leaves me with child.” To answer Renata’s questioning look, she said, “I am ashamed, Renata. Probably you do not know… Allart and I made one another a pledge, that our marriage would remain unconsummated. I—I tempted him to break that vow.”

  “Cassandra, Allart is not a child or an untried boy. He is a grown man, and fully capable of making such a decision for himself.” Renata smothered an impulse to laugh. “I doubt he would be complimented by the thought that you ravished him against his will.”

  Cassandra colored. “Still, if I had been stronger, if I had been able to master my unhappiness—”

  “Cassandra, it’s done and past mending; all the smiths in Zandru’s forges can’t mend a broken egg. You are not the keeper of Allart’s conscience. Now you can only look ahead. Perhaps it is just as well that Allart must leave you for a time. It will give you both the opportunity to decide what you wish to do in the future.”

  Cassandra shook her head. “How can I alone make a decision that concerns us both? It is for Allart to say what shall come afterward. He is my husband and my lord!”

  Suddenly Renata was exasperated. “It is that attitude which has led women to where they are now in the Domains! In the name of the Blessed Cassilda, child, are you still thinking of yourself only in terms of a breeder of sons and a toy of lust? Wake up, girl! Do you think it is only for that Allart desires you?”

  Cassandra blinked, startled. “What else am I? What else can any woman be?”

  “You are not a woman!” Renata said angrily. “You are only a child! Every word you say makes it evident! Listen to me, Cassandra. First, you are a human being, a child of the gods, a daughter of your clan, bearing laran. Do you think you have it only that you may pass it on to your sons? You are a matrix worker; soon you will be a monitor. Do you honestly think you are no good to Allart for anything but to share his bed and to give him children? Gods above, girl, that he could have from a concubine, or a riyachiya…”

  Cassandra’s cheeks flushed an angry red. “It is not seemly to talk about such things!”

  “But only to do them?” Renata retorted, at white heat. “The gods created us thinking creatures; do you suppose they meant woman to be brood animals alone? If so, why do we have brains and laran, and tongues to speak our thoughts, instead of being given only fair faces and sex organs and bellies to bear our children and breasts to nourish them? Do you believe the gods did not know what they were doing?”

  “I do not believe there are any gods at all,” Cassandra retorted, and the bitterness in her voice was so great that Renata’s anger vanished. She, too, had known that kind of bitterness; she was not yet free of it.

  She put her arms around the other girl, and said tenderly, “Cousin, you and I have no reason to quarrel. You are young and untaught; as you learn, here, to use your laran, perhaps you will come to think differently about what you are, within yourself—not only as Allart’s wife. Someday you may be the keeper of your own will and conscience, and not rely on Allart to make the decisions for both of you, nor lay on him the burden of your sorrows as well as his own.”

  “I never thought of that,” said Cassandra, hiding her face against Renata’s shoulder. “If I had been stronger, I would not have laid this burden upon him. I have put upon him the guilt for my own unhappiness which drove me into the lake. Yet he was only doing what he felt he must do. Will they teach me here to be strong, Renata? As strong as you?”

  “Stronger, I hope, chiya,” Renata said, kissing the other girl on the forehead, yet her own thoughts were grim. I am full of good advice for her, yet I cannot handle my own life. For the third time, now, I run away from marriage, into this unknown mission at Aldaran, for a girl I do not know and for whom I care nothing. I should stay here and defy my father, not run away to Aldaran to teach some unknown girl how to use the laran that her foolish forefathers bred into her mind and body! What is this girl to me, that I should neglect my own life to help her gain command of hers?

  Yet she knew it had all been determined by what she was—a leronis, born with the talent, and fortunate enough to have been given Tower training to master it. Thus in honor bound to do whatever she could to help others less fortunate master their own unasked for, undesired laran.

  Cassandra was calm now. She said, “Allart will not go without bidding me farewell… ?”

  “No, no, of course not, my child. Coryn has already given him leave to withdraw from the circle, so this last night you spend under one roof, you may spend together to say your farewells.” She did not tell Cassandra that she herself was to accompany Allart on his ride northward; that would be for Allart to tell her, in his own time and in his own way. She only said, “In any case, as things are between you now, one of you should go. You know that when serious work beg
ins in the circle, you must remain apart and chaste.”

  “I do not understand that,” Cassandra said. “Coryn and Arielle—”

  “—have worked together for more than a year in the circle; they know the limits of what is allowed and what is dangerous,” Renata said. “A day will come when you will know it, too, but as you are now, it would be difficult to recall or keep to those limits. This is your time to learn, with no distractions, and Allart would be”—she smiled at the other girl, mischievously—“a distraction. Oh, these men, that we can neither live at peace with them—nor without them!”

  Cassandra’s laughter was momentary. Then her face convulsed again with weeping. “I know that all you say is true, and yet I cannot bear to have Allart leave me. Have you never been in love, Renata?”

  “No, not as you mean it, chiya.” Renata held Cassandra close to her, torn, with the empath laran, anguished with the other woman’s pain, as Cassandra sobbed helplessly against her breast.

  “What can I do, Renata? What can I do?”

  Renata shook her head, staring bleakly into space. Will I ever know what it is to love that way? Do I want to know, or is such love as this only a trap into which women walk of their own free will, so that they have no more strength to rule their own lives? Is this how the women of the Comyn have become no more than breeders of sons and toys of lust? But Cassandra’s pain was very real to her. At last she said, hesitating, shy before the depths of the other woman’s emotion, “You could make it impossible for him to leave you, if you grieve like this, cousin. He would be too fearful for you, too guilty at the thought of leaving you to such despair.”

  Cassandra struggled to control her sobs. Finally she said, “You are right. I must not add to Allart’s guilt and grief with my own. I am not the first, nor the last wife of a Hastur who must see him ride away from her, with no knowledge of when, or ever, he will return; but his honor and the success of his mission are in my hands, then. I must not hold that lightly. Somehow”—she set her small chin stubbornly—“I will find the strength to send him away from me; if not gladly, at least I will try to make sure that he goes without fear for me to add to his own.”

  It was a small party that rode north from Hali the next day. Donal, as a suppliant, had ridden alone; Allart himself had only the banner-bearer to which, as heir to Elhalyn, he was entitled, and the messenger with a truce-flag; not so much as a single body-servant. Renata, too, had dispensed with lady companions, saying that in time of war such niceties need not be observed; she had brought only her nurse Lucetta, who had served her since childhood, and would have dispensed even with this attendance, save that an unmarried woman of the Domains could not travel without any female attendance.

  Allart rode silently, apart from the rest, tormented by the memory of Cassandra at the moment of their parting, her lovely eyes filled with the tears she had struggled so valiantly not to shed before him. At least he had not left her pregnant; so far the gods had been merciful.

  If there were any gods, and if they cared what befell mankind…

  Ahead he could hear Renata chatting lightheartedly with Donal. They seemed so young, both of them. Allart knew he was only three or four years older than Donal, but it seemed he had never been as young as that. Seeing what will be, what may be, what may never be, it seems I live a lifetime in every day that passes. He envied the boy.

  They were riding through a land bearing the scars of war, blackened fields with traces of fire, roofless houses, abandoned farms. So few travelers passed them on the road that after the first day Renata did not even bother to keep her cloak modestly folded about her face.

  Once an air-car flew low overhead; it circled, dipped low to scrutinize them, then turned about and flew back southward. The guardsman with the truce-flag dropped back to ride at Allart’s side.

  “Truce-flag or not, vai dom, I wish you had agreed to an escort. Those bastards of Ridenow may choose not to honor a truce-flag; and seeing your banners, it might occur to them that it would be worth much to capture the heir to Elhalyn and hold him to ransom from his Hastur kinfolk. It would not be the first time such a thing had happened.”

  “If they will not honor a flag of truce,” Allart said reasonably, “it will avail us nothing to defeat them in this war, either, for they would not honor our victory or the terms of surrender. I think we must trust our enemies to abide by the rules of war.”

  “I have had small faith in the rules of war, Dom Allart, since first I saw a village burned to ashes by clingfire—not soldiers alone, but old men and women and little children. I would prefer to trust in the rules of war with a considerable escort at my back!”

  Allart said, “I have not foreseen it with my laran, that we will be under attack.”

  The Guardsman only said dryly, “Then you are fortunate, vai dom. I have not the consolation of foresight or other sorcery,” and fell into stubborn silence.

  On the third day of the journey, they crossed a pass which led downward to the Kadarin River, which separated the Lowland Domains from the territories held by the mountain folk—Aldaran, Ardais, and the lesser lords of the Hellers. Before they rode downward, Renata turned back to look over the lands from which they had come, where most of the Domains lay spread out before them. Renata looked on the distant hills and Towers, then cried out in dismay—forest fire was raging across the Kilghard Hills away south.

  “Look where it rages!” she cried. “Surely it will trespass on Alton lands.” Allart and Donal, both telepaths, picked up her thought. Will my home, too, lie in flames down there in a war which is none of ours? Aloud she only said, her voice shaking, “Now I wish I had your foresight, Allart.”

  The panorama of the Domains below them blurred before Allart’s eyes and he closed them in a vain attempt to shut out the diverging futures of his laran. If the powerful clan of the Altons was drawn into this war by an attack on their home country, no homestead or estate anywhere in the Domains would be safe. It would not matter to the Altons whether their homes were burned by fires deliberately set, or by those raging out of control after being set to attack elsewhere.

  “How dare they use forest fire as a weapon,” Renata demanded furiously, “knowing it cannot be controlled, but is at the mercy of winds over which they have no power.”

  “No,” said Allart, trying to comfort her. “Some of the leroni—you know that—can use their powers to raise clouds and rain to dampen the fires, or even snow to smother them.”

  Donal drew his mount close to Renata’s. “Where lies your home, Lady?”

  She pointed a slender hand. “There, between the lakes of Miridon and Mariposa. My home is beyond the hills, but you can see the lakes.”

  Donal’s dark face was intent, as he said, “Have no fear, damisela. See—it will move upward along that ridge”—he pointed—“and there the winds will drive it back upon itself. It will burn out before tomorrow’s sunset.”

  “I pray you are right,” she said, “but surely you are only guessing?”

  “No, my lady. Surely you can see it, if you will only calm yourself. Certainly you, who are Tower-trained, can have no difficulty in reading how the air currents there will move this way, and the wind will rise there. You are a leronis; you must see that”

  Allart and Renata regarded Donal in wonder and amazement. Finally Renata said, “Once when I was studying the breeding program, I read something of such a laran as that, but it was abandoned because it could not be controlled. But that was not in the Hastur kin, nor in the Delleray. Are you perhaps akin to the folk of Storn or Rockraven?”

  “Aliciane of Rockraven—she who was fourth daughter to old Lord Vardo—was my mother.”

  “Is it so?” Renata looked at him with open curisoity. “I believed that laran extinct, since it was one of those which came on a child before birth and usually killed the mother who bore such a child. Did your mother survive your birth?”

  “She did,” Donal said, “but she died in bearing my sister Dorilys, who is to be in
your care.”

  Renata shook her head. “So the accursed breeding program among the Hastur kin has left its mark in the Hellers, too. Had your father any laran?”

  “I do not know. I cannot recall that I ever looked on his face,” Donal said, “but my mother was no telepath, and Dorilys—my sister—cannot read thoughts at all. Such telepathy as I have must be the gift of my father.”

  “Did your laran come on you in infancy, or suddenly, in adolescence?”

  “The ability to sense air currents, storms, has been with me as long as I can remember,” Donal said. “I did not think it laran then, merely a sense everyone had to greater degree or less, like an ear for music. When I grew older I could control the lightning a little.” He told how in childhood he had diverted a bolt of lightning which might, otherwise, have struck the tree under which he and his mother had sheltered. “But I can do it only rarely and in great need, and it makes me ill; so I try only to read these forces, not to control them.”

  “That is wisest,” Renata confirmed. “Everything we know of the more unusual laran has taught us how dangerous it is to play with these forces; rain at one place is drought at another. It was a wise man who said, ‘It is ill done to chain a dragon for roasting your meat.’ Yet I see you bear a star-stone.”

  “A little, and only for toys. I can levitate and control a glider, such things as that. Such small things as our household leronis could teach me.”

  “Were you a telepath from infancy, too?”

  “No; that came on me when I was past fifteen, when I had ceased to expect it.”

  “Did you suffer much from threshold sickness?” Allart asked.

  “Not much; dizziness, disorientation for half a season or so. Mostly I was distressed because my foster-father forbade me my glider for that time!” He laughed, but they could both read his thoughts: I never knew how deeply my foster-father loved me, till I felt how deeply he feared then to lose me when I fell ill with threshold sickness.