When Renata brought the sleeping draft, Donal held the vial to her lips. Dorilys swallowed it obediently, but her voice was plaintive when she said, “I am so afraid to sleep now. My dreams are so dreadful, and I hear the tower falling, and the thunder is inside me. The storms are all inside my head now…”
Donal stood up, Dorilys in his arms. “Let me carry you to your bed, sister,” he said, but she clung to him.
“No, no! Oh, please, please, I’m afraid to be alone. I’m so afraid. Please stay with me, Donal! Don’t leave me!”
“I will stay with you until you are asleep,” Donal promised, sighing, and signaled to Cassandra to come with them.
She followed as he carried Dorilys along the hall and up the long staircase. At the end of the hallway the roofing had been roughly repaired, but a great pile of stone and fallen plaster and debris still blocked the hall. Cassandra thought, It is no great wonder she hears it in her nightmares!
Donal carried Dorilys into her room, laying her on the bed and summoning her women to loosen her clothing, remove her shoes. But even when she was tucked under her quilts she would not release his hand. She murmured something Cassandra did not hear. Donal stroked her forehead gently, with his free hand.
“This is no time to speak of that, chiya. You are ill. When you are well and strong again, and wholly free of threshold sickness—then, yes, if you wish it. I have promised you.” He bent to kiss her lightly on the forehead, but she pulled at his head with both hands so that their lips met, and the kiss she gave him was not a child’s kiss or a sister’s. Donal drew away, looking troubled and embarrassed.
“Sleep, child, sleep. You are wearied; you must be strong and well tonight for the victory feast in the Great Hall.”
She lay back on her pillow, smiling.
“Yes,” she said drowsily. “For the first time I shall sit in the high seat as Lady of Aldaran… and you beside me… my husband…”
The drowsiness of the strong sleeping medicine was already taking her. She let her eyes fall shut, but she did not loosen her grip on Donal’s hand, and even when she slept it was some time before her fingers relaxed enough so that he could draw his hand free. Cassandra, watching, was embarrassed at having witnessed this, even though she knew perfectly well that this was one reason Donal had wanted her there.
She is not herself. We should not blame her for what happens when she is under such stress, poor child. But inside herself Cassandra knew that Dorilys was perfectly well aware what she was doing, and why.
She is too old for her years…
When they returned to the hall, Renata raised questioning eyes to them, and Donal said, “Yes, she sleeps. But in the name of all the gods, cousin, what did you give her to work so quickly?”
Renata told him, and he stared at her in consternation.
“That? To a child?”
Dom Mikhail said, “That would be a dose overlarge for a grown man dying of the black rot! Was that not dangerous?”
“I dared give her nothing less,” Renata said. “Listen.” She held up a hand for silence and overhead they could hear the crackle and crumble of thunder in the cloudless sky. “Even now she dreams.”
“Blessed Cassilda, have mercy!” Dom Mikhail said. “What ails her?”
Renata said soberly, “Her laran is out of control. You should never have allowed her to use it in the war, my lord. Her control was broken down when she loosed it against the armies. I first saw it in the fire station, when she played with the storms, and became overexcited and dizzy. You remember, Donal! But she had not then come to her full strength or womanhood. Now—all the control I taught her has faded from her mind. I do not know what we can do for her.” She turned, made a deep reverence to Aldaran.
“My lord, I asked you this once before, and you refused. Now, I think, there is no choice. I implore you. Let me burn out her psi centers. Perhaps now, while she sleeps, it could still be done.”
Aldaran looked at Renata in horror.
“When her laran has saved us all? What would that do to her?”
“I think—I hope,” Renata said, “that it would do no more than take away the lightnings that torment her so. She would be without laran, but she wishes for that now. You heard her beg Cassandra to take away the thundering. She would perhaps be no more, and no less, than an ordinary woman of her caste, ungifted with laran, yes, but having her beauty, still, and her talents, and her superb voice. She could still—” She hesitated, choked over the words, and went on, looking straight at Donal, “She could still give an heir of Aldaran blood to your clan, gifted with the laran in her genes. She should never bear a daughter, but she could give Aldaran a son, if need be.”
Donal had told her of the promise he had made to Dorilys, during the siege of Castle Aldaran.
“It is no more than fair,” Renata had said then. If Dorilys must be bound all her life by the catenas in a marriage forced on her before she is old enough to know anything of marriage or of love, where she will have the name and dignity of a wife but never a husband’s love, it is only fair that she should have something of her very own, something to love and cherish. I do not grudge her a child for Aldaran. It would be better if she would choose some other than Donal for the fathering, but as her life must be ordered, it is not likely she will come to know any man well enough for such a purpose. And it is Lord Aldaran’s will that Donal’s son should reign here when he is gone. I do not begrudge Dorilys a child of Donal’s. It is I who am his wife, and we all know it, or will know it, in time to come.
Now Renata looked at Lord Aldaran, pleading, and Allart remembered the moment when he had seen with his laran, in this very hall, the vassals of Aldaran acclaiming a child whom he held up before them, proclaiming the new heir of Aldaran blood. Why, Allart wondered, should his foresight show him only this one moment? It seemed that all else was blurred into nightmare and thundercloud. But they saw it in Allart’s mind, all the telepaths there assembled, and Aldaran said “I told you so!” with that fierce, hawklike glance.
Donal lowered his head and would not meet Renata’s eyes.
“It seems terrible to do that to her, when she has saved us all. Are you sure it would do no worse to her than this—to destroy the psi centers and leave the rest undamaged?” Lord Aldaran said.
Renata said reluctantly, “My lord, no leronis living could make such a pledge. I love Dorilys as if she were my own, and I would give her the uttermost of my skill and strength. But I do not know how much of her brain has been invaded by the laran, or damaged by these storms. You know that electrical discharges within the brain reflect themselves as convulsive seizures in the body. Dorilys’s laran somehow translates the electrical discharges in the brain to thunder and lightnings in the electrical field of the planet. Now that is out of control. She said the thunders were inside her now. I do not know how much damage has been done. It might be that I would have to destroy some part of her memory, or of her intelligence.”
Donal was white with dread. “No!” he said, and it was a prayer. “Would she be an idiot, then?”
Renata would not look at him. She said, very low, “I cannot swear that the possibility is beyond belief. I would do my best for her. But it could indeed be so.”
“No! All gods help us—no, kinswoman!” Aldaran said, the old hawk roused. “If there is the slightest chance—no, I cannot risk it. Even if all should go for the best, cousin, a woman who is heir to Aldaran cannot live as a commoner, without laran. She would be better dead!”
Renata bowed, a submissive gesture. “Let us hope it does not come to that, my lord.”
Lord Aldaran looked around at them all. “I shall see you tonight at the victory feast within this hall,” he said. “I must go and give orders that all is done as I command.” He went from the hall, his head erect and arrogant.
Renata, watching him go, thought, It is his moment of triumph. He has Aldaran now, unchallenged, despite the ruin of the war. Dorilys is a part of that triumph. He wants her at his side,
a threat, a weapon for the future. Suddenly she shuddered, hearing the thunders, soft and dying overhead.
Dorilys slept, her terror and rage diminished by the drug.
But she would wake. And what then?
The thunders were still silent late that evening, as the sun set. Allart and Cassandra stood on the balcony above their suite, looking down into the valley.
“I can hardly believe the war is over,” Cassandra said.
Allart nodded. “And most likely the war with the Ridenow as well; it was my father and Damon-Rafael who wished to conquer them and drive them back to the Dry-towns. I do not think anyone else cares if they remain at Serrais; certainly the women of Serrais, who wedded them and welcomed them there, do not.”
“What is going to happen in Thendara now, Allart?”
“How should I know?” Her husband’s smile was bleak. “We have had proofs enough of the inadequacy of my foresight. Most likely Prince Felix will reign until the Council declares his heir. And you know, and I know, whom they are likely to choose.”
She said, with a little shiver, “I do not want to be queen.”
“Nor I to be king, beloved. But we both knew, when we became entangled in the great events of our time, that there would be no help for it.” He sighed. “My first act, if it is so, will be to choose Felix Hastur as my principal Councillor. He was born to the throne, and reared to the knowledge of ruling; also, he is emmasca and long-lived, as with those of chi-eri blood, and he may live through two or three reigns. Since he can raise up no son to supplant me, he will be the most useful and disinterested of advisers. Between the two of us, he and I may together make something like a king.”
He put his arm around Cassandra, drew her close. Damon-Rafael had reminded him; with Cassandra’s modified genes, the blend of Hastur and Aillard might, after all, be viable in a child of theirs. Cassandra, following his thoughts, said aloud, “With what I have learned in the Tower I can make certain I will conceive no child who will kill me in the bearing, or carry lethal genes which will destroy him at puberty. There will be some risk, always…” She raised her eyes to his and smiled. “But after what we have survived together, I think we can risk that much.”
“There will be time for that,” he said, “but if there should be no such good fortune, Damon-Rafael has half a dozen nedestro sons. One of them, at least, should have the stuff to make a king. I think I have had lesson enough in the pride that drives a man to seek a crown for his own sons.” He could see, shadowy and blurred in the future, the face of a lad who would follow him to the throne, and that it was a child of Hastur blood. But whether it was a son of his own, or the son of his brother, he did not know, or care.
He was weary, and more grieved than he wanted to let himself know, at his brother’s death. He thought, Even though I had resolved to kill him if I must, even though it was I who held up the mirror of his own heart and thus forced him to turn the knife on himself, I am grieved. He knew he would never be wholly free of grief and guilt for the decision which had been, whether anyone else ever knew it or not, the first conscious act of his reign. And he knew he would never cease to mourn—not for the power-hungry potential tyrant he had driven to suicide, but for the big brother he loved, who had wept with him at their father’s grave.
But that Damon-Rafael had died long ago, long ago—if he had ever lived outside Allart’s own imagination!
Faint thunder rumbled in the sky, and Cassandra started, then, looking at the rain falling, a dark streak, across the valley on the peaks, she said, “I think it is only a summer storm. Yet I can never hear lightning now—” She broke off. “Allart! Do you think Renata was right? Should you have persuaded Dom Mikhail to let Renata destroy her laran as she slept?”
“I do not know,” Allart said, troubled. “After what has befallen, I am not eager to trust my own foresight now. But I, too, found my laran a curse, when I was a boy on the threshold of manhood. Had any offered me such a release then, I think I would have taken it with gladness. And yet—and yet—” He reached out for her, drew her to him, remembering those agonized days when he had cowered, paralyzed, under the laran which had become such a dreadful curse. It had stabilized when he came to manhood; he knew now that he would never have been more than half alive without it. “When she comes to maturity, Dorilys, too, may find stability and strength, and be the stronger for these trials.” As I have been. And you, my beloved. “I should go to her,” Cassandra said uneasily, and Allart laughed.
“Ah, that is like you, love—you who are to be queen, to rush off to the bedside of a sick maiden, and one who is not even to be one of your subjects!”
Cassandra raised her small head proudly. “I was monitor, and healer, before ever I thought of being a queen. And I hope I shall never refuse my skill to anyone who stands in need of it!”
Allart raised her fingertips to his lips and kissed them.
“The gods grant, beloved, that I shall be as good a king as that!”
Within the castle, Renata heard the thunder, and thought of Dorilys as she readied herself for the victory feast.
“If you have any influence with her at all, Donal,” she said, “you will try to persuade her that I mean her well. Then, perhaps, I can work with her, to rebuild the control I had begun to teach her. It would be easier to retrace what she and I had done than to begin again with a stranger.”
“I will do that,” Donal said. “I do not fear for her; never once has she turned on me, nor on her father, and if she has control enough for that, I have no doubt she can learn control in other things. She is weary now, and frightened, and in the grip of threshold sickness. But when she is well again, she will recapture her control. I am sure of it.”
“God grant you are right,” she said, smiling, trying to hide her fears.
Abruptly, he said, “At the victory feast, beloved—I want to tell my father, and Dorilys, how it stands with us.”
Renata shook her head vehemently. “I do not think it is the right time, Donal. I do not think she can bear it yet.”
“Yet,” Donal said, frowning, “I am reluctant to lie to her. I wish it had been you, rather than Cassandra, who saw how she clung to me, when I carried her to her bed. I want her to know that I will always cherish her and protect her, but I do not want her to misunderstand, either, or to have a false impression of how things are to be between us. At this feast— when she sits at my side as my wife—” He stopped, troubled, thinking of the kiss Dorilys had given him, which was not a sister’s kiss at all.
Renata sighed. At least a part of Dorilys’s trouble was threshold sickness, the emotional and physical upheaval which often disturbed a developing telepath in adolescence. Aldaran had lost three nearly grown children that way. Renata, a monitor, and Tower-trained, knew that part of the danger in threshold sickness was the enormous upsurge, at the same time, of telepathic forces, mingled with the stresses of developing, not yet controlled, sexuality. Dorilys had come young to that, too. Like a plant in a forcing-house, the use of her laran powers had created all the other upheavals and upsurges, too. Was it any wonder, filled with all this new power and awareness, that she turned to the older boy who had been her special champion, her idol since she was a baby, her protector—and now, by this cruel farce she was too young to understand, her husband as well?
“It is true that she survived her first attack of threshold sickness, and the first attack is often the worst. Perhaps, if she wakes well and coherent—but at this victory feast, Donal? When first she sits at your side, acknowledged your wife? Would you spoil her pleasure in that, then?”
“What better time?” Donal asked, smiling. “But even before Dorilys, I want you to tell my father how it is to be with us. He should know that you bear my nedestro child. It is not the heir he wants for Aldaran. But he should know that this child will be shield-arm and paxman to Aldaran house as I have been since my mother brought me here as a child. Truly, my dear love, we cannot keep it secret much longer. Pregnancy, like blood-feud
, grows never less with secrecy. I would not have it thought that I am cowardly, or ashamed of what I have done. Once known and acknowledged, beloved, your status is protected. Even Dorilys, by civilized custom, knows it is a wife’s duty to see to the well-being of any child her husband may father. At this point in her life, I think, any duty properly belonging to a wife will please Dorilys. She was so pleased when Father said she should sit as heir at the victory feast, beside her consort.”
“Perhaps you are right,” Renata said, remembering Dorilys, who hated sewing, proudly embroidering a holiday shirt for Donal—a traditional bride’s task. Donal was right; his marriage to Dorilys was a legal fiction, but custom should be observed, and it was his duty to tell Dorilys that another woman bore his child.
Donal remembered that he had been present—a boy just turned ten years old—when Dom Mikhail had informed Lady Deonara that Aliciane of Rockraven was pregnant with his child. Deonara had risen, embraced Aliciane before all the house-folk, and led her from the women’s table to the high seat, formally sharing a drink of wine from the same cup, in token that she would accept the coming child. Renata laughed uneasily at the thought of this ritual with Dorilys.
“Yet you have loved her tenderly,” Donal urged, “and I think she will remember that. Also there is this to consider. Dorilys is impulsive and given to fierce tempers, but she is also very conscious of her dignity before the house-folk, as Lady of Aldaran. Once she has been forced to be polite to you at a formal occasion, like this, she will remember how kind you have been to her. Nothing would please me more than to see you reconciled. She will know that I love her, I honor her, I will always care for her. I will even, if it is really her will, give her a child. But she will know what she can expect from me, and what she cannot.”
Renata sighed and took his hands.
“As you will, then, beloved,” she said. “I can refuse you nothing.”
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