Stormqueen! (40 page)

Allart said, “I have seen nothing of the kind.” He had tried, very hard, not to look ahead. It seemed now that he saw nothing except disasters, many of which could not be tied down to time or place. Again and again he had seen Castle Aldaran under siege, arrows flying, armed men striking, lightnings aflare and striking down on the keep. Allart had tried to do as he did at Nevarsin - to barricade it all away from his mind, to see
nothing;
for most of what he saw were lies and meaningless fear.

“Foresight is useless here, my lord. If I should see a hundred different possibilities, still, only one of them can come to pass. So it is meaningless to see ahead and fear the other ninety-and-nine. But if it were inevitable that Dorilys should die in threshold sickness at puberty, I do not think I would be able to
avoid
seeing it; and I have not.”

Dom Mikhail leaned his head in his hands, and said, “Would that I had some trace of your gift, Allart! For it seems to me that this is clear sign that the folk of Storn have been in communication with my brother of Scathfell; and they will not anger him because he still hopes to win Aldaran somehow, if I die without son or son-in-law to hold it for me. And
that
,” he said, pausing and moving his head with that quick hawklike movement, “will never be, while the four moons ride in the heaven and snow falls in midwinter!”

His eyes fell on Donal, and softened, and all of them could follow what he was thinking, that it was high time Donal, at least, was wed. Donal tensed knowing this was not the time to speak and cross him, but Dom Mikhail said only, “Go, children, join the dancers in the hall, if you will. I must think what to say to my kinsman of Storn,” and Donal breathed again.

But later that night, Donal said, “We must not delay much longer, beloved. Or a day will come when he will summon me and say, ‘Donal, here is your bride,’ and I will be put to the trouble of explaining to him why I cannot marry whatever spiritless daughter of one of his vassals he has found for me. Renata, shall I journey to the Kilghard Hills and make suit, then, in my own name for your hand? Would Dom Erlend, do you think, give his daughter to a poor man, lord of no more than the small holding at High Crags? You are daughter to a powerful Domain; your kinsmen will say I was quick to go wooing a rich dower.”

Renata laughed. “I have but a small dower of my own; I have three older sisters. And my father is so displeased that I have come here without his consent that he may even refuse me that! Such dower as I have is from Dom Mikhail, for my care of Dorilys, and he will hardly be sorry to keep it in his own family!”

“Still, he has been kinder to me than any father of my own blood could have been, and he deserves better of me than this double-dealing. Nor do I want your kinsmen to think I have seduced you while you dwelt under my foster-father’s roof, perhaps for the sake of that very dower.”

“Oh, that wretched dower! I know you do not care for that, Donal.”

“If it is necessary, my love, I will give up all claim on it and take you in your bare shift,” he said seriously.

Renata laughed and pulled his head down to her. “You would take me better without it,” she teased, loving the way he still blushed like a boy half his age.

She had never believed she could be so wholly lost to everything except her love. She thought,
For all my years in the Tower, for all the lovers I have taken, I might as well have been a child Dorilys”s age! Once I knew what love could be, all the rest meant nothing, nothing at all, less than nothing
…

“Still, Renata,” Donal said, resuming the conversation at last, “my foster-father should know.”

“He is a telepath. I am sure he knows. But I think he has not yet decided what he means to do about it,” Renata said, “and it would be quite unkind of us to force it upon his attention!”

Donal had to be content with that, but he wondered. How could Dom Mikhail ever have thought that Donal would go against custom this way, and turn his thoughts, unpermitted, upon a marriageable woman without the consent of her kin? He felt strange, alienated from the pattern he knew his life should have taken.

Looking at the troubled face of her lover, Renata sighed. In her solitary struggles with conscience in the Tower, she had realized that inevitably she must break away from the traditional patterns allotted to a woman of her clan. Donal had never, till now, faced the necessity for change.

“I shall send to my father, then, when it is too late for him to reply before midwinter, telling him that we are to be married at midwinter-night - if you still want me.”

“If I still want you? Beloved, how can you ask?” Donal reproached, and the rest of their conversation was not held in words.

Summer drew on. The leaves began to turn, Dorilys celebrated her birthday, and the first of the harvest was gathered in. On a day when all of Aldaran’s people had gone out to see the great wagons filled with sacks of nuts and jugs of the oil pressed from them borne into one of the outlying barns, Allart found himself standing next to Renata in an outlying part of the courtyard.

“Are you to remain for the winter, kinsman? I shall not leave Dorilys till she is safely past puberty; but you?”

“Donal has asked me to stay, and Dom Mikhail as well. I shall remain until I am summoned by my brother.” Beyond the words Renata sensed weariness and resignation. Allart was painfully longing for Cassandra; in one of his secret dispatches he had asked leave to return, which Damon-Rafael had refused.

Renata smiled, an ironic smile. “Now that your brother has a legitimate son, he is in no hurry for you to rejoin your wife, and perhaps father sons who might contest that claim to the Domain.”

Allart sighed, a sound too weary, Renata thought, for a man as young as Allart. “Cassandra will bear me no children,” he said. “I will not bring that danger upon her. And I have sworn in the fires of Hali to support the claim of my brother’s sons, legitimate or
nedestro
, to the Domain.”

Renata felt the tears which had been so near the surface for days now welling up and brimming over in her eyes. To keep them back, she made her voice hard and ironic. “To the Domain - yes, you have sworn. But to the crown, Allart?”

“I want no crown,” Allart said.

“Oh, I believe you,” Renata’s voice was waspish. “But will that brother of yours ever believe that?”

“I do not know.” Allart sighed. Did Damon-Rafael truly believe that Allart could not resist the temptation to wrest the Domain - or the crown - from his hands? Or did he simply wish to place the powerful lord Aldaran under an obligation to Elhalyn? Damon-Rafael would need allies, if he chose to struggle with Prince Felix for the throne at Thendara.

That struggle would not come for a while. Old King Regis still clung to life, and the Council would not disturb his deathbed. But when the king lay in an unmarked grave at Hali beside his forefathers, as the custom was, then -
then
the Council would not be slow to demand that Prince Felix display his fitness to inherit his father’s throne.

“An
emmasca
might make a good king,” Renata said, following his thoughts effortlessly, “but he can found no dynasty. Felix will not inherit And I read the last dispatch, too. Cassilde never recovered after the birth of her son, and died a few tendays after. So your brother has a legitimate son, but is seeking again for a wife. Now, no doubt, he repents he was so quick to marry you to Cassandra.”

Allart’s mouth curled in distaste, remembering what Damon-Rafael had said on that subject. “If Cassilde should die, as she has been likely to do any time these past few years, I would be free to take Cassandra myself.” How could even his brother have spoken that way of the woman who had borne him a dozen children, only to see them die?

Allart said, “Perhaps it is better this way,” but he sounded so dreary that Renata could not keep back the tears. He tipped her face gently up to his. “What is it, cousin? You are ever eager to comfort my troubles, yet you speak never of your own. What ails you, kinswoman?” His arms went out to encircle her, but it was the affectionate touch of a brother, a friend, not a lover, and Renata knew it. She sobbed, and Allart held her gently.

“Tell me,
chiya
,” he said, as tenderly as if she were Dorilys’s age, and Renata struggled to hold back her tears.

“I haven’t told Donal. I wanted to have his child. If it were so with me, my father could not force me to come home to Edelweiss and marry whatever man he had chosen for me… And so I conceived, but after a day or so, monitoring, I discovered that the child was female; and so I - ” She swallowed, and Allart could feel her pain like a great agony within himself. “I could not let it live. I - I don’t regret it; who could, with that curse on the line of Rockraven? And yet - I look at Dorilys and I cannot help but think, I have had to destroy what could have been like
that
, beautiful and - and - ” Her voice broke and she sobbed helplessly for a moment against Allart.

And I thought I could force a choice like this upon Cassandra
… There was nothing Allart could say. He held Renata, letting her cry softly against him.

She quieted at last, murmuring, “I know I did right. It had to be. But I - I couldn’t tell Donal, either.”

What in the name of all the gods, are we doing to our women? What have we wrought in our blood and genes, to bring this on them? Holy Bearer of Burdens, it is your blessing, not your curse, that I am parted from Cassandra…

Even as he spoke he seemed to see Cassandra’s face, racked with fear, fear like Renata’s. Trying to put it aside, he tightened his arms around Renata and said gently, “Still you know you have done right, and that knowledge will strengthen you, I hope.” Then, slowly, searching for words, he told her of the moment of foresight, when he had seen her far advanced in pregnancy, terrified, despairing. “I have not seen that of late in my visions,” he reassured her. “Probably that possibility existed only during the short time you were actually pregnant, and afterward - afterward, that future simply ceased to be; since you had taken the action which could prevent it. Don’t be regretful.”

Still, he was unsure: he had not seen
anything
of late. He had tried hard to blot out
any
use of his foresight and its dreadful thronging possible futures. Was it true that now, with the female child Renata had conceived already destroyed, there was no cause for fear? But he had reassured her. She looked calmer, and he would not disturb her again.

“I
know
I did right,” Renata said. “Yet of late Dorilys has grown so sweet, so biddable and gentle. Now that she has some command of her
laran
, the storms seem to rage no longer.”

Yes
, thought Allart.
It has been long since my sleep or my waking was disturbed by those dreadful visions of a vaulted room, of a child’s face framed in awful lightnings
… Had all these tragedies, too, moved out of the realm of the possible, as Dorilys mastered her terrible gift?

“Yet, in a way, that makes it worse,” Renata said, “to know there might have been another such child, and now she will never live… Well, I suppose I must simply think of Dorilys as the daughter I shall never dare to have… Allart, she has invited her father and Donal to hear her play and sing this afternoon; will you come, too? She has begun to develop a truly fine singing voice; will you come and hear it?”

“With pleasure,” Allart said sincerely.

Donal was there already, and Lord Aldaran, and several of the women of the household, including Dorilys’s music-mistress, a young noblewoman of the house of Darnel. Darkly beautiful, with dark hair and dark-lashed eyes, she reminded Allart briefly of Cassandra, though they were not really much alike. Still, as Lady Elisa sat with her head bent over the
rryl
, tuning the strings, he noted that she, too, had six fingers on her hands. He remembered what he had said to Cassandra at their wedding, “May we live in a time when we can make songs, not war!” How brief that hope had been! They lived in a land torn with war among mountains and Domains alike, Cassandra in a Tower beset by air-cars and incendiaries, Allart in a land aflame with forest fire and raging lightnings, striking like arrows. Startled, he looked around the quiet room, out at the quiet skies and hills beyond. No sound of war, no breath. His damned foresight again, no more, in the calm room where Lady Elisa touched the sidebars of the harp, and said, “Sing, Dorilys.”