Stormqueen! (47 page)

He let his
laran
range out cautiously ahead. Almost in every instance he saw their lives end
here
, yet there had to be other possibilities. If it were his ordained fate to die here, and if bringing Cassandra from Hali would lead inevitably to his death and hers in the snow, then why had his
laran
shown him no trace of it, ever, in any line of probability that he had foreseen to this time?

“Donal,” he said, and the younger man stirred.

“Cousin…”

“You have more of the weather gift than I. Can you read this storm and discover how far it extends, and how long it will take to move past us?”

“I will try.” Donal sank inward in consciousness, and Allart, lightly in rapport, saw again the curious extended sense of pressures and forces, like nets of energy upon the surface of the ground, and in the thin envelope of air above it. Finally, returning to surface consciousness, Donal said soberly, “Too far, I fear. And it is moving sluggishly. Would that I had my sister’s gift, to control the storms and move them here and there at my will!”

Suddenly Allart knew that was the answer, as he began to see ahead again. His
laran
was real foresight, yes; he could dislocate time and stand outside it, but it was limited by his own interpretation of what he saw. For that reason it would always be unreliable as a sole guide to his actions. He must never be content with an obvious future; there was always the probability, however small, that interaction with someone whose actions he could not foresee would alter that future beyond recognition. He could rule his
laran
, but as with his matrix jewel, he must never let it rule him instead. Yesterday he had used it to find safety here and avoid the most obvious deaths lying in wait; it had worked to avert imminent death until he could explore some other probability.

“If we could somehow make contact with Dorilys - “

“She is not a telepath,” Donal said, sounding doubtful. “Never have I been able to reach her with my thoughts.” Then he lifted his eyes and said, “Renata… Renata is a telepath. If one of you two could manage to reach Renata - “

Yes, for Renata was the key to control of Dorilys’s power.

Allart said, “
You
try to reach her, Donal.”

“But - I am not so strong a telepath.”

“Nevertheless. Those who have shared love, as you two, can often make such a link when no other can. Tell Renata of our plight, and perhaps Dorilys can read the storm, or help it to pass more quickly beyond us!”

“I will do what I can,” Donal said. Drawing himself upright, the cloaks still hunched around him. he drew out his matrix and began to focus himself within it. Allart and Cassandra, clinging together beneath the remaining cloak, could almost see the luminous lines of force spreading out, so that Donal seemed no more than a solid network of swirling energies, fields of force… Then, abruptly, the contact flared and Allart and Cassandra, both telepaths, could not close away that amplified rapport

Renata
!

Donal
! The joy and blaze of that contact spilled over to Cassandra and Allart, as if she touched them, too, embraced them.

I was fearful, with this storm! Are you safe? Have you remained at Tramontana, then? I feared when it broke that the escort would be forced to turn back; did they meet with you, then?

No, my beloved
. Quickly, in rapid mental images, Donal sketched their plight. He interrupted Renata’s horrified reaction.
No, love, don’t waste time and strength that way. Here is what you must do
.

Of course, Dorilys can help us
, and the swift touch, awareness.
I will find her at once, show her what to do
.

The contact was gone. The lines of force faded out and Donal shivered under the doubled cloaks.

Allart handed him the last of the food, and said, when he protested, “Your energy is drained with the matrix; you need the strength.”

“Still, your lady - ” Donal protested, but Cassandra shook her head. In the gray snowlight she looked pale, drawn, deathly.

“I am not hungry, Donal. You need it far more than I. I am cold, so cold…”

Quickly Allart knew what she meant and what faced her now. He said, “What is it with the leg, then?”

“I will monitor and be sure,” she said, a flicker of a smile touching her face, a wry smile indeed. “I have not wanted to know the worst, since there seems nothing I could do to mend it, however bad it may be.” But he saw her look go abstracted, focused inward. Finally, reluctant, she said, “It is not good. The cold, the forced inactivity - and in the lower part of that leg the circulation is already impaired, so that it is more susceptible to chilling.”

There was nothing Allart could say but, “Help may soon reach us, my love. Meanwhile - ” He took off his outer tunic, began to wrap it around the injured knee to protect it, and wrapped her in his under-cloak, remaining in his undertunic and breeches. At their shocked protest, he said with a smile,

“Ah, you forget; I was a monk at Nevarsin for six years, and I slept naked in worse weather than this.” Indeed, the old lessons took over; as the cold struck his now unprotected flesh, he began automatically the old breathing, flooding his body with inner warmth. He said, “Truly, I am not cold. Feel and see…”

Cassandra reached out her hand, wondering. “It is true! You are warm as a furnace.”

“Yes,” he said, taking her chilly fingers in his and laying them under his arm. “Here, let me warm your hands.”

Donal said, in astonishment, “I would that you could teach me that trick, cousin.”

Feeling enormously genial with the sudden flooding warmth, Allart replied, “It needs little teaching. We teach it to the novices in their first season with us, so that before a few tendays have passed, they are romping half naked in the snow. Children who are crying with the cold in their first few days soon begin to run about in the courtyards without even remembering to put on their cowls.”

“Is it a secret of your
cristoforo
religion?” Donal asked suspiciously.

Allart shook his head. “No, only a trick of the mind; it needs not even a matrix. The first thing we tell them is that cold is born of
fear
; that if they needed protection against cold, they would have been born with fur or feathers; that the forces of nature protect even the fruits with snow-pods if they need them; but man, being born naked, needs no protection against the weather. Once they come to believe that, that mankind wears clothes because he wishes to, for modesty or for decoration, but not to shelter against the weather, then the worst is over and soon they can adjust their bodies to cold or heat as they wish.” He laughed, knowing the euphoria of the extra oxygen he was taking into his body was beginning to act upon him, to be converted into warmth. “I am less cold than I was last night under our shared cloaks and body warmth.”

Cassandra tried to imitate his breathing, but she was in severe pain, and this inhibited her concentration, while Donal was wholly untrained.

Outside, the storm raged even more fiercely, and Allart lay down between the two, trying to share with them his warmth. He was desperately anxious about Cassandra; if she suffered much more pain and chilling, her knee might not heal for a long time, perhaps never wholly restore itself. He tried to conceal his anxiety from her, but the same closeness which had enabled Donal to reach Renata - without a Tower screen, through an open matrix-link alone - meant he and Cassandra were similarly linked and, especially at this close range, could not conceal a fear so strong from one another.

She reached for his hand and murmured, “Don’t be frightened. The pain is not so bad now; truly it is not.”

Well, when they reached Aldaran, Margali and Renata could tend her; for now there was nothing to be done. In the dimness he held the slight six-fingered hand in his, felt the knotted scar of the
clingfire
burn. She had endured war and fear and pain before this; he had not brought her out of peaceful life into danger. If he had simply substituted one danger for another, still, he knew, it was the danger which she had freely chosen for another less to her liking, and that was all any human being could ask in such days. Comforted a little, he dropped off, for a time, to sleep, held in her arms.

When he woke it was to hear a cry from Cassandra.

“Look! The storm has cleared!” He looked up, dazed, at the sky. It had stopped snowing entirely, and clouds were tearing across the sky at a wild pace.

“Dorilys,” Donal said. “No storm ever moved across these hills at such a pace.” He drew a long, shaking breath. “Her power - the power we have all feared so much - has saved all our lives.”

Allart, sending his
laran
out across the country around, realized that the escort had been weathered in on the other side of the ledge he had hesitated to face in the storm. Now, as soon as they could bring their riding-animals across it - a matter of a few hours, certainly - help would be with them, food and shelter and care.

It had not been Dorilys’s
laran
alone that had saved them, he thought soberly. The
laran
he had considered a curse had now proved its worth - and its limitations.

I cannot ignore it. But I must never wholly rely on it, either. I need not hide from it in terror, as I did all those years in Nevarsin. But I cannot let it whollv rule my actions.

Maybe I am beginning to know its limitations
, Allart thought. It suddenly occurred to him that he had thought of Donal as very young, childishly young. Yet he himself, he realized, was no more than two years Donal’s senior. With a completely new humility, free for once in his life of self-pity, he thought,
I am still very young myself. And I may not be given enough time to learn wisdom. But if I live, I may find that some of my problems were only because I was too young, and too foolish to know I was only too young
.

Cassandra was lying on his cloak, gray with pain and exhausted. He turned to her, and was touched that she tried to smile and appear brave. Now he could reassure her honestly, without hiding his own fear. Help was on the way and would reach them soon; there was only a little more time to wait.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Donal Delleray, called Rockhaven, and Dorilys, heir to Aldaran, were formally married by the
catenas
on midwinter night.

It was not a festive occasion. The weather prevented, as often in the Hellers, inviting any but the nearest of Aldaran’s neighbors; and of those invited, many chose not to come, in which Aldaran saw, rightly or not, a sign that they had chosen to align with his brother of Scathfell. So that the marriage was held in the presence of the immediate household alone, and even among these there was murmuring.

This kind of marriage, half-brother to half-sister, had once been commonplace in the early days of the breeding program, especially among the great nobles of the Domains - and imitated, like all such customs, by their inferiors. But it had fallen now into disuse and was regarded as mildly scandalous.

“They do not like it,” said Allart to Cassandra as they went into the great hall where the festive supper, and the ceremony, and afterward the dance for the household, were all to be held. She was leaning heavily on his arm; she still walked with a dragging limp, memento of their ordeal in the snow, despite the best care Margali and Renata could give. It might heal with time, but it was still difficult for her to walk without help.

“They do not like it,” he repeated. “Had anyone other than Dom Mikhail given orders for such a thing, they would have defied him, I think.”

“What is it they do not like? That Donal shall inherit Aldaran when he is not of the blood of Hastur and Cassilda?”

“No,” said Allart. “As far as I can tell from talking to Aldaran’s vassals and household knights, that pleases them rather than otherwise; none of them has any love for Scathfell, nor any wish to see him rule here. If Dom Mikhail had given it out, true or not, that Donal was his
nedestro
son and would inherit, they would have stood by him to the death. Even if they knew it was false, they would have treated it as a legal fiction. What they do not like is this marriage of brother and sister.”