Stormqueen! (62 page)

And Allart saw what once he had foreseen in this hall, a child’s face all ablaze with lightning…

Renata took a panicked step backward, tripping over a piece of furniture. Donal cried out, “Dorilys, no! No! Not at her!” and flung himself between Renata and Dorilys, shielding Renata with his body. “If you are angry, speak your anger to me alone - ” Then he broke off, with an inarticulate sound, and staggered and his body twitched, caught in the lightning flare. He jerked violently, convulsed, fell, his body crisped and blackened like a blasted tree, twitched again, already lifeless, and lay without moving on the stone pavement.

It had all happened so swiftly that there were many in the lower hall who had heard nothing except cries and accusations. Margali still sat with her mouth open, staring stupidly at her charge, not believing what she saw. Cassandra still stood with her arms extended toward Dorilys, but Allart caught her and held her motionless.

Dom Mikhail took one step toward Dorilys, and staggered. He stopped, swaying, holding himself upright with both hands on the edge of the table. His face was congested and dark with blood, and he could hardly speak. His voice held a terrible bitterness.

“It is the curse,” he said. “A sorceress foretold this day, that I should cry out to the gods above and below, would to all of the gods that I had died childless.” Moving slowly, an old, broken-winged hawk, he came slowly to where Donal lay, fell to his knees beside him.

“Oh, my son,” he whispered. “My son, my son…” and raised his face, set and rigid as if carved in stone, to Dorilys. “Strike me down, too, girl. Why do you wait?” Dorilys had not moved; she stood as if turned to stone, as if the lightning which had struck Donal down had struck her, too, turning her motionless. Her face was a terrible, tragic mask, her eyes blank and unmoving. Her mouth was open, as if in a soundless scream, but she did not move.

Allart breaking the frozen stasis, began to move to Dom Mikhail’s side, but a wild flare of lightning suddenly blazed in the hall, and Dorilys disappeared in its flare. Allart fell back dazed by the shock. Another and another lightning bolt crackled in the room, and they could see Dorilys now, her eyes mad and blazing. Another lightning bolt and another seared at random around the room, and in the lower hall a man leaped up, twitched, and fell dead. One by one, everyone edged back, step by step, from where Dorilys stood, surrounded by the crazed flare of lightning, deafened by thunder; back, and back from where she stood like a statue of some terrible goddess etched in lightning. Her face was not a child’s face. It was not even human anymore.

Only Renata dared the lightning. Perhaps, Allart thought in some horrified corner of his mind where he could still think, perhaps Renata simply had no more to lose. She took a step toward Dorilys; another. Another. Dorilys moved for the first time since she had struck Donal down, a menacing gesture, but Renata did not pause or flinch, advancing step by step toward the core of those terrible lightnings where Dorilys blazed like some figure of legendary hells.

Dom Mikhail said brokenly, “No, Lady Renata. No, no - stand back from her. Not you, too, Renata - not you, too.”

Allart heard in his mind a clamor, a confusing babble, a wild interplay of confused possibilities there - gone, retreating, surging up again - as Renata moved, slowly and steadily, toward Dorilys, where she stood over Donal’s dead body. He saw Renata fall blasted, saw her strike Dorilys with her own
laran
and hold her motionless, as she had done when Dorilys was a willful child; he heard her cursing Dorilys, pleading with her, defying her, all at once in the wild surge of futures from this moment that would be, might be, would never be…

Renata spread her arms wide. Her voice was anguished but steady, clearly audible.

“Dorilys,” she said in a whisper. “Dorilys, my little girl, my darling - “

She rose from where she had fallen and took a step and another, and Dorilys came into her arms, was folded close to her breast. The lightnings died. Suddenly Dorilys was only a little girl again, clasped in Renata’s arms, sobbing tempestuously.

Renata held her, soothing her, stroking her, murmuring soft love words, tears raining down her own face. Dorilys looked around her, dazed.

“I feel so sick, Renata,” she whispered. “What has happened? I thought this was a festival. Is Donal very angry with me?” Then she shrieked, a long, terrible cry of horror and realization, and crumpled, a limp, lifeless-looking unconscious heap in Renata’s arms.

Overhead the thunder muttered and died and was still.

CHAPTER THIRTY

It is too late,” Renata repeated. “I do not know if it will ever be safe to let her wake again.”

Overhead the thunder rattled at random, striking sudden searing bolts around the towers of Aldaran, and Allart wondered, with a shudder, what dreams disturbed Dorilys’s sleep. Dreadful ones, no doubt.

In the stunned moment following Dorilys’s realization of what she had done, Renata had managed to get her to swallow a dose of the same strong drug she had given her before. Almost as soon as she had swallowed it, the moment of sanity had faded from her eyes and the terrible core of lightning had begun to build up around her again. But the drug had taken over with merciful quickness before more than a few random bolts had struck, and she had sunk into her present unquiet stupor, the storms raging overhead but not striking near.

“We cannot give her that drug again,” Renata repeated. “Even if I could get her to take it again - and I am not sure of that - it would almost certainly kill her.”

Aldaran said, with terrible bitterness, “Better that, than that she should destroy us all as she destroyed my boy.” His voice broke and the terrible glazed brightness of his eyes was worse than weeping. “Is there no hope, Renata? None?”

“I am afraid that even when I asked you, before,” Renata said, “it was too late. Too much of her mind, too much of the brain itself has been destroyed and invaded by the lightnings. It is too late for Dorilys, my lord. I fear you must accept that; our only concern now is to make sure she does not destroy too much outside herself, in her own death.”

The father shuddered. Finally he said, “How can we make sure of that?”

“I do not know, my lord. Probably no one with this lethal gift has ever survived so near maturity, and so we have only the faintest notion of its potential. I must consult with those in Tramontana Tower, or perhaps at Hali, to be certain what we can do, and how we can best make her harmless during” - Renata swallowed, struggling to control herself - “during what little time remains to her. She can tap the whole electrical potential of the planet, my lord. I beg you not to underestimate the damage she can still do, if we frighten her.”

“I am cursed,” said Aldaran, softly and bitterly. “I was cursed the day she was born, and I did not know it. You tried to warn me, and I did not hear. It is I who deserve death, and it took only my children, my innocent children.”

“Let me go and consult my colleagues in the Towers, Lord Aldaran.”

“And spread far and wide the news of the shame of Aldaran? No, Lady Renata. It was I who brought this awful curse to our world; without malice, and in love, but still it was I. Now I shall destroy it.”

He drew his dagger, raised it above Dorilys, and brought it suddenly striking down. But from the prostrate form there came a blue flash and Aldaran fell back, knocked half across the room, the breath gone from his body. When Allart picked him up he struggled for breath and for a moment Allart feared he was dying.

Renata shook her head sadly.

“Had you forgotten, my lord? She is a telepath, too. Even in her sleep, she can sense your intent. Although I do not think she would want to live if she knew, there is something in that brain that will protect itself. I do not think we can kill her. I must go to Hali or to Tramontana, my lord.”

Lord Aldaran bowed his head.

“As you will, kinswoman. Will you make ready to ride?”

“There is no time for that - and no need. I will go through the overworld.”

Drawing out her matrix, Renata composed herself for the journey. With one part of herself she was grateful for this disturbance, this desperate need; it deferred the moment when she must face the unendurable fact of Donal’s death. Unasked, Cassandra came to keep watch beside Renata’s body while she made the journey through the intangible realms of the mind.

It was like stepping out of a garment suddenly grown unimaginably too large. For an instant, in the grayness of the shadow-world overlaying the solid and tangible world, Renata could see her body, looking as lifeless as Dorilys’s, wearing the elaborate gown she had put on for the victory feast which had turned to defeat, and Cassandra motionless beside her. Then, moving with the swiftness of thought, she stood on the high peak of Tramontana Tower, wondering why she had been drawn here… then, in the crimson garment of a Keeper, she saw Ian-Mikhail of Tramontana.

He said gently, “So Donal is dead, suddenly and by violence? I was his friend, and his teacher. I must seek him out in the Realms Beyond, Renata. If he died suddenly, and by violence, he may not know he is dead; his mind may be trapped near to his body and he may be helplessly trying to reenter it again. I was uneasy about him; yet I did not know what had befallen him until I saw you, cousin.”

In the intangible spaces of the overworld, where a physical touch could register only as an idea, he gently touched her hand.

“We share your grief, Renata. We all loved him; he should have been one of us in Tramontana. I must go to him.” She saw the small premonitory stirring of the gray spaces which presaged Ian-Mikhail’s withdrawing of his thoughts and presence from her, and caught at his presence with a despairing thought that disturbed the overworld like a cry.

“What of Dorilys, kinsman? What shall we do for her?”

“Alas, I do not know, Renata. Her father would not entrust her to us, and we do not know her. It is a pity; we might have found a way to help her control her
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. But the records of the breeding programs are at Hali and Arilinn. Perhaps they have had some experience, or some advice. Delay me no more, sister; I must go to Donal.”

Renata watched his image in the overworld recede, grow distant. He was going to seek out Donal, dead so suddenly by violence, make certain he did not linger, trapped, near his useless body. Dully Renata envied him. She knew that contact between the dead and the living was perilous for both, and thus forbidden. The dead must not be encouraged to remain too near the grief of the bereaved; the living must not be drawn into realms where, as yet, they had no business. Ian-Mikhail, trained from adolescence to the detachment of a Keeper’s vows, could safely perform this office for his friend without being drawn into overmuch concern. Even so, Renata knew, had Donal been a member of his immediate family, Ian-Mikhail would have ceded this task to another, less personally concerned.

Weary, uncertain, remembering only Donal and her loss, Renata turned her thoughts toward Hali. She struggled for calm, knowing that too much emotion would force her off this plane altogether, but it threatened to overcome her. She knew that if she did not banish the tormenting memories she would break altogether, retreat in to the dream-stuff of the overworld, and never return.

But the grayness of the overworld seemed unending, and while she could see the dimness of the Tower of Hali in the distance, it seemed that although she tried to move toward the Tower, her limbs would not obey her, nor her unruly thoughts. She moved forever in gray uninhabited mental wastelands…

Then, very far away, in the distance, it seemed that she saw a familiar figure, young, laughing, very far away, too far to reach… Donal! Donal, so very far from her! In this realm where thoughts were pliable, something survived… She began to hurry after the retreating figure, sending out a cry of joy.

Donal! Donal, I am here! Wait for me, beloved
….

But he was very far away. He did not turn or look at her. She thought, with a last moment of rationality,
No; it is forbidden. He has gone into a realm still denied, still inaccessible. This could draw me after him… too far
…

I will not go too far. But I must see him again. I must see him only this once, say the good-byes of which we were so cruelly cheated
…
only this once, and then nevermore
…

She hurried after the retreating figure, her thoughts seeming to bear her along swiftly through the grayness of the overworld. When she looked around all the familiar landmarks, the last sight of Hali Tower, had vanished, and she was wholly alone in grayness, with nothing but the small, retreating figure of Donal just at the horizon, drawing her on…