Marilla bent her head. She would have to face that someday, too; and she thought with a sting of regret of the long braid of hair left on her floor. She forced herself not to shrink from Dyan’s intimate touch . . . . Yes, they have shared more than this, he has a right to expect it . . . .
“I suppose you wonder why I would have no woman about me,” said Dyan quietly. “I thought it not fair to marry as many of the Comyn do, to women with whom they have no more in common than horse or dog, to use a woman as a breeding-animal, no more. Once I dwelt with a woman for a year, and she bore my son; I had him legitimated, but he died, years ago. I have an heir by adoption—I think you may have seen him in Thendara; Hastur’s paxman, young Syrtis. I do not dislike women as much as all that.” He raised his eyes and looked at her directly.
“What do you want with me, Marilla?” he asked.
She bent her head. How long had he known?
“Since we stood together by the waterfall,” Dyan said quietly. “I am no laranzu; yet telepath enough to know something of what you felt. Do you understand how much I love your brother, Marilla? I know you have hated me; yet I mean him no harm. He will leave me; a younger lad always does; I will have no choice but to find another. My—my friends seem somehow to grow to manhood, and I—well, perhaps it is something within me—” he shrugged. “Why am I explaining myself to you?”
She turned away and bent her head. Her voice was stifled. “You owe me nothing, my lord.”
She wished he would not look at her; and as if yielding to her wish he got up and busied himself at the far end of the shelter where the horses were; he gave them grain from a bag, hauled some of the fodder stacked at the far end and spread it for them. She came and stood close, tearing apart the baled fodder so the horses could get at it to eat, and he smiled.
“What? Now I know you are a woman, you do not leave me to do the men’s business here?”
“When I ride with Merryl, I am a boy with him; should I be less with you, vai dom?”
“You are his equal, aye,” Dyan said softly, “I would you were his twin brother, not his sister . . .” and she lowered her eyes before the sudden heat in his. He reached out and took her between his hard hands, holding her so that she faced him. “You have come here with me, Marilla—what do you want, truly?”
She turned aside, swearing that she would not cry. How could she say, I want what it is that you have shared with Merryl and never with me, what you can give to no woman—ah, fool that I am, caught in my own trap—
He pulled her against him, stroking her hair, stroking the nape of her neck. After a time he lowered his lips against hers, and a little later he carried her to the bed of saddle blankets.
“But you are a child—” he said, after a time, hesitantly, “and, if I make no mistake, virgin—do I repay hospitality by violating the sister of my host?”
She half sat up, her arms still round his neck. She said fiercely, “You did not ask my leave to take my brother to your bed! What sort of ninny do you think me, that you must have permission from him to take me, when I myself have given you that leave? I am my own—my own woman, I belong not to my brother but to myself—nor to you, Lord Dyan! I give and withhold myself at my own will, not that of some man!”
He laughed softly, and for a moment she thought he was laughing at her, but it was a laugh of pure delight. “One thing more you have learned of your brother’s world, Marilla—if all women were like you, I doubt I should be such a man as I am today—” His lips sought hers again and he whispered softly, against them, “Bredhya.” Then he pulled her down again on the bed of saddle blankets.
“I must take care, then, if you are a maiden; I would not reward you for this with pain,” he said, touching her more gently than she had believed was possible, and she sighed, letting her mind open before him as her lips opened under his, feeling his delight and surprise and wonder.
I thought you cared nothing for women, Dyan . . . .
I am a man of impulse . . . you know that of me, if nothing more . . . .
And then even thought was lost.
~o0o~
They rode home early in the daylight, holding hands. As they came within sight of Lindirsholme, Marilla halted, looking at Dyan with a certain dismay.
“Merryl will know . . . again I have stolen from him what he wanted; when we were little children, my father said always, I should have been the man, I was the stronger of the two . . . and always I bested him at riding and hawking . . . and now even at this I have stolen what he wanted most . . . .”
Dyan clasped her hand and held it hard.
“You have taken from Merryl nothing that is his,” he said gently. “And I shall tell him, believe me, that it was for love of him . . . . I cherish you, bredhya, but without my love for Merryl, you would have been no more to me than any of the hundreds of women who would lure a Comyn lord into their bed . . . do you think women have not tried? Had you been older, more guileful, I would have thought it of you, and turned away from you, but my friend’s sister was something else . . .” he lowered his eyes again and was silent. “Now he has shared with me what was the dearest of his possessions,” he said at last, “his sister’s love. Is it not so, Marilla?”
She clung to his hand. “It is so, Dyan.”
Merryl met them at the gate, holding out his hands to each of them as they dismounted. “I was frightened, when I knew what you had done,” he said. “The storm was so fierce—but you took him to our own old place, Marilla . . . . I am glad!” And, meeting his eyes, she knew that he was aware of what had befallen them, as she had wakened to share his delight in Dyan’s arms. Dyan reached out and hugged them both together, turning his head from side to side to kiss them, Marilla’s soft cheek, Merryl’s downy one, and for a moment it seemed to Marilla, in an insight she never lost, that somehow Dyan was not a bearded, scarred, aging man, but somehow, inside, a laughing boy her own age or Merryl’s . . . .
She took his hand and her brother’s, and, walking between them, walked through the gates of Lindirsholme.
~o0o~
Dyan rode away ten days later, Merryl at his side.
“I wish I might come with you to Thendara,” she said rebelliously, as she said farewell.
“So do I,” Dyan said softly, “but you know why it cannot be.” Already, with her laran, she knew that the night they had spent together had been fruitful; she bore Dyan’s child, and already guessed that it was the son he needed and desired so much. He held her face between his hands again and said, “You have given me the one thing Merryl could not, Marilla. No one else, ever, can take your place in that. I will marry you if you will—” he added, hesitating, but she quickly shook her head.
“If I held you in those bonds, I should desire of you what you cannot give . . . what the bonds of marriage demand,” she said. “You would come to hate me . . . ” and at his look of pain, she added quickly, “not to hate, perhaps; but you would resent me, that some one had put reins to your freedom . . . I have this.” With a curious new gesture she held her hands, sheltering, across her body where the child lay cradled. “I am content with that . . .” and she raised her lips for his farewell kiss. And as he turned away, riding at Merryl’s side, she whispered to herself:
“Once you called me, bredhya. But I know, if you did not, that what you truly said was . . . bredhyu.”
She turned before they were out of sight and went inside the gates. There were those who would think that Dyan had taken from her what she had to give, and left her nothing; but she knew now that it was not true.
She was mother to the son of Lord Ardais; mother to a Comyn Heir. Now no kinsman could force her, unwillingly, to marry some man for house and name; she had status enough of her own, wed or no. She was her own woman, now and forever; and Dyan had given her this, which was better than marriage.
Someday—perhaps—there might be another man, and perhaps not. Perhaps she was never meant for marriage. But someday, certainly, she would find someone to sh
are her life who could accept her in freedom; and when she found that person, man or woman, she would know. Dyan had given her that.
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The Shadow
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Danilo Syrtis signed the estate books and handed them back to the steward.
“Tell the people in the Hall to give you some dinner before you start back,” he said, “and my thanks for coming out in this godforgotten weather!”
“It was no more than my duty, vai dom,” the man said. Danilo watched him leave and wondered if he should go to his own dinner now, or send for some bread and cheese here in the little study he used for estate business. He did not feel like making polite conversation with the steward about business or the weather, and he supposed the man, too, was eager to get back on the road and be home with his wife and children before dark set in. There was more snow coming tonight; he could see the shadow of it in the great clouds that hovered over Ardais.
Snow coming, and it was cold in the room. And by nightfall I shall be on the road . . . and Danilo started, wondering if he had fallen asleep for a moment. There was no such luck coming his way, that he should be on the road, away from here, by nightfall. Danilo rubbed his hands together. His feet were warmed by a little brazier of charcoal under the desk, but his fingers ached and he could see the breath between his mouth and the books which lay on the desk before him. He had never grown used to the cold in the Hellers.
I wish I were in the lowlands, he thought. Regis, Regis, my brother and bredu, I do my duty here at Ardais as you in Thendara; but though I am Regent here at Ardais, I would rather be in Thendara at your side, no more than your sworn man and paxman. I shall not see my home again, perhaps not for years, and there is no help for it. I am sworn.
He put out his hand to the bell, but before he could ring it, the door opened and one of the upper servants came into the study.
“Your pardon, vai dom. The Master would like to see you, at once if convenient; if you are still occupied with the steward, he asks you to name a time when you can attend him.”
“I’ll go at once,” said Danilo, puzzled. “Where will I find him?”
“In the music room, Lord Danilo.”
Where else? That was where Dyan spent much of his time; like a great spider in the center of his web, and we are all in his shadow.
Dyan, Lord Ardais, was Danilo’s uncle; Danilo’s mother had been the illegitimate daughter of Dyan’s father, who had had many bastards. Dyan’s only son had been killed in a rockslide at Nevarsin monastery; when Danilo proved to have the laran of the Ardais Domain, the catalyst-telepath Gift believed extinct, the childless Dyan had adopted Danilo as his Heir.
He had been at Ardais now more than a year, and Dyan Ardais had proved both generous and exacting. He had had Danilo given everything he needed for his station as the Ardais Heir from suitable clothing to suitable horses and hawks; had sent him to a Tower for preliminary training in the use of his laran—more training than Dyan himself had had—and had had him properly educated in all the arts suitable for a nobleman: calligraphy, arithmetic, music and drawing, fencing, dancing and swordplay. He had himself taught Danilo music, and something of mapmaking, and of the healing arts and medicine.
He had also been generous to Danilo’s father, sending breeding stock, farmhands and other servants, and a capable steward to manage Syrtis and to make life comfortable for the elderly Dom Felix in his declining years. “Your place is at Ardais,” Dyan had said, “preparing yourself for the Wardenship of Ardais. For even if I should someday have another son—and that is not altogether impossible, though unlikely—it is even more unlikely that I should live to see that son a man grown. You might need to be Regent for him for many years. But your own patrimony must not be neglected,” he stated, and had made certain that the estate of Syrtis lacked for nothing which could be provided.
As he approached the door of the music room, a slender young man, fair-haired and with a sort of feline grace, brushed past Danilo without a word. But he gave Danilo a sharp look of malice.
Now what, I wonder, has happened now to displease him? Is the Master harsh with his minion?
Danilo disliked Julian, who was Dyan’s house laranzu; but Dyan’s favorites were no business of his. Nor was Dyan’s love life any affair of his. If nothing else, Danilo realized, he should be grateful to Julian; the presence of the young laranzu had emphasized, to all the housefolk, that there was an enormous distance between the way Dyan treated his foster-son and ward, and the way he treated his minion.
He himself had nothing to complain of. Before Dyan had known who Danilo was, or that he had the Ardais Gift, when Danilo was simply one of the poorest and most powerless cadets in the Cadet Corps, Dyan had tried to seduce him, and when Danilo had refused, in distaste, Dyan had gone on pursuing and persecuting him. Danilo was a cristoforo, and in their faith it was shameful to be a lover of men.
But never once, in the year since Dyan had adopted him as Heir, had Dyan addressed a word or gesture to him not completely suitable between foster-son and guardian. Yet the shadow of what had once been between them lay heavy over Danilo; he had, he believed, forgiven Dyan, yet the shadow was dark between them, and he never came into Dyan’s presence without a certain sense of constraint.
As far as he knew, he had done nothing to displease his guardian. But it was unprecedented that Dyan should send for him at this hour. Normally they met only for the evening meal and spent a formal hour afterward in the music room; sometimes Dyan played for him on one of the several instruments he had mastered, or had his minstrels and entertainers in. Sometimes, to Danilo’s distress, Dyan insisted that Danilo play for him; he had required that his foster-son learn something of music, saying no man’s education could be complete without it.
Dyan was standing near the fireplace, tall and lean in the somber black clothing he affected. Despite the fire, it was cold enough to see his breath. He heard Danilo come in and turned to face him. “Good day, foster-son. Have you had your noon meal?”
“No, sir; I was about to have it when I received your message and came at once.”
“Shall I send for something for you? Or, there is fruit and wine on the table; please help yourself.”
“Thank you, sir. I am not really hungry.” Danilo noticed that Dyan’s mouth was set; he looked grim. He felt a little inward clamping, tight inside him; he was still a little afraid of Dyan. He could not imagine what he could have done to bring that look of displeasure to his guardian’s face. Mentally, he ran over the events of the last tenday. The estate accounts, with which he had been trusted for the last four moons, were all in order, unless the men had all conspired to lie to him. As far as he knew, his tutors would all give good reports of him; he was not really a brilliant scholar, but they could not fault him for industry and obedience. Then he saw Dyan’s eyes shift a little in his direction and was suddenly angry.
He is trying to make me afraid again. I should have remembered; my fear gives him pleasure, he likes to see me squirm. He drew himself up and said, “May I ask why you have sent for me at this hour without warning, sir? Have I done something to make you angry?”
Dyan seemed to shake himself and come out of a daydream. “No, no,” he said quickly, “but I have had ill news, and it has distressed me for your sake. I will not keep you in suspense, and I will not play at words with you. I have had a messenger from Syrtis. Your father is dead.”
Danilo gasped with the shock, though he knew the bluntness was merciful; Dyan had not left him to worry and wonder while he broke the news in easy stages.
“But he was perfectly well and strong when I left Syrtis after my birthday visit . . . .”
“No man of his age is ever ‘perfectly well and strong,’” Dyan said. “I do not know the medical details, but it sounded to me as if he had a sudden stroke. The messenger said that he had finished his breakfast and thanked the cook, saying he planned to go riding, and suddenly fell on the floor. He wa
s dead when they picked him up. It was to be expected at his time of life; you were born, I understand, at an age when most men have grandchildren on their knees. He had ill-luck, I know, with his elder son.”
Danilo nodded, numbly. His older brother had been killed in battle before Danilo was born; he had been paxman to Regis Hastur’s father. “I am glad he did not suffer,” he said, and felt tears rising in his throat. My poor father; he wanted me to have a nobleman’s education, he never stood in my way. I hoped a day would come when I would know him better, when I could come back to him as a man, free of all the troubles of youth, and know him also as the man he was, not only as my father. And now I never will. His throat closed; he could not hold back his sobs. After a moment he felt Dyan’s hand on his shoulder; very gently, but through the touch he felt something like tenderness; inwardly he cringed with revulsion.
He thinks, because I am grieving, he can touch me and I will not draw away from the touch . . . he never stops trying, does he?
Abruptly the touch was withdrawn. Dyan’s voice was distant, controlled.
“I wish I could comfort you; but it is not my comfort you wish for. Before I sent for you, I made inquiries through my household laranzu.” Now Danilo understood the look of malice Julian had given him.
“I learned through the Towers that Regis Hastur was in Thendara and is riding today for Syrtis; he has said to his grandfather that as your sworn friend he owes a kinsman’s duty to your father, and he would await you there. You may go as soon as the necessities are packed, unless you would rather wait until the weather clears . . . only the mad and the desperate travel in the Hellers in winter, but I did not think you would want to wait.”
“I am not afraid of weather,” Danilo said. He still felt numb. He had wanted to see his home, and Regis, but not like this.
“I took the liberty of asking my own valet to pack your clothing for the ride and for the funeral. But have some food before you ride, my son.”