Stormqueen!

  “Not love you?” Allart whispered again. “I love you as my blessed forefather loved Robardin’s daughter on the shores of Hali centuries ago. Not want you, Cassandra?” He held her to him, covering her with kisses, and he felt that his kisses were breathing life into her as the breath of his lungs had given her life at the depths of the lake. He was almost beyond thought, beyond remembering the pledge they had made to one another, but a final, despairing thought crossed his mind before he drew the blankets aside.

  I can never let her go, not now. Merciful Avarra, have pity on us!

  * * *

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  « ^ »

  Allart sat at Cassandra’s side, looking into her sleeping face. Physically she was not much the worse for her experience in the lake. Even now he was not certain whether it had been a genuine attempt at suicide, or only an impulse born of deep unhappiness, compounded by illness and exhaustion. But in the days since then he had hardly left her side. He had come so close to losing her!

  The others in the Tower had left them much to themselves. As they had known the state of affairs between himself and Cassandra, he sensed they knew the change that had come, but it did not seem to matter.

  Now, he knew, as soon as Cassandra was able to leave her bed, some decision must be made. Should he leave the Tower and take her with him, send her to a place of safety (for if they were making weapons here, the Tower would be under attack), or should he go away himself and leave her here for the laran training he knew she must have?

  Yet again and again, his own laran gave him visions of riding away to the north, Renata at his side. Cassandra’s absence from these visions frightened him. What was to become of her?

  He saw strange banners overhead, war, the clashing of swords, the explosion of strange weapons, fire, death. Maybe that would be best for us both…

  He found it impossible to keep to the disciplined calm he had learned at Nevarsin. Cassandra was ever-present in his mind, his thoughts and emotions as hypersensitive to her as his body.

  He had broken the pledge they had made to one another.

  After seven years in Nevarsin, I am still weak, still driven by the senses and not by the mind. I took her without thought, as if she had been one of old Dom Marius’s pleasure girls.

  He heard the soft knock at the door, but even before it registered on his ears, he knew—it has come. He stooped and kissed the sleeping woman, with an aching sense of farewell, then went to the door, opening it in a split second after the knock, so that Arielle blinked in surprise.

  “Allart,” she whispered. “Your brother, the lord Elhalyn, is below in the Stranger’s Hall and asks to speak with you. I will remain with your wife.”

  Allart went down to the Stranger’s Hall, the only room in the Tower into which outsiders were permitted to come. Damon-Rafael was there, his paxman noiseless and unmoving at his back.

  “You lend us grace, brother. How may I serve you?”

  “I suppose you have heard of the truce’s end?”

  “Then you have come to summon me to arms?”

  Damon-Rafael said with a contemptuous laugh, “Do you suppose I should come myself for that? Anyhow, you would serve me better here; I have little faith, after all those years of monkish seclusion, in your skill at arms or any of the manly arts. No, brother, I have another mission for you, if you will accept it.”

  It took all of Allart’s hard-won discipline to remain silent at the taunt, remarking quietly that he was at the service of his brother and his overlord.

  “You have dwelled beyond the Kadarin; have you ever traveled to the Aldaran lands, near Caer Donn?”

  “Never; only to Ardais and Nevarsin.”

  “Still, you must know that clan grows over-powerful. They hold Castle Aldaran at Caer Donn, as well as Sain Scarp and Scathfell; and they make alliances with all the others, with Ardais and Darriel and Storn. They are of Hastur kin, but Lord Aldaran came not to my accession as lord of Elhalyn, nor has he come to midsummer festival in Thendara for many years. Now, with this war breaking forth again, he is like a great hawk in his mountain aerie, ready to swoop down on the Lowlands whenever we are torn by strife and cannot resist him. If all those who owe allegiance to Aldaran were to strike us at once, Thendara itself could not hold. I can foresee a day when all the Domains from Dalereuth to the Kilghard Hills might lie under the lordship of Aldaran.”

  Allart said, “I knew not you had the foresight, brother.”

  Damon-Rafael moved his head with a quick, impatient gesture. “Foresight? That takes not much reading! When kinsmen quarrel, enemies step in to widen the gap. I am trying to negotiate another truce—it profits us nothing to set the land aflame—but with our cousins of Castle Hastur under seige, it is not easy. Our carrier-birds are flying night and day with secret dispatches. Also, I have leroni working in relays to send messages, but of course we can entrust nothing secret to them; what is known to one is known to all with laran. Now we come to the service I ask of you, brother.”

  “I listen,” Allart said.

  “It is long since a Hastur sent a kinsman on diplomatic mission to Aldaran. Yet we need such a tie. The Storns hold lands to the west of Caer Dorm, close to Serrais across the hills, and they might find it useful to join with the Ridenow. Then all of the alliances within the Hellers could be drawn into this war. Do you think you might persuade Lord Aldaran to hold himself and his liegemen neutral in this war? I do not think he would join it on our side, but he might be willing to stay out of it entirely. You are Nevarsin-trained; you know the language of the Hellers well. Will you go for me, Allart, and try to keep Mikhail, Lord Aldaran, from joining in this war?”

  Allart studied his brother’s face. This seemed all too simple a mission. Did Damon-Rafael plot some treachery, or did he simply want Allart out of the way, so that the Hasturs of Elhalyn would not have loyalties divided between the brothers?

  “I am at your command, Damon-Rafael, but I know little diplomacy of that sort.”

  “You will carry letters from me,” Damon-Rafael said, “and you will write secret dispatches and send them to me by carrier-birds. You will write open dispatches, which spies on both sides will certainly see; but you will also write secret dispatches, and send them under a matrix-lock which none but I can open or read. Surely you can arrange a lock spelled shut so that if other eyes fall upon them they will be destroyed?”

  “That is simple enough,” Allart said, and now he understood. There could not be many people to whom Damon-Rafael would willingly give the unique pattern of his own body and brain to set a matrix-lock; such a lock was a common tool for assassins, like the homing device Coryn had mentioned.

  So I am one of the two or three persons living to whom Damon-Rafael will entrust that power over him; because I am sworn to defend him and his sons.

  “I have arranged it so you will have a cover for your mission,” Damon-Rafael said. “We have captured an envoy from Aldaran, fearing he had been sent to declare for the Ridenow. But the messenger, when my household leronis probed his sleep, told us he was on a personal mission for Lord Aldaran. I don’t know all the details, but it has nothing to do with the war. His memory has been matrix-cleansed, and when he speaks with your Keeper, which he will do soon, I suppose, he will not know that he was ever captured or that he has been probed at all. I have arranged with our cousin Coryn that you will be, ostensibly, in charge of the truce flag which will escort Aldaran’s messenger northward to the Kadarin. No one will notice if you simply continue and ride with them to Aldaran. Is that satisfactory to you?”

  What choice have I? But I have known for days now that I must ride northward; only I did not know it was to Aldaran. And what has Renata to do with this? But aloud he said to Damon-Rafael only, “It seems you have thought of everything.”

  “At sunset, my paxman will ride here to give you documents qualifying you as my ambassador, and instructions for sending messages, and access to carrier-birds.” He rose, saying, “If you wish, I w
ill pay a courtesy visit to your lady. It should be thought this is a family visit without any secret purpose.”

  “I thank you,” Allart said, “but Cassandra is not well, and has kept her bed. I shall convey her your respectful compliments.”

  “Do so, by all means,” Damon-Rafael said, “although, I suppose, since you have chosen to dwell with her in the Tower, there is no reason to send congratulations. I do not imagine she is already carrying your child.”

  Not now, perhaps never… Allart felt again the surge of desolation. He said aloud only, “No, we have not as yet any such good fortune.” Damon-Rafael had no way of knowing the real state of affairs between himself and Cassandra, neither the pledge they had made one another nor the circumstances in which it had been broken. He was only twisting a knife at random. There was no need to waste anger on his brother’s malice, but Allart was angry.

  Still, he was bound to obey Damon-Rafael as overlord of Elhalyn, and Damon-Rafael was so far right. If the Northmen from the Hellers joined this war, there would be ravage and disaster.

  I should be grateful, he thought, that the gods have sent me such an honorable way to serve in this war. If I can persuade the Aldarans to neutrality I will indeed do well for all the vassals of Hastur.

  As Damon-Rafael rose to depart, Allart said, “Truly, I thank you, brother, for entrusting me with this mission,” and his words were so heartfelt that Damon-Rafael stared at him with surprise. When he embraced Allart at parting there was a touch of warmth in the gesture. The two would never be friends, but they were nearer to it at this moment than they had been for years or Allart knew it sadly—were ever likely to be again.

  Later that night he was summoned again to the Stranger’s Hall, this time, he supposed, to meet with Damon-Rafael’s envoy, bearing safe-conducts and dispatches.

  Coryn met him outside the door.

  “Allart, do you speak the languages of the Hellers?”

  Allart nodded, wondering if Damon-Rafael had taken Coryn into his confidence and why.

  “Mikhail of Aldaran has sent us a messenger,” Coryn said, “but his command of our language is uncertain. Will you come and speak to him in his own tongue?”

  “Gladly,” Allart said, and.thought, Not Damon-Rafael’s envoy, then, but Aldaran’s messenger. Damon-Rafael said he had been mind-probed. I think that unjust, but, after all, this is war.

  When he came with Coryn into the Stranger’s Hall, he recognized the messenger’s face. His laran had shown it to him again and again, though he had never known why: a dark-haired, dark-browed, youthful face, looking at him with tentative friendliness. Allart greeted him in the formal speech of the Hellers.

  “You lend us grace, siarbainn,” he said, giving it the special inflection which made the archaic word for stranger mean, friend-still-unknown. “How may I serve you?”

  The strange youth rose and bowed.

  “I am Donal Delleray, foster-son and paxman to Mikhail, Lord Aldaran. I bring his words, not my own, to the vai leroni of Hali Tower.”

  “I am Allart Hastur of Elhalyn; this, my kinsman and cousin, Coryn, tenerezu of Hali. Speak freely.”

  He thought, Surely this is more than coincidence, that Aldaran should send a messenger just as my brother devises his plan. Or did he devise his plan to fit the messenger’s coming? The gods strengthen me—I see plots and counterplots everywhere!

  Donal said, “First, vai domyn, I am to bear you Lord Aldaran’s apologies for sending me in his place. He would not hesitate to come as suppliant and petitioner, but he is old, and hardly fitted to bear the long road from Aldaran. Also, I can ride more quickly than he. Indeed, I had thought to be here within eight days’ ride, but I seem to have lost a day on the road.”

  Damon-Rafael and his damned mind-probing, Allart thought, but he said nothing, waiting for Donal to make his request.

  Coryn said, “It is our pleasure to do courtesy to Lord Aldaran; what does he ask?”

  “Lord Aldaran bids me say that his daughter, his only living child and heir, is cursed with laran such as he has never known before. The aged leronis who has cared for her since her birth no longer knows what to do with her. The child is of an age when my father fears lest threshold sickness destroy her. He comes, then, as suppliant, to ask of the vai leroni if they know of one who will come to care for her during these crucial seasons.”

  This was not unknown, that a Tower-trained leronis might go to guide and care for some young heir during the troubled years of adolescence, when threshold sickness took such toll of the sons and daughters of their caste. A laranzu from Arilinn Tower had first counseled Allart to seek sanctuary at Nevarsin. And, Allart thought, if Aldaran was beholden to Hali for such a service, Aldaran would be all the more ready to refrain from angering Elhalyn by coming into this war.

  Allart said, “The Hasturs of Elhalyn, and those who serve them in Hali Tower, will be pleased to serve Lord Aldaran in this matter.” He asked Coryn in their own language, “Who shall we send?”

  “I thought you would go,” Coryn said. “You are none too eager to remain and become entangled in this war.”

  “I shall go, indeed, at my brother’s bidding and on his mission,” Allart said, “but it is not seemly that a laranzu shall have the training of a maiden. Surely she needs a woman to guide her.”

  “Yet there is none to spare,” said Coryn. “Now that I am to lose Renata, I shall need Mira for monitoring. And, of course, Cassandra is not even well enough trained for monitoring, far less for work of this sort, teaching a young girl to control her gift.”

  Allart said, “Could not Renata fulfill this mission? It seems to me that this would remove her from the combat zone, as much as returning to Neskaya.”

  “Yes, Renata is the obvious choice,” Coryn said, “but she is not to go to Neskaya. Did you not hear? No,” he answered his own question. “While Cassandra has been ill, you have stayed with her and you did not hear the word from the relays. Dom Erlend Leynier has sent word that she is not to go to Neskaya Towers but to go home to her wedding. It has twice been delayed already. I do not think she would wish to delay it again to go to some godforgotten corner of the Hellers, to teach some barefoot mountain girl how to handle her laran!”

  Allart looked apprehensively at young Donal. Had he heard the offensive remark? But Donal, like a proper messenger, was staring straight before him, appearing neither to hear or see anything but what concerned him directly. If he did know enough of the Lowland tongue to understand Coryn’s words, or had enough laran to read their thoughts, neither Coryn nor Allart would ever know.

  “I do not think Renata is in such a great hurry to be married,” Allart demurred.

  Coryn chuckled. “I think you mean you are in no hurry for Renata to be married, cousin.” Then, at the glare of rage in Allan’s eyes, he said hastily, “I was but jesting, cousin. Tell young Delleray that we will ask the damisela Renata Leynier if she will undertake the journey northward.”

  Allart repeated the formal phrases to Donal, who bowed and replied, “Say to the vai domna that Mikhail, Lord Aldaran, would not have her make this tremendous service unremunerated. In gratitude, she will be dowered as if she were his younger daughter, when the time comes for her to marry.”

  “That is generous,” Allart said, as indeed it was. The use of laran could not be bought or sold like ordinary service; tradition stated it should be used only in service to caste or clan and was not for hire. This was the usual compromise. The Leyniers were wealthy, but they had no such wealth as the Aldarans, and this would give Renata the dower of a princess.

  After a few more courtesies, they had young Donal conducted to a chamber to await the final arrangements. Coryn said regretfully, as he and Allart went through the force-field into the main part of the Tower, “Perhaps I should have arranged this journey for Arielle. She is a Di Asturien, but she is nedestro and has no dower to speak of. Even if my brother would give me leave to marry, which is not likely, he would not allow me to wed with a poor g
irl.” He laughed bitterly. “But it matters not… even if she were dowered with all the jewels of Carthon, a Hastur of Carcosa could not wed with a nedestro of Di Asturien; and if Arielle had such a dowry, her father would surely offer her to another, and I should lose her.”

  “You are long unmarried,” Allart said, and Coryn shrugged.

  “My brother is not eager for me to have an heir. I have laran enough, and I have fathered half a dozen sons for their accursed breeding program, on this girl and that, but I have not bothered to see the babes, though they say they all have laran. It is better not to get too fond of them, since I understand that every attempt to breed the Hastur gift to Aillard or Ardais has meant they die in threshold sickness, poor little brats. It is hard on their mothers, but I have no intention of letting myself be heart-wrung, too.”

  “How can you take it so casually?”

  For a moment the mask of indifference broke and Coryn looked out at him in real distress.

  “What else can I do, Allart? No son of Hastur has a life he can call his own, while the leroni of this damned stud-service they call our caste make all our marriages and even arrange the fathering of our bastards. But we are not all like you, able to tolerate living the life of a monk!” Then he was stony-faced, impassive again. “Well, it is not an unpleasant duty to my clan, after all. While I dwell here as Keeper, there are plenty of times when I am no use to any woman, which is almost as good as being a monk… Arielle and I are willing to take what we can have when occasion permits. I am not like you, a romantic seeking a great love,” he added defensively, and turned away. “Will you ask Renata if she will go, or shall I?”

  “You ask her,” Allart said. He knew already what she would say, knew they would ride northward together. He had seen it again and again; it could not be avoided.

  Was it unavoidable, then, that he would love Renata, forgetting his love and his honor and his pledge to Cassandra?