Allart could see the storm ahead of them, sensing rather than seeing the charges of electricity leaping from cloud to cloud. They circled in a long, slow spiral almost to the ground, and Allart sensed Donal’s exasperation.
Are we going to have to land somewhere and wait out the storm? I would risk it, but Allart is unaccustomed to flying…
I will risk what you risk, kinsman Donal.
Follow me, then. It is like dodging a rain of arrows, but I have done it more than once… He dipped his wings, soared upward on a fast current, then darted swiftly between two clouds. Quickly! A charge of lightning has just struck and there is a little time until another can build up!
Allart felt the curious harsh tingle, and again they ran the gauntlet of darting lightning. He would have hung back, but he trusted Donal’s laran to guide them through, Donal knowing where and precisely when the lightning would strike. Yet Allart felt cold chills strike him. They flew through a sudden small rain squall and he clung, drenched and icy, to the struts of the glider, his wet clothes freezing against his skin. He followed Donal on the long sickening swoop of downdraft, snatched up at the last minute to ride a current up and up till they hung circling above the heights of Castle Aldaran.
Donal instructed, a voice in his mind: We cannot go down at once; there is too much charge on our gliders and clothing. When we put foot to ground it would knock us senseless. We must circle a while; soar, spread your hands to drain off the charge. …
Allart, following instructions, drifting in lazy, dreamy circles, knew that Donal was in the hawk-persona again, projecting himself into the mind and thoughts of a great bird. Circling above the castle; Allart had leisure to look down at Aldaran. In these months past it had become a second home to him, but now he beheld, with a sense of foreboding, a long caravan of riders winding up to the gates. Turning, Allart sent out a wordless cry of warning to Donal, as the caravan leader drew and brandished a sword, the sound of his yelling almost audible to Allart where he hung high above the battlements, above the steep tumbling waterfall.
“But there is no one there, kinsman,” Donal said, troubled. “What ails you? What did you see? Truly, there is no one there.”
Dazed, Allart blinked, a sudden giddiness making his wings flutter, and he tilted, automatically, to balance on the air. The road to Aldaran lay bare and deserted in the thickening twilight—neither riders, nor armed men, nor banners. His laran had shown him, only his laran, the foresight of what might, or might never, come to pass. It was gone.
Donal fluttered, swooped sidewise. His agitated alarm prompted Allart to follow him quickly. “We must get down, even if we are knocked senseless,” he, shouted, then sent a swift, agitated thought to Allart: There is another storm coining.
But I see no clouds.
This storm needs no clouds, Donal thought in dismay. This is the anger of my sister, generating lightning. The clouds will come. She would not strike us, knowing, but still we must get down as quickly as we can.
He let himself drop on a swift current, shifting his weight . on the glider so that he hung, vertically, using his weight and twisting his body like an acrobat to send the glider downward. Allart, more cautious and less experienced, followed a more conservative downward spiral, but he felt, still, the jolt of painful electricity as his feet touched the ground behind the castle. Donal, unbuckling his harness and shoving the glider in a jumble of ropes at the servant who came hurrying to take it, murmured, “What can it be? What has happened to upset or frighten Dorilys?” With a word of apology to Allart, he hurried away.
* * *
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
« ^ »
Renata, too, heard the muttering of the summer thunder, without thinking too much about it, as she moved through the castle halls on her way to Dorilys’s apartments for their daily late-afternoon lesson.
Because Dorilys was younger than the novice workers in any Tower—and also because Dorilys had not, as they did, sought out this training of her own free will, pledging herself to endure uncomplaining all the discomforts and difficulties of the work—Renata had tried to make the teaching easy and pleasant, to devise games and amusements which would develop the girl’s use of laran without tedious exercises to tire or bore her. Dorilys was still too young to be tested formally for telepathy which rarely developed much in advance of puberty, but other forms of laran were earlier to arise, and Renata judged that Dorilys had a considerable amount of clairvoyance and, probably, some telekinetic power in addition to her formidable gift of generating or controlling lightnings. So she had taught her with simple games: hiding sweets and toys and letting her find them with her laran, blindfolding her and having her find her way among intricate obstacle courses of furniture or unfamiliar parts of the castle; having her pick her own possessions, blindfolded, out of a jumble of similar ones, by the “feel” of her own magnetism attached to them. She was a quick pupil, and enjoyed the lessons so much that on two or three occasions Margali had actually controlled her rebellious young charge by threatening to deprive her of them, as she did with her music lessons, unless she satisfactorily finished the other tasks of which she was not so fond.
As far as Renata could tell, Dorilys was wholly without the two gifts which would have made her a trainable Tower worker: telepathy, defined as the ability to read or pick up deliberate thought; and empathy, or the ability to feel another’s emotions or physical sensations in her own mind and body. But either might develop at adolescence—they often did—and if, at that time, she had some control of her own energy currents and flows, there would be less danger of the dreaded threshold sickness.
If it could only develop earlier—or later! It was the scourge of all the families with laran that these troubling facilities should develop at the same time the child was going through the physical and emotional upheavals of puberty. So many of those who bore these gifts found that the sudden onset of psi powers, developing sexuality, and the hormonal and temperamental liability of these times were an overload on body and brain. They developed enormous upheavals; sometimes crisis, convulsions, and even death followed. Renata herself had lost a brother to threshold sickness; no laran family survived unscathed.
Dorilys carried Aldaran blood on her father’s side, not the relatively stable Delleray, which was akin to the Hastur. What Renata knew of the Aldaran and Rockraven lines did not make her entirely hopeful, but the more Dorilys knew of the energy currents in her body, the nerve flows and energon runs, the more likely she would be to survive these upheavals without undue difficulty.
Now, as she approached Dorilys’s rooms, she sensed overtones of annoyance, weary patience (Renata herself considered the old leronis virtually a saint for putting up with this difficult and spoiled little girl), and the arrogance of Dorilys when she was crossed. Dorilys had seldom shown this pettish side to Renata, for she admired the young leronis and wanted her goodwill and liking. But she had never been disciplined firmly, and found it difficult to obey when her emotions went otherwise. It did not make it easier that, since Darren of Scathfell had been struck down, Margali was afraid of her charge, and could not conceal it
I am afraid of her, too, Renata thought, but she does not know it, and if I ever let her know, I will never again be able to teach her anything!
Outside the door, she heard Dorilys’s voice, just a petulant grumble. She heightened her sensitivity to hear Margali’s firm answer.
“No, child. Your stitching is a disgrace. There will be no music lesson, nor any lesson with the lady Renata, until you have taken out all those clumsy stitches and done them properly.” She added, in a coaxing tone, “You are not so clumsy as that; you are simply not trying. You can sew very neatly when you choose, but today you have decided you do not want to sew, and so you are deliberately making a mess of what you do. Now take out all of those stitches—no, use the proper ripping tool, child! Don’t try to take them out with your fingers, or you will tear the cloth! Dorilys, what is the matter with you today?”
Dorilys said, “I don’t like sewing. When I am Lady of Aldaran I will have a dozen sewing-women, and there is no reason I should learn. The lady Renata will not deprive me of my lesson because you say so!”
The rude and spiteful tone of her words decided Renata. The sewing was not important, but the self-discipline of working carefully and conscientiously at a task for which she had neither talent nor taste was a valuable teaching. Renata, a trained empath and monitor, felt as she opened the door the deep searing pain across Margali’s forehead, the lines of weariness in the older woman’s face. Dorilys was up to her old trick of giving Margali headaches when the older woman would not give her everything she wanted. Dorilys was sitting over the hated sewing, looking sweet and compliant, but Renata could see, as Margali could not, the triumphant smirk on her face as Renata came through the door. She flung the sewing to the floor, and rose, hurrying to Renata.
“Is it time for my lesson, cousin?”
Renata said coldly, “Pick up your sewing and put it away properly in its drawer—or better yet, sit down and finish it as you should.”
“I don’t have to learn to sew,” Dorilys said, pouting. “My father wants me to learn those things which you can teach me!”
“What I can teach you best,” Renata said firmly, “is to do what you have to do, when you have to do it, as well as you can do it, whether you want to do it or not. I do not care whether you can sew neatly or whether your stitches stagger like a chervine drunken on windfall apples”—Dorilys gave a small, triumphant giggle—“but you will not use your lessons with me to get the better of your foster-mother, or to evade what she wants you to do.” She glanced at Margali, who was white with pain, and decided the time had come for a showdown.
“Is she giving you headaches again?”
Margali said faintly, “She knows no better.”
“Then she shall learn better,” Renata said, her voice icy. “Whatever it is that you are doing, Dorilys, you will release your foster-mother at once, and you will kneel and beg her pardon, and then perhaps I shall continue to teach you.”
“Beg her pardon?” Dorilys said incredulously. “I won’t!”
Something in the tilt of the small chin, though Dorilys was said to resemble her dead mother, suddenly made Renata think of Lord Aldaran himself. She has her father’s pride, she thought, but she has not yet learned to mask it in courtesy and expedient compromise and charm. She is still young and we can see this willfulness in all its naked ugliness. Already she does not care who she hurts, as long as she gets her own way. And to her, Margali is not much better than a servant. Nor am I; she obeys me because it pleases her.
She said, “I am waiting, Dorilys. Beg Margali’s pardon at once, and never do so again!”
“I will, if she will promise not to order me around anymore,” Dorilys said sullenly.
Renata set her lips. So it was really a showdown, then. If I back down, if I allow her to set her own terms, she will never obey me again. And this teaching may save her life. I do not want power over her, but if I am to teach her, she must learn obedience; to rely on my judgment until she can trust her own and control it.
“I did not ask you on what terms you would beg her pardon,” Renata said. “I simply told you to do it I am waiting.”
“Renata,” Margali began.
But Renata said quietly, “No, Margali. Keep out of this. You know as well as I what the first thing is she must learn.” To Dorilys she said, her voice a whiplash, using the trained command-voice, “Kneel down at once and beg pardon of your foster-mother!”
Dorilys dropped automatically to her knees; then, springing up, she cried out shrilly, “I have told you never to use command-voice on me! I will not allow it, and neither will my father! He would not see me humiliated by begging her pardon!”
Dorilys, Renata thought, should have been thoroughly spanked before she was old enough, or strong enough, to get such exaggerated ideas of her own importance. But everyone has been afraid of her, and would not cross her. I do not blame them. I am afraid of her, too.
She knew she faced an angry child whose anger had killed. Yet I still have the upper hand. She is a child and she knows she is in the wrong, and I am a trained Tower technician and monitor. I must teach her, now, that I am stronger than she is. Because a day will come, when she is full-grown, when no one will be strong enough to control her; and before that time has come, she must be capable of controlling herself.
Her voice was a whiplash. “Dorilys, your father gave me charge of you in all things. He told me that if you disobeyed, I had his leave to beat you. You are a big girl, and I would not like to humiliate you that way, but I tell you—unless you obey me at once, and beg pardon of your foster-mother, I shall do exactly that, as if you were a baby too small to listen to the voice of reason. Do as I tell you, and at once!”
“I will not,” cried Dorilys, “and you cannot make me!” As if to echo her words, there was a harsh mutter of thunder outside the windows. Dorilys was too angry to hear it, but she sensed it, and flinched.
Renata thought, Good. She is still a little afraid of her own power. She does not want to kill again…
Then Renata felt across her own forehead the searing pain, like a tightening band… was she picking this up from Margali, with her own empath power? No; a quick look at the angry child showed her that Dorilys was taut, frowning, tense, concentrated with gritted anger. Dorilys was doing to her what she had done to Margali.
The little devil! Renata thought, torn between anger and unwilling admiration of the child’s power and spirit. If only all that strength and defiance can be turned to some useful purpose, what a woman she will make! Focusing on her matrix—which she had never done before in Dorilys’s presence, except to monitor her—Renata began to fight back, reflecting the energy at Dorilys. Slowly her own pain diminished and she saw the girl’s face go white with strain. She kept her voice calm with an effort.
“See? You cannot serve me so, Dorilys. I am stronger than you. I do not want to hurt you, and you know it. Now obey me, and we will have our lesson.”
She felt Dorilys strike out, angrily. Summoning all her own strength, she caught and held the child as if she had wrapped her physically in her arms, restraining body and mind, voice and laran. Dorilys tried to cry out, “Let me go,” and discovered, in terror, that her voice would not obey, that she could not make a single move… Renata, sensitive, empath, felt Dorilys’s terror as if it were in her own body, and ached with pity for her.
But she must know that I am strong enough to protect her from her own impulses, that she cannot strike me down without thinking, as she did with Darren. She must know that she is safe with me, that I will not let her hurt herself, or anyone else.
Now Dorilys was really afraid. For a moment, watching her bulging eyes, the frantic small trapped movements of her muscles, Renata felt such pity that she could not endure it. I do not want to hurt her, or to break her spirit, only to teach her … to protect her from her own terrible power! Someday she will know it, but now she is so frightened, poor little love…
She saw the small muscles in Dorilys’s throat moving, struggling to speak, and released the hold on the child’s voice; saw the tears starting from Dorilys’s eyes.
“Let me go, let me go!”
Margali turned entreating eyes on her; she, too, was suffering, seeing her beloved nursling so helpless.
The old leronis whispered, “Release her, Lady Renata. She will be good; won’t you, my baby?”
Renata said, very gently, “You see, Dorilys, I am still stronger than you. I will not allow you to hurt anyone, not even yourself. I know you do not really want to hurt or kill anyone for a moment’s anger because you cannot have your own way in all things.”
Dorilys began to sob, still held rigidly motionless in the grip of Renata’s laran.
“Let me go, cousin, I beg you. I will be good. I will, I promise. I am sorry.”
“It is not to me you must apologize, child, b
ut to your foster-mother,” Renata reminded her gently, releasing her hold on the little girl.
Dorilys dropped to her knees and managed to sob out, “I am sorry, Margali. I did not mean to hurt you; I was only angry,” before she collapsed into incoherent crying.
Margali’s thin fingers, gnarled now with age, gently stroked Dorilys’s soft cheek. “I know that, dear heart. You would never hurt anyone; it is only that you do not think.”
Dorilys turned to Renata and whispered, her eyes wide with horror, “I could have—could have done to you what I did to Darren—and I love you, cousin, I love you.” She flung her arms around Renata, and Renata, still shaking, wrapped her arms around the thin, shaking child.
“Don’t cry anymore, sweetheart. I won’t let you hurt anyone. I promise,” she said, holding her tight. “I won’t ever let you hurt anyone.” She took her kerchief, dried Dorilys’s eyes. “Now put away your sewing properly, and we will have our lesson.”
She knows, now, what she is capable of doing, and she is beginning to be wise enough to be afraid of it. If I can only manage to control her until she is wise enough to control herself!
Outside the window the storm had died to a distant rumble, and then to nothing, silence.
But, hours later, Renata faced Allart, shaking with long-suppressed tension and fear.
“I was stronger than she—but not enough,” she whispered. “I was so frightened, kinsman!”
He said soberly, “Tell me about it. What are we to do with her?”
They were sitting in the drawing room of the small and luxurious suite of rooms which Lord Aldaran had ordered placed at Renata’s disposal.
“Allart, I hated to frighten her that way! There should be a better way to teach her than fear!”