Stormqueen!

  Painfully, painstakingly, Allart forced himself to thread his way through all the possibilities. I am not a god! How can I tell which of these things would be best for all? I can only say what would be least painful for Donal or for Renata, whom I love…

  Now, against his will, he began to see his own future. He would return to Cassandra… he would not return but would dwell forever in Nevarsin or, like Saint-Valentine-of-the-Snows, alone in a solitary cave in the Hellers till death… he would be reunited ecstatically with Cassandra… he would die at the hands of Damon-Rafael, who feared treachery… Cassandra would dwell forever in the Tower… she would die in bearing his child… she would fall into the hands of Damon-Rafael, who had never ceased to regret that he had given her to Allart instead of making her his own barragana… This jolted Allart completely out of the reverie of crowding futures and probabilities, to look more closely at that one.

  Damon-Rafael, his own wife dead, and his single legitimate son dead before weaning… Allart had not known that; it was pure foresight, laran. But was it true or only a fear born of his consciousness of Cassandra and of Damon-Rafael’s unscrupulous ambition? Abruptly something his father had said when speaking of his handfasting to Cassandra surged back into his mind.

  “You will be married to a woman of the Aillard clan, with genes specially modified to control this laran. …” Allart had heard his father, but he had not been listening. He had heard only the voice of his own fear. But Damon-Rafael had known. It would not be the first time that a Domain chief, powerful and ambitious, had taken the wife of his younger brother… or his brother’s widow. If I return to claim Cassandra for my wife, Damon-Rafael will kill me. With a craven pang, Allart wondered how he could avoid this fate, the fate it now seemed he saw everywhere.

  I shall return to the monastery, take vows there, never to return to Elhalyn. Then Damon-Rafael will take Cassandra for his wife, and seize the throne of Thendara from the faltering hands of the young emmasca who sits there now. Cassandra will mourn for me, but when she is queen at Thendara she will forget…

  And Damon-Rafael, his ambition satisfied, will be content.

  Then horror flared upon Allart, seeing what kind of king his brother would be. Tyranny—the Ridenow would be wiped out wholly so that the women of Serrais could be bred into the line of Elhalyn, the Hasturs of Hali and Valeron would be assimilated into the single line of Elhalyn, so many alliances entered into that the Domains themselves would become only vassals to the Hastur of Elhalyn, reigning from Thendara. Damon-Rafael’s greedy hands would reach out to bring all of the known world from Dalereuth to the Hellers under the domain of Elhalyn. All this would happen in the name of bringing peace… peace under the despotism of Damon-Rafael and the sons of Hastur!

  Inbreeding, sterility, weakness, decadence, the inflow of barbarians from the Dry-towns and hill country . . . sack, looting, ravage, death…

  I do not want a crown. Yet no man living could rule this land worse than my brother…

  By main force Allart shut off the flow of images. Somehow, he must prevent this from occurring. Now for the first time he let himself think seriously of Cassandra. How casually he had almost stepped aside, leaving her to become Damon-Rafael’s prey—for, queen or no, no woman would ever be more than this to his brother, a toy of lust and a pawn of ambition. Damon-Rafael had brought an almost certain death upon Cassilde, not caring as long as she bore him a legitimate son. He would not hesitate to use Cassandra the same way.

  Then something in Allart that he had crushed and subdued and trampled suddenly reared up and said, No! He shall not have her!

  If she had wanted Damon-Rafael, if she had even been ambitious for the crown, then, with agony never to be weighed or measured, Allart might have stepped aside. But he knew her too well for that. It was his responsibility—and his right, his unchallenged right—to protect and reclaim her for himself.

  Even now, my brother might be reaching out his hand to take her…

  Allart could see ahead into all possible futures, but he could not see what was actually happening now at a distance—not without the aid of his matrix. Slowly, stretching cramped muscles, he stood up and looked around the chamber. The night had passed, and the snow; crimson dawn was breaking over the Hellers outside his window, showing snowclad peaks flashing red sunlight. With the weather-wisdom of the mountains, which he had learned at Nevarsin, he knew the storm was gone, for a time at least.

  With the starstone in his hand, Allart resolutely focused on his thought, enormously amplified by the matrix, over the long spaces that lay between. What befalls at Elhalyn? What is happening in Thendara?

  Slowly, pinpointed as if he were seeing it with his physical eyes through the small end of a lens, tiny and sharp-edged and brilliant, a picture formed before his eyes.

  Along the shores of Hali, where the unending waves that were not water splashed and receded forever, a procession wound its way, with the banners and flags of mourning. Old King Regis was being carried to the burial ground at the shores of Hali, there to lie, as custom demanded, in an unmarked grave among the former kings and rulers of the Domains. In that procession, face after face flashed before Allart’s eyes, but only two made any impression on him: One, the narrow, pale sexless face of Prince Felix, sad and fearful. It would not be long, Allart knew, looking at the rapacious faces of the nobles in his train, before Prince Felix was stripped naked and forced to yield his crown to one who could pass on blood and genes, the precious laran. The other was the face of Damon-Rafael of Elhalyn, next heir to the crown of Thendara. As if already tasting his victory, Damon-Rafael rode with a fierce smile on his face. Before Allart’s eyes the picture blurred, not into what was now, but what would be, and he saw Damon-Rafael crowned in Thendara, Cassandra, robed and jeweled as a queen, at his side, and the powerful lords of Valeron, cemented in close alliance through kinfolk, standing behind the new king Damon-Rafael…

  War, decadence, ruin, chaos… Allart suddenly knew he stood at the crux of a line of events which could alter forever the whole future of Darkover.

  I wish my brother no harm. But I cannot let him plunge all of our world into ruin. There is no journey that does not begin with a single step. I cannot prevent Damon-Rafael from becoming king. But he will not cement the Aillard alliance by making my wife his queen.

  Allart put the matrix aside, sent for his servants and had food brought, eating and drinking without tasting, to strengthen him against what he knew must come. That done, he went in search of Lord Aldaran. He found Dom Mikhail in high good humor.

  “I have sent the message to my brother of Scathfell, inviting him to the wedding of my daughter and my beloved foster-son,” he said. “It is a stroke of genius. There is no other man into whose hands I would so willingly give my little daughter for her safety and protection lifelong. I shall tell her today what we intend, and I think she, too, will be grateful, that she need not be given into a stranger’s hands… You are responsible for this splendid solution, my friend. I wish I could somehow repay you with some equal kindness! How I would like to be a fly upon the wall when my brother of Scathfell reads the letter I have sent him!”

  Allart said, “As a matter of fact, Dom Mikhail, I have come to ask you a great favor.”

  “It would be a pleasure to grant you whatever you ask, cousin.”

  “I wish to send for my wife, who dwells in Hali Tower. Will you receive her as a guest?”

  “Willingly,” Dom Mikhail said. “I will send my own guard as escort, if you wish it, but the journey is precarious at this time of year; ten days’ ride from the Lowlands with the winter storms coming on. Perhaps you could eliminate the time it would take my men to travel to the lake of Hali and fetch her, if you sent to Tramontana Tower with a message through the relays that she should set forth at once. I could send men to meet her on the way and escort her. I suppose she could find her own escort from Elhalyn.”

  Allart looked troubled. He said, “I do not want to trust her to my brother,
and I am reluctant that her going should be known.”

  Dom Mikhail looked at him sharply. “Is it like that? I suggest, then, that you go at once with Donal to Tramontana, and try to persuade them to bring her here at once, through the Tower relays. It is not often done in these days—the expenditure of energy is out of all reason—unless the need is desperate. But if it is as important as that—”

  Allart said, “I did not know that could still be done!”

  “Oh, yes, the equipment is still there in the Tower, matrix-powered. Perhaps, with your help, they could be persuaded. I would suggest that you ride to Tramontana, however, rather than flying; the weather is not good enough at this season for that… Still, speak with Donal. He knows all that there is to know about flying in the Hellers at any season.” He rose, courteously dismissing the younger man.

  “It will be a pleasure to welcome your wife as my guest, cousin. She will be an honored guest at my daughter’s wedding.”

  “Yes, of course we can fly there,” Donal said, glancing at the sky. “We will have at least a day free of snow, but of course we cannot return the same day. If there must be work done within the relays, you would be too exhausted, and so would your lady. I suggest that we leave for Tramontana as soon as we can, and that I give orders for mounts to be sent after us, including one for your wife, gentle and suited to a lady’s riding.”

  They set forth later that morning. Allart did not speak of Donal’s approaching marriage, fearing it might be a sore point with him, but Donal brought it up himself. “It cannot be before midwinter night,” he said. “Renata has monitored Dorilys and she says she will not mature before that. And she has had such ill fortune with handfastings that even Father hesitates to subject her to another such ceremony.”

  “Has she been told?”

  “Yes, Father told her,” Donal said, hesitating, “and I spoke with her, a little, after… She is only a child. She has only the haziest idea of what marriage means.”

  Allart was not so certain, but after all it was Donal’s affair, and Renata’s, not his. Donal turned to catch the wind, tilted his glider-wings with the control, and soared upward on a long drift of air.

  Once airborne, as always, the troubles of the world slipped away from Allart’s thoughts; he gave himself up to it without thought, riding the achingly cold air in a kind of ecstasy, matrix-borne, hawk-free. He was almost regretful when he came in sight of Tramontana Tower, but not quite. There lay his path to Cassandra.

  As he turned the glider over to Arzi he pondered that. Perhaps, rather than bringing her here to a cowardly safety, he should return to Hali and face his brother. No, he knew with that cold new inner knowledge; if he should venture anywhere within Damon-Rafael’s grasp his life would not be worth the smallest coin.

  Inside himself he mourned. How have we come to this, my brother and I? Yet he put his grief aside, steadying himself to face the tenerezu of the Tower with his request.

  Ian-Mikhail frowned, and Allart thought he would refuse out of hand. “The power is there,” he said, “or can be summoned. Yet I am very reluctant to entangle Tramontana in the affairs of the Lowlands. Are you very sure there is danger to your wife, Allart?”

  Allart found in his mind only the certain knowledge that Damon-Rafael would not hesitate to seize her, as he had seized Donal. Donal, close by, reading his thoughts, flushed with anger.

  “That I had never known until this moment. It is well for Lord Elhalyn that my foster-father did not know!”

  Ian-Mikhail sighed. “Here we are at peace; we make no weapons and take part in no wars. But you are one of us, Allart. We must safeguard your lady from harm. I cannot imagine it. I, too, was schooled at Nevarsin, and I would rather lie with a corpse or a cralmac than an unwilling woman. But I have heard that your brother is a ruthless man, and ambitious beyond measure. Go, Allart. Communicate with Cassandra through the relays. I will summon the circle for tonight.”

  Allart went to the matrix chamber, calming himself for the work, casting himself into the spinning darkness of the relays, riding the web of electrical energies as earlier that day he had ridden the air drafts of the winter sky. Then, without warning, he felt the intimate touch on his mind. He had not hoped for such luck; Cassandra herself was in the relays.

  Allart? Is it you, love?

  Surprise and wonder, an amazement that was near to tears… You are at Tramontana? You know we are all in mourning here for the old king?

  Allart had seen, though no one had thought to tell him formally here.

  Allart, a moment before you begin whatever business brought you to Tramontana. I am—I do not want to trouble you, but I am afraid of your brother. He paid me a courtesy call, saying marriage-kin should know one another; and when I spoke my sympathy at Cassilde’s death and the death of his young son, he spoke of a time gone by when brothers and sisters held all their wives in common, and he looked at me so strangely. I asked what he meant and he said a time would come when I would understand, but I could not read his thoughts…

  Until this moment Allart had hoped it was fantasy born of his fear. Now he knew his foresight had been true.

  It was for this I came here, beloved. You must leave Hali and come to me in the mountains.

  Ride there at this season? In the Hellers?

  He could feel her fear. Nevarsin-trained, Allart had no fear of the killing weather of the Hellers, but he knew her fright was genuine. No. Even now the circle is gathering, to bring you here through the screens. You do not fear that, do you, love?

  No… But the faraway denial did not sound quite sure.

  It will not be long. But go and ask the others to come.

  Ian-Mikhail came into the matrix chamber, now wearing the crimson robe of a Keeper. Behind him Allart could see the girl Rosaura whom he had met here before, and half a dozen of the others. The white-robed monitor was working with the dampers, adjusting them to compensate for the presence of an outsider, setting up the force-lock which made it impossible for any outsider to intrude, body or mind, into the space or time where they were working. Then Allart felt the familiar body-mind touch and knew he was being monitored for his presence in the circle. He felt grateful to them, not knowing how to express it, that they were willing to tolerate the presence of someone outside their closed and intimate circle. Yet he was not wholly an outsider; he had touched them more than once when he worked in the relay-nets. He was known to them, and he felt obscurely comforted.

  I have lost my brother. Damon-Rafael is my enemy. Yet will I nevermore be wholly brotherless, having worked in the relays which touch mind to mind all over this world. I have sisters and brothers in Hali and Tramontana, and at Arilinn and Dalereuth and all of the Towers…

  Damon-Rafael and I were never brothers in that sense.

  Ian-Mikhail of Storn was gathering the circle now, motioning each of them to his or her place. Allart counted nine in the circle, and he came and sat in the ring of joined bodies, not touching anywhere but close enough to feel one another as electrical fields. He saw the inner swirlings within force-fields that were the others in the circle; saw the field begin to build around Ian-Mikhail as the Keeper seized the tremendous energies of the linked matrices and began to twist and direct them into a cone of power on the screen before them. Having worked only with Coryn as Keeper, whose mental touch was light and almost imperceptible, by contrast Allart felt that Ian-Mikhail caught him, wrenched at him, almost brutally, placing him within the circle, but there was nothing of malice in the strength. It was simply the distinct way he worked; everyone used his or her psi powers in a particular way.

  Once in the circle, locked into the ring of minds, individual thought faded, gave way to a humming awareness of joined, concentrated purpose. Allart could sense the force building inside the screen, a vast enormous singing silence. Dimly in the distance he touched other familiar minds: Coryn, like a brief handclasp; Arielle a riffle of air, wavering, perceptible; Cassandra… They were there, they were here—then he went blin
d and deaf with the searing overload, the sting of ozone in his nostrils, the enormous flaring, searing energies like lightning crashing on the heights.

  Abruptly the pattern broke, and they were separate individuals again, and Cassandra, dazed and white, was kneeling on the stones before the circle.

  She reeled, about to fall, but Rosaura reached out and steadied her; then Allart was there, lifting her in his arms. She looked up at him in exhaustion and terror.

  Ian-Mikhail said with a faint laugh, “You are as wearied as by the ten days’ ride, kinswoman. There has been a certain amount of energy expended, however it was done. Come with us, then. We must eat and rebuild our forces. Tell us all the news from Hali, if you will.”

  Allart was faint with the terrible hunger of the energy-drain. For once, he found himself eating the heavily sweetened reserve foods in the matrix chamber without nausea or distaste. He was not enough of a technician to understand the process which had teleported Cassandra through space across the ten days’ ride between the Towers, but she was here, her hand clasped tight in his, and that was enough for him.

  The white-robed monitor came and insisted on monitoring them both. They didn’t protest.

  As they ate, Cassandra told the news from Hali. The death and burial of the old king; the Council summoned to test Prince Felix—not yet crowned, probably never to be crowned; the upheaval in Thendara among the people who supported the gentle young prince. There had been a renewed truce with the Ridenow which Hali Tower had been forced to use for the stockpiling of clingfire. Cassandra showed Allart one of the characteristic burns on her hand.