Stormqueen!

  Well, when they reached Aldaran, Margali and Renata could tend her; for now there was nothing to be done. In the dimness he held the slight six-fingered hand in his, felt the knotted scar of the clingfire burn. She had endured war and fear and pain before this; he had not brought her out of peaceful life into danger. If he had simply substituted one danger for another, still, he knew, it was the danger which she had freely chosen for another less to her liking, and that was all any human being could ask in such days. Comforted a little, he dropped off, for a time, to sleep, held in her arms.

  When he woke it was to hear a cry from Cassandra.

  “Look! The storm has cleared!” He looked up, dazed, at the sky. It had stopped snowing entirely, and clouds were tearing across the sky at a wild pace.

  “Dorilys,” Donal said. “No storm ever moved across these hills at such a pace.” He drew a long, shaking breath. “Her power—the power we have all feared so much—has saved all our lives.”

  Allart, sending his laran out across the country around, realized that the escort had been weathered in on the other side of the ledge he had hesitated to face in the storm. Now, as soon as they could bring their riding-animals across it—a matter of a few hours, certainly—help would be with them, food and shelter and care.

  It had not been Dorilys’s laran alone that had saved them, he thought soberly. The laran he had considered a curse had now proved its worth—and its limitations.

  I cannot ignore it. But I must never wholly rely on it, either. I need not hide from it in terror, as I did all those years in Nevarsin. But I cannot let it whollv rule my actions.

  Maybe I am beginning to know its limitations, Allart thought. It suddenly occurred to him that he had thought of Donal as very young, childishly young. Yet he himself, he realized, was no more than two years Donal’s senior. With a completely new humility, free for once in his life of self-pity, he thought, I am still very young myself. And I may not be given enough time to learn wisdom. But if I live, I may find that some of my problems were only because I was too young, and too foolish to know I was only too young.

  Cassandra was lying on his cloak, gray with pain and exhausted. He turned to her, and was touched that she tried to smile and appear brave. Now he could reassure her honestly, without hiding his own fear. Help was on the way and would reach them soon; there was only a little more time to wait.

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  « ^ »

  Donal Delleray, called Rockhaven, and Dorilys, heir to Aldaran, were formally married by the catenas on midwinter night.

  It was not a festive occasion. The weather prevented, as often in the Hellers, inviting any but the nearest of Aldaran’s neighbors; and of those invited, many chose not to come, in which Aldaran saw, rightly or not, a sign that they had chosen to align with his brother of Scathfell. So that the marriage was held in the presence of the immediate household alone, and even among these there was murmuring.

  This kind of marriage, half-brother to half-sister, had once been commonplace in the early days of the breeding program, especially among the great nobles of the Domains— and imitated, like all such customs, by their inferiors. But it had fallen now into disuse and was regarded as mildly scandalous.

  “They do not like it,” said Allart to Cassandra as they went into the great hall where the festive supper, and the ceremony, and afterward the dance for the household, were all to be held. She was leaning heavily on his arm; she still walked with a dragging limp, memento of their ordeal in the snow, despite the best care Margali and Renata could give. It might heal with time, but it was still difficult for her to walk without help.

  “They do not like it,” he repeated. “Had anyone other than Dom Mikhail given orders for such a thing, they would have defied him, I think.”

  “What is it they do not like? That Donal shall inherit Aldaran when he is not of the blood of Hastur and Cassilda?”

  “No,” said Allart. “As far as I can tell from talking to Aldaran’s vassals and household knights, that pleases them rather than otherwise; none of them has any love for Scathfell, nor any wish to see him rule here. If Dom Mikhail had given it out, true or not, that Donal was his nedestro son and would inherit, they would have stood by him to the death. Even if they knew it was false, they would have treated it as a legal fiction. What they do not like is this marriage of brother and sister.”

  “But this is a legal fiction, too,” Cassandra protested.

  Allart said, “I am not so sure of that. And neither are they. I still feel guilty that it was my own careless words which put this mad idea into Dom Mikhail’s mind. And those who support Dom Mikhail in this—well, they do it as if they were humoring a madman. I am not so sure they are wrong,” he added after a moment. “All madmen do not rave and froth at the mouth and chase butterflies in midwinter snow. Pride and obsession like Dom Mikhail’s come near to madness, even if they are couched in reason and logic.”

  Since the bride was a little girl, the guests could not even hope to lighten the occasion with the jokes and rough horseplay which usually marked a wedding, culminating in the rowdy business of putting the bride and groom to bed together. Dorilys was not even full-grown, far less of legal age to be married. No one had wanted to rouse in Dorilys any bitter memories of her last handfasting, and so there had been no question of presenting her as a grown woman. In her childish dress, her copper hair hanging in long curls about her shoulders, she looked like a child of the household who had been allowed to stay up for the festivities, rather than like the appointed bride. As for the bridegroom, though he made an attempt to give decent lip service to the occasion, he looked grim and joyless, and before they went into the hall, the guests observed that he went toward a group of the bride’s waiting-women and called Renata Leynier apart, talking with her vehemently for some minutes. A few of the house-folk, and most of the servants, knew the true state of affairs between Donal and Renata, and shook their heads at this indiscretion in a man about to be wed. Others, looking at the little bride, surrounded by her nurses and governesses, compared her mentally with Renata and did not censure him.

  “Whatever he says, whatever mummery he may make with the catenas, this is no more than a handfasting, and not a legal wedding. In law, even a catenas marriage is not legal till it is consummated,” Donal argued. Renata, about to tell him that this point was still being argued before the Council and the lawgivers of the land, knew that he needed reassurance, not reason.

  “It will make no difference to me! Swear it will make no difference to you, Renata, or I will defy my foster-father here and now, before all his vassals!”

  If you were going to defy him, Renata thought in despair, you should have done so from the beginning, certainly before things went this far! It is too late for public defiance without destroying both of you! Aloud she said only, “Nothing could make any difference to me, Donal; you know that too well to need any oaths, and this is neither the time nor the place. I must go back to the women, Donal.” But she touched his hand lightly, with a smile that was almost pity.

  We were so happy this summer! How could we come to this? I am not blameless; I should have married him at once. To do him justice, he wished for that. Renata’s thoughts were in turmoil as she walked, with Dorilys’s women, into the hall.

  Dom Mikhail was standing by the fireplace, lighted with the midwinter-fires kindled that day with sunfire, token of the return of light from the darkest day, greeting each of his guests in turn. Dorilys made her father a formal curtsy, and he bowed to her, kissed her on either cheek, and set her at his right side, at the high table. Then, one by one, he greeted the women.

  “Lady Elisa, I would like to express my gratitude for your work in cultivating the lovely voice my daughter has inherited from her mother,” he said, bowing. “Kinswoman Margali, again at this season I am grateful to you that you have taken a mother’s place with my orphaned child. Damisela—” he bowed over Renata’s hand —“how can I express my pleas
ure in what you have done for Dorilys? It is the greatest pleasure to welcome you to my—to my festal board,” he said, stumbling. Renata, a telepath and keyed to the highest level of sensitivity at this moment, knew with a moment of anguish that he had started to say, “to my family,” and then had remembered the real state of affairs between herself and Donal, and forborne to speak those words.

  I always thought he knew, Renata thought, blind with pain. Yet it means more to him, to carry out this plan of his! Now she even regretted the scruples that had prevented her from again becoming pregnant by Donal at once.

  If I had come to midwinter night visibly pregnant with Donal’s child, would he have had the insolence to give Donal in marriage to another before my very eyes? When he insists that I have been the salvation of Dorilys? Could I have forced his hand that way? She walked to her seat, blinded by tears, in a welter of regrets and anxieties.

  Although Aldaran’s cooks and stewards had done their best, and the feast spread before them was notable, it was a joyless occasion. Dorilys seemed nervous, twisting her long curls, at once restless and sleepy. At the close of the meal Dom Mikhail signaled for attention, and called Donal and Dorilys to him. Cassandra and Allart, seated side by side at the far end of the high table, watched in tension, Allart braced for some untoward explosion, either from Donal, guarded and miserable behind a taut facade of civility, or from one of the sullen stewards and household knights at high table or lower hall. But no one interrupted. Watching Dom Mikhail’s face, Allart thought no one would have dared to cross him now.

  “This is indeed a joyous occasion for Aldaran,” said Dom Mikhail.

  Allart, briefly meeting Donal’s eyes, shared a thought with him, quickly barricaded again. Like Zandru’s hell it is!

  “On this day of revelry it is my pleasure to place the guardianship of my house and my only heir, still a minor, Dorilys of Aldaran, into the hands of my beloved foster-son Donal of Rockraven.”

  Donal flinched at the name which proclaimed him bastard, and his lips moved in inaudible protest.

  “Donal Delleray,” Dom Mikhail corrected himself, reluctantly.

  Allart thought, Even now he does not wish to face the fact that Donal is not his son.

  Aldaran placed the twin bracelets of finely chased copper—engraved and filigreed, and lined on the side nearest the skin with gold plating so that the precious metal would not irritate the skin—on Donal’s right wrist and Dorilys’s left. Allart, looking down at the bracelet on his own wrist, held out his hand to Cassandra. All around the hall married couples were doing the same, as Aldaran spoke the ritual words.

  “As the left hand to the right, may you be forever at one; in caste and clan, in home and heritage, at fireside and in council, sharing all things at home and abroad, in love and in loyalty, now and for all time to come,” he said, locking the bracelets together. Smiling for a moment despite his disquiet, Allart fitted the link of his own bracelet into that of his wife and they clasped hands tightly. He picked up Cassandra’s thought, If only it were Donal and Renata … and felt again a surge of anger at this travesty.

  Aldaran unlocked the bracelets, separated them. “Separated in fact, may you be joined in heart as in law,” he said. “In token I bid you exchange a kiss.”

  All through the hall, married couples leaned toward one another to proclaim again their bond, even those, Allart knew, who were not on good terms with one another at ordinary times. He kissed Cassandra tenderly, but he turned his eyes away as Donal bent forward, just touching Dorilys’s lips with his own.

  Aldaran said, “May you be forever one.”

  Allart caught Renata’s eye, and thought, Desolate. Donal should not have done this to her… He still felt a strong sense of closeness to her, of responsibility, and he wished he knew what he could do. It is not even as if Donal himself were happy about this. They are both wretched. He damned Dom Mikhail for his obsession, and guilt lay heavy on him. This was my doing. I put it into his head. He wished heartily that he had never come to Aldaran at all.

  Later there was dancing in the hall, Dorilys leading the dance with a group of her women. Renata had helped her to devise this dance and danced with her in the first measures, hands interlaced with the child’s as they went through the ornate measures.

  Allart watched her and thought, They are not rivals; they are both victims. He saw Donal watching them both, and abruptly turned away, returning to the sidelines where Cassandra, still too lame for dancing, sat among a group of the old women.

  The night wore on, Aldaran’s vassals and guests dutifully trying to put some jollity into the occasion. A juggler performed magic tricks for the household, bringing coins and small animals from the unlikeliest places, scarves and rings out of nowhere; in the end he brought a live songbird from Dorilys’s ear and presented it to her, then retired, bowing. There were minstrels to sing old ballads, and in the great hall, more dancing. But it was not like a wedding, nor like an ordinary midwinter feast. Every now and then someone would start to make the kind of rowdy joke suitable for a wedding, then remember the real state of affairs and nervously break off in mid-sentence. Dorilys sat beside her father in the high seat, Donal at her side for a long time. Someone had found a cage for her songbird and she was trying to coax it to sing, but the hour was late and the bird drooping on its perch. Dorilys seemed to droop, too. Finally Donal, desperate at the silent tension and the joyless gathering, said, “Will you dance with me, Dorilys?”

  “No,” said Aldaran. “It is not seemly that bride and groom dance together at a wedding.”

  Donal turned on his foster-father a look of fury and despair. “In the name of all the gods, this pretense—” he began, then sighed heavily and dropped it. Not at a feast, not before all their assembled house-folk and vassals. He said with heavy irony, “God forbid we should do anything out of custom, such as might cause scandal among our kin,” and turned, beckoning Allart from his wife’s side. “Cousin, take my sister out to dance, if you will.”

  As Allart led out Dorilys to the floor, Donal looked once at Renata, in despair, but before his father’s eyes he bowed to Margali. “Foster-mother, will you honor me with a dance, I beg?” and moved away with the old lady on his arm.

  Afterward he danced dutifully with other of Dorilys’s women, Lady Elisa and even her aged, waddling nurse. Allart, watching, wondered if this was intended to lead up to a situation where it would seem obvious for Donal to dance with Renata; but as Donal returned old Kathya to the women, they came face to face with Dorilys, who had been dancing with the coridom of the estate.

  Dorilys looked up at Donal sweetly, then beckoned to Renata and in a clear, audible voice, filled with a false and sugary sweetness, said loudly, “You must dance with Donal, Renata. If you dance with a bridegroom at midwinter, you, too, will be married within the year, they say. Shall I ask my father to find you a husband, cousin Renata?” Her smile was innocent and spiteful, and Donal clenched his teeth as he took Renata’s hand and led her onto the dancing floor.

  “She should be spanked!”

  Renata was almost in tears. “I thought—I thought she understood. I had hoped she was fond of me, even that she had come to love me! How could she—”

  Donal could only say, “She is overwrought. The hour is late for her, and this is a trying occasion. She cannot help but remember, I suppose, what happened at her handfasting to Darren of Scathfell…” As if to underline his anger it seemed, though he could not be sure whether he really heard it or remembered it, that he heard a curious premonitory rumble of thunder.

  Renata thought, Dorilys has been on her good behavior of late. She cooperated with me on moving the storm which menaced Allan and Cassandra and Donal, and is now proud of her talent, proud that it saved lives. But she is only a child, spoiled and arrogant.

  Allart, across the room and seated at Cassandra’s side, heard the thunder, too, and for a moment it seemed like the voice of his laran, warning him of storms to break over Aldaran… For a momen
t it seemed that he stood in the courtyard of Aldaran keep, hearing thunders strike and break over the castle; he saw Renata’s face pale and distraught with the lightnings… he heard the cries of armed men and actually started, wondering if the castle were truly under assault, until he recalled that it was midwinter night.

  Cassandra clasped his hand. “What did you see?” she whispered.

  “A storm,” he said, “and shadows, shadows over Aldaran.” His voice died to a whisper, as if he heard the thunders again, though this time it was only in his mind.

  When Donal returned to the high seat of his foster-father he said firmly, “Sir, the hour is late. Since this will not end like a traditional wedding, with a bedding as well, I have given orders for the guesting-cup to be brought and the minstrels dismissed.”

  Aldaran’s face turned dark with sudden flaring anger.

  “You take all too much on yourself, Donal! I have given no orders to that effect!”

  Donal was startled, mystified at the sudden rage. Dom Mikhail had left all such things in his hands for the last three midwinter feasts. He said reasonably, “I did as you have always bidden me to do, sir. I acted upon my own best judgment.” He hoped that by quoting his foster-father’s own words he could calm him.

  Instead, Dom Mikhail leaned forward with clenched hands and demanded, “Are you so eager to rule all in my place, then, Donal? That you cannot wait for my word—”

  Donal thought, bewildered, Is he mad? Is his mind going?

  Dom Mikhail opened his mouth to say more, but the servants had already entered bearing the jeweled cup containing a rich mixture of wine and spices, which would go around, shared from hand to hand. It was offered to Dom Mikhail, who held it motionless between his two hands for so long that Donal trembled. Courtesy finally conquered. Dom Mikhail set the cup to his lips, bowed to Donal, and handed him the cup. In his turn Donal barely tasted the mixture, but steadied it for Dorilys to taste, and passed it on to Allart and Cassandra.