As he spoke Allart almost gasped aloud, for his laran clearly showed it. In this great hall where they now sat, he could see it as clearly as if it were at this moment present to his eyes: Dom Mikhail, looking older, stooped and aged, held up a blanketed child—newborn, only a small red oval of baby face between the folds of the fleecy shawl—proclaiming Aldaran’s heir. The cries of acclamation were so loud that for a moment Allart could not believe the other; could not hear them… The images were gone, had yet to be. But he was deeply shaken.
Would Donal, then, actually father a child on his little sister? Would this be the heir to Aldaran? His foresight seemed so clear and unequivocal! Donal picked it up from his mind and sat staring at him, helplessly, but some hint of it spilled over to the old man and he grinned in fierce triumph, seeing in Allart’s mind the heir with whom he was obsessed.
At that moment Margali and Cassandra entered the hall, and Aldaran looked at them with a benevolent smile.
“I had not thought your merrymaking would end so quickly, ladies. When the hall-steward’s daughter came of age, there was dancing and singing in the women’s rooms until midnight was past—” He broke off abruptly. “Margali, kinswoman, what is wrong?”
But he read the truth quickly in her face.
“Threshold sickness! Merciful Avarra!”
Suddenly, from ambition and paranoia, he was only a concerned father again. His voice shook when he said, “I had hoped she would be spared this. Aliciane’s laran came on her early, and she had no crisis at puberty, but there is a curse on my seed… my older sons and daughter so died.” He bowed his head. “I have not thought of them in years.”
Allart saw them in his mind, reinforced by the memories of the old leronis: a dark, laughing boy; a smaller, more solid boy with a mop of riotous curls and a triangular scar on his chin; a delicate, dreamy dark girl who somehow, in the lift of her small head, had something of a look of Dorilys, too… Allart felt in himself the anguish of the father who had seen them sicken and die, one after another, all their promise and beauty wiped out. He saw in the older man’s mind a terrible picture, never to be effaced or forgotten: the girl lying arched, convulsed, her long hair matted, her lips bitten through so that her face was smeared with blood, the dreamy eyes those of an agonized maddened animal…
“You must not despair, cousin,” Margali said. “Renata has trained her well, to endure this. Often the first attack of threshold sickness is the most severe so that if she survives that, the worst is over.”
“It is often so,” Dom Mikhail said, his voice brooding inward on horror. “It was so with Rafaella, one day laughing and dancing and playing her harp; and the next day, the very next, a screaming, tormented thing going into convulsion after convulsion in my arms. She never opened her eyes again to know me. When at last she ceased to struggle, I did not know whether to be more grieved, or more glad that she had come to the end of her agony… But Dorilys has survived.”
“Yes,” Cassandra said compassionately, “and she did not even go into crisis, Dom Mikhail. There is no reason to think she will die.”
Donal’s voice was fierce, angry. “Now do you see, Father, what was on my mind? Before we speak of getting her with child, can we at least be sure she will live to womanhood?”
Aldaran flinched, as with a crushing blow. In the dying thunder past the windows, there was suddenly a crash and a rumble, and rain smote them, sluicing down and rattling, pounding, like the tramp of Scathfell’s armies on the march toward them.
For now the spring thaw was upon the Hellers, and the war was upon them.
* * *
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
« ^ »
For the first moon of spring it rained incessantly, and Allart, welcoming the rain because he knew it would keep Scathfell’s armies from the road, still fretted with indecision. Damon-Rafael had sent a message expressing kindly concern, which to Allart’s perception read false in every line of it, and ended by ordering his brother home at the earliest moment when the roads were open and he was able to travel.
If I return home now, Damon-Rafael will kill me. It is as simple as that… Treason. I am forsworn. I gave my oath that I would support his rule, and now I know I will not. My life is forfeit to him, for I have broken my oath, in thought if not in deed… yet. So indecision made him linger at Aldaran, glad of the spring rains which kept him there.
Damon-Rafael is not sure, not yet. But if the roads are open and still I do not come—then I am a traitor, my life forfeit. And he wondered what Damon-Rafael would do when there was no longer any room for doubt.
Meanwhile, Dorilys had had a few repeated attacks of threshold sickness, but they had not been very severe, and at no time had Renata considered her life to be in danger. Renata had stayed with her tirelessly—though on one occasion she said to Cassandra, with the wry lift of a smile, “I do not know if she truly wishes to keep me at her side—or whether she feels that when I am with her, at least I am not with Donal.” Both women knew there was another thing, unspoken.
Soon or late, she must know that I am bearing Donal’s child. I do not want to hurt her or cause her any more grief.
Donal, whenever he saw Dorilys—which was seldom, for he was organizing the defenses of Aldaran against the attack which they knew would come with the spring—was kindly and attentive, the loving elder brother he had always been. But whenever Dorilys spoke the words “my husband,” he never answered with anything except an indulgent laugh, as if this were indeed a childish game they were playing, and he humoring her in it.
During these days when Dorilys was subject to recurring attacks of disorientation and upheaval—her telepathic sense, not yet under control, plunging her into a nightmare of terror and overload—she and Cassandra had become very close. Their shared love of music cemented this bond. Dorilys was already a talented player on the lute; Cassandra taught her to play a rryl as well, and she learned from the older woman some of the songs of Cassandra’s faraway homeland at Valeron.
“I cannot see how you can endure to live in the Lowlands,” Dorilys said. “I could not live without the mountain peaks surrounding me. It must be so dismal there, and so dull.”
Cassandra smiled. “No, sweetheart, it is very beautiful. Sometimes here I feel the mountains are closing around me so that I can hardly breathe, as if the peaks were the bars of a cage.”
“Really? How strange! Cassandra, I cannot play that chord as you do at the end of the ballad.”
Cassandra took the rryl from her hand and demonstrated. “But you cannot finger it as I do. You will have to ask Elisa to show you the fingering,” Cassandra said, and spread out her hand before Dorilys. The girl stared, wide-eyed.
“Oh, you have six fingers on your hand! No wonder I cannot play it as you do! I have heard that is a sign of chieri blood, but you are not emmasca as the chieri are; are you, cousin?”
“No,” Cassandra said, smiling.
“I have heard—Father told me that the king in the Lowlands is emmasca, so they will take the throne from him this summer. How terrible for him, poor king. Have you ever seen him? What is he like?”
“He was only the young prince when I saw him last,” said Cassandra. “He is quiet, and sad faced, and I think he would have made a good king, if they had been willing to let him reign.”
Dorilys bent over the instrument, experimentally fingering the chord she could not play again and again. Finally she gave up the attempt. “I wish I had six fingers,” she said. “There is no way I can play it properly! I wonder if my children will inherit my musical talents, or only my laran.”
“Surely you are too young to be thinking yet about children,” Cassandra said, smiling.
“In a few more moons, I will be capable of bearing. You know there is a great need for a son of Aldaran blood.” She spoke so seriously that Cassandra felt a great wrench of pity.
This they do to all the women of our caste! Dorilys has hardly put away her dolls, and already she can think of nothing
but her duty to her clan! After a long silence, hesitating, she said, “Perhaps—Dorilys, perhaps you should not have children, with this curse of laran you bear.”
“As a son of our house must risk death in war, so a daughter of a great house must risk everything to give children to her caste.” She repeated it simply and positively, and Cassandra sighed.
“I know, chiya. Since I was a child younger than you, I, too, heard that day in and day out, as a religion it was impious to doubt, and I believed it as you do now. But I feel you should be old enough to decide.”
“I am old enough to decide,” said Dorilys. “You do not have that kind of problem, cousin. Your husband is not heir to a Domain.”
“You did not know?” Cassandra said. “Allart’s elder brother will be king, if the emmasca of Hali is dethroned. This brother has no legitimate sons.”
Dorilys stared at her. She said, “You could be queen,” and her face held awe. Evidently she had had no idea of Allart’s caste; he was only her brother’s friend. “Then Dom Allart, too, stands desperately in need of an heir, and you are not yet bearing him one.” Her eyes held a hint of reproach.
Hesitant, Cassandra explained the choice they had made. “Now, perhaps, with what I know, it might be safe, but we will wait till we are sure. Till we are very sure…”
“Renata said I should bear no daughters,” Dorilys said, “or I might die as my mother died in giving me birth. But I am not sure I trust Renata anymore. She loves Donal, and she does not want me bearing his children.”
“If that is true,” Cassandra said very gently, “then it is only that she fears for you, chiya.”
“Well, in any case, I should have a son first,” Dorilys said, “and then I will decide. Perhaps, when I give him a son, Donal will forget Renata, because I will be the mother of his heir.” Her young arrogance was so great that Cassandra felt troubled, and again assailed by doubts.
Could she cement her bond with Allart best by giving him the son he must have, if they were not to deny him the throne like Prince Felix? They had not spoken of this seriously for some time.
I would give anything, to be so sure of myself as Dorilys! But she changed the subject firmly, taking the rryl on her lap again, and placing Dorilys’s fingers on the strings.
“Look. I think perhaps if you hold it this way, you can play that chord, even with only five fingers,” she said.
Again and again, as the days passed, Allart wakened to the awareness of Aldaran under siege, then knew that the reality was not yet with them, that it was only his foresight which spread the inevitable visibly before him. That it was inevitable he knew perfectly well.
“At this season,” Donal said one morning, “the spring storms would have subsided in the Lowlands, but I do not know how the weather goes at Scathfell or Sain Scarp, or whether their armies can move. I shall go up to the watch-tower, which commands all the country around, and see if there is any suspicious movement on the roads.”
“Take Dorilys with you to the watchtower,” Allart advised. “She can read the weather even better than you.”
Donal hesitated and said, “I am reluctant, always, to meet with Dorilys now. Especially now that she can read my thoughts a little, as well. I am not happy that she has become a telepath.”
“Still, if Dorilys feels she can be of use to you somehow, that you are not altogether avoiding her…” Allart suggested.
Donal sighed. “You are right, cousin. Besides, I cannot avoid her entirely.” He dispatched a servant to his sister’s rooms, thinking, Would it be altogether bad, then, to give Dorilys what my father wishes of me? Perhaps, if she has what she wants of me, she will not grudge me Renata, and we need not struggle so hard to keep it from her…
Dorilys looked like the springtime itself, in a tunic embroidered with spring leaves, her shining hair braided low on her neck and caught with a woman’s butterfly-clasp. Allart could see the dissonance in Donal’s mind between his memories of the child, and the tall, graceful young woman she had become. He bowed over her hand, courteously.
“Now I see that I must call you my lady, Dorilys,” he said lightly, trying to make it a joke. “It seems that my little girl is gone forever. I have need of your talents, carya,” he added, and explained what he wanted of her.
At the very topmost spire of Castle Aldaran, the watch-tower shot up for the height of another floor or two, an astonishing feat of engineering, and one which Allart could not figure out. It would have had to be done by matrix, working with a large circle. This great height commanded all of the country around to a great distance. While they climbed to the Tower, the window-slits showed them it was wrapped in fog, and cloud, but by the time they emerged into the high chamber, the clouds were already thinning and moving away. Donal looked at Dorilys in delighted surprise, and she smiled, almost a smug smile.
“To dispel fogs of that sort—even as a baby I think I could do that,” she said. “And now it is nothing. It takes only the lightest thought, without effort, and if you wish to see clearly—I remember when I was little you brought me up here, Donal, and let me look through Father’s collection of big spyglasses.”
Allart could see the roads below them aswarm with movement. He blinked, knowing they were not there, not yet; then shook his head, trying to clarify present from future. It was true! Armies moved on the road, though not yet at the gates of Aldaran.
“We need not fear,” Donal said, trying to reassure Dorilys. “Aldaran has never been captured by force of arms. We could hold this citadel forever, had we food enough; but they will be at our gates within a tenday. I will put on a glider-harness and go out to spy where they go, and bring back news of how many men move against us.”
“No,” Allart said. “If you will let me presume to advise you, cousin, you will not go yourself. Now that you are to command, your place is here where any one of your vassals who needs to consult with you can find you at once. You must not risk yourself on a task which any one of your lads could do for you.” Donal made a gesture of repugnance. “It goes against me—to order any man into a danger I will not face myself,” he said, but Allart shook his head.
“You will face your own dangers,” he said, “but there are dangers for the leaders and dangers for the followers, and they are not interchangeable. From now on, cousin, your flying must be a recreation for times of peace.”
Dorilys touched Donal’s arm very lightly. She said, “Now that I am a woman—can I still fly, Donal?”
Donal said, “I do not see why you should not, when there is peace again, but you must ask our father about that, chiya, and Margali.”
“But I am your wife,” she said, “and it is for you to give me commands.”
Caught between exasperation and tenderness, Donal sighed. He said, “Then, chiya, I command you to seek Margali’s advice in this, and Renata’s. I cannot advise you.” Her face had clouded ominously at the mention of Renata, and Donal thought, Someday I must tell her, very clearly, how it stands with me and Renata. He said aloud, an arm gently about her shoulders, “Chiya, when I was fourteen and my laran was coming on me, as it is upon you now, I was forbidden to fly for more than half a year, since I was never sure when an attack of disorientation and giddiness would come upon me. For that reason, it would please me better if you did not seek to fly until you are sure you can master it.”
“I will do exactly as you say, my husband,” she said, looking up at him with a look of such adoration that he quailed.
When she had gone away, Donal looked at Allart in despair. “She seems not like a child! I cannot think of her as a child,” he said, “and that is my only defense now, to say she is a child and too young.”
Allart was painfully reminded of his own emotional conflict over the riyachiyas, with this difference—that they were sterile and not altogether human and whatever he did with them could affect only his own self-esteem and not the riyachiyas themselves. But Donal had been placed in the position of playing a god with the life of a real woman. H
ow could he advise Donal? He had consummated his own marriage, against his own better judgment, and for much the same reasons—because the girl wished for it.
He said soberly, “Perhaps it would be better not to think of Dorilys as a child, cousin. No girl given the training she has had can be altogether a child. Perhaps you must begin to think of her as a woman. Try to come to agreement with her in that way, as a woman old enough to make her own decisions; at least when the threshold sickness has left her free of impulse and sudden brainstorms.”
“I am sure you are right.” Almost gratefully, Donal recalled himself to duty. “But come—my father must be told that there is movement on the roads, and someone must be sent to spy out where they are!”
Aldaran greeted the news with a fierce smile.
“So it has come!” he said, and Allart thought again of the old hawk, mantling, spreading his wings, eager for a last flight.
As armed men crossed the Kadarin and moved northward into the Hellers, Allart, seeing them with his laran, knew with a sinking heart that some of these men moved northward against him; for among the armed men there were some with the fir-tree badge of the Hasturs of Elhalyn, with the crown that distinguished it from the Hasturs of Carcosa and Castle Hastur.
Day after day, he and Donal returned to the watchtower, awaiting the first sign of the armies’ imminent approach at the castle.
But is this real, or does my laran show me what might never come to pass?
“It is real, for I see it, too,‘” Donal said, reading his thoughts. “My father must be told of this.”
“He wished to keep from entanglement in Lowland wars,” Allart said. “Now, by sheltering me and my wife, he has made an enemy, and Damon-Rafael has made common cause with Scathfell against him.” As they turned to go down into the castle, he thought, Now, truly, I am brotherless…
Donal laid a hand on his arm. “I, too, cousin,” he said.