There was a time, not a year past, when I was proud to say to Cassandra Aillard that I did not know what it was to love a man, to suspend my own better judgment to do his will. Do all women come to this, soon or late? And I dared to judge her for that!
Later that evening, when Donal met her at the door of the feasting hall, and himself conducted her to her seat at the women’s table, Renata thought that she might as well have shouted it aloud before all the assembled house-folk of Castle Aldaran. She did not care. If all had gone rightly, she and Donal would have been married at midwinter night, and worn the catenas. Aldaran had forced another marriage on Donal, but she was neither the first woman nor the last to cling to a lover forced into an expedient marriage with someone else.
She watched Donal as he took his seat at the high table. He had looked handsome to her even in the old rubbed-leather riding-breeches and faded jerkin he had worn during the siege, but now he had put on his finest garments. Firestones hung gleaming at his throat and a jeweled sword at his side. His hair was curled and there were rings on his fingers; he looked handsome and princely. Old Dom Mikhail, in his long furred robe of dark green, with wide sleeves and a jeweled belt, looked proud, but benevolent, too. Dorilys’s chair was empty, and Renata wondered if she were still in her drugged sleep. No doubt sleep would do her more good than feasting. Beside Donal and Lord Aldaran at the high table were only Allart and Cassandra, as honored guests of highest rank, and the leronis Margali, who was a noblewoman and Dorilys’s foster-mother. Under ordinary conditions, Renata sat there herself, as Dorilys’s companion and teacher, and so did the coridom or estate steward, the chief of the hall-stewards, the castellan, and three or four other functionaries of Castle Aldaran. But at such a solemn feast, only the immediate family and any guests of rank equal to Aldaran’s own, or higher, were seated beside the lord Aldaran. The nobles and functionaries were seated either at the women’s table where Renata sat, with Lady Elisa and the other women of the estate, or at the men’s table with the household knights and important men of the castle.
The lower hall was crowded with those of lower rank, soldiers, guardsmen, servants, everyone down to the stablemen and dairy-women.
“Why are you looking like that at Dorilys’s empty chair?” Cassandra asked.
“I thought for a moment that she was there,” Allart murmured, disquieted. He had seen for a moment a strange flare of lightning, and thought, I am weary. I still start at shadows. Perhaps it is only the aftermath of the siege!
Dom Mikhail leaned toward Margali, asking what had delayed Dorilys. After a moment he nodded, rose from his chair, and addressed the folk assembled in the Great Hall.
“Let us give thanks to the gods that the armies which surrounded us are vanquished and gone to their own place. What they have destroyed will be rebuilded; what they have broken shall be mended.” He raised his cup. “First let us drink to honor those who have given their lives in this warfare.”
Allart rose with the others, drinking silently from his cup in honor to the dead.
“Now I shall speak of the living,” Lord Aldaran said. “I hereby state that any child of any man who died in the siege of this castle shall be fostered in my house, or the household of one of my vassals, according to his father’s rightful station, commoner or noble.”
There was an outcry of thanks for the lord Aldaran’s generosity; then he spoke again.
“Furthermore, if their widows wish to marry again, my stewards shall see to finding them suitable husbands, and if not, they shall be helped to respectable livelihoods.”
When the outcry had died down this time, he said, “Now let us eat and drink, but drink first in honor of him who best defended the castle—my foster-son Donal of Rockraven and husband of my daughter, Dorilys, Lady of Aldaran.”
Under the cover of the cries of acclamation, Cassandra said, “Would that Dorilys were here, to know herself so honored.”
“I do not know,” Allart said slowly. “I think perhaps she has already too much pride in her own power and station.”
Dom Mikhail glanced to where Allart sat with Cassandra. “I would that you might remain to help me set my Domain in order, cousin. Yet I have no doubt that before very long they will summon you to Thendara. With your brother dead, you are heir to the Domain of Elhalyn.” He looked at Allart, suddenly cautious. Dom Mikhail had become aware that he was no longer dealing with a kinsman, a friend, a fellow noble, but with a future ruler with whom he must one day soon have careful, tactical diplomatic dealings. A Hastur lord, one who might before midsummer day sit on the throne of Thendara.
It seemed to Allart that every word Dom Mikhail spoke was fenced about with sudden caution.
“I hope we will always be friends, cousin.”
Allart said, heartfelt, “I hope, indeed, that there will always be friendship between Thendara and Elhalyn.” But he wondered, Can I never again know any real friendships, any simple personal relationships? The thought depressed him.
Dom Mikhail said, “It will take us half a year to clear away the rubble of the fallen tower; perhaps twice that to rebuild, if we do it by ordinary means. What do you think, Donal—shall we send for a matrix crew, perhaps from Tramontana, perhaps from the Lowlands, to come and clear away this rubble?”
Donal nodded. “We must think of the folk who have had to be away from their homes because of the armies; already the spring planting is delayed, and if it must wait much longer, we will have hunger in these hills at harvest.”
Dom Mikhail said, “Yes, and they can design the tower anew, and raise it again by matrix. It would be costly and long, but it would give pride to Castle Aldaran, and when your children and Dorilys’s rule here someday, you will wish for a point of vantage to command the country around. Though, indeed, I think it will be long, very long, before anyone sends armed might against the stronghold of Aldaran!”
“May that day be far,” Donal said. “I hope you will sit in this high seat for many years to come, my father.” He rose and bowed. “By your leave, sir,” he said, and left his seat, going to the women’s table where Renata sat
“Come with me, love, and speak with my father. Then, when Dorilys comes later to join us, he will know the truth, and there will be honesty among us all.”
Renata smiled and took his offered hand. Part of her felt naked and exposed by the way in which he had sought her out, but she realized that this was a part of the price she paid for her love. She could have chosen to go away, to return to her family, when Donal was married to another. A conventional woman would have done so. She had chosen to remain here as Donal’s barragana, and she was not ashamed of it. Why should she hesitate to cross the little space between the women’s table and the high seat, to sit at Donal’s side?
Allart watched with apprehension, wondering what would happen when Renata and Dorilys came face to face. No… Dorilys was not here; she had not come into the hall. Yet his laran showed him weird out-of-focus pictures of Dorilys’s face, of Renata, distraught. He started to rise from his seat, then realized in despair that there was nothing he could do, nothing to focus on, nothing had happened yet; but the noise and confusion in the ball, pictured by his laran, paralyzed him. He stared around, bewildered by the pandemonium of his laran, and the actual present Great Hall, with only the cheerful noises of many people loudly eating and drinking at a holiday feast.
Renata said, “I love Dorilys well. I would not for worlds step on the hem of her garment. I still feel we should not tell her this until we are sure that she is free of threshold sickness.”
“But if she finds it out of herself, she will be very angry, and rightly so,” Donal argued, leading Renata toward the high seat. “We should tell my father, even if there is no need to tell Dorilys at once.”
“What is it that you will say to my father and not to me, my husband?”
The light, childish voice dropped into the silence, shattering it like breaking glass. Dorilys, in her holiday gown of blue, her hair coiled low on
her neck, and somehow looking more childish than ever in her woman’s garments, came walking across the floor, dazed, almost as if she were sleepwalking. Allart and Margali rose, and Dom Mikhail held out his hand to Dorilys, saying, “My dear child, I am glad you are well enough to join us,” but she paid no attention, her eyes fixed on Donal and Renata, hand in hand before her.
She cried out suddenly, “How dare you speak like that about me, Renata!”
Renata could not conceal a start of surprise and guilt. But she looked at Dorilys and smiled.
“Dear child,” she said, “I have said nothing about you except what shows my love and concern, as always. If there is anything we have not told you, it has been only to save you distress while you were overwearied and ill with threshold sickness.” But her heart sank as she saw the look in Dorilys’s eyes, dark, strained, clutching sanity about her with painful concentration, and she realized that Dorilys, as she had done on the day of her festival, was reading thoughts again; not clearly like a skilled telepath, but erratically, with crazy, patchy imcompleteness. Then Dorilys cried out in rage and sudden comprehension, turning on Donal.
“You!” she cried, in a frenzy. “You have given to her what you denied to me! Now you think—you scheme that she will bear the new heir to Aldaran!”
“Dorilys, no,” Renata protested, but Dorilys, beside herself, would not hear.
“Do you think I cannot see it? Do you think I do not know that my father has always schemed that your child should be heir? He would let you father a child on some outsider to supersede mine.”
Donal reached for her hands, but she wrenched them away.
“You promised, Donal,” she cried shrilly. “You promised, and tried to soothe me with lies, as if I were a child to be petted and told fairy tales, and while you lied to me, all that time you planned that she should bear your first son. But she shall not, I swear it! I will strike her first!”
Lightning flared in the hall, a crash of thunder, loud and almost deafening. In the shocked silence as it died away, Cassandra rose, taking a frantic step toward Dorilys.
“Dorilys, dear child, come to me.”
“Don’t touch me, Cassandra!” Dorilys shrieked. “You have lied to me, too. You are her friend, not mine! You schemed with her, knowing what she planned behind my back. I am alone here; there is none to love me.”
“Dorilys, there is none here does not love you,” Donal said.
But Dom Mikhail had risen, somber and angry. He raised a hand and said, using command-voice, “Dorilys! I say, be still!”
The girl stood motionless, shocked into silence.
“This is an outrage!” Lord Aldaran said, towering over the child. “How dare you create such an unseemly uproar at a festival? How dare you speak so to our kinswoman? Come and sit here in your proper place by me, and be silent!”
Dorilys took a step toward the high table, and Renata thought, her heart churning with relief, After all, even with her power, she is a child; she is accustomed to obey her elders. She is still young enough to obey her father without question.
Dorilys took another step under the command-voice; then she broke free.
“No!” she cried out, whirling, stamping her foot in the willful fury Renata had seen so often in her first days at the castle. “I will not! I will not be humiliated this way! And you, Renata, you who have dared to step on my garment this way, in pride of what you have had from my husband when I have had only empty words and promises and a child’s kiss on the forehead, you shall not flaunt your belly at me. You shall not!” She whirled, her face ablaze with the lightning flare.
And Allart saw what once he had foreseen in this hall, a child’s face all ablaze with lightning…
Renata took a panicked step backward, tripping over a piece of furniture. Donal cried out, “Dorilys, no! No! Not at her!” and flung himself between Renata and Dorilys, shielding Renata with his body. “If you are angry, speak your anger to me alone—” Then he broke off, with an inarticulate sound, and staggered and his body twitched, caught in the lightning flare. He jerked violently, convulsed, fell, his body crisped and blackened like a blasted tree, twitched again, already lifeless, and lay without moving on the stone pavement.
It had all happened so swiftly that there were many in the lower hall who had heard nothing except cries and accusations. Margali still sat with her mouth open, staring stupidly at her charge, not believing what she saw. Cassandra still stood with her arms extended toward Dorilys, but Allart caught her and held her motionless.
Dom Mikhail took one step toward Dorilys, and staggered. He stopped, swaying, holding himself upright with both hands on the edge of the table. His face was congested and dark with blood, and he could hardly speak. His voice held a terrible bitterness.
“It is the curse,” he said. “A sorceress foretold this day, that I should cry out to the gods above and below, would to all of the gods that I had died childless.” Moving slowly, an old, broken-winged hawk, he came slowly to where Donal lay, fell to his knees beside him.
“Oh, my son,” he whispered. “My son, my son…” and raised his face, set and rigid as if carved in stone, to Dorilys. “Strike me down, too, girl. Why do you wait?” Dorilys had not moved; she stood as if turned to stone, as if the lightning which had struck Donal down had struck her, too, turning her motionless. Her face was a terrible, tragic mask, her eyes blank and unmoving. Her mouth was open, as if in a soundless scream, but she did not move.
Allart breaking the frozen stasis, began to move to Dom Mikhail’s side, but a wild flare of lightning suddenly blazed in the hall, and Dorilys disappeared in its flare. Allart fell back dazed by the shock. Another and another lightning bolt crackled in the room, and they could see Dorilys now, her eyes mad and blazing. Another lightning bolt and another seared at random around the room, and in the lower hall a man leaped up, twitched, and fell dead. One by one, everyone edged back, step by step, from where Dorilys stood, surrounded by the crazed flare of lightning, deafened by thunder; back, and back from where she stood like a statue of some terrible goddess etched in lightning. Her face was not a child’s face. It was not even human anymore.
Only Renata dared the lightning. Perhaps, Allart thought in some horrified corner of his mind where he could still think, perhaps Renata simply had no more to lose. She took a step toward Dorilys; another. Another. Dorilys moved for the first time since she had struck Donal down, a menacing gesture, but Renata did not pause or flinch, advancing step by step toward the core of those terrible lightnings where Dorilys blazed like some figure of legendary hells.
Dom Mikhail said brokenly, “No, Lady Renata. No, no— stand back from her. Not you, too, Renata—not you, too.”
Allart heard in his mind a clamor, a confusing babble, a wild interplay of confused possibilities there—gone, retreating, surging up again—as Renata moved, slowly and steadily, toward Dorilys, where she stood over Donal’s dead body. He saw Renata fall blasted, saw her strike Dorilys with her own laran and hold her motionless, as she had done when Dorilys was a willful child; he heard her cursing Dorilys, pleading with her, defying her, all at once in the wild surge of futures from this moment that would be, might be, would never be…
Renata spread her arms wide. Her voice was anguished but steady, clearly audible.
“Dorilys,” she said in a whisper. “Dorilys, my little girl, my darling—”
She rose from where she had fallen and took a step and another, and Dorilys came into her arms, was folded close to her breast. The lightnings died. Suddenly Dorilys was only a little girl again, clasped in Renata’s arms, sobbing tempestuously.
Renata held her, soothing her, stroking her, murmuring soft love words, tears raining down her own face. Dorilys looked around her, dazed.
“I feel so sick, Renata,” she whispered. “What has happened? I thought this was a festival. Is Donal very angry with me?” Then she shrieked, a long, terrible cry of horror and realization, and crumpled, a limp, lifeless-looking unconscious he
ap in Renata’s arms.
Overhead the thunder muttered and died and was still.
* * *
CHAPTER THIRTY
« ^
It is too late,” Renata repeated. “I do not know if it will ever be safe to let her wake again.”
Overhead the thunder rattled at random, striking sudden searing bolts around the towers of Aldaran, and Allart wondered, with a shudder, what dreams disturbed Dorilys’s sleep. Dreadful ones, no doubt.
In the stunned moment following Dorilys’s realization of what she had done, Renata had managed to get her to swallow a dose of the same strong drug she had given her before. Almost as soon as she had swallowed it, the moment of sanity had faded from her eyes and the terrible core of lightning had begun to build up around her again. But the drug had taken over with merciful quickness before more than a few random bolts had struck, and she had sunk into her present unquiet stupor, the storms raging overhead but not striking near.
“We cannot give her that drug again,” Renata repeated. “Even if I could get her to take it again—and I am not sure of that—it would almost certainly kill her.”
Aldaran said, with terrible bitterness, “Better that, than that she should destroy us all as she destroyed my boy.” His voice broke and the terrible glazed brightness of his eyes was worse than weeping. “Is there no hope, Renata? None?”
“I am afraid that even when I asked you, before,” Renata said, “it was too late. Too much of her mind, too much of the brain itself has been destroyed and invaded by the lightnings. It is too late for Dorilys, my lord. I fear you must accept that; our only concern now is to make sure she does not destroy too much outside herself, in her own death.”
The father shuddered. Finally he said, “How can we make sure of that?”
“I do not know, my lord. Probably no one with this lethal gift has ever survived so near maturity, and so we have only the faintest notion of its potential. I must consult with those in Tramontana Tower, or perhaps at Hali, to be certain what we can do, and how we can best make her harmless during”— Renata swallowed, struggling to control herself—“during what little time remains to her. She can tap the whole electrical potential of the planet, my lord. I beg you not to underestimate the damage she can still do, if we frighten her.”