“I was more afraid to stay than to come,” Allart said, shaking.
Father Master had said, encouragingly, “At least you could still select between a greater and a lesser fear. Now you must learn to control the fear and look beyond it; and then a day will come when you will know that it is yours, your servant, to command as you will.”
“All the Gods grant it,” Allart had said, shivering. So his life here had begun… and had endured for six years now. Slowly, one by one, he had mastered his fears, his body’s demands, learning to seek out among the bewildering fan-shaped futures the one least harmful. Then his future had narrowed, until he saw himself only here, living one day at a time, doing what he must… no more and no less.
Now, after six years, suddenly what he saw ahead was a bewildering flow of images: travel, rocks and snow, a strange castle, his home, the face of a woman… Allart covered his face with his hands, again in the grip of the old paralyzing fear.
No! No! I will not! I want to stay here, to live my own destiny, to sing to no other man’s tune and in no other man’s voice…
For six years he had been left to his own destiny, subject only to the futures determined by his own choices. Now the outside was breaking in on him again; was someone outside the monastery making choices in which he must be involved, one way or another? All the fear he had subdued in the last six years crowded in on him again; then, slowly, breathing as he had been taught, he mastered it.
My fear is my own; I am in command of it, and I alone can choose… Again he sought to see, among the thronging images, one path in which he might remain Brother Allart, at peace in his cell, working for the future of his world in his own way…
But there was no such future path, and this told him something; whatever outside choice was breaking in on him, it would be something which he could not choose to deny. A long time he struggled, kneeling on the cold stone of his cell, trying to force his reluctant body and mind to accept this knowledge. But in the end, as he now knew he had power to do, he mastered his fear. When the summons came he would meet it unafraid.
By midday, Allart had faced enough of the bewildering futures which spread out, diverging endlessly, before him, to know at least a part of what he faced. He had seen his father’s face—angry, cajoling, complaisant—often enough in these visions to know, at least in part, what was the first trial facing him.
When Father Master summoned him, he could face the ancient monk with calm and an impassive control.
“Your father has come to speak with you, my son. You may see him in the north guest chamber.”
Allart lowered his eyes; when at last he raised them, he said, “Father, must I speak with him?” His voice was calm, but the Father Master knew him too well to take this calm at face value.
“I have no reason to refuse him, Allart.”
Allart felt like flinging back an angry reply, “I have!” but he had been trained too well to cling to unreason. He said quietly, at last, “I have spent much of this day schooling myself to face this; I do not want to leave Nevarsin. I have found peace here, and useful work. Help me to find a way, Father Master.”
The old man sighed. His eyes were closed—as they were most of the time, since he saw more clearly with the inner sight—but Allart knew they beheld him more clearly than ever.
“I would indeed, for your sake, son, that I could see such a way. You have found content here, and such happiness as a man bearing your curse can find. But I fear your time of content is ended. You must bear in mind, lad, that many men never have such a time of rest to learn self-knowledge and discipline; be grateful for what you have been given.”
Oh, I am sick of this pious talk of acceptance of those burdens laid upon us—Allart caught back the rebellious thought, but Father Master raised his head and his eyes, colorless as some strange metal, met Allart’s rebellious ones.
“You see, my boy, you have not really the makings of a monk. We have given you some control over your natural inclinations, but you are by nature rebellious and eager to change what you can, and changes can be made only down there.” His gesture took in a whole wide world outside the monastery. “You will never be content to accept your world complacently, son, and now you have the strength to fight rationally, not to lash out in blind rebellion born of your own pain. You must go, Allart, and make such changes in your world as you may.”
Allart covered his face with his hands. Until this moment he had still believed—like a child, like a credulous child!—that the old monk held some power to help him avoid what must be. He knew that six years in the monastery had not helped him grow past this; now he felt the last of his childhood drop away, and he wanted to weep.
Father Master said with a tender smile, “Are you grieving that you cannot remain a child, in your twenty-third year, Allart? Rather, be grateful that after all these years of learning, you have been made ready to be a man.”
“You sound like my father!” Allart flung at him angrily. “I had that served up to me morning and night with my porridge—that I was not yet manly enough to fill my place in the world. Do not you begin to speak so, Father, or I shall feel my years here were all a lie!”
“But I do not mean what your father means, when I say you are ready to meet what comes as a man,” Father Master said. “I think you know already what I mean by manhood, and it is not what my lord Hastur means; or was I mistaken when I heard you comfort and encourage a crying child this morning? Don’t pretend you do not know the difference, Allart.” The stern voice softened. “Are you too angry to kneel for my blessing, child?”
Allart fell to his knees; he felt the touch of the old man on his mind.
“The Holy Bearer of Burdens will strengthen you for what must come. I love you well, but it would be selfish to keep you here; I think you are too much needed in that world you tried to renounce.” As he rose, Father Master drew Allart into a brief embrace, kissed him, and let him go.
“You have my leave to go and clothe yourself in secular garments, if you will, before you present yourself to your father.” Again, for the last time, he touched Allart’s face. “My blessing on you always. We may not meet again, Allart, but you will be often in my prayers in the days to come. Send your sons to me, one day, if you will. Now go.” He seated himself, letting his cowl drop over his face, and Allart knew he had been dismissed from the old man’s thoughts as firmly as from his presence.
Allart did not avail himself of Father Master’s permission to change his garments. He thought angrily that he was a monk, and if his father liked it not, that was his father’s trouble and none of his own. Yet part of this rebellion came from the knowledge that when he turned his thoughts ahead he could not see himself again in the robes of a monk, nor here in Nevarsin. Would he never come again to the City of Snows?
As he walked toward the guest chamber, he tried to discipline his breathing to calm. Whatever his father had come to say to him, it would not be bettered by quarreling with the old man as soon as they met. He swung open the door and went into the stone-floored chamber.
Beside the fire burning there, in a carven chair, an old man sat, erect and grim, his fingers clenched on the chair-arms. His face had the arrogant stamp of the lowland Hasturs. As he heard the measured sweep of Allart’s robe brushing on the stone, he said irritably, “Another of you robed spooks? Send me my son!”
“Your son is here to serve you, vai dom.”
The old man stared at him. “Gods above, is it you, Allart? How dare you present yourself before me in this guise!”
“I present myself as I am, sir. Have you been received with comfort? Let me bring you food or wine, if you wish.”
“I have already been served so,” the old man said, jerking his head at the tray and decanter on the table. “I need nothing more, except to speak with you, for which purpose I undertook this wretched journey!”
“And I repeat, I am here and at your service, sir. Had you a hard journey? What prompted you to make such a journey in w
inter, sir?”
“You!” growled the old man. “When are you going to be ready to come back where you belong, and do your duty to clan and family?”
Allart lowered his eyes, clenching his fists till his nails cut deep in his palm and drew blood; what he saw in this room, a few minutes from now, terrified him. In at least one of the futures diverging now from his every word, Stephen Hastur, Lord Elhalyn, younger brother of Regis II, who sat on the throne of Thendara, lay here on the stone floor, his neck broken. Allart knew that the anger surging in him, the rage he had felt for his father since he could remember, could all too easily erupt in such a murderous attack. His father was speaking again, but Allart did not hear, fighting to force mind and body to composure.
I do not want to fall upon my father and kill him with my two hands! I do not, I — do — not! And I will not! Only when he could speak calmly, without resentment, he said, “I am sorry, sir, to displease you. I thought you knew that I wished to spend my life within these walls, as a monk and a healer. I would be allowed to pronounce my final vows this year at midsummer, to renounce my name and inheritance and dwell here for the rest of my life.”
“I knew you had once said so, in the sickness of your adolescence,” Dom Stephen Hastur said, “but I thought it would pass when you were restored to health of body and mind. How is it with you, Allart? You look well and strong. It seems that these cristoforo madmen have not starved you nor driven you quite mad with deprivations—not yet.”
Allart said amiably, “Indeed they have not, sir. My body, as you can see, is strong and well, and my mind at peace.”
“Is it so, son? Then I shall not begrudge the years you have spent here; and by whatever methods they achieved this miracle, I shall forever be grateful to them.”
“Then compound your gratitude, vai dom, by giving me leave to remain here where I am happy and at peace, for the rest of my life.”
“Impossible! Madness!”
“May I ask why, sir?”
“I had forgotten that you did not know,” Lord Elhalyn said. “Your brother Lauren died, three years ago; he had your laran, only in worse form still, for he could not manage to distinguish between past and future; and when it came upon him in all strength, he withdrew inside himself and never spoke again, or responded to anything outside, and so died.”
Allart felt grieved. Lauren had been the merest child, a stranger, when he left home; but the thought of the boy’s sufferings dismayed him. How narrowly he himself had escaped that fate! “Father, I am sorry. What pity you could not have sent him here; they might have been able to reach him.”
“One was enough,” Dom Stephen said. “We need no weakling sons; better die young than pass on such a weakness in the blood. His Grace, my brother Regis, has but a single heir; his elder son died in battle against those invaders at Serrais, and his only remaining son, Felix, who will inherit his throne, is frail in health. I am next, and then your brother Damon-Rafael. You stand within four places of the throne, and the king is in his eightieth year. You have no son, Allart.”
Allart said, with a violent surge of revulsion, “With such a curse as I bear, would you have me pass it to another? You have told me how it cost Lauren his life!”
“Yet we need that foresight,” Stephen Hastur said, “and you have mastered it. The leroni of Hali have a plan for fixing it in our line without the instability which endangered your sanity and killed Lauren. I tried to speak of this to you before you left us, but you were in no shape to think of the needs of the clan. We have made compact with the Aillard clan for a daughter of their line, whose genes have been so modified that they will be dominant, so that your children will have the sight, and the control to use it without danger. You will marry this girl. Also she has two nedestro sisters, and the leroni of the Tower have discovered a technique which will assure that you will father only sons on all of these. If the experiment succeeds, your sons will have the foresight and the control, too.” He saw the disgust in Allart’s face and said, enraged, “Are you no more than a squeamish boy?”
“I am a cristoforo. The first precept of the Creed of Chastity is to take no woman unwilling.”
“Good enough for a monk, not a man! Yet none of these will be unwilling when you take her, I assure you. If you wish, the two who are not your wives need not even know your name; we have drugs now which will mean that they carry away only the memory of a pleasant interlude. And every woman wishes to bear a child of the lineage of Hastur and Cassilda.”
Allart grimaced in revulsion. “I want no woman who must be delivered to me drugged and unconscious. Unwilling does not only mean fighting in terror of rape; it would also mean a woman whose ability to give, or refuse, free consent had been destroyed by drugs!”
“I would not suggest it,” said the old man angrily, “but you have made it clear that you are not ready to do your duty by caste and clan of your own free will! At your age, Damon-Rafael had a dozen nedestro sons by as many willing women! But you, you sandal-wearer—”
Allart bent his head, fighting the reflex of anger which prompted him to take that frail old neck between his hands and squeeze the life out of it. “Damon-Rafael spoke his mind often enough on the subject of my manhood, Father. Must I hear it from you as well?”
“What have you done to give me a better opinion of you? Where are your sons?”
“I do not agree with you that manhood must be measured by sons alone, sir; but I will not argue the point with you now. I do not wish to pass on this curse in my blood. I know something of laran. I feel you are wrong in trying to breed for greater strength in these gifts. You can see in me—and in Lauren, even more—that the human mind was never intended to bear such weight. Do you know what I mean if I speak of recessives and lethal genes!”
“Are you going to teach me my business, youngster?”
“No, but in all respect, Father, I will have no part in it If I were ever to have sons—”
“There is no if about it. You must have sons.”
The old man’s voice was positive, and Allart sighed. His father simply did not hear him. Oh, he heard the words with his ears. But he did not listen; the words went through and past him, because what Allart was saying did not agree with the fixed belief of Lord Elhalyn—that a son’s prime duty was to breed the sons who would carry on the fabled gifts of Hastur and Cassilda, the laran of the Domains.
Laran, sorcery, psi power, which enabled these families to excel in the manipulation of the matrix stones, the starstones amplifying the hidden powers of the mind; to know the future, to force the minds of lesser men to their own will, to manipulate inanimate objects, to compel the minds of animal and bird—laran was the key to power beyond imagining, and for generations the Domains had been breeding for it.
“Father, hear me, I beg you.” Allart was not angry or argumentative now, but desperately in earnest. “I tell you, nothing but evil can come of this breeding program, which makes of women only instruments to breed monsters of the mind, without humanity! I have a conscience; I cannot do it.”
His father sneered, “Are you a lover of men, that you will not give sons to our caste?”
“I am not,” Allart said, “but I have known no woman. If I have been cursed with this evil gift of laran—”
“Silence! You blaspheme our forefathers and the Lord of Light who gave us laran!”
Now Allart was angry again. “It is you who blaspheme, sir, if you think the gods can be bent to human purposes this way!”
“You insolent—” His father sprang up, then, with an enormous effort, controlled his rage. “My son, you are young, and warped by these monkish notions. Come back to the heritage to which you were born, and you will learn better. What I ask of you is both right and needful if the Hasturs are to prosper. No”—he gestured for silence when Allart would have spoken—“on these matters you are still ignorant, and your education must be completed. A male virgin”—try as he might, Lord Elhalyn could not keep the contempt from his voice— “is
not competent to judge.”
“Believe me,” Allart said, “I am not indifferent to the charms of women. But I do not wish to pass on the curse of my blood. And I will not.”
“That is not open to discussion,” Dom Stephen said, menace in his voice. “You will not disobey me, Allart. I would think it disgrace if a son of mine must father his sons drugged like some reluctant bride, but there are drugs which will do that to you, too, if you leave us no choice.” Holy Bearer of Burdens, help me! How shall I keep from killing him as he stands here before me?
Dom Stephen said more quietly, “This is no time for argument, my son. You must give us a chance to convince you that your scruples are unfounded. I beg of you, go now and clothe yourself as befits a man and a Hastur, and make ready to ride with me. You are so needed, my dear son, and—do you not know how much I have missed you?” The genuine love in his voice thrust pain through Allart’s heart. A thousand childhood memories crowded in on him, blurring past and future with their tenderness. He was a pawn to his father’s pride and heritage, yes, but with all this, Lord Elhalyn sincerely loved all his sons, had been genuinely afraid for Allart’s health and sanity—or he would never have sent him to a cristoforo monastery, of all places on the face of this world! Allart thought, I cannot even hate him; it would be so much easier if I could!