The old lord Syrtis was a plump soft man, who came into the courtyard himself to welcome his overlord, falling to his knees in fawning politeness, rising with a smile that was almost a smirk when Dom Stephen drew him into a kinsman’s embrace. He embraced Allart, too, and Allart flinched from the man’s kiss on his cheek.
Ugh, he is like a fawning house cat!
Dom Marius led them into his Great Hall, filled with sybaritic luxury, seated them on cushioned divans, called for wine. “This is a new form of cordial, made from our apples and pears; you must try it… I have a new amusement; I will talk of it when we have dined,” Dom Marius of Syrtis said, leaning back into the billowy cushions. “And this is your younger son, Stephen? I had heard some rumor that he had forsaken Hali and become a monk among the cristoforos, or some such nonsense. I am glad it is only a vicious lie; some people will say anything.”
“I give you my word, kinsman, Allart is no monk,” Dom Stephen said. “I gave him leave to dwell at Nevarsin to recover his health; he suffered greatly in adolescence from threshold sickness. But he is well and strong, and came home to be married.”
“Oh, is it so?” Dom Marius said, regarding Allart with his wide, blinking eyes, encased in wide pillows of fat. “And is the fortunate maiden known to me, dear boy?”
“No more than to me,” Allart said in grudging politeness. “I am told she is my kinswoman Cassandra Aillard; I saw her but once, when she was a baby girl.”
“Ah, the domna Cassandra! I have seen her in Thendara; she was present at the Festival Ball in Comyn Castle,” Dom Marius said with a leer.
Allart, thought, disgusted, He only wants us to know he is important enough to be invited there!
Dom Marius called servants to bring their supper. He followed the recent fad for nonhuman servants, cralmacs, artificially bred from the harmless trailmen of the Hellers, with matrix-modified genes by human insemination. To Allart the creatures seemed ugly, neither human nor trailman. The trailmen, strange and monkeylike though they were, had their own alien beauty. But the cralmacs, handsome though some of them undeniably were, had for Allart the loathsomeness of something unnatural.
“Yes, I have seen your promised bride; she is fair enough to make even a true monk break his vows,” Dom Marius sniggered. “You will have no regrets for the monastery when you lie down with her, kinsman. Though all those Aillard girls are unlucky wives, some being sterile as riyachiyas and others so fragile they cannot carry a child to birth.”
He is one of those who like to foretell catastrophe, too, Allart thought. “I am in no great hurry for an heir; my elder brother is alive and well and has fathered nedestro sons. I will take what the gods send.” Eager to change the subject, he asked, “Did you breed the cralmacs on your own estate? Father told me as we rode of my brother’s experiments in breeding ornamental chervines through matrix-modification; and your cralmacs are smaller and more graceful than those bred at Hali. They are good, I remember, only for mucking out stables and such heavy work, things it would be unsuitable to ask one’s human vassals to do.”
He said this with a sudden pang—How quickly I forget!—remembering that in Nevarsin he had been taught that no honest work was beneath the dignity of a man’s own hands. But the words had diverted Dom Marius again into boasting.
“I have a leronis from the Ridenow, captured in battle, who is skillful with such things. She thought I was kind to her, when I assured her she would never be used against her own people—but how could I trust her in such a battle?—and she made no trouble about doing other work for me. She bred me these cralmacs, more graceful and shapely indeed than any I had before. I will give you breeding stock, male and female, if you will, for a wedding gift, Dom Allart; no doubt your lady would welcome handsome servants. Also the leronis bred for me a new strain of riyachiyas; will you see them, cousin?”
Lord Elhalyn nodded, and when they finished the meal the promised riyachiyas were brought in. Allart looked on them with an inner spasm of revulsion: exotic toys for jaded tastes. In form they were women, fair of face, slender, with shapely breasts lifting the translucent folds of their draperies, but too narrow of hip and slender of waist and long of leg to be genuine women. There were four of them, two fair-haired, two dark; otherwise identical. They knelt at Dom Marius’s feet, moving sinuously, the curve of their slender necks, as they bowed, swanlike and exquisite, and Allart, through his revulsion, felt an unaccustomed stirring of desire.
Zandru’s hells, but they are beautiful, as beautiful and unnatural as demon hags!
“Would you believe, cousin, that they were borne in cralmac wombs? They are of my seed, and that of the leronis,” he said, “so that a fastidious man, if they were human, might say they were my daughters, and indeed, the thought adds a little—a little something,” he said, sniggering. “Two at a birth—” He pointed to the fair-haired pair and said, “Leila and Rella; the dark ones are Ria and Tia. They will not disturb you with much speech, though they can talk and sing, and I had them taught to dance and to play the rryl and to serve food and drink. But, of course, their major talents are for pleasure. They are matrix-spelled, of course, to draw and bind—I see you cannot take your eyes from them, nor”—Dom Marius chuckled— “can your son.”
Allart started and angrily turned away from the horribly enticing faces and bodies of the inhumanly beautiful, lust-inspiring creatures.
“Oh, I am not greedy; you shall have them tonight, cousin,” Dom Marius said, with a lewd chuckle. “One or two, as you will. And if you, young Allart, have spent six years of frustration in Nevarsin, you must be in need of their services. I will send you Leila; she is my own favorite. Oh, the things that riyachiya can do, even a sworn monk would yield to her touch.” He grew grossly specific, and Allart turned away.
“I beg you, kinsman,” he said, trying to conceal his loathing, “do not deprive yourself of your favorite.”
“No?” Dom Marius’s cushiony eyes rolled back, in feigned sympathy. “Is it so? After so many years in a monastery, do you prefer the pleasures to be found among the brethren? I myself seldom desire a ri’chiyu, but I keep a few for hospitality, and some guests desire a change now and then. Shall I send you Loyu? He is a beautiful boy indeed, and I have had all of them modified to be almost without response to pain, so that you can use him any way you choose, if you desire.”
Dom Stephen said quickly, seeing that Allart was about to explode, “Indeed, the girls will do well enough for us. I compliment you on the skill of your leronis at breeding them.”
When they had been taken to the suite of rooms allotted to them, Dom Stephen said, enraged, “You will not disgrace us by refusing this courtesy! I will not have it gossiped here that my son is less than a man!”
“He is like a great fat toad! Father, is it a reflection on my manhood that the thought of such filth overwhelms me with loathing? I would like to fling his foul gifts in his sniggering face!”
“You weary me with your monkish scruples, Allart. The leroni never did better than when they bred us the riyachiyas; nor will your wife-to-be thank you if you refuse to have one in your household. Can you be so ignorant as not to know that if you lie with a breeding woman, she may miscarry? It is part of the price we pay for our laran, which we have bred with such difficulty into our line, that our women are fragile and given to miscarry, so that we must spare them when they are with child. If you turn your desires on a riyachiya only she need not be jealous, as if you had given your affections to a real girl who would have some claim on your thoughts.”
Allart turned his face away; in the Lowlands this kind of speech between the generations was the height of indecency, had been from the days when group marriage was commonplace and any man of your father’s age could be your father, any woman of an age to be your mother could have been your mother indeed; so that the sexual taboo was absolute between generations.
Dom Stephen said defensively, “I would never so far forget myself, Allart, except that you have not been willing
to do your duty by our caste. But I am sure you are enough my son that you will come to life with a woman in your arms!” He added, crudely, “You need not be scrupulous; the creatures are sterile.”
Allart thought, sick with disgust, I may not wait for the room with the green and gold hangings, I may kill him here and now, but his father had turned away and gone into his own chamber.
He thought, enraged, as he made ready for bed, of how corrupt they had become. We, the sacred descendants of the Lord of Light, bearing the blood of Hastur and Cassilda—or was that only a pretty fairy tale? Were the laran gifts of the families descended from Hastur no more than the work of some presumptuous mortal, meddling with gene-matter and brain-cells, some sorceress with a matrix jewel modifying germ plasm as Dom Marius’s leronis did with those riyachiyas, making exotic toys for corrupt men?
The gods themselves—if indeed there are any gods—must turn sick at the sight of us!
The warm, luxurious room sickened him; he wished himself back at Nevarsin, in the solemn night silence. He had turned out the light when he heard an almost noiseless foot-step and the girl Leila, in her flimsy draperies, stole softly across the floor to his side.
“I am here for your contentment, vai dom.”
Her voice was a husky murmur; her eyes alone betrayed that she was not human, for they were dark brown animal eyes, great soft, strange unreadable eyes.
Allart shook his head.
“You can go away again, Leila, I will sleep alone tonight”
Sexual images tormented him, all the things he might do, all the possible futures, an infinitely diverging set of probabilities hinging on this moment. Leila sat on the edge of the bed; her soft slender fingers, so delicate that they seemed almost boneless, stole into his. She murmured, pleading, “If I do not please you, vai dom, I will be punished. What would you have me do? I know many, many ways to give delight.”
He knew his father had maneuvered this situation. The riyachiyas were bred and taught and spelled to be irresistible; had Dom Stephen hoped she would break down Allan’s inhibitions?
“Indeed, my master will be very angry if I fail to give you pleasure. Shall I send for my sister, who is as dark as I am fair? And she is even more skilled. Or would it give you pleasure to beat me, Lord? I like to be beaten, truly I do.”
“Hush, hush!” Allart felt sick. “No one would want anyone more beautiful than you.” And indeed, the shapely young body, the enchanting little face, the loose scented hair falling across him, were enticing. She had a sweet, faintly musky scent; somehow before he touched her he had believed that the riyachiyas would smell animal, not human.
Her spell is on me, he thought. How then could he resist? With a sense of deathly weariness, as he felt her slender fingertips trace a line of awareness down his bare neck from earlobe to shoulder, he thought, What does it matter? I had indeed resolved to live womanless, never to pass on this curse I bear. But this poor creature is sterile, I cannot father a child on her if I would. Perhaps when he knows I have done his will in this, he will be less ready to put insults on me and call me less than a man. Bearer of Burdens, strengthen me! I but make excuses for what I want to do. Why should I not? Why must I alone resist what is given by right to every man of my caste? His mind was spinning. A thousand alternate futures spun out before him: in one he seized the girl in his hands and wrung her neck like the animal he knew her to be; in another he saw himself and the girl entwined in tenderness, and the image swelled, driving the awareness of lust into his body; in another he saw the dark maiden lying dead before him… So many futures, so much death and despair… Spasmodically, desperately, trying to blot out the multiple futures, he took the girl in his arms and drew her down on the bed. Even as his lips came down on hers, he thought of despair, futility. What does it matter, when there is all this ruin before me…?
He heard, as if from nowhere, her small cries of pleasure, and in his wretchedness, thought, At least she is not unwilling, and then he did not think again at all, which was an enormous relief.
Chapter Five
When he woke, the girl was gone, and Allart lay without moving for a moment, overcome with sickness and self-contempt. How shall I keep from killing that man, that he brought this upon me… ? But as his father’s dead face swam before his eyes in the familiar room with green and gold hangings, he reminded himself sternly, The choice was mine; he provided only the opportunity.
Nevertheless, he felt overwhelming self-contempt as he moved around the room, making ready to ride. In the night past he had learned something about himself that he would rather not have known.
In his six years in Nevarsin it had been no trouble to him to keep to the womanless precincts of the monastery, to live without thought of women; he had never been tempted, even at midsummer festival when even the monks were free to join in the revelry, to seek love or its counterfeit in the lower town. So it had never occurred to him that he would find it difficult to keep his resolve—not to marry, not to father children bearing the monstrous curse of laran. Yet, even through his loathing and revulsion for the thing Leila was, not even human, six years of self-imposed celibacy had been cast aside in minutes, at the touch of a riyachiya’s obscenely soft fingertips.
Now what is to become of me? If I cannot keep my resolve for a single night. … In the crowding, diverging futures he saw before his every step, there was a new one, and it displeased him: that he might become some such creature as old Dom Marius, refusing marriage indeed, sating his lust with these unnaturally bred pleasure girls, or worse.
He was grateful that their host did not appear at breakfast; he found it hard enough to face his father, and the vision of his father’s dead face came near to blotting out the real, live presence of the old man, good-natured over his buttered bread and porridge. Sensing his son’s unspoken anger (Allart wondered if his father had had reports from servants, or even if he had stooped low enough to question the girl Leila, to verify that Allart had proved his masculinity), Dom Stephen kept silence until they were donning their riding-cloaks, then said, “We will leave the riding-animals here, son; Dom Marius has offered us an air-car which will take us directly to Hali, and the servants can bring the riding-animals on in a few days. You have not ridden in an air-car since you were very small, have you?”
“I do not remember that I rode in one even then,” said Allart, interested against his will. “Surely they were not common in such times.”
“No, very uncommon, and of course they are toys for the wealthy, demanding a skilled laran operator as they do,” Lord Elhalyn said. “They are useless in the mountains; the crossdrafts and winds would dash any heavier-than-air vehicle against the crags. But here in the Lowlands it is safe enough, and I thought such a flight would divert you.”
“I confess I am curious,” Allart said, thinking that Dom Marius of Syrtis certainly spared no pains to ingratiate himself with his overlord. First he put his favorite pleasure girls at their disposal, and now this! “But I heard at Nevarsin that these contrivances were not safe in the Lowlands either. While war rages between Elhalyn and Ridenow, they are all too easily attacked.”
Dom Stephen shrugged, saying, “We all have laran; we can make short work of any attackers. After six years in a monastery, no doubt your fighting skills are rusty when it comes to sword and shield, but I have no doubt you could strike anyone who attacked us out of the sky. I have fire-talismans.” He looked shrewdly at his son, then said, “Or are you going to tell me that the monks have made you such a man of peace that you will not defend your life or the life of your kinsmen, Allart? I seem to remember that as a boy you had no stomach for fighting.”
No, for at every stroke I saw death or disaster for myself or another, and it is cruel of you to taunt me with childish weakness which was no fault of mine, but of your own accursed hereditary Blood-Gift… But aloud Allart said, forcing himself to ignore the shocking dead face of his father which persisted in appearing before his eyes, blurring his father’s living face,
“While I live, I will defend my father and my Lord to the death, and the gods do so to me and more also if I fail or falter.”
Startled, warmed by something in Allart’s voice, Lord Elhalyn put out his arms and embraced his son. For the first time Allart could remember, to him or anyone, the old man said, “Forgive me, dear son, that was not worthy of me. I should not so accuse you unmerited,” and Allart felt tears stinging his eyes.
Gods forgive me. He is not cruel, or if he is, it is only out of fear for me, too… He truly wills to be kind…
The air-car was long and sleek, made of some gleaming glassy material, with ornamental stripes of silver down the length of it, a long cockpit with four seats, open to the sky. Cralmacs rolled it out from its shed, onto the ornamented paving of the inner courtyard, and the operator, a slender young man with the red hair which proclaimed the minor nobility of the Kilghard Hills, approached them with a curt bow, a mere perfunctory reverence; a highly trained expert, a laranzu of this kind, needed to be deferential to no man, not even to the brother of the king at Thendara.
“I am Karinn, vai dom. I have orders to take you to Hali. Please take your seats.”
He left it to the cralmacs to lift Dom Stephen into his seat, and to fasten the straps around him, but as Allart took a place, Karinn lingered a moment before going to his own seat. He said, “Have you ever ridden in one of these, Dom Allart?”
“Not since I can remember. Is it powered by such a matrix as you alone can handle? That would seem beyond belief!”
“Not entirely; in there”—Karinn pointed—“is a battery charged with energy to run the turbines; it would indeed demand more power than one man has at his command, to levitate and move such an apparatus, but the batteries are charged by the matrix circles, and my laran, at this moment, is needed only to guide and steer—and to be aware of attackers and evade them.” His face was somber. “I would not defy my overlord, and it is no part of my duty to refuse to do as I am bid, but—have you laran?”
The Ages of Chaos Page 7
