Did he have any control over any of them at all, or would some relentless fate thrust them all upon him? As they had thrust Cassandra Aillard upon him as his wife, this woman standing before him… A dozen Cassandras, not one, looking up at him—aglow with love and passion he knew he could arouse, torn with hatred and loathing (yes, he could rouse that, too), limp with exhaustion, dying with a curse, dying in his arms… Allart closed his eyes in a vain effort to shut out the faces of his wife.
Cassandra said, in real alarm, “My husband! Allart! Tell me what is wrong with you, I beg!”
He knew he had frightened her, and sought to control the crowding futures, to put to practice the techniques he had learned at Nevarsin, to narrow down the dozen women she had become—might become, would become—into the one who stood before him now.
“It is not anything you have done, Cassandra. I have told you how I am cursed.”
“Is there nothing that can help you?”
Yes, he thought savagely, it would have helped most of all if neither of us had ever been born; if our ancestors, may they freeze forever in Zandru’s darkest hell, could have refrained from breeding this curse into our line! He did not speak it, but she picked up the thought, and her eyes widened in dismay.
But just then kinsmen and kinswomen burst in on their momentary solitude. Damon-Rafael claimed Cassandra for a dance with an arrogant, “She will be all yours soon enough, brother!” and someone else thrust a glass into his hand, demanding that he join in the revelry which, after all, was in his honor!
Trying to conceal rage and rebellion—after all, he could not blame his guests for the whole system!—he let himself be persuaded to drink, to dance with young kinswomen who evidently had so little to do with his future that their faces remained reassuringly one, not altered continually by the crisscrossing probabilities of his laran. He did not see Cassandra again until Damon-Rafael’s wife Cassilde, and their kinswomen, were leading her from the hall for the formal bedding.
Custom demanded that the bride and husband be put to bed in the presence of their assembled peers, as proof that the marriage had been duly made. Allart had read at Nevarsin that there had been a time, soon after the establishment of marriage for inheritance and the catenas, when public consummation had been required, too. Fortunately Allart knew that would not be demanded of him. He wondered how anyone had ever managed it!
It was not long before they led him, in a tumult of the usual jokes, into the presence of his bride. Custom demanded, too, that a bride’s bedding-gown should be more revealing than anything she had ever worn before—or would ever wear again. In order, Allart thought cynically, that all might see she had no hidden flaw that would impair her value as breeding-stock!
The gods grant they have not drugged her into complaisance… He looked sharply to see if her eyes were drug-blurred, whether they had dosed her with aphrodisiacs. He supposed this was merciful for a girl given unwilling to a complete stranger; no one, he supposed, would have much heart for fighting a terrified girl into submission. Again conflicting futures, conflicting possibilities and obligations crowded into his mind with images of lust fighting for place with other futures in which he saw her lying dead in his arms. What had Damon-Rafael told him? That all of her sisters had died with the birth of their first child…
With a chorus of congratulations, the kinsmen withdrew, leaving them alone. Allart rose and threw down the bar of the lock. Returning to her side, he saw the fear in her face and the gallant effort she made to hide it
Does she fear I shall fall on her like a wild animal? But aloud he said only, “Have they drugged you with aphrosone or some such potion?”
She shook her head. “I refused it. My foster-mother would have made me drink it, but I told her I did not fear you.”
Allart asked, “Then why are you trembling?”
She said, with that flash of spirit he had seen in her before, “I am cold, my lord, in this near-naked gown they insisted I must wear!”
Allart laughed. “It seems I have the better of it, then, being robed in fur. Cover yourself, then, Lady—it would have not needed that for me to desire you—I forgot, you do not like to be complimented, or flattered!” He came up and sat on the edge of the great bed beside her. “May I pour you some wine, domna?”
“Thank you.” She took the glass, and as she sipped he saw the color come back into her face. Gratefully she tugged the fur robe up, to her shoulders. He poured some for himself, turning the stem of the goblet in his fingers, trying to think how he must say what must be said without offending her. Again the crowding futures and possibilities threatened to overwhelm him, so that he could see himself ignoring his scruples, taking her into his arms with all the pent-up passion of his life. How she would come alive with passion and love, the years of joy they would share… and again, confusingly, blurring the face of the woman and the moment before him, another woman’s face, tawny and laughing, surrounded by masses of copper hair…
“Cassandra,” he said, “did you want this marriage?”
She did not look at him. “I am honored by this marriage. We were handfasted when I was too young to remember. It must be different for you, you are a man and have choice, but I had none. Whatever I did as a child, I heard nothing but this or that will or will not be suitable when you are wed to Allart Hastur of Elhalyn.”
He said, the words wrung from him, “What joy it must be to have such security, to see only one future instead of a dozen, a hundred, a thousand… not to have to tread your way among them like an acrobat who dances upon a stretched rope at Festival Fair!”
“I never thought of that. I thought only that your life was more free than mine, to choose…”
“Free?” He laughed without amusement. “My fate was as sealed as yours. Lady. Yet we may still choose among the futures I can see, if you are willing.”
She said in a low voice, “What is left for us to choose now, my lord? We are wedded and bedded; it seems to me that no more choice is possible. Only this; you can use me cruelly or gently, and I can bear all with patience or disgrace my caste by fighting you away and forcing you, like the victim of some old bawdy song, to bear the marks of my nails and teeth. Which indeed,” she said, her eyes glinting up at him in a laugh, “I would think it shameful to do.”
“The gods forbid you should have cause,” he said. For a moment, so poignant were the images roused by her words, it seemed that all other futures had really been wiped out. She was his wife, given to him consenting, even willing, and wholly at his mercy. He could even make her love him.
Then why do we not yield together to our destiny, my love…?
But he forced himself to say, “A third choice remains still, my lady. You know the law; whatever the ceremony, this is no marriage until we make it so, and even the catenas can be unlocked, if we petition.”
“If I should so anger my kinsmen, and bring the wrath of the Hasture upon them, then the string of alliances on which the reign of the Hasturs is built will come crashing down. If you seek to return me to my kinsmen because I found no favor with you, there will be no peace for me, and no happiness.” Her eyes were wide and desolate.
“I thought only— A day might come when you could be given to one more to your liking, my girl.”
She said shyly, “What makes you think I could find one more to my liking?”
He realized with sudden dread that the worst had happened. Fearing she would be given to an insensitive brute who would think of her only as a brood-mare, finding that instead he spoke to her as to an equal, the girl was ready to adore him!
If he so much as touched her hand, he knew, his resolve would vanish; he would cover her with kisses, draw her into his arms—if only to wipe out the crowding futures he could see building up from this crucial moment, wipe them all out in a single moment by some positive action, whatever it might be.
His voice sounded strained, even to himself. “You know the curse I bear. I see not the true future alone, but a dozen futur
es, any one of which may come true, or mock me by never coming to pass. I had resolved never to marry, that I might never transmit this curse to any son of mine. This was why I had resolved to renounce my heritage and become a monk; I can see, all too clearly, what marriage with you might bring about. Gods above,” he cried out, “do you think me indifferent to you?”
“Are your visions always true, Allart?” she pleaded. “Why must we deny our destiny? If these things are ordained, they will come about, whatever we do now, and if not, they cannot trouble us.” She raised herself to her knees, flung her arms around him.
“I am not unwilling, Allart. I—I—I love you.”
For the barest instant Allart could not help tightening his arms around her. Then, fighting the shamed memory of how he had surrendered to the temptation of the riyachiya, he seized her shoulders in his hands and thrust her away with all his strength. He heard his own voice harsh and ice-cold, as if it belonged to someone else.
“Do you still expect me to believe they have not drugged you with aphrodisiacs, my lady?”
She went rigid, tears of anger and humiliation welling in her eyes. He wanted, as he had never wanted anything in his life, to draw her back to rest against his heart.
“Forgive me,” he begged. “Try to understand. I am fighting to—to find my way out of this trap they have led us into. Don’t you know what I have seen? All roads lead there, it seems—that I will do what is expected of me, that I will breed monsters, children tormented worse by laran than ever I was, dying as my young brother died, or worse, living to curse us that they were ever born. And do you know what I have seen for you, at the end of every road, my poor girl? Your death, Cassandra, your death in bearing my child.”
She whispered, her face white, “Two of my sisters so died.”
“Yet you wonder why. I am not rejecting you, Cassandra. I am trying to avoid the frightful destiny I have seen for both of us. God knows, it would be easy enough… Along most of the lines of my future, I see it, the course it would be easiest to take; that I should love you, that you should love me, that we will walk hand in hand into that terrible tragedy the future holds for us. Tragedy for you, Cassandra. And for me. I—” He swallowed, trying to steady his voice. “I would not bear the guilt of your death.”
She began to sob. Allart dared not touch her; he stood looking down at her, heart-wrung, wretched. “Try not to cry,” he said, his voice ragged. “I cannot bear it. The temptation is always there, to do the easiest thing, and trust to luck to lead us through; or if all else fails, to say, ‘It is our destiny and no man can fight against fate.’ For there are other choices. You might be barren, you might survive childbirth, our child might escape the curse of our joint laran. There are so many possibilities, so many temptations! And I have resolved that this marriage shall be no marriage at all, until I see my way clear before me. Cassandra, I beg you, agree to this.”
“It seems that I have no choice,” she said, and looked up at him, desolate. “Yet there is no happiness, either, in our world, for a woman who finds no favor with her husband. Until I am pregnant, my kinswomen will give me no peace. They have laran, too, and if this marriage is not consummated, sooner or later they will know that, too, and the same troubles we foresaw from refusing the marriage will be on us. Either way, my husband, it seems that we are the game who may stay in the trap or walk to the cookpot; either way lies ruin.”
Calmed by the seriousness with which she sought to think about and evaluate their predicament, Allart said, “I have a plan, if you will follow me in it, Cassandra. Most of our kinsmen, before they come to my age, take their turn in a Tower, using their laran in a matrix circle which can give energy and power and a good life to our people. I was excused this duty because of my poor health, but the obligation should be filled. Also, the life of the court is not the best life for a young wife who—” He choked on the words. “Who might be breeding. I will petition for leave to take you to the Tower of Hali, where we will do our share of work in a matrix circle. So we will not face your kinswomen or my brother, and we can dwell apart without provoking talk. Perhaps, while we are there, we can find some way out of this dilemma.”
Cassandra’s voice was submissive. “Let it be as you will. But our kin will think it strange that we choose this during the first days of our marriage.”
“They may think what they will,” Allart said. “I think it no crime to give false coin to thieves, or to lie to one who questions beyond courtesy. If I am questioned by anyone who has a right to an answer, I shall say that I shirked this obligation during my early manhood, and I wish to satisfy it now, so that you and I may go away together with no remaining unfulfilled obligations overshadowing our lives. You, my lady, may say what you will.”
Her smile glinted at him; again Allart felt the wrench of heartbreak.
“Why, I will say nothing at all, my husband. I am your wife and I go where you choose to go, needing no more explanation than that! I do not say that I love this custom, nor that if you chose to demand it of me, I should obey without strife. I doubt you would find me such a submissive wife after all, Dom Allart. But I can use the custom where it suits my purposes!”
Holy Bearer of Burdens, why could not my fate have given me a woman I would be glad to put aside, not this one it would have been so easy for me to love! Exhausted with relief, he bowed his head, took up her slender fingers and kissed them.
She saw the broken weariness in his face and said, “You are very weary, my husband. Will you not lie down now and sleep?”
Again the erotic images were torturing him, but he pushed them aside. “You do not know much of men, do you, chiya?”
She shook her head.“How could I? Now it seems I am not to know,” she said, and looked so sad that, even through his resolve, Allart felt a distant regret
“Lie down and sleep if you will, Cassandra.”
“But will you not sleep?” she asked naïvely, and he had to laugh.
“I will sleep on the floor; I have slept in worse places, and this is luxury after the stone cells of Nevarsin,” he said. “Bless you, Cassandra, for accepting my decision!”
She gave him a faint smile. “Oh, I have been taught that it is a wife’s duty to obey. Though it is a different obedience than I foresaw, still, I am your wife and will do as you command. Good night, my husband.”
The words were gently ironic. Stretched on the soft rugs of the chamber, Allart summoned all the discipline of his years at Nevarsin and finally managed to blot out from his mind all the images of Cassandra awakened to love; nothing remained but the moment, and his resolve. But once, before dawn, he thought he could hear the sound of a woman crying, very softly, as if muffling the sound in silks and coverlets.
The next day they departed for Hali Tower; and there they remained for half a year.
Chapter Eight
Early spring again in the Hellers, Donal Delleray, called Rockraven, stood on the heights of Castle Aldaran, wondering idly if the Aldaran forefathers had chosen this high peak for their keep because it commanded much of the country around. It sloped down toward the distant plains, and behind it rose toward the far impassable peaks where no human thing dwelled, but only trailmen and the half-legendary chieri of the far Hellers, in their fastnesses surrounded by eternal snow.
“They say,” he said aloud, “that in the farthest of these mountains, so far in the snows that even the most skilled mountaineer would fail before he found his way through the peaks and crevasses, there is a valley of unending summer, and there the chieri have withdrawn since the coming of the children of Hastur. That is why we never see them now, in these days. There the chieri dwell forever, immortal and beautiful, singing their strange songs and dreaming immortal dreams.”
“Are the chieri really so beautiful?”
“I do not know, little sister; I have never seen a chieri,” Donal said. He was twenty now, tall and whiplash thin, dark-tanned, dark-browed, a straight and somber young man who looked older than he was. �
�But when I was very small, my mother told me once that she had seen a chieri in the forests, behind a tree, and that she had the beauty of the Blessed Cassilda. They say, too, that if any mortal wins through to the valley where the chieri dwell, and eats of their food and drinks of their magical waters, he, too, will be gifted with immortality.”
“No,” Dorilys said. “Now you are telling me fairy tales. I am too old to believe such things.”
“Oh, you are so old,” Donal teased. “I look daily to see your back stoop over with age and your hair turn gray!”
“I am old enough to be handfasted,” Dorilys said with dignity. “I am eleven years old, and Margali says I look as if I were already fifteen.”
Donal gave his sister a long, considering look. It was true; at eleven Dorilys was already taller than many women, and her slender body had already some hint of a woman’s shapely roundness.
“I do not know if I want to be handfasted,” she said, suddenly sulky. “I do not know anything of my cousin Darren! Do you know him, Donal?”
“I know him,” Donal said, and his face went bleak. “He was fostered here, with many other lads, when I was a boy.”
“Is he handsome? Is he kind and well-spoken? Do you like him, Donal?”
Donal opened his mouth to speak and then shut it again. Darren was the son of Lord Aldaran’s younger brother, Rakhal. Mikhail, Lord Aldaran, had no sons, and this marriage would mean that their children would inherit and consolidate the two estates; this was the way great Domains were built. It would be pointless to prejudice Dorilys against her promised husband because of boyish differences.
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