The Ages of Chaos

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Dorilys asked, “Did you like being a leronis? What is a monitor?”

  “You will find that out when I monitor you, as I must do before I begin to teach you about laran,” Renata said.

  “What did you do in the Tower?”

  “Many things,” Renata said. “Bringing metals to the surface of the ground for the smiths to work them, charging batteries for lights and air-cars, working in the relays to speak without voice to those in the other Towers, so that what was happening in one Domain could be known to all, much faster than a messenger could ride…”

  Dorilys listened, finally letting out a long, fascinated sigh. “And will you teach me to do those things?”

  “Not all of them, perhaps, but you shall know such things as you have need to know, as the lady of a great Domain. And beyond that, such things as all women should know if they are to have control of their own lives and bodies.”

  “Will you teach me to read thoughts? Donal and Father and Margali can read thoughts and I cannot, and they can talk apart and I cannot hear, and it makes me angry because I know they talk about me.”

  “I cannot teach you that, but if you have the talent I can teach you to use it. You are too young to know whether you have it or not.”

  “Will I have a matrix?”

  “When you can learn to use it,” Renata said. She thought it strange that Margali had not already tested the child, taught her to key a matrix. Well, Margali was well on in years; perhaps she feared what her charge, headstrong and lacking in mature judgment, would do with the enormous power of a matrix. “Do you know what your laran is, Dorilys?”

  The child lowered her eyes. “A little. You know what happened at my handfasting…”

  “Only that your promised husband died very suddenly.”

  Suddenly Dorilys began to cry. “He died—and everyone said I had killed him, but I didn’t, cousin. I didn’t want to kill him—I only wanted to make him take his hands off me.”

  Looking at the sobbing child, Renata’s first, spontaneous impulse was to put her arms around Dorilys and comfort her. Of course she hadn’t meant to kill him! How cruel, to let a child so young carry blood-guilt! But in the instant before she moved, an intuitive flash of second thought kept her motionless.

  However young she was, Dorilys had laran which could kill. This laran, in the hands of a child too young to exercise rational judgment about it… the very thought made Renata shudder. If Dorilys was old enough to possess this terrifying laran, she was old enough—she would have to be old enough—to learn control, and its proper use.

  Controlling laran was not easy. No one knew better than Renata, a Tower-trained monitor, how difficult it could be, the hard work and self-discipline which went even into the earliest stages of that control. How could a spoiled, pampered little girl, whose every word had been law to her companions and adoring family, find the discipline and the inner motivation to tread that difficult path? Perhaps the death she had wrought, and her guilt and fear about it, might be fortunate in the long run. Renata did not like to use fear in her teaching, but at the moment she did not know enough about Dorilys to throw away any slight advantage she might have in teaching the girl.

  So she did not touch Dorilys, but let her cry, looking at her with a detached tenderness of which her calm face and manner gave not the slightest hint. At last she said, voicing the first thing she herself had been taught in the early discipline of Hali Tower, “Laran is a terrible gift and a terrible responsibility, and it is not easy to learn to control it. It is your own choice whether you will learn to control it, or whether it will control you. If you are willing to work hard, a time will come when you will be in command, when you will use your laran and not let it use you. That is why I have come here to teach you, so that such a thing cannot happen again.”

  “You are more than welcome here at Aldaran,” Mikhail, Lord Aldaran said, leaning forward from his high seat and catching Allart’s eyes. “It is long since I had the pleasure of entertaining one of my Lowland kin. I trust we will make you welcome. But I do not flatter myself that the heir to Elhalyn did the service which any paxman or banner-bearer could do, just for the sake of showing me honor. Not when the Elhalyn Domain is at war. You want something of me— or the Elhalyn Domain wants something, which may not be the same thing at all. Will you not tell me your true mission, kinsman?”

  Allart pondered a dozen answers, watching the play of firelight on the old man’s face, knowing it was the curious foresight of his laran which caused that face to wear a hundred aspects—benevolence, wrath, offended pride, anguish. Had his mission alone the power to raise all those reactions in Lord Aldaran, or was it something yet to pass between them?

  At last, weighing each word, he said, “My lord, what you say is true, although it was a privilege to travel north with your foster-son, and I was not sorry to be at some distance from this war.”

  Aldaran raised an eyebrow and said, “I would have thought in time of war you would have been unwilling to leave the Domain. Are you not your brother’s heir?”

  “His regent and warden, sir, but I am sworn to support the claim of his nedestro sons.”

  “It seems to me you could have done better for yourself than that,” Dom Mikhail said. “Should your brother die in battle, you seem better fitted to command a Domain than any flock of little boys, legitimate or bastard, and no doubt the folk of your Domain would rather have it so. There’s a true saying: when the cat’s a kitten, rats make play in the kitchen! So it goes with a Domain;, in times like this, a strong hand is needful. In wartime a younger son, or one whose parentage is uncertain, can carve out for himself a position of power as he could never do at any other time.”

  Allart thought, But I have no ambition to rule my Domain. However, he knew that Lord Aldaran would never believe this. To men of his sort, ambition was the only legitimate emotion for a man born into a ruling house. And it is this which keeps us torn with fratricidal wars… But he said nothing, if he did, Aldaran would immediately jump to the conclusion that he was an effeminate, or, worse, a coward. “My brother and overlord felt I could better serve my Domain on this mission, sir.”

  “Indeed? It must be more important than I had believed possible,” Aldaran said, and he looked grim. “Well, tell me about it, kinsman, if it is a mission of such great moment to Aldaran that your brother must entrust it to his nearest rival!” He looked angry and guarded, and Allart knew he had not made a good impression. However, as Allart broached his mission, Aldaran slowly relaxed, leaning back in his chair, and when the young man had done he nodded slowly, letting out his breath with a long sigh.

  “It is not so bad as I feared,” he said. “I have foresight enough, and I could read your thoughts a little—not much; where did you learn to guard them so?—and I knew you came to speak of this war to me. I feared you had come, for the sake of the old friendship between your father and me, to urge me to join with your folk in this war. Though I loved your father well, that I would have been reluctant to do. I might have been willing to aid in the defense of Elhalyn, if you were hard pressed, but I would not have wished to attack the Ridenow.”

  “I have brought no such request, sir,” Allart said, “but will you tell me why?”

  “Why? Why, you ask? Well, tell me, lad,” Aldaran said. “What grudge have you against the Ridenow?”

  “I, myself? None, sir, save that they attacked an air-car in which I was riding with my father, and brought about his death. But all the Domains of the Lowlands have a grudge against the Ridenow because they have moved into the old Domain of Serrais and have taken their women in marriage.”

  “Is that such a bad thing?” Aldaran asked. “Did the women of Serrais ask your aid against these marriages, or prove to you that they had been married against their will?”

  “No, but—” Allart hesitated. He knew it was not lawful for women of the Hastur kin to marry outside that kinfolk. As the thought crossed his mind, Aldaran picked it up and said, “As I thought. It
is only that you want these women for your own Domain, and those close akin to you. I had heard that the male line of Serrais is extinct; it is this inbreeding which has brought that line to extinction. If the women of Serrais wed back into the Hastur kin, I know enough of their bloodlines to predict that their laran will not survive another hundred years. They need new blood in that House. The Ridenow are healthy, and fertile. Nothing better could happen to the Serrais women than for the Ridenow to marry into their kindred.”

  Allart knew that his face betrayed his revulsion, though he tried to hide it. “If you will forgive plain speaking, sir, I find it revolting to speak of the relationships between men and women only in terms of this accursed breeding program in the Domains.”

  Aldaran snorted. “Yet you think it fitting to let the Serrais women be married off to Hasturs and Elhalyns and Aillards all over again? Isn’t that breeding them for their laran, too? They wouldn’t survive three more generations, I tell you! How many fertile sons have been born to Serrais in the last forty years? Come, come, do you think the lords who rule at Thendara are so charitable that they are trying to preserve the purity of Serrais? You are young, but you can hardly be so naïve as that. The Hastur kin would let Serrais die out before they let outlanders breed into it, but these Ridenow have other ideas. And that is the only hope for Serrais—some new genes! If you are wise, you people in the Domains will welcome the Ridenow and bind them to your own daughters with marriage ties!”

  Allart was shocked. “The Ridenow—marry into the Hastur kin? They have no part in the blood of Hastur and Cassilda.”

  “Their sons will have it,” Aldaran said bluntly, “and with new blood, the old Serrais line may survive, instead of breeding itself into sterility, as the Aillards are doing at Valeron, and as some of the Hasturs have done already. How many emmasca sons have been born into the Hasturs of Carcosa, or of Elhalyn, or Aillard, in the last hundred years?”

  “Too many, I fear.” Against his will Allart thought of the lads he had known in the monastery; emmasca, neither male nor wholly female, sterile, some with other defects. “But I have not studied the matter.”

  “Yet you presume to form an opinion on it?” Aldaran raised his eyebrows again. “I heard you had married an Aillard daughter; how many healthy sons and daughters have you? Though I need hardly ask. If you had, you would hardly be willing to swear allegiance to another man’s bastards.”

  Stung, Allart retorted, “My wife and I have been wedded less than half a year.”

  “How many healthy legitimate sons has your brother? Come, come, Allart; you know as well as I that if your genes survive, they will do so in the veins of your nedestro children, even as mine. My wife was an Ardais, and bore me no more living children than your Aillard lady is likely to bear you.”

  Allart lowered his eyes, thinking with a spasm of grief and guilt, It is no wonder the men of our line turn to riyachiyas and such perversions. We can take so little joy in our wives, between guilt at what we do to them, or fear for what will befall them!

  Aldaran saw the play of emotion on the young man’s face and relented. “Well, well, there is no need to quarrel, kinsman; I meant no offense. But we have followed a breeding program, among the kin of Hastur and Cassilda, that has endangered our blood more than any upstart bandits could do—and salvation may take strange forms. It seems to me that the Ridenow will be the salvation of Serrais, if you folk at Elhalyn do not hinder them. But that is neither here nor there. Tell your brother that even if I wished to join in the war, which I do not, I could do nothing of the sort. I am myself hard-pressed; I have quarreled with my brother of Scathfell, and it troubles me that he has, as yet, sought no revenge. What is he plotting? I have meaty bones to pick, here at Aldaran, and it seems to me sometimes that the other mountain lords are like kyorebni, circling, waiting… I am old. I have no legitimate heir, no living son at all, no single child of my own blood save my young daughter.”

  Allart said, “But she is a fair child—and a healthy one, it seems—and she possesses laran. If you have no son, surely you can find somewhere a son-in-law to inherit your estate!”

  “I had hoped so,” Aldaran said. “I think now it might even be well to marry her to one of those Ridenow, but that would bring down all the Elhalyn and Hastur kindred as well. It must depend, also, on whether your kinswoman can help her to survive the threshold at adolescence. I lost three grown sons and a daughter so. When I sought to wed into a line— such as my late wife, Deonara of Ardais—whose laran came early upon them, the children died before birth or in infancy. Dorilys survived birth and infancy, but with her laran, I fear she will not survive adolescence.”

  “The gods forbid she should die so! My kinswoman and I will do all that we can. There are many ways now of preventing death in adolescence. I myself came near it, yet I live.”

  “If that is so,” Aldaran said, “then am I your humble suppliant, kinsman. What I have is yours for the asking. But I beg you, remain and save my child from this fate!”

  “I am at your service. Lord Aldaran. My brother has bidden me remain while I can be of use to you, or as long as needful to persuade you to remain neutral in this war.”

  “That I promise you,” Aldaran said.

  “Then you may command me, Lord Aldaran.” Then Allart’s bitterness broke through. “If you do not hold me too greatly in contempt, that I am not eager to return to the battlefield, since that seems to you the most fitting place for the young men of my clan!”

  Aldaran bent his head. “I spoke in anger. Forgive me, kinsman. But I have no will to join this stupid war in the Lowlands, even though I feel the Hasturs should test the Ridenow before they admit them into their kindred. If the Ridenow cannot survive, perhaps they do not truly deserve to come into the line of Serrais. Perhaps the gods know what they are doing when they send wars among men, so that old lines of blood, softened by luxury and decadence, may die out, and new ones prevail, or come into them; new genetic material with traits tested by their ability to survive.”

  Allart shook his head. “This may have been true in the older days,” he said, “when war was truly a test of strength and courage, so that the weaker did not survive to breed. I cannot believe it is so now, my lord, when such things as clingfire kill the strong and the weak alike, even women and little children who have no part in the quarrels of the lords…”

  “Clingfire!” Lord Aldaran whispered. “Is it so, then—that they have begun to use clingfire in the Domains? But surely they can use it but little; the raw material is hard to mine from the earth and deteriorates so rapidly once it is exposed to the air.”

  “It is made by matrix circles in the Towers, my lord. This is one reason I was eager to leave the area of this war. I would not be sent cleanly into battle, but would be put to make the hellish stuff.” Aldaran closed his eyes as if to shut out the unbearable.

  “Are they all madmen, then, below the Kadarin? I had thought sheer sanity would deter them from weapons which must ravage conquerer and conquered alike! I find it hard to believe in any man of honor loosing such terrible weapons against his kin,” Aldaran said. “Remain here, Allart. All the gods forbid I should send any man back into such dishonorable warfare!” His face twisted. “Perhaps, if the gods are kind, they will exterminate one another, like the dragons of legend who consumed one another in their fire, leaving their prey to build on the scorched ground beneath them.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Renata, head lowered, hurried across the courtyard at Aldaran. In her preoccupation, she ran hard into someone, murmured an apology, and would have hurried on, but felt herself caught and held.

  “Wait a moment, kinswoman! I have hardly seen you since I came here,” Allart said.

  Renata, raising her eyes, said, “Are you making ready to return to the Lowlands, cousin?”

  “No, my lord of Aldaran has invited me to remain, to teach Donal something of what I learned at Nevarsin,” Allart said. Then, looking full into her face, he drew a breath of
consternation. “Cousin, what troubles you? What is so dreadful?”

  Confused, Renata looked at him, saying, “Why, I do not know.” Then, dropping into full rapport with his thoughts, she saw herself as she looked in his eyes—drawn, pale, her face twisted with grief and tragedy.

  Is this what I am, or what I shall be? In sudden fear, she clung for a moment to him, and he steadied her, gently.

  “Forgive me, cousin, that I frightened you. Indeed, I am beginning to feel that much of what I see exists only in my own fear. Surely there is nothing so frightful here, is there? Or is the damisela Dorilys such a little monster as the servants say?”

  Renata laughed, but she still looked troubled. “No, indeed; she is the dearest, sweetest child, and as yet she has shown me only her most biddable and loving face. But— Oh, Allart, it is true! I am frightened for her; she bears a truly dreadful laran, and I am afraid for what I must say to the lord Aldaran, her father! It cannot but make him angry!”

  “I have seen her only for a few minutes,” Allart said. “Donal was showing me how he controls the glider-toys, and she came down and begged to fly with us; but Donal said she must ask Margali, that he would not take the responsibility of letting her come. She was very cross, and went off in a great sulk.”

  “But she did not strike at him?”

  “No,” said Allart. “She pouted and said he did not love her, but she obeyed him. I would not want to let her fly until she could control a matrix, but Donal said he was given one when he was nine, and learned to use it without trouble. Evidently laran comes early on the Delleray kindred.”

  “Or on those of Rockraven,” Renata said, but she still looked troubled. “I would not want to trust Dorilys with a matrix yet; perhaps never. But we will speak of that later. Lord Aldaran has agreed to receive me, and I must not keep him waiting.”

  “Indeed you must not,” Allart said, and Renata went across the courtyard, frowning.