The Ages of Chaos

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “But is it really needful for her to wear those unseemly breeches? It seems not modest to me.”

  Renata laughed. “For flying? How modest would it be, do you think, if her gown should fill with the wind like a great sail and fly up about her ears? Those unseemly breeches seem to me the most modest garment she could possibly wear for flying!”

  “I had not thought of that,” the old leronis confessed, laughing. “I, too, longed to fly when I was a young girl. I wish I were coming with you!”

  “Come along, then,” Renata invited. “Surely you have skill enough to learn to control the levitators!”

  Margali shook her head. “No, my bones are too old. There is a time to learn such things, and when that time is past, it is too late. It’s too late for me. But go, Renata. Enjoy it—and you, too, darling,” she added, kissing Dorilys’s cheek. “Is your tunic fastened? Have you a warm scarf? It is sure to be cold on the heights.”

  Despite her brave words, Renata felt uneasy. Not since she was five years old had she showed the shape of her limbs in any public place. When they joined Allart and Donal in the courtyard, they, too, seemed abashed and did not look at her.

  Renata thought, I hoped Allart had more sense! I have shared his bed, and yet he looks everywhere but at me, as if it came as a great surprise to him that I had legs like everyone else! How ridiculous is custom!

  But Dorilys was quite without self-consciousness, strutting in her breeches, demanding to be noticed and admired.

  “See, Donal! Now I will be able to fly as well as any boy!”

  “And has Renata taught you to practice with the matrix, raising and lowering other objects before you tried it with yourself?”

  “Yes, and I am good at it. Didn’t you say I was good at it, Renata?”

  Renata smiled. “Yes, I think she has a talent for it, which a little practice will sharpen into skill.”

  While Donal showed his sister the mechanism of the glider-toys, Allart came to help Renata with her straps. They stood side by side, watching Dorilys and her brother. The night they had spent together had cemented and strengthened their friendship; it had not really changed its nature. Renata smiled up at Allart, acknowledging his help, realizing with pleasure that she thought of him as she always did, as a friend, not a lover.

  I do not know what love is. I do not think I really want to know…

  She was fond of Allart. She had liked giving him pleasure. But both had been content to leave it there, a single shared impulse of loneliness, and not to build it into anything it was not. Their needs were basically too different for that.

  Donal was now showing Dorilys how to read the air currents carefully, how she could use the focus of her matrix to amplify them and make them more perceptible to her senses. Renata listened carefully; if lads in the Hellers mastered these tricks before they were ten years old, surely a trained matrix worker could do it, too!

  Donal made them all practice a while on the flat windswept area behind the castle, running with the winds and letting themselves rise on the currents, soaring high and circling, swooping down. Finally he declared himself satisfied and pointed to the peak far above them, where the fire station commanded a view of the whole valley beyond Caer Donn. “Do you think you can fly so far, little sister?”

  “Oh, yes!” Dorilys was flushed and breathless, little tendrils of fine copper hair escaping from the long braid at her back, her cheeks whipped to crimson with the wind. “I love it. I would like to fly forever!”

  “Come, then. But stay close to me. Don’t be afraid; you can’t fall, not as long as you keep your awareness of the air currents. Now, lift your wings, like this—”

  He watched her step off and soar upward on a long rising current, rising and rising over a long gulf of sky. Renata followed, feeling the draft take her and toss her high, seeing Allart rising behind her. Dorilys caught a downdraft and was circling, hovering like a hawk, but Donal gestured her onward.

  Higher and higher they flew, rising through a damp white cloud, emerging above it; now hovering and turning, soaring down until they came to rest on the peak. The fire watch station was an ancient structure of cobblestone and timbers; the ranger, a middle-aged man, long and lean, with pale gray eyes and the weathered look of one who spends much of his time peering into unfathomable distances, came to greet them, in surprise and pleasure.

  “Master Donal! Has Dom Mikhail sent you with a message for me?”

  “No, Kyril; it is only that we wished my sister to see how the fire station is managed. This is Lord Allart Hastur, and the lady Renata Leynier, leronis of Hali.”

  “You are welcome,” the man said, courteously, but without undue servility; as a skilled professional, he owed deference to no one. “Have you ever been up to the peak before, little lady?”

  “No. Father thought it too far for me to ride; also, he said you were too busy here during the fire season for guests.”

  “Well, he was right,” Kyril said, “but I will be glad to show you what I can as I have leisure. Come inside, my dear.”

  Inside the station were relief maps of the entire valley, a replica in miniature of the tremendous full-circle panorama seen from the windows of the building on every side. He pointed out to her the cloud-cover over parts of the valley, the areas marked on his map which had been burned over in recent seasons, the sensitive areas of resin-trees which had to be watched closely for any stray spark.

  “What is that light flashing, Master Kyril?”

  “Ah, you have sharp eyes, little one. It is a signal to me, which I must answer.” He took a mirrored-glass device with a small mechanical cover which could be opened and closed swiftly, and stepping to the opened window, began to flash a patterned signal into the valley. After a moment the flashing in the valley resumed. Dorilys started to ask a question, but he motioned her to be quiet, then bent over his map, marked it with chalk, and turned back to her.

  “Now I can explain to you. That man signaled to me that he was building a cookfire there, while the herdmen take their count of his cattle. It is a precaution so that I will not think a forest fire has begun and call men together to fight it. Also, if the smoke remains more than a reasonable time for a herdman’s cookfire, I will know it is out of control and can dispatch someone to help with it before it spreads too far. You see”—he gestured in a circle all around the fire-tower— “I must know at every moment where every wisp of smoke is, in all this country, and what causes it.”

  “You have the chemicals from Tramontana?” Donal asked.

  “The first lot reached me just in time to stop a serious outbreak in the creek-bed there,” he said, indicating it on the map. “Yesterday a consignment was brought here, and others stored at the foot of the peak. It is a dry year, and there is some danger, but we have had only one bad burn, over by Dead Man’s Peak.”

  “Why is it called Deak Man’s Peak?” Dorilys asked.

  “Why, I do not know, little lady; it was so called in my father’s time and my grandfather’s. Perhaps at some time, someone found a dead man there.”

  “But why would anyone go there to die?” Dorilys asked, looking up at the far crags. “To me it looks more like a hawk’s nest.”

  “There were hawks there once,” Kyril said, “for I climbed to take some when I was a young man. But that was long, long ago.” He looked at the distant sea of smoke and flame; to the others it was blurred by distance. “There have been no hawks there for years…”

  Renata interrupted the conversation, saying, “Dorilys, can you tell where the fire on that slope will move next?”

  Dorilys blinked, her face going blank, staring into the distance. After a moment she gestured, and for a moment Allart, astonished, realized she was speaking so rapidly it was gibberish.

  “What, child?” Renata asked, and Dorilys came back to herself.

  She said, “It is so hard to say it in words, when I can see the fire where it was and where it is and where it is moving, from its start to its finish.”<
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  Merciful Avarra, Allart thought. She sees it in three dimensions of time—past and present and future. Is it any wonder we find it hard to communicate with her! The second thought that hit him, hard, was that this might somehow have some bearing on his own curious gift… or curse!

  Dorilys was trying to focus down, to search, struggling, for words to communicate what she saw.

  “I can see where it started, there, but the winds drove it down the watercourse, and it turned—look—into the… I can’t say it! Into those net things at the edge of the wind-stream. Donal,” she appealed, “you see it, don’t you?”

  He came and joined her at the window. “Not quite what you see, sister. I think perhaps no one sees it quite as you do; but can you see where it will move next?”

  “It has moved—I mean, it will move there, where they will have the men all ganged together to fight it,” she said. “But it will come there only because they come. It can feel—No, that isn’t right! There aren’t any words.” Her face twisted and she looked as if she were almost crying. “My head hurts,” she said plaintively. “Can I have a drink of water?”

  “There is a pump behind the door,” the man Kyril said. “The water is good; it comes from a spring behind the station. Be sure to hang up the cup when you have drunk, little lady.” As she went in quest of her drink, Renata and Donal exchanged long looks of amazement

  Renata thought, I have learned more about her laran now in a few minutes than I have learned in half a season. I should have thought to come here before.

  Kyril said in a low voice, “You know, of course, that there are not any men fighting the fire now; they controlled it and left it to burn out along the lower crags. Yet she saw them. I have seen nothing like this since the sorceress Alarie came here once with a fire-talisman to gain command of a great fire, when I was a young man. Is the child a sorceress, then?”

  Renata, disliking the ancient word smacking so much of superstition, said, “No; but she has laran, which we are trying to train properly, to see these things. She took to the gliders like a young bird to the air.”

  “Yes,” Donal said. “It took me far longer to master them. Perhaps she sees the currents more clearly than I can. For all we know, they are solid to her, something she can almost touch. I think Dorilys could learn to use a fire-talisman; the forge-folk have them, to bring metals from the ground to their forges.”

  Renata had heard of this. The forge-folk had certain especially adapted matrixes, which they used for mining and for that purpose only; a technique both more crude and more developed than the highly technical mining methods of the Towers. She had the Tower technician’s distrust of matrix methods developed in this catch-as-catch-can, pragmatic way, without theory.

  Kyril looked into the valley, saying, “The cookfire is out,” and erased the chalk mark on his map. “One less trouble, then. That valley is all as dry as tinder. May I offer you some refreshment, sir? My lady?”

  “We have brought food with us,” Allart said. “Rather, we would be honored if you would share our meal.” He began to unwrap the packages of dried fruit, hard-baked bread, and dried meat that they had brought.

  “I thank you,” Kyril said. “I have wine here, if I may offer you a cupful, and some fresh fruit for the little lady.”

  They sat near the window so that Kyril could continue his watch. Dorilys asked, “Are you alone here all the time?”

  “Why, no, lady. I have an apprentice who helps me, but he has gone down the valley today to see his mother, so for the day I am alone. I had not thought I would be entertaining guests.” He drew out his clasp-knife from his heavy boot and began to peel her an apple, spiraling the peel into delicately cut designs. She watched with fascination, while Renata and Allart watched the clouds moving slowly across the valley far below them, casting strange shadows. Donal came and stood behind them.

  Renata asked him, in a low voice, “Can you, too, sense where the storms will move?”

  “A little, now, when I can see them spread out this way before me. I think perhaps that when I am watching a storm I move a little outside of time, so that I see the whole storm, from start to finish, as Dorilys saw the whole fire a little while ago.” He glanced back at Dorilys, who was eating her apple, chattering with the ranger. “But somehow at the same time I see the lightnings in sequence, one after another, so that I know where each one will strike and which first, because I can see the pattern of where they move through time. That is why, sometimes, I can control them—but only a little. I cannot make them strike anywhere, as my sister does,” he added, lowering his voice so that it would not carry to the little girl. “I can only, now and again, divert them so that they will not strike where they have already begun to move.”

  Allart listened, frowning, thinking of the sensitive divisions of time which this gift took. Donal, picking up his thoughts, said, “I think this must be a little like your gift, Allart. You move outside time, too; do you not?”

  Allart said, troubled, “Yes, but not always into real time. Sometimes, I think, a kind of probability time, which will never happen, depending on the decisions of many, many other people, all crisscrossing. So that I see only a little part of the pattern of what will be or what may be. I don’t think a human mind could ever learn to sort it all out.”

  Donal wanted to ask some questions about whether Allart had ever tested his gift under kirian, one of the telepathic drugs in use in the Towers, for it was well known that kirian somehow blurred the borders between mind and mind so that telepathy was easier, time not quite so rigid. But Renata was following her own line of question, her mind again on her charge.

  “You all saw how the fire troubled her,” she said. “I wonder if that has something to do with the way she uses her gift—or strikes. Because in anger or confusion, she no longer sees a pattern of time clearly; for her there is nothing but that one moment, of rage, or anger, or fear… She cannot see it as only one of a progression of moments. You spoke of a fever she had as a child, when storms raged around the castle for days, and you wondered what dreams or delirium prompted them. Possibly there was some damage to the brain. Fevers often impair laran.” She considered for a long moment, watching the slow inexorable drifting of the storm clouds below them, which now masked a sizable part of the valley floor.

  Dorilys came up behind them, winding her arms around Renata like an affectionate kitten trying to climb into a lap.

  “Is it me you are talking about? Look down there, Renata. See the lightning inside the cloud?”

  Renata nodded, knowing the storm was just beginning to build up enough electrical potential to show lightnings; she herself had not seen lightning yet.

  “But there are lightnings in the air even when there are no clouds and no rain,” Dorilys said. “Can’t you see them, Renata? When I use them, I don’t really bring them, I just use them.” She looked sheepish, guilty, as she added, “When I gave Margali a headache, and tried to do it with you, I was using those lightnings I couldn’t see.”

  Merciful gods, Renata thought, this child is trying to tell me, without knowing the words, that what she does is to tap the electrical potential field of the planet itself! Donal and Allart, picking up the thought, turned startled eyes on her, but Renata did not see them, suddenly shuddering.

  “Are you cold, cousin?” the child asked solicitously. “It is so warm…”

  All the gods at once be thanked that at least she cannot read minds as well…

  Kyril had come over to the window, looking with concentrated attention at the curdled mass of gray that was the storm center and the lightnings just beginning to be visible within it. “You asked about my work, little lady. This is a part of it, to watch where the storm center moves, and see if it strikes anywhere. Many fires are set by lightning, though sometimes no smoke can be seen for a long time after.” He added, with an apologetic glance at the noblemen and Renata, “I think perhaps that some unknown forefather endowed me with a little foresight, because sometime
s when I see a great strike I know that it will later blaze up. And so I watch it with a little more care, for some hours.”

  Renata said, “I would like to inquire into your ancestors, and find how even this diluted trace of laran came into your blood.”

  “Oh, I know that,” Kyril said, again almost apologetic. “My mother was a nedestro of the old lord of Rockraven’s brother—not he who rules there now, but the one before him.”

  So how can I say there is any laran gift which is all evil, without potential use for good? Renata thought. Kyril had turned his own small inherited gift to a useful, skilled, and harmless profession.

  But Donal was following his own thoughts.

  “Is it so, then, Kyril? Why, then, we are kinsmen.”

  “True, Master Donal, though I never sought to bring myself to their notice. Saving your presence, they are a proud people, and my mother was too humble for them. And I have no need of anything they could give.”

  Dorilys slid her hand confidingly through Kyril’s. “Why, then, we are related, too, kinsman,” she said, and he smiled and patted her cheek.

  “You are like your mother, little one; she had your eyes. If the gods will, you will have inherited her sweet voice, as you have her pretty ways.”

  Renata thought, How she charms everyone, when she is not being proud or sullen! Aliciane must have had that sweetness.

  “Come here, Dorilys,” she said. “Look at the storm; can you see where it will move?”

  “Yes, of course,” Dorilys narrowed her eyes and squinted her face in a comical way, and Allart glanced at Renata for permission to question her pupil.

  “Is its course fixed, then, not to be changed at all?”

  Dorilys said, “It’s awfully hard to explain, kinsman. It could go this way or that, if the wind changed, but I can only see one or two ways the wind could change…”

  “But the path is fixed?”

  “Unless I tried to move it,” she said.