The Ages of Chaos

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “In the pockets, the pockets,

  Fro’ Domenick’s pockets.

  Those wonderful pockets he wore round his waist.

  The pockets he stuffed every morning in haste;

  Whatever he owned at the start of the day,

  He stuffed in his pockets and went on his way.”

  The audience was chuckling before long at the ever-increasing and ridiculous catalog of the possessions borne in the legendary monk’s pockets.

  “Whatever he owned at the start of the day,

  He stuffed in his pockets and went on his way.

  A bowl and a spoon and a book for his prayers,

  A blanket to shield him against the cold airs,

  A pencase to write down his prayers and his letters.

  A warm cozy kneepad to kneel to his betters,

  A nutcracker handled in copper and gold…”

  Dorilys herself was struggling to keep her face straight as her audience began to chuckle, or giggle, or in the case of her father, throw back his head and guffaw with laughter at the absurdity of some of the contents of:

  “The pockets, the pockets, Fro’ Domenick’s pockets…”

  She had reached the verse which detailed:

  “A saddle and bridle, some spurs and a rein

  In case he was given a riding chervine,

  A gold-handled basin, a razor of—”

  Dorilys broke off, uncertainly, as the door opened, and Lord Aldaran turned in anger on his paxman, who had entered with such lack of ceremony.

  “Varlet, how dare you break into the room of your young mistress this way!”

  “I beg the young lady’s pardon, but the matter is extremely urgent. Lord Scathfell—”

  “Come, come,” Aldaran said irritably. “Even if he were at our gates with a hundred armed warriors, my man, it would not excuse such a lack of courtesy!”

  “He has sent you a message. His messenger speaks of a demand, my lord.”

  After a moment Mikhail of Aldaran rose. He bowed to Lady Elisa and to his daughter with as much courtesy as if Dorilys’s little schoolroom had been a presence-chamber.

  “Ladies, forgive me. I would not willingly have interrupted your music. But I fear I must ask permission to withdraw, daughter.”

  For a moment Dorilys gaped; he asked her permission to come and go? It was clearly the first time he had extended this grown-up formal politeness; but then the beautiful manners in which Margali and Renata had schooled her came to her aid. She dropped him so deep a curtsy that she nearly sank to her knees.

  “You are welcome to come and go at your own occasions, sir, but I beg you to return when you are free.”

  He bent over her hand. “I shall indeed, my daughter. Ladies, my apologies.” he added, extending the bow to Margali and Renata, then he said curtly, “Donal, attend me,” and Donal rose and hurried after him.

  When they had gone, Dorilys tried to resume her song, but the heart had gone out of the occasion and after a little it broke up. Allart went down into the courtyard where the riding animals were stabled, and the escort of the diplomatic mission from Scathfell was tethered. Among them he could see other badges of different mountain clans, that armed men came and went in the courts, but they shifted like water and were not there when he looked again. He knew that his laran painted hallucinations for him of things that might never be. He tried to thread his way through them, to see into time, but he was not calm enough, and what he sensed—he was not consciously reading the minds of those who had brought Scathfell’s demand, but they, too, were broadcasting their emotions all over the landscape—was not conducive to calm.

  War? Here? He felt a pang of grief for the long beautiful summer, so irrevocably shattered. How could I sit at peace when my people are at war and my brother prepares to strive for a crown? What have I done to deserve this peace, when even my beloved wife faces danger and terror? He went to his room and tried to calm himself with the Nevarsin breathing disciplines, but he could not concentrate with the visions of war, storms, and riots crowding eyes and brain, and he was grateful when, after a considerable time, he was summoned to Aldaran’s presence-chamber.

  He had expected to confront the embassy from Scathfell, as he had seen them so often in his vision, but no one was there except Aldaran himself, staring gloomily at the floor in front of his high seat, and Donal, pacing nervously back and forth.

  As Allart came in Donal gave him a quick look of gratitude and entreaty mingled.

  “Come in, cousin,” Dom Mikhail said. “Now indeed do we need the advice of kinsmen. Will you sit?”

  Allart would have preferred to stand, or to pace like Donal, but he took the seat Dom Mikhail indicated. The old man sat with his chin in his hands, brooding. At last he said, “Do you sit, too, Donal! You drive me mad pacing there like a berserker possessed by a raging wolf,” and waited for his foster-son to seat himself beside Allart. “Rakhal of Scathfell—for I will not yield him the name of brother—has sent me an envoy with demands so outrageous that I can no longer bear them in calm. He sees fit to demand that I shall choose without delay, preferably before midwinter, one of his younger sons—I suppose I should be honored that he leaves it up to me to choose which of his damned whelps I will have—to be formally adopted as my heir, since I have no legitimate son, nor, he says, am I likely to have one at my age.” He picked up a piece of paper lying on the seat where he cast it, and crumpled it again in his fist. “He says I should invite all men to witness what I have done in declaring a son of Scathfell my heir, and then—will you listen to the insolence of the man!—he says, then you may live out your few remaining years in such peace as your other deeds allow.” He clenched the offending letter in his fist as if it were his brother’s neck.

  “Tell me, cousin. What am I to do with that man?”

  Allart stared, appalled. In the name of all the gods, he thought, what does he mean by asking me? Does he think seriously that I am capable of advising him on such a matter?

  Aldaran added, more gently, and also more urgently, “Allart, you were schooled at Nevarsin; you know all our history, and all the law. Tell me, cousin. Is there no way at all that I can keep my brother of Scathfell from grasping my estate even before my bones are cold in my grave?”

  “My lord, I do not see how they can compel you to adopt your brother’s son. But I do not know how you can keep Lord Scathfell’s sons from inheriting after you; the law is not clear about female children.” And if it were, he thought almost in despair, is Dorilys truly fit to rule? “When a female heir is given leave to inherit, it is usually because all concerned feel that her husband will make a suitable overlord. No one will deny you the right to leave Aldaran to Dorilys’s husband.”

  “And yet,” Aldaran said, with painstaking fingers smoothing out the crumpled letter, “look—the seals of Storn, and Sain Scarp, and even of Lord Darriel, hung about this letter, as if to lend their strength to this—this ultimatum he has sent. No wonder Lord Storn made me no reply when I sought his son for Dorilys. Each of them is afraid to ally himself with me lest he alienate all the others. Now, indeed, do I wish the Ridenow were not entangled in this war against your kin, or I should offer Dorilys there.” He was silent a moment, brooding. “I have sworn I will burn Aldaran over my own head ere it goes to my brother. Help me find a way, Allart.”

  The first thought that flashed into Allan’s mind—and later, he was grateful that he had had sense enough to barricade it so that Aldaran could not read it—was this: My brother Damon-Rafael has but lately lost his wife. But the very thought filled his mind with erupting visions of dread and disaster. The effort to control them kept him silent in consternation, while he remembered Damon-Rafael’s prediction that had sent him here: “I fear a day when all our world from Dalereuth to the Hellers will bow before the might of Aldaran.”

  Noting his silence, Dom Mikhail said, “It is a thousand pities you are wed, cousin. I would offer my daughter to you. … But you know my will. Tell me, Allart. Is
there no way at all in which I can declare Donal my heir? It is he who has always been the true son of my heart.”

  “Father,” Donal entreated, “don’t quarrel with your kinsmen about me. Why set the land aflame in a useless war? When you have gone to join your forefathers—may that day be far from you, dear foster-father—what will it matter to you, then, who holds Aldaran?”

  “It matters,” said the old man, his face set like a mask in stone. “Allart, in all your knowledge of the law, is there no single loophole through which I might bring Donal into this inheritance?”

  Allart set his mind to consider this. He said at last, “None, I think, that you could use, but these laws about blood inheritance are not yet so strong as all that. As recently as seven or eight generations ago, you and your brothers and all your wives would have dwelt together, and the eldest among you, or your chosen leader, would have chosen for heir the son who looked most likely and capable, not the eldest son of the eldest brother, but the best. It is custom, not law, that has foisted this rule of primogeniture and known fathering on the mountains. Yet if you simply proclaim that you have chosen Donal by the old law and not the new, then there will be war, my lord. Every eldest son in the mountains will know his position threatened, and his younger brother or his remote kinsmen more his enemy than now.”

  “It would be simpler,” said Aldaran with great bitterness, “if Donal were a waif or an orphan, and not the son of my beloved Aliciane. Then could I wed him to Dorilys, and see my daughter protected and my estate in the hands of the one who knows it best and is best fitted to care for it.”

  Allart said, “That could still be done, my lord. It would be a legal fiction—as when the lady Bruna Leynier, sister of the heir who had been killed in battle, took her brother’s widow and his unborn child under her protection in freemate marriage, so that no other marriage could be forced upon the widow and the child’s rights set aside. They say that she commanded the guards, too, in her brother’s place.”

  Aldaran laughed. “I thought that only a jesting tale.”

  “No,” said Allart. “It happened, indeed. The women dwelt together for twenty years, until the unborn child was grown to manhood and could claim his rights. Folly, perhaps, but the laws could not forbid it. Such a marriage has a legal status at least—a half-brother and half-sister can marry if they will. Renata has told me it is best for Dorilys to bear no children, and Donal could father a nedestro heir to succeed him.”

  He was thinking of Renata, but Mikhail of Aldaran raised his head with a quick, decisive movement. “Legal fiction be damned,” he said. “That is our answer, then, Donal. Allart is mistaken in what Renata said. I remember it well! She said Dorilys should not bear a daughter, but it would be safe for her to bear a son. And she has Aldaran blood, which would mean that Donal’s son would be an Aldaran heir, and thus entitled to inherit after them. Every breeder of animals knows this is the best way to fix a desired trait in the line, to breed back with the same genetic materials. So that Dorilys will bear to her half-brother the son Aliciane should have given me—Renata will know how to make sure of that—and the fire-control and lightning-control talents redoubled. We must be careful for a few generations not to allow any daughters to be born, but so much the better, so that the line will flourish.”

  Donal stared at his foster-father, appalled. “You cannot possibly be serious, sir!”

  “Why not?”

  “But Dorilys is my sister—and only a little girl.”

  “Half-sister,” Aldaran said, “and not such a little girl as all that. Margali tells me she will come to womanhood sometime this winter, so there is not even long to wait before we can tell them a true Aldaran heir is to inherit.”

  Donal stared at his father, stricken, and Allart could tell he was thinking of Renata, but Mikhail of Aldaran was too intent on his own will to have the slightest scrap of laran left over for reading his foster-son’s thoughts. But as Donal opened his mouth to speak, Allart saw, all too clearly, the old man’s face darkening and twisting, stricken, the roaring of the brain. Allart clamped the boy’s wrist in his hand, forcing the picture of Aldaran’s attack on Donal, hard, his thoughts strong as the command-voice: In the name of all the gods, Donal, don’t quarrel with him now! It would be the death of him! Donal fell back into his seat, the words unspoken. The picture of Lord Aldaran stricken down at the words vanished into the limbo of those things which now would not come to pass, and Allart saw it thin out and vanish, relieved and yet troubled. I am not a monitor, but if he stands so near to death, we must tell Renata. He should be monitored…

  “Come, come,” Aldaran said gently. “Your scruples are foolish, my son. You have known for many years that Dorilys must marry as soon as she is grown, and if she must be wed before she is full-grown, will it not be easier for her to marry someone she knows and loves well? Would you not use her more gently than some stranger? It is the only way I can think of, that you should marry Dorilys and father a son upon her—as things are now,” he added, frowning a little.

  Allart, startled and shocked, realized it was probably just as well for Dorilys that Lord Aldaran was very old and considered himself past fathering an heir.

  “As for this thing,” Aldaran said, crushing Scathfell’s letter again and flinging it to the floor, “I think I shall use it to wipe myself, and send it so to my brother, to show him what I think of his ultimatum! At the same time I shall invite him to witness your wedding.”

  “No,” whispered Donal. “Father, I beg you—”

  “Not a word, my son; my mind is made up.” Aldaran rose and embraced Donal. “Since first Aliciane brought you into this house, you have been my beloved son; and this will make it legitimate. Will you deny me that, dear lad?”

  Donal stood helpless, unable to speak his protest. How could he cast his foster-father’s love and concern back at him at that moment?

  “Call my scribe,” said Lord Aldaran. “I shall take pleasure in dictating a letter to Lord Scathfell, inviting him to the wedding of my daughter and heir with my chosen son.”

  Donal made a final plea. “You know, my father, that this is a declaration of war? They will come against us in force.”

  Aldaran gestured at the window. Outside the gray skies were blurring with the fall of daytime snow, the first of the year. “They will not come now,” he said. “Winter is upon us. They will not come till spring thaw. And then—” He threw back his head and laughed, and Allart felt chills down his spine, thinking of the raucous scream of a bird of prey. “Let them come. Let them come when they will. We will be ready for theml”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  But truly there is no woman in the world whom I wish to marry,” Donal said, “except for you,, my beloved.” Until Renata had come into his life, he had never believed that he would have any choice in the matter—nor did he particularly want it, provided his bride-to-be was neither sickly nor a shrew, and he had trusted his foster-father to make sure of that. He had wasted very little thought on the matter.

  Renata saw all these thoughts—and the almost unconscious resentment in Donal, that he had had to face this enormous change in his life pattern—and reached out to take his hand.

  “Indeed I am to blame, my love. I should have done as you wished, and married you at once.”

  “No one speaks of blame, carya mea, but what are we to do now? My foster-father is old, and today I truly feared he would be stricken down as I spoke, had not Allart prevented me. All the gods forgive me, Renata, I could not help thinking—if he should die, then would I be free of this thing he asks.” Donal covered his face with his hands, and Renata, watching him, knew that his present upheaval was her doing. It was she who had inspired him to set himself against his foster-father’s wishes.

  At last she said, keeping her voice calm with considerable effort, “Donal, my beloved, you must do what you feel is right. The gods forbid I should try to persuade you against your conscience. If you think it wrong to go against your foster-father�
��s will, then you must obey him.”

  He raised his face, struggling with the effort not to break down. “In the name of the merciful gods, Renata, how could I possibly want to obey him? Do you think I want to marry my sister?”

  “Not even with Aldaran as the dower?” she asked. “You cannot tell me that you have no desire to inherit the Domain.”

  “If I could do it justly! But not like this, Renata, not like this! I would defy him, but I cannot speak that word if it would strike him dead, as Allart fears! And the worst of it is—if you desert me now, if I should lose you—”

  Quickly she reached out and took his hands in hers. “No, no, my love. I will not desert you, I promise it! That was not what I meant! I meant only that if you are forced into this marriage, it can be the legal fiction he wishes it to be, or wished it to be at first.”

  Donal swallowed hard. “How can I ask that? A noblewoman of your rank cannot become a barragana. This would mean I can never offer you what you should have in honor, the catenas and honorable recognition as my wife. My own mother was a barragana. I know what life would be for our children. Daily they taunted me, called me brat and bastard and things that made less pleasant hearing. How could I bring that upon any child of mine? Merciful Evanda, there were times I hated my own mother, that she had exposed me to such things!”

  “I would rather be barragana to you than wear the catenas for another, Donal.”

  He knew she spoke truth, but confused resentment made him lash out, “Truly? What you mean, I suppose, is that you would rather be barragana to Aldaran than wife to the poor farmer of High Crags!”

  She looked at him in dismay. Already it has made us quarrel!