The Ages of Chaos

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “You do not understand me, Donal. I would rather be yours, as wife, freemate, or barragana, than marry some man my father chose for me without my knowledge or consent, were that man Prince Felix on his throne at Thendara. My father will be angry when he hears that I dwell openly in your house as barragana, but it will mean he cannot dispose of me to some other man, for there are those who would not have me upon such conditions, and I am beyond the reach of his anger—or his ambition!”

  Donal felt guilty, knowing he could not so have defied his foster-father; and now, having defied her kin, Renata had nowhere else to go. He knew he should be equally brave, refuse Lord Aldaran’s command, and insist upon marrying Renata at once, even if his foster-father were to disinherit him and drive him forth.

  Yet, he thought, miserably, I cannot quarrel with him. It is not only for my own sake, but I would not leave him at the mercy of the folk of Scathfell, and the other mountain lords who hover to pick his bones the moment they see him helpless! His foster-father had no one else. How could he leave him alone? Yet it seemed that honor demanded he do just that.

  He covered his face with his hands.

  “I feel torn in pieces, Renata! Loyalty to you—and loyalty to my father. Is this, I wonder, why marriages are arranged by kinfolk, so that such terrible conflicts of loyalty cannot arise?”

  As if Donal’s tormented self-questioning could reverberate throughout Castle Aldaran, Allart, too, was troubled, restlessly pacing in his allotted chamber.

  He thought, I should have let Donal speak. If the shock of knowing he could not always have his own way should have killed Dom Mikhail, then we can well spare such tyrants, seeking always to impose their own will on others, despite their conscience… All the rage and resentment Allart had felt against his own father, he was ready to pour out on Lord Aldaran.

  For this damned breeding program he will wreck Donal’s life, and Dorilys’s—before she is even out of childhood—and Renata’s! Does he care about anything except a legitimate heir of Aldaran blood?

  But then, belatedly, Allart began to be fair. He thought, No, it is not all Dom Mikhail’s fault. Donal is to blame, too, that he did not go at once to Dom Mikhail when first he fell in love with Renata, and ask for her in marriage. And I am to blame, that I listened to his request for some legal loophole. It was I who put it into his head that Donal and Dorilys could be married even as a legal fiction! And it was my damned foresight that made me prevent Donal from speaking out! Again I was swayed by a happening that might never have come to pass!

  My laran has brought this upon us all. Now somehow I must manage to master it, to thread my way and see through time, to discover what will happen among the many futures I see.

  He had blocked it for so long. For many moons now, he had spent much of his emotional energy trying to see nothing, to live in the moment as others did, not letting himself be swayed by the shifting, seductive possibilities in the many futures. The thought of opening his mind to it all was terror, a fear that was almost physical. Yet that was what he must do.

  Locking his door against intrusion, he went about his preparations with as much calm as he could summon. Finally he stretched out on the stone floor, closing his eyes and breathing quietly in the Nevarsin-trained manner, to calm himself. Then, struggling against panic—he couldn’t do this, he had spent seven years in Nevarsin learning how not to do this—he lowered the self-imposed barriers and reached out with his laran…

  For an instant—timeless, eternal, probably not much more than half a second, but seeming like a million years inside his screaming senses—all of time rushed in on him, past and present, all of the deeds of his forefathers that had resulted in this moment. He saw a woman walking by the lake of Hali, a woman of surpassing beauty with the colorless gray eyes and moonlight hair of a chieri; he glimpsed memories of forests and peaks; he saw other stars and other suns, a world with a yellow sun with only a single pale moon in the sky; he looked out on a black night of space; he died in snow, in space, in fire, a thousand deaths crammed into a single moment; he fought and died screaming on a battlefield; he saw himself die curled into fetal position and withdrawing into himself beyond thought as he had almost done in his fourteenth year; he lived a hundred thousand lives in that one shrieking moment, and knew his body convulsing into spasms of terror, dying… He heard himself cry out in agony and knew he was insane, that he would never come back… He fought for a moment to slam the gates he had opened, knew it was too late…

  And then he was Allart again, and knew he had only this single life, now, the others were irrevocably past or had yet to be. But in this single life (and how narrow it looked, after those centuries upon centuries of split-second awareness that he was, he had been, he would be) still spread out before him, infinitely reduplicating itself, with every move he made hundreds of new possibilities were created and others were wiped out forever. He could see now how every move he had made since his childhood had either opened up opportunities or closed off other paths for all time. He could have taken the path of pride in strength and weaponry, set himself to best Damon-Rafael at swordplay and combat, become his father’s most needed son… He could have somehow arranged it so that Damon-Rafael died in childhood, become his father’s heir… He could have remained forever in the safe and sheltered walls of Nevarsin, disinherited… He could have plunged into the world of the senses that he had discovered, an infinite temptation, in the arms of a riyachiya. … He could have choked out the life of his father, in his humiliated pride… Slowly, through the crowding pasts, he could see the inevitability of the choices that had led him to this moment, to this crossroads…

  Now he was here, at this crucial moment in time, where his past choices, willing or unwilling, had led him. Now his future choices must be made in full knowledge of what they might bring. In that overloaded moment of total awareness, he accepted responsibility for what had been, and for what would be, and began to look carefully ahead.

  Dorilys’s words flashed through his mind: “It’s like a stream of water. If I put rocks in it, it would go around the rocks, but it could go either way. But I couldn’t make it jump out of the stream-bed, or run back uphill…”

  Slowly he began to see, with that curious extended perception, what lay ahead; the most likely thing straight before him, it seemed, fanning out to the wildest possibilities at the far edges of his awareness. He saw immediately before him the possibilities that Donal would accept; would defy; would take Renata and be gone from Aldaran; would take Dorilys and father nedestro children upon Renata. He saw that Dom Erlend Leynier might join forces with Scathfell against Aldaran in retaliation for the insult to his daughter. (He should warn Renata of that—but would she care?) Again and again, he saw the often repeated vision of Scathfell’s armed men upon Aldaran in the spring, so that once again Aldaran must be kept by force of arms… He saw remoter possibilities: that Lord Aldaran would indeed be struck down by a massive stroke, would die or lie helpless for months and years, while Donal struggled with his unwilling regency for his sister… that Lord Aldaran would recover and drive Scathfell away with his superior armed might… that Lord Aldaran would somehow be reconciled to his brother… He saw Dorilys dying in threshold sickness when womanhood came upon her… dying while delivering the child Donal swore he would never father upon her… surviving to give Donal a son, who would inherit only the Aldaran laran and die of threshold sickness in his teens…

  Painfully, painstakingly, Allart forced himself to thread his way through all the possibilities. I am not a god! How can I tell which of these things would be best for all? I can only say what would be least painful for Donal or for Renata, whom I love…

  Now, against his will, he began to see his own future. He would return to Cassandra… he would not return but would dwell forever in Nevarsin or, like Saint-Valentine-of-the-Snows, alone in a solitary cave in the Hellers till death… he would be reunited ecstatically with Cassandra… he would die at the hands of Damon-Rafael, who feared tr
eachery… Cassandra would dwell forever in the Tower… she would die in bearing his child… she would fall into the hands of Damon-Rafael, who had never ceased to regret that he had given her to Allart instead of making her his own barragana… This jolted Allart completely out of the reverie of crowding futures and probabilities, to look more closely at that one.

  Damon-Rafael, his own wife dead, and his single legitimate son dead before weaning… Allart had not known that; it was pure foresight, laran. But was it true or only a fear born of his consciousness of Cassandra and of Damon-Rafael’s unscrupulous ambition? Abruptly something his father had said when speaking of his handfasting to Cassandra surged back into his mind.

  “You will be married to a woman of the Aillard clan, with genes specially modified to control this laran. …” Allart had heard his father, but he had not been listening. He had heard only the voice of his own fear. But Damon-Rafael had known. It would not be the first time that a Domain chief, powerful and ambitious, had taken the wife of his younger brother… or his brother’s widow. If I return to claim Cassandra for my wife, Damon-Rafael will kill me. With a craven pang, Allart wondered how he could avoid this fate, the fate it now seemed he saw everywhere.

  I shall return to the monastery, take vows there, never to return to Elhalyn. Then Damon-Rafael will take Cassandra for his wife, and seize the throne of Thendara from the faltering hands of the young emmasca who sits there now. Cassandra will mourn for me, but when she is queen at Thendara she will forget…

  And Damon-Rafael, his ambition satisfied, will be content.

  Then horror flared upon Allart, seeing what kind of king his brother would be. Tyranny—the Ridenow would be wiped out wholly so that the women of Serrais could be bred into the line of Elhalyn, the Hasturs of Hali and Valeron would be assimilated into the single line of Elhalyn, so many alliances entered into that the Domains themselves would become only vassals to the Hastur of Elhalyn, reigning from Thendara. Damon-Rafael’s greedy hands would reach out to bring all of the known world from Dalereuth to the Hellers under the domain of Elhalyn. All this would happen in the name of bringing peace… peace under the despotism of Damon-Rafael and the sons of Hastur!

  Inbreeding, sterility, weakness, decadence, the inflow of barbarians from the Dry-towns and hill country . . . sack, looting, ravage, death…

  I do not want a crown. Yet no man living could rule this land worse than my brother…

  By main force Allart shut off the flow of images. Somehow, he must prevent this from occurring. Now for the first time he let himself think seriously of Cassandra. How casually he had almost stepped aside, leaving her to become Damon-Rafael’s prey—for, queen or no, no woman would ever be more than this to his brother, a toy of lust and a pawn of ambition. Damon-Rafael had brought an almost certain death upon Cassilde, not caring as long as she bore him a legitimate son. He would not hesitate to use Cassandra the same way.

  Then something in Allart that he had crushed and subdued and trampled suddenly reared up and said, No! He shall not have her!

  If she had wanted Damon-Rafael, if she had even been ambitious for the crown, then, with agony never to be weighed or measured, Allart might have stepped aside. But he knew her too well for that. It was his responsibility—and his right, his unchallenged right—to protect and reclaim her for himself.

  Even now, my brother might be reaching out his hand to take her…

  Allart could see ahead into all possible futures, but he could not see what was actually happening now at a distance—not without the aid of his matrix. Slowly, stretching cramped muscles, he stood up and looked around the chamber. The night had passed, and the snow; crimson dawn was breaking over the Hellers outside his window, showing snowclad peaks flashing red sunlight. With the weather-wisdom of the mountains, which he had learned at Nevarsin, he knew the storm was gone, for a time at least.

  With the starstone in his hand, Allart resolutely focused on his thought, enormously amplified by the matrix, over the long spaces that lay between. What befalls at Elhalyn? What is happening in Thendara?

  Slowly, pinpointed as if he were seeing it with his physical eyes through the small end of a lens, tiny and sharp-edged and brilliant, a picture formed before his eyes.

  Along the shores of Hali, where the unending waves that were not water splashed and receded forever, a procession wound its way, with the banners and flags of mourning. Old King Regis was being carried to the burial ground at the shores of Hali, there to lie, as custom demanded, in an unmarked grave among the former kings and rulers of the Domains. In that procession, face after face flashed before Allart’s eyes, but only two made any impression on him: One, the narrow, pale sexless face of Prince Felix, sad and fearful. It would not be long, Allart knew, looking at the rapacious faces of the nobles in his train, before Prince Felix was stripped naked and forced to yield his crown to one who could pass on blood and genes, the precious laran. The other was the face of Damon-Rafael of Elhalyn, next heir to the crown of Thendara. As if already tasting his victory, Damon-Rafael rode with a fierce smile on his face. Before Allart’s eyes the picture blurred, not into what was now, but what would be, and he saw Damon-Rafael crowned in Thendara, Cassandra, robed and jeweled as a queen, at his side, and the powerful lords of Valeron, cemented in close alliance through kinfolk, standing behind the new king Damon-Rafael…

  War, decadence, ruin, chaos… Allart suddenly knew he stood at the crux of a line of events which could alter forever the whole future of Darkover.

  I wish my brother no harm. But I cannot let him plunge all of our world into ruin. There is no journey that does not begin with a single step. I cannot prevent Damon-Rafael from becoming king. But he will not cement the Aillard alliance by making my wife his queen.

  Allart put the matrix aside, sent for his servants and had food brought, eating and drinking without tasting, to strengthen him against what he knew must come. That done, he went in search of Lord Aldaran. He found Dom Mikhail in high good humor.

  “I have sent the message to my brother of Scathfell, inviting him to the wedding of my daughter and my beloved foster-son,” he said. “It is a stroke of genius. There is no other man into whose hands I would so willingly give my little daughter for her safety and protection lifelong. I shall tell her today what we intend, and I think she, too, will be grateful, that she need not be given into a stranger’s hands… You are responsible for this splendid solution, my friend. I wish I could somehow repay you with some equal kindness! How I would like to be a fly upon the wall when my brother of Scathfell reads the letter I have sent him!”

  Allart said, “As a matter of fact, Dom Mikhail, I have come to ask you a great favor.”

  “It would be a pleasure to grant you whatever you ask, cousin.”

  “I wish to send for my wife, who dwells in Hali Tower. Will you receive her as a guest?”

  “Willingly,” Dom Mikhail said. “I will send my own guard as escort, if you wish it, but the journey is precarious at this time of year; ten days’ ride from the Lowlands with the winter storms coming on. Perhaps you could eliminate the time it would take my men to travel to the lake of Hali and fetch her, if you sent to Tramontana Tower with a message through the relays that she should set forth at once. I could send men to meet her on the way and escort her. I suppose she could find her own escort from Elhalyn.”

  Allart looked troubled. He said, “I do not want to trust her to my brother, and I am reluctant that her going should be known.”

  Dom Mikhail looked at him sharply. “Is it like that? I suggest, then, that you go at once with Donal to Tramontana, and try to persuade them to bring her here at once, through the Tower relays. It is not often done in these days—the expenditure of energy is out of all reason—unless the need is desperate. But if it is as important as that—”

  Allart said, “I did not know that could still be done!”

  “Oh, yes, the equipment is still there in the Tower, matrix-powered. Perhaps, with your help, they could be persua
ded. I would suggest that you ride to Tramontana, however, rather than flying; the weather is not good enough at this season for that… Still, speak with Donal. He knows all that there is to know about flying in the Hellers at any season.” He rose, courteously dismissing the younger man.

  “It will be a pleasure to welcome your wife as my guest, cousin. She will be an honored guest at my daughter’s wedding.”

  “Yes, of course we can fly there,” Donal said, glancing at the sky. “We will have at least a day free of snow, but of course we cannot return the same day. If there must be work done within the relays, you would be too exhausted, and so would your lady. I suggest that we leave for Tramontana as soon as we can, and that I give orders for mounts to be sent after us, including one for your wife, gentle and suited to a lady’s riding.”

  They set forth later that morning. Allart did not speak of Donal’s approaching marriage, fearing it might be a sore point with him, but Donal brought it up himself. “It cannot be before midwinter night,” he said. “Renata has monitored Dorilys and she says she will not mature before that. And she has had such ill fortune with handfastings that even Father hesitates to subject her to another such ceremony.”

  “Has she been told?”

  “Yes, Father told her,” Donal said, hesitating, “and I spoke with her, a little, after… She is only a child. She has only the haziest idea of what marriage means.”

  Allart was not so certain, but after all it was Donal’s affair, and Renata’s, not his. Donal turned to catch the wind, tilted his glider-wings with the control, and soared upward on a long drift of air.

  Once airborne, as always, the troubles of the world slipped away from Allart’s thoughts; he gave himself up to it without thought, riding the achingly cold air in a kind of ecstasy, matrix-borne, hawk-free. He was almost regretful when he came in sight of Tramontana Tower, but not quite. There lay his path to Cassandra.