Stormqueen!

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “Gods above,” Allart said, and Cassandra came and stood looking up at him, troubled.

  “Will the lord Damon-Rafael send for you, my husband? Must you go to the war?”

  “I do not know,” he said. “I was long enough in the monastery that my brother may think me too little skilled in campaign and strategy, and wish another of his paxmen to command the men.” He fell silent, thinking, If one of us must go, perhaps it is better if I go to war. If I do not come back, then she will be freed, and we will be out of this hopeless impasse. The woman was looking up at him, her eyes filled with tears, but he kept his face cold, impassive, the disciplined and impersonal glance of the monk. He said, “Why are you not resting, my lady? Renata said you would be ill. Should you not keep your bed?”

  “I heard the talk of war and I was frightened,” she said, seeking for his hand, but he gently drew it away, turning to Coryn.

  The Keeper said, “I would think you better employed here, Allart. You have the strength that makes our work easier, and since the war has broken out again, we are sure to be asked to make clingfire for weapons. And since we are to lose Renata—”

  “Are we to lose Renata?”

  Coryn nodded. “She is a neutral in this war; her father has already sent word on the relays that she must be sent home under a safe-conduct. He wishes her out of the combat area at once. I am always sorry to lose a good monitor,” Coryn added, “but I believe, with training, Cassandra will be equally skillful. Monitoring is not difficult, but Arielle is better as a technician. Do you think, Renata, that you will have time to instruct Cassandra in the techniques of monitoring before you go?”

  “I will try,” Renata said, coming toward them, “and I will stay as long as I can. I do not want to leave the Tower—” and she looked up at Allart helplessly. He remembered what she had told him only that morning.

  “I shall be sorry to see you go, kinswoman,” he said, taking her hands gently in his own.

  “I would rather stay here with you,” she said. “Would that I were a man like you and free to choose.”

  “Ah, Renata,” he said, “men are not free either, not free to refuse war and dangers. I who am a Hastur lord can be sent unwilling into battle as if I were the least of my brother’s vassals.”

  They stood for a moment, hands clasped, unaware of Cassandra’s eyes on them, nor did either of them see her leave the hall. Then Coryn came up to them.

  “How we shall need you, Renata! Lord Damon-Rafael has sent to us already for a new supply of clingfire and I have devised a new weapon that I am eager to experiment with.” He took a careless seat in the window, as merrily as if he were devising a new sport or game. “A homing device set to a trap-matrix to kill only a particular enemy, so that if we aim it—for instance—at Lord Ridenow, it will do no good for his paxman to throw himself in front of his lord’s body. Of course we would have to get his thought-pattern, resonances from some captured article of his clothing, perhaps, or better yet, jewelry he has worn next to his body. Or by probing some captured man of his. Such a weapon will harm no one else, for nothing but the particular pattern of his mind will detonate it; it will fly to him, and him only, and kill him.”

  Renata shuddered, and Allart absentmindedly stroked her hand.

  “Clingfire is too hard to make.” Arielle said. “I wish they could find some better weapon. First we must mine the red stuff from the ground, then separate it atom by atom by distilling at high heat, and that is dangerous. Last time I worked with it, one of the glass vessels exploded; fortunately I was wearing protective clothing, but even so—” She thrust out her hand, showing a wicked scar, round, cicatrized, a deep depression in the flesh. “Only a fragment, only a grain, but it burned to the bone and had to be cut away.”

  Coryn lifted the girl’s hand to his lips and kissed it. “You bear an honorable scar of war, preciosa. Not many women do. I have devised vessels which will not break at whatever heat; we have all put a binding spell on them so that they cannot shatter no matter what happens. Even if they should crack or break, the binding spell will hold them so that they stay in their shape and will not fly and shatter and injure the bystanders.”

  “How did you do that?” Mira asked.

  “It was easy,” Coryn said. “You set their pattern with a matrix so they can take no other shape. They can crack, and their contents can leak out, but they cannot fly asunder. If they are smashed the pieces will sooner or later settle gently down—we cannot put gravity wholly in abeyance—but they will not fly with enough strength to cut anyone. But to work with a ninth-level matrix, as we must do when refining clingfire, we need a circle of nine, and a technician, or better yet, another Keeper, to hold the binding spell on the vessels. I wonder,” Coryn added, gazing at Allart, “would you make a Keeper, given training?”

  “I have no such ambitions, kinsman.”

  “Yet it would keep you away from the war,” Coryn said frankly, “and if you feel guilt at that, remember you will be better employed here, and not without risk. None of us is free of scars. Look,” he added, holding up his hands, showing a deep, long-healed burn. “I took a backflow once, when a technician faltered. The matrix was like a live coal. I thought it would burn to the bones of my hands like clingfire. As for suffering—well, if we are to be working circles of nine, night and day, for the making of weapons—well, we will suffer, and our women with us, if we must spend so much time in the circles.”

  Arielle colored as the men standing around began to chuckle softly; they all knew what Coryn meant: the major side effect of matrix work, for men, was a long period of impotence. Seeing Allan’s stiff smile, Coryn chuckled again.

  “Perhaps we should all be monks, and trained to endure that, with cold and hunger,” he said, laughing. “Allart, tell me. I have heard that on your way from Nevarsin you were attacked by a clingfire device which exploded—but you managed to wrest it loose so that it exploded at a distance. Tell me about that.”

  Allart told what he could remember of the episode, and Coryn nodded gravely. “I had thought of such a missile, making it superfragile, to be filled either with clingfire or with ordinary incendiaries. I have one which will set an entire forest ablaze, so that they must withdraw fighting men to fight the fire. And I have a weapon which is like those fancy drops our artisans make, which can be struck with hammers or trodden on by beasts, and will not break, but the merest touch against the long glass tail and they shatter into a thousand fragments. This one cannot be prematurely exploded as you did with the one sent against your father, because nothing, nothing, will explode it except the detonating thoughts of the one who sent it. I am not sorry for the end of the truce. We must have a chance to try these weapons somewhere!”

  “Would they might stay forever untried!” Allart said with a shudder.

  “Ah, there speaks the monk,” Barak said. “A few years will cure you of such treasonous nonsense, my lad. Those Ridenow usurpers who would crowd their way into our Domain are many and fertile, some of the fathers with six or seven sons, all land-hungry and quarrelsome. Of my father’s seven sons, two died at birth and another when laran came on him at adolescence. Yet it seems to me almost worse to have many sons who survive to manhood, so that an estate must be cut into slivers to support them all; or they must range outward, as those Ridenow have done, seeking lands enough for them to rule, and conquer.”

  Coryn smiled without even a trace of mirth. “True,” he said. “One son is needful, so needful they will do anything to insure that one survives; but if two should live, it is too many. I was the younger son, and my elder brother is well pleased that I should dwell here as Keeper, powerless in the great events of our time. Your brother is more loving, Allart—at least he has given you in marriage!”

  “Yes,” Allart said, “but I have sworn to uphold his claim to the throne, should anything befall King Regis—may his reign be long!”

  “Already his reign has been overlong,” said a Keeper from one of the other circles. “But I
am not looking forward with any pleasure to what will come when your brother and Prince Felix begin to struggle for the throne. War with Ridenow is evil enough, but a war of brethren within the Hastur Domain would be far worse.”

  “Prince Felix is emmasca, I have heard,” Barak said. “I do not think he will fight to keep his crown—eggs can’t fight stones!”

  “Well, he is safe enough while the old king lives,” Coryn said. “But after that it is only a matter of time till he is challenged and exposed. Who, I wonder, did they bribe, to let him be named as heir in the first place? But perhaps you were fortunate, Allart, for your brother needed your support badly enough to find you a wife, and a lovely and winning lady she is indeed.”

  “I thought I had seen her here but a moment ago,” said the other Keeper, “but now she is gone.”

  Allart looked around, suddenly filled with a nameless foreboding. A group of the younger women of the Tower were dancing at one end of the long room; he had thought her among them. Again he saw her lying dead in his arms… but he dismissed the picture as an illusion born of fear and his mental disquiet.

  “Perhaps she has gone upstairs to her room again. Renata bade her keep her bed, for she was not well, and I was surprised she had come down at all tonight.”

  “But she is not in her room,” Renata said, coming to them, picking up his thought, her face white. “Where can she have gone, Allart? I went to ask if she wished me to instruct her as a monitor, and she is not within the Tower at all.”

  “Merciful Avarra!” Suddenly the diverging futures crashed in upon him again and Allart knew where Cassandra had gone. Without a word of leavetaking he turned away from the men and hurried out, going through halls and corridors, stepping through the force-field and out of the Tower.

  The sun, a great crimson ball, hung like fire on the distant hills, coating the lake with flame.

  She saw me with Renata. I would not touch her hand, though she was weeping; yet I kissed Renata before her eyes. Only in friendship, as I might have comforted a sister, only because I could touch Renata without that agony of love and guilt. But Cassandra saw and did not understand…

  He shouted Cassandra’s name, but there was no reply, only the soft splashing sound of the cloud-waters. He flung off his outer garment and began to run. At the very edge of the sand he saw two small high-heeled sandals, dyed blue, not kicked this way and that but lined up with meticulous care, as if she had knelt here, delaying. Allart kicked off his boots and ran into the lake.

  The strange cloud-waters enfolded him, dim, strange, and the thick, foggy sensation surrounded him. He breathed it in, feeling the curious exhilaration it gave at first. He could see quite clearly, as if through a thin morning mist. Brilliant creatures—fish or bird?—glided past him, their shimmering orange and green colors like nothing he had ever seen, except the lights behind his eyes when he had been given a dose of kirian, the telepathic drug which opened the brain… Allart felt his feet falling lightly on the weedy bottom of the lake as he began to run along the lake bed.

  Something had passed this way, yes. The fish-birds were gathering, drifting in the cloud-currents. Allart felt his running feet slowing. The heavy gas of the cloud was beginning to oppress him now. He sent out a despairing cry: “Cassandra!” The cloud of the lake would not carry sound; it was like being at the bottom of a very silent well, silence engulfing and surrounding him. Even at Nevarsin he had never known such silence. The fish-birds drifted past him, noiseless, curious, their luminescent colors stirring reflections in his brain. He was dizzy, light-headed. He forced himself to breathe, remembering that in the strange gaseous cloud of the lake, there was none of that element which triggered the breath reflex in the brain. He must breathe by effort and will; his brain would not keep his body breathing automatically.

  “Cassandra!”

  A faint, distant flicker, almost pettish… “Go away. …” and it was gone again.

  Breathe! Allart was beginning to tire; here the weeds were deeper, thicker, and he had to force his way through him.

  Breathe! In and out, remember to breathe… He felt a long slimy trail of weed lock around his ankle, had to stoop and disengage it. Breathe! He forced himself to struggle on, even as the brilliantly colored fish-birds began to cluster around him, their colors blurring before his eyes. His laran rushed upon him, as always when he was troubled or fatigued, and he saw himself sinking down and down into the gas and ooze, lying there quiet and content, suffocating in happy peace because he had forgotten how to breathe… Breathe! Allart struggled to draw in another damp breath of the gas, reminding himself that it would support life indefinitely; the only danger was forgetting to breathe it in. Had Cassandra already reached this point? Was she lying, comfortably dying—a painless ecstatic death—here at the bottom of the lake?

  She wanted to die, and I am guilty… Breathe! Don’t think of anything now, just remember to breathe…

  He saw himself carrying Cassandra from the lake, still, lifeless, her long hair lying black and dripping across his arm… saw himself bending over her, lying in the swaying grasses in the lake bed, taking her in his arms, sinking down beside her… no more laran. no trouble, no more fear, the family curse ended forever for them both.

  The fish-birds moved, agitated, around him. Before his feet, he saw a flicker of pale blue, no color ever to be seen at the bottom of the lake. Was it the long sleeve of Cassandra’s gown? Breathe… Allart bent over her. She was lying there, on her side, her eyes open and still, a faint joyous smile on her lips, but she was too far gone to see Allart. His heart clutching, he bent over her, lifted her lightly into his arms. She was unconscious, faint, her body lolling against him in the drifting weeds. Breathe! Breathe into her mouth; it is the gas in our expelled breath which triggers breathing… Allart tightened his arms about her and laid his lips againt hers, forcing his breath into her lungs. As if in reflex, she breathed, a long deep breath, and was still again.

  Allart lifted her and began to carry her back along the lake bed, in the dim cloudy light reddened now by the setting sun, and terror suddenly struck him. If it grows dark, if the sun sets, I will never find my way to the shore in the darkness. We will die here together. Again he bent over her, forcing his expelled breath into her mouth; again he felt her breathe. But the automatic breathing-mechanism was gone in Cassandra, and he did not know how long she could survive without it, even with the oxygen of the reflex breaths he forced her to take, every two or three steps, by breathing into her mouth. And he had to hurry, before the light was gone. He struggled along in the growing darkness, holding her in his arms, but he had to stop every two or three breaths, to breathe life into her again. Her heart was beating. If she would only breathe… if he could only rouse her enough to remember to breathe…

  The last few steps were nightmare. Cassandra was a slight woman, but Allart was not a big man, either. As the cloud-fog grew shallower, he finally abandoned any attempt to carry her and dragged her along, stooping and holding her under the shoulders, every two or three steps stopping to force his breath into her lungs. At last his head broke out into air and he gasped air convulsively, hearing it sob in and out of his lungs. Then, with a final effort, he grabbed Cassandra up and held her with her head out of the cloudy gas, stumbling drunkenly toward the shore, collapsing beside her on the grass. He lay beside her, breathing into her mouth, pressing her ribs, until after several breaths she shuddered and gasped and let out a strange wailing cry, not unlike the cry of a newborn child as his lungs filled with the first breath. Then he heard her begin to breathe normally again. She was still unconscious, but after a little, in the gathering darkness, he felt her thoughts touch his. Then she whispered, still faintly, only a breath, “Allart? Is it you?”

  “I am here, my beloved.”

  “I am so cold.”

  Allart caught up the garment he had flung away, wrapped it tightly around her. He held her, close-folded, murmuring hopeless endearments.

  “Preciosa… bredhiv
a … my treasure, my cherished, why… how… I thought I had lost you forever. Why did you want to leave me?”

  “Leave you? No,” she whispered. “But it was so peaceful in the lake, and all I wanted was to stay there forever in the silence, and not to fear anymore, or cry anymore. I thought I could hear you calling me, but I was so weary… I only lay down to rest a little, and I was so tired, I could not rise. I could not seem to breathe, and I was afraid… and then you came… but I knew you did not love me.”

  “Not love you? Not want you? Cassandra—” Allart found that he could not speak. He pulled her close to him, kissed her on the cold lips.

  Moments later he took her up again in his arms and carried her into the Tower, through the lower hall. The other members of the matrix circles, assembled there, stared at him with shock and amazement, but there was something in Allart’s eyes that kept them from speaking or approaching the couple. He felt Renata watching them, felt the curiosity and horror from them all. Briefly, without thinking about it, he saw himself as he must appear in their eyes, soaked and bedraggled, bootless, Cassandra’s drenched garments soaking the cloak he had wrapped around her, her long dark hair streaming dampness and entangled weeds. Before the grim concentration in his face they drew aside as he went through the hall and up the long stairs; not to the room where she had slept, alone, since they had come here, but along a wide hallway on the lower floors of the Tower, to his own room.

  He shut and locked the door behind him and knelt beside her, with shaking hands removing the soaked clothing, wrapping her warmly in his own blankets. She was still as death, pale and unmoving against the pillow, her damp hair hanging lifelessly down.

  “No,” she whispered. “You are to leave the Tower and you did not even tell me. I felt it would be better to die than to stay here alone, with all the others mocking me, knowing I am wed and no wife, that you did not love me or want me.”