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!
“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 mo
ment, 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…
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