Stormqueen!

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Allart listened with amazement and wonder. His wife. Yet he felt he had never seen this woman before. When last he had seen her she had been childlike, submissive, still sick with the recoil of her suicidal despair. Now, after a scant half year, she seemed years older; her very voice and gestures stronger, more definite. This was no timid girl but a woman, poised, confident, sure of herself, talking casually and competently with the other monitors about the professional requirements of their exacting work.

  What have I to give to a woman like this? Allart wondered. She clung to me, then, because I was stronger and she needed my strength. But now that she does not need me, will she love me?

  “Come, cousin,” Rosaura said. “I must find you some clothes; you cannot travel in what you wear now.”

  Cassandra laughed, looking down at the loose, warm white monitor’s robe which was her only garment.

  “Thank you, kinswoman. I came away in haste without leisure to pack my belongings!”

  “I will find you travel clothing, and a change or so of underlinen,” Rosaura said. “We are much of a size. And when you reach Castle Aldaran, I am sure they can find you suitable garments.”

  “Am I going with you to Aldaran, Allart?”

  Ian-Mikhail said, “Unless you would rather stay here with us… we are always in need of competent monitors and technicians.”

  There was something of the old childlike Cassandra in the way she clasped his hand.

  “I thank you, kinsman. But I will go with my husband.”

  The night was far advanced, snow beating furiously around the heights of the Tower. Rosaura showed them to a room made ready on the lower floor.

  Allart wondered again, when they were alone. What have I to give a woman like this? A woman, and no longer in need of my strength! But as he turned to her, he felt the barriers going down, one after another, so that their minds merged before he even touched her. He knew nothing was gone between them that could make a difference.

  In gray dawnlight they were roused by a sudden knocking at the door. It was not really very loud, but somehow had a frantic sound, a commotion that made Allart sit up and stare wildly around him for some cause, some reason behind the violent disturbance. Cassandra sat up and looked at him in the dim light, frightened.

  “What is it? Oh, what is it?”

  “Damon-Rafael,” Allart said, before realizing that this was madness. Damon-Rafael was ten days away in the Lowlands and there was no way he could intrude here. Yet, as he opened the door, the sight of Rosaura’s pale, frightened face was a shock. Had he really expected to see his brother, armed for combat or kill, ready to break into the room where he slept, reunited with his wife?

  “I am sorry to disturb you,” Rosaura said, “but Coryn of Hali is in the relays and he says he must speak with you at once, Allart.”

  “At this hour?” Allart said, wondering who had suddenly gone mad, for the dawn was just beginning to merge into pink at the edge of the sky. Nevertheless he dressed in haste, and hurried up the long stairs to the matrix chamber because he felt too confused to trust himself to the rising-shaft.

  A young technician Allart did not know was in the relays.

  “You are Allart Hastur of Elhalyn? Coryn of Hali has insisted we waken you.”

  Allart took his place inside the relay circle, and reaching out, felt Coryn’s light touch on his mind.

  Kinsman? At such an hour? What can be happening at Hali?

  I do not like it any better than you do. But a few hours past, Damon-Rafael, Lord Elhalyn, came raging to the doors of Hali, demanding that we turn your wife over to him, as hostage against your treachery. I knew not that there was madness in our kindred, Allart!

  Not madness, but a touch of laran, and a very little of my own foresight, Allart sent back in answer. Did you tell him you had sent her here?

  I had no choice, Coryn replied. Now he has demanded that we attack Tramontana Tower with our powers, unless they agree quickly to send her back, and preferably you, too. …

  Allart whistled in dismay. Hali was bound, by law and custom, to use its powers for the Elhalyn overlord. They could strafe Tramontana with psychic lightnings, till the workers in the Tower were dead or mindless. Had he brought ruin on the friends here who had brought Cassandra to him? How could he have entangled them in his own family troubles? Well, it was too late now to regret.

  Coryn said, We refused, of course, and he gave us a day and a night to reconsider our answer. By the time he comes again we must be able to tell him, in a way that will satisfy his own leronis that neither of you is in Tramontana and that such strafing would be useless.

  Be very sure, we shall be gone from Tramontana before daylight, Allart assured him, and allowed the contact to break.

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  « ^ »

  They set forth at the break of day, afoot, Tramontana kept no mounts and, in any case, their escort, with travel gear, had set forth yesterday at the same hour as Donal and Allart in their gliders. There was only one road, and sometime today they would meet the party from Aldaran on it.

  The important thing was to be gone from Tramontana so that Hali could justly refuse to strafe the other Tower. We cannot bring disaster upon our brothers and sisters of Tramontana, not when they have made themselves vulnerable for our sake.

  Cassandra looked up at him as they walked down the steep path side by side, and it seemed to Allart that the look she gave him was one of awful vulnerability. Once again, in life and death, he was responsible for this woman. He did not speak, but moved close to her.

  “All the gods be thanked for the fine weather,” Donal said. “We are but ill equipped to travel more than a day in these hills. But the party from Aldaran has tents and shelter, blankets and food; once we meet them, we could, if need struck us, camp for a few days should a storm come up.” His trained eyes scanned the sky. “But it seems to me unlikely that there will be such a storm. If we meet with them on the road a little after midday, as we most probably will, we can reach Aldaran sometime tomorrow in the afternoon.”

  As he spoke a small thrill of dread struck inward at Allart. For a moment it seemed that he walked through whirling snow, a raging wind, and Cassandra was gone from his side… No! It was gone. No doubt Donal’s words had roused fear of one of those remotely possible futures which would probably never come to pass. As the sun rose above its mantle of crimson cloud on the distant peaks, he put back the cowl of his traveling-cloak—borrowed from Ian-Mikhail, for he had not been able to wear heavy garments in the glider, and all of his cold-weather gear was with the escort party from Aldaran; they had, of course, expected to wait in comfort at Tramontana until the escort came for them. Donal was similarly burdened with a borrowed cloak—for, although the weather seemed incredibly fine for the season, no one ventured forth in winter in the Hellers without clothing against a sudden storm, no matter how unlikely. Cassandra was dressed in clothing somewhat too short for her, borrowed from Rosaura. The colors, designed for the tawny-russet Rosaura, made her delicate dark beauty look quenched and colorless, and the short skirt displayed her ankles a little more than was strictly seemly, but she made a joke of it,

  “All the better for walking on these steep paths!” She bundled up Rosaura’s bright green travel-cloak and wadded it carelessly under her arm. “It is all too warm for this; I would as soon not be burdened with carrying it,” she said, laughing.

  “You do not know our mountains, Lady,” Donal said soberly. “If even a little wind springs up, you will be glad of it.”

  But as the sun climbed the sky, Allart’s confidence grew. After more than an hour of walking, Tramontana was lost to sight behind a shoulder of the mountain, and Allart felt relieved. Now indeed they were gone from Tramontana, and when Damon-Rafael came to Hali and demanded that they should be yielded up to him, Tramontana could honestly say they were out of reach.

  Would he vent his wrath upon the Hali circle, anyway? Most probably he would not. He n
eeded their goodwill for the war he was waging against the Ridenow, needed them to make the weapons which gave him tactical and military advantage—and Coryn was an inspired deviser of weapons. All too inspired, Allart thought. If the Domain were in my hands I should make peace at once with the Ridenow, and truce lasting enough that we could settle our differences in a meaningful way. Aldaran is right; we have no cause to war with the Ridenow at Serrais. We should welcome them among us, and be grateful if the laran of Serrais is kept alive in the women they have wed.

  After several hours of walking, as the sun heightened to noon, Donal and Allart, too, had taken off their heavy cloaks and even their outer tunics. The people at Tramontana had given them ample food for a meal or two by the way—“In case,” they said, “your escort should be somewhat delayed by the road; riding-animals can go lame or rockfalls obstruct the roads for a little”—and they sat on rocks beside the road, eating hard flat cakes of journey-bread and dried fruit and cheese.

  “Merciful Avarra,” Cassandra said, gathering up the remnants, “it seems they have given us enough for a tenday! Surely there is no sense to carrying all this!”

  Allart shrugged, stuffing the packets in one of the pockets of his outer tunic. Something in the gesture made him think of mornings at Nevarsin, stowing the few things he was allowed to possess in the pockets of his robe.

  Donal, taking the remaining packages of food, seemed to share a part of the joke. “I feel like Fro’ Domenick, with his pockets bulging,” he said, and whistled a snatch of Dorilys’s song.

  Little more than a year ago, Allart thought, I was resigned to living the rest of my life within the walls of a monastery. He looked at Cassandra, who had tucked up her skirts almost to her knees and climbed a little stone wall to come at a stream that trickled down, clear and cool, from the heights. She bent to cup the water in her hands for a drink. I thought I could spend all my life as a monk, that no woman could ever mean anything to me, yet it would rend me asunder now to be parted from her. He climbed across the wall, and bent beside her to drink, and as their hands touched, he wished suddenly that Donal was not with them; then he almost laughed at himself. Surely there had been times in the summer past when Renata and Donal had suffered his presence as unwillingly as he now tolerated Donal’s company.

  They sat for a while beside the road, resting, feeling the warmth of the sun on their heads, and Cassandra told him about her training as a monitor, and of the work as a mechanic. He touched the bone-deep clingfire scar on her hand with a twinge of horror, glad suddenly that she was out of the reach of war. In return he told her a little of Dorilys’s strange gift, touching lightly on the horror of the deaths following her handfastings, and talking of how they had flown among the storms.

  “You shall try it, too, kinswoman,” Donal said, “when the spring comes.”

  “I wish I might, but I do not know if I would care to wear breeches, even for that.”

  “Renata does,” Donal said.

  Cassandra laughed gaily. “She has always had more daring than I!”

  Donal said, suddenly subdued, “Allart is my dear cousin and friend and I have no secrets from his wife. Renata and I were to be married at midwinter. But now my father has other wishes.” Slowly, he told her of Aldaran’s plan, that he and Dorilys should marry, so he might legally inherit Aldaran. She looked at him in kindly sympathy.

  “I was fortunate. My kinfolk gave me to Allart when I had never seen him, but I found him such a one as I could love,” she said. “Yet I know it is not always so, nor even very often, and I know what it is to be parted from a loved one.”

  “I will not be parted from Renata,” Donal said, low and fierce. “This mockery of marriage with Dorilys will be no more than a fiction, to endure no longer than my father lives. Then, if Dorilys will have it so, we will find her a husband and go forth, Renata and I. Or if she has no will to marry, I will remain as warden in her time. If it is her wish to adopt one of my nedestro sons as her heir, well and good; and if not, well and good also. I will not defy my father, but I will not obey him, either. Not in this; not if he wishes me to take my half-sister to bed and father a son upon her!”

  “I should think that should be as Dorilys wills it, kinsman. The lady of Aldaran, if she is lawfully wed to another, cannot create scandal by taking guardsmen or mercenaries to her bed… and she may not have any wish to live loveless and childless.”

  Donal looked away from her. “She may do as she wills, but if she has sons they will not be of my fathering. Allart has told me enough of what the breeding program and its inbreeding has already done among our people. My mother reaped that bitter fruit, and I will sow no more of it.”

  Before the fierceness of that, Cassandra recoiled. Allart, sensing her unease, picked up her cloak and said, “I suppose we should go on. The escort can travel faster than we can, but still, even an hour’s walking to meet them will lessen the time we must spend on the road tomorrow.”

  The path was less steep now, but the sunshine was patched with shadows as long feathery traces of gray cloud moved across the sky. Donal shivered and looked nervously toward the heights, darkening with thick gray masses, but he said nothing, only fastening the neck of his cloak.

  Allart, picking up his apprehension, thought, It would be well if we met with the escort as soon as might be.

  A little more walking, then, and the sky was hidden entirely with cloud, and Allart felt a snowflake strike his face. They were drifting slowly down, spiraling as they fell. Cassandra caught the snowflakes in her hand, marveling, childlike, at their size. But Allart had lived at Nevarsin and he knew something of the storms in the Hellers.

  So Damon-Rafael may have had his way after all. By driving us forth in winter from the safety of Tramontana Tower, when storms are rather more likely than not, he may have rid himself without effort of a dangerous rival… And if I die in this storm, then there is no one to stand against my brother’s will to power. Allart’s laran began to overpower him again, bringing him obsessive pictures of ruin and terror, wars raging, lands ravaged and burned, a true age of chaos all over Darkover from Dalereuth to the Hellers.

  Scathfell, too, might fall upon Aldaran, and with Donal gone, there will be no one to stand against him. Between them, Scathfell and my brother will tear all this land asunder!

  “Allart,” Cassandra said, picking up from his mind some of the images of ruin and chaos, “what is wrong?”

  And I have Cassandra to protect, not only against my brother, but against all the rage of the elements!

  “Will it be a blizzard?” she asked, suddenly frightened, and he looked at the thickening snowfall.

  “I am not sure,” he said, watching Donal thrust up a wetted finger into the wind and turn it slowly around, trying to sense where the wind came from. “But there is some danger, though not immediate. We may meet the escort on the way before it gets any worse. They have food and clothing and gear for shelter, and then there will be nothing to fear.”

  But even as he spoke, he met Donal’s eyes and knew that it was worse than he thought. The storm was coming from the direction of Aldaran; therefore it had probably already forced the escort to stop and make camp on the way. They would not be able to see the road ahead and the animals would not be able to find their footing in the heavy snow. There was no blame to the escort party; they would have believed Allart and Donal and Allart’s lady safe and among friends in Tramontana Tower.

  How could they be expected to guess at Damon-Rafael’s malice?

  Cassandra looked terrified. If she is reading my mind, no wonder, Allart thought, and applied himself to the task of calming her fears. He had too much respect for her to offer her a pacifying lie, but things were not as bad as she feared, either.

  “One of the first things I learned at Nevarsin, was the art of finding shelter in unlikely places, and how to come through these sudden storms without disaster. Donal,” he said, “is there any man among the escort with a scrap of laran, so that you and I could
reach him and tell the escort of our plight?”

  Donal stopped to consider. At last he said regretfully, “I fear not, cousin. Although it would not hurt to try; some few men can receive thoughts, though they could not send them and do not think of it as laran.”

  “Try, then, to reach them,” Allart instructed. “For they have every reason to believe us safe at Tramontana. They should know that this is not so. Meanwhile—” He cast his eyes around, searching for shelter, trying to think ahead along the road to see if there was an old building of any kind, a lean-to, a deserted barn, even some inhabited dwelling where they might be given shelter.

  But as far as his clairvoyance could see, there was none. The country they traveled might have been virgin to all human feet for all time, for any traces of mankind’s passing here. He had seen no print of habitation since the small stone wall near where they had eaten their midday meal.

  It had been years since he had had to use his mountain-survival training; not since his third year at Nevarsin, when he had been sent forth barehanded in his monk’s cowl into the teeth of the harshest season, to bring back proof of his fitness for the next level of training. The old brother who had taught him had said, “After some deserted human dwelling, next best is a thicket of trees close-set; after that, a rock-ledge facing away from the wind and with some vegetation.” Allart wrinkled his forehead, trying to remember, searching out ahead of him, letting his laran have full play as he sought to spy ahead in time what lay along each of the directions they might take from here.

  Is there time to return to Tramontana? Mentally retracing his steps, he saw along that line of probability only their three dead bodies, huddled and frozen at the side of the road.

  For once in his life he was grateful for his laran, which allowed him to see clearly ahead on every choice they might make; because on the choices they made now, their very lives would certainly depend. He saw along the road directly ahead that the path narrowed; where blinded by the ever-thickening snow, they might miss their footing, go plunging into a chasm hundreds of feet deep, their bodies never found. They must go no farther along this road. Following his clear warning, Cassandra and Donal stopped and awaited his guidance. They were now only blurred cloaked shapes in the thickening snow, and a high wind had begun to scream down from the heights.