Stormqueen!
Marion Zimmer Bradley
ages of chaos 01 - a novel of darkover



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DAW BOOKS, INC.
DONALD A. WOLLHEIM, PUBLISHER
1301 Avenue of the Americas
New York, N. Y. 10019



COPYRIGHT ©, 1978, BY MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY
All Rights Reserved.
Cover art by Michael Whelan
FIRST PRINTING, JUNE 1978
PRINTED IN U.S.A.



DEDICATION
To Catherine L. Moore
First Lady of Science Fiction
I have ceased, I hope, the imitation which is said to be the sincerest form of 
flattery. I shall never outgrow, I hope, the desire to emulate; nor the 
admiration, the affection, and the inspiration which she has created in every 
woman who writes science fiction and fantasy—and in most of the men, too!
—MZB



A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
Ever since the third or fourth of the Darkover novels, my surprisingly faithful 
readers have been writing in to me, asking, in essence, “Why don’t you write a 
novel about the Ages of Chaos?”
For a long time I demurred, hesitating to do this; to me the essence of the 
Darkover novels seemed to be just this—the clash of cultures between Darkovan 
and Terran. If I had acceded to their request to write about a time “before the 
coming of the Terrans,” it seemed to me, the very essence of the Darkover novels 
would have been removed, and what remained would be very much like any of a 
thousand other science-fantasy novels dealing with alien worlds where people 
have alien powers and alien concerns.
It was my readers who finally persuaded me to attempt this. If every reader who 
actually writes to an author represents only a hundred who do not (and I am told 
the figure is higher than this) there must be, by now, several thousand readers 
out there who are interested and curious about the time known as the Ages of 
Chaos; the time before the Comyn had firmly established an alliance of their 
seven Great Houses to rule over the Domains; and also the height of the Towers, 
and of that curious technology known then as “starstone” and later becoming the 
science of matrix mechanics.
Readers of The Forbidden Tower will want to know that Stormqueen deals with a 
time before Varzil, Keeper of Neskaya, known as “the Good,” perfected the 
techniques allowing women to serve as Keepers in the Towers of the Comyn.
In The Shattered Chain, Lady Rohana says;
“There was a time in the history of the Comyn when we did selective breeding to 
fix these gifts in our racial heritage; it was a time of great tyranny, and not 
a time we are very proud to remember.”
This is a story of the men and women who lived under that tyranny, and how it 
affected their lives, and the lives of those who came after them on Darkover.
—MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY



STORMQUEEN!



CHAPTER ONE

The storm was wrong somehow.
That was the only way Donal could think of it… wrong somehow. It was high summer 
in the mountains called the Hellers, and there should have been no storms except 
for the never-ending snow flurries on the far heights above the timberline, and 
the rare savage thunderstorms that swooped down across the valleys, bouncing 
from peak to peak and leaving flattened trees and sometimes fire in the path of 
their lightnings.
Yet, though the sky was blue and cloudless, thunder crackled low in the 
distance, and the very air seemed filled with the tension of a storm. Donal 
crouched on the heights of the battlement, stroking with one finger the hawk 
cradled in the curve of his arm, crooning half-absently to the restless bird. It 
was the storm in the air, the electric tension, he knew, which was frightening 
the hawk. He should never have taken it from the mews today—it would serve him 
right if the old hawkmaster beat him, and a year ago he would probably have done 
so without much thought. But now things were different. Donal was only ten, but 
there had been many changes in his short life. And this was one of the most 
drastic, that within the change of a few moons hawkmaster and tutors and grooms 
now called him—not that-brat-Donal, with cuffs and pinches and even blows, 
merited and unmerited, but, with new and fawning respect—young-master-Donal.
Certainly life was easier for Donal now, but the very change made him uneasy; 
for it had not come about from anything he had done. It had something to do with 
the fact that his mother, Aliciane of Rockraven, now shared the bed of Dom 
Mikhail, Lord of Aldaran, and was soon to bear him a child.
Only once, a long time ago (two midsummer festivals had come and gone), had 
Aliciane spoken of these things to her son.
“Listen carefully to me, Donal, for I shall say this once only and never again. 
Life is not easy for a woman unprotected.” Donal’s father had died in one of the 
small wars, which raged among the vassals of the mountain lords, before Donal 
could remember him; their lives had been spent as unregarded poor relations in 
the home of one kinsman after another, Donal wearing castoffs of this cousin and 
that, riding always the worst horse in the stables, hanging around unseen when 
cousins and kinsmen learned the skills of arms, trying to pick up what he could 
by listening.
“I could put you to fosterage; your father had kinsmen in these hills, and you 
could grow up to take service with one of them. Only for me there would be 
nothing but to be drudge or sewing-woman, or at best minstrel in a stranger’s 
household, and I am too young to find that endurable. So I have taken service as 
singing-woman to Lady Deonara; she is frail, and aging, and has borne no living 
children. Lord Aldaran is said to have an eye for beauty in women. And I am 
beautiful, Donal.”
Donal had hugged Aliciane fiercely; indeed she was beautiful, a slight girlish 
woman, with flame-bright hair and gray eyes, who looked too young to be the 
mother of a boy eight years old.
“What I am about to do, I do it at least partly for you, Donal. My kin have cast 
me off for it; do not condemn me if I am ill-spoken by those who do not 
understand.”
Indeed it seemed, at first, that Aliciane had done this more for her son’s good 
than her own: Lady Deonara was kind but had the irritability of all chronic 
invalids, and Aliciane had been quenched and quiet, enduring Deonara’s sharpness 
and the shrewish envy of the other women with goodwill and cheerfulness. But 
Donal for the first time in his life had whole clothing made to his measure, 
horse and hawk of his own, shared the tutor and the arms-master of Lord 
Aldaran’s fosterlings and pages. That summer Lady Deonara had borne the last of 
a series of stillborn sons; and Mikhail, Lord of Aldaran, had taken Aliciane of 
Rockraven as barragana and sworn to her that her child, male or female, should 
be legitimated, and be heir to his line, unless he might someday father a 
legitimate son. She was Lord Aldaran’s acknowledged favorite—even Deonara loved 
her and had chosen her for her lord’s bed—and Donal shared her eminence. Once, 
even, Lord Mikhail, gray and terrifying, had called Donal to him, saying he had 
good reports from tutor and arms-master, and had drawn him into a kindly 
embrace. “I would indeed you were mine by blood, foster-son. If your mother 
bears me such a son I will be well content, my boy.”
Donal had stammered, “I thank you, kinsman,” without the courage, yet, to call 
the old man “foster-father.” Young as he was, he knew that if his mother should 
bear Lord Aldaran his only living child, son or daughter, then he would be 
half-brother to Aldaran’s heir. Already the change in his status had been 
extreme and marked.
But the impending storm… it seemed to Donal an evil omen for the coming birth. 
He shivered; this had been a summer of strange storms, lightning bolts from 
nowhere, ever-present rumblings and crashes. Without knowing why, Donal 
associated these storms with anger—the anger of his grand-sire, Aliciane’s 
father, when Lord Rockraven had heard of his daughter’s choice. Donal, cowering 
forgotten in a corner, had heard Lord Rockraven calling her bitch, and whore, 
and names Donal had understood even less. The old man’s voice had been nearly 
drowned, that day, by thunder outside, and there had been a crackle of angry 
lightnings in his mother’s voice, too, as she had shouted back, “What am I to 
do, then, Father? Bide here at home, mending my own shifts, feeding myself and 
my son upon your shabby honor? Shall I see Donal grow up to be a mercenary 
soldier, a hired sword, or dig in your garden for his porridge? You scorn Lady 
Aldaran’s offer—”
“It is not Lady Aldaran I scorn,” her father snorted, “but it is not she whom 
you will serve and you know it as well as I!”
“And have you found a better offer for me? Am I to marry a blacksmith or 
charcoal-burner? Better barragana to Aldaran than wife to a tinker or 
ragpicker!”
Donal had known he could expect nothing from his grand-sire. Rockraven had never 
been a rich or powerful estate; and it was impoverished because Rockraven had 
four sons to provide for, and three daughters, of whom Aliciane was the 
youngest. Aliciane had once said, bitterly, that if a man has no sons, that is 
tragedy; but if he has too many, then worse for him, for he must see them 
struggle for his estate.
Last of his children, Aliciane had been married to a younger son without a 
title, and he had died within a year of their marriage, leaving Aliciane and the 
newborn Donal to be reared in strangers’ houses.
Now, crouching on the battlements of Castle Aldaran and watching the clear sky 
so inexplicably filled with lightning, Donal extended his consciousness outward, 
outward—he could almost see the lines of electricity and the curious shimmer of 
the magnetic fields of the storm in the air. At times he had been able to call 
the lightning; once he had amused himself when a storm raged by diverting the 
great bolt where he would. He could not always do it, and he could not do it too 
often or he would grow sick and weak; once when he had felt through his skin (he 
did not know how) that the next bolt was about to strike the tree where he had 
sheltered, he had somehow reached out with something inside him, as if some 
invisible limb had grasped the chain of exploding force and flung it elsewhere. 
The lightning bolt had exploded, with a sizzle, into a nearby bush, crisping it 
into blackened leaves and charring a circle of grass, and Donal had sunk to the 
ground, his head swimming, his eyes blurred. His head had been splitting in 
three parts with the pain, and he could not see properly for days, but Aliciane 
had hugged and praised him.
“My brother Caryl could do that, but he died young,” she told him. “There was a 
time when the leroni at Hali tried to breed storm-control into our laran, but it 
was too dangerous. I can see the thunder-forces, a little; I cannot manipulate 
them. Take care, Donal; use that gift only to save a life. I would not have my 
son blasted by the lightnings he seeks to control.” Aliciane had hugged him 
again, with unusual warmth.
Laran. Talk of it had filled his childhood, the gifts of extrasensory powers 
which were so much a preoccupation with the mountain lords—yes, and far away in 
the lowlands, too. If he had had any truly extraordinary gift, telepathy, the 
ability to force his will upon hawk or hound or sentry-bird, he would have been 
recorded in the breeding charts of the leroni, the sorceresses who kept records 
of parentage among those who carried the blood of Hastur and Cassilda, legendary 
forebears of the Gifted Families. But he had none. Merely storm-watch, a little; 
he sensed when thunderstorms or even forest fire struck, and someday, when he 
was a bit older, he would take his place on the fire-watch, and it would help 
him, to know, as he already knew a little, where the fire would move next. But 
this was a minor gift, not worth breeding for. Even at Hali they had abandoned 
it, four generations before, and Donal knew, not knowing precisely how he knew, 
that this was one reason why the family of Rockraven had not prospered.
But this storm was far beyond his power to guess. Somehow, without clouds or 
rain, it seemed to center here, over the castle. Mother, he thought, it has to 
do with my mother, and wished that he dared run to seek her, to assure himself 
that all was well with her, through the terrifying, growing awareness of the 
storm. But a boy of ten could not run like a babe to sit in his mother’s lap. 
And Aliciane was heavy now and ungainly, in the last days of waiting for Lord 
Aldaran’s child to be born; Donal could not run to her with his own fears and 
troubles.
He soberly picked up the hawk again, and carried it down the stairs; in air so 
heavy with lightning, this strange and unprecedented storm, he could not loose 
it to fly. The sky was blue (it looked like a good day for flying hawks) but 
Donal could feel the heavy and oppressive magnetic currents in the air, the 
heavy crackle of electricity.
Is it my mother’s fear that fills the air with lightning, as sometimes my 
grandsire’s anger did? Suddenly Donal was overwhelmed with his own fear. He 
knew, as everyone knew, that women sometimes died in childbirth; he had tried 
hard not to think about that, but now, overwhelmed with terror for his mother, 
he could feel the crackle of his own fear in the lightning. Never had he felt so 
young, so helpless. Fiercely he wished he were back in the shabby poverty of 
Rockraven, or ragged and unregarded as a poor cousin in some kinsman’s 
stronghold. Shivering, he took the hawk back to the mews, accepting the 
hawkmaster’s reproof with such meekness that the old man thought the boy must be 
sick!
  
Far away in the women’s apartments, Aliciane heard the continuing roll of 
thunder; more dimly than Donal, she sensed the strangeness of the storm. And she 
was afraid.
The Rockravens had been dropped from the intensive breeding program for laran 
gifts; like most of her generation, Aliciane thought that breeding program 
outrageous, a tyranny no free mountain people would endure in these days, to 
breed mankind like cattle for desired characteristics.
Yet all her life she had been reared in loose talk of lethal genes and 
recessives, of bloodlines carrying desired laran. How could any woman bear a 
child without fear? Yet here she was, awaiting the birth of a child who might 
well be heir to Aldaran, knowing that his reason for choosing her had been 
neither her beauty—although she knew, without vanity, that it had been her 
beauty which first caught his eye—nor the superb voice which had made her Lady 
Deonara’s favorite ballad-singer, but the knowledge that she had born a strong 
and living son, gifted with laran; that she was of proven fertility and could 
survive childbirth.
Rather, I survived it once. What does that prove, but that I was lucky?
As if responding to her fear, the unborn child kicked sharply, and Aliciane drew 
her hand over the strings of her rryl, the small harp she held in her lap, 
pressing the side-bars with her other hand and sensing the soothing effect of 
the vibrations. As she began to play, she sensed the stir among the women who 
had been sent to attend her, for Lady Deonara genuinely loved her singing-woman, 
and had sent her own most skillful nurses and midwives and maids to attend her 
in these last days. Then Mikhail, Lord Aldaran, came into her room, a big man, 
in the prime of life, his hair prematurely grayed; and indeed he was far older 
than Aliciane, who had turned twenty-four but last spring. His tread was heavy 
in the quiet room, sounding more like a mailed stride on a battlefield than a 
soft-shod indoor step.
“Do you play for your own pleasure, Aliciane? I had thought a musician drew most 
of her pleasure from applause, yet I find you playing for yourself and your 
women,” he said, smiling, and hitched a light chair around to sit in it at her 
side. “How is it with you, my treasure?”
“I am well but weary,” she said, also smiling. “This is a restless child, and I 
play partly because the music seems to have a calming effect. Perhaps because 
the music calms me, and so the child is calm, too.”
“It may well be so,” he said, and when she put the harp from her, said, “No, 
sing, Aliciane, if you are not too tired.”
“As you will, my lord.” She pressed the strings of the harp into chords, and 
sang, softly, a love song of the far hills:
“Where are you now?
Where does my love wander?
Not on the hills, not upon the shore, not far on the sea,
Love, where are you now?
“Dark the night, and I am weary,
Love, when can I cease this seeking?
Darkness all around, above, beyond me,
Where lingers he, my love?”
Mikhail leaned toward the woman, drew his heavy hand gently across her brilliant 
hair. “Such a weary song,” he said softly, “and so sad; is love truly such a 
thing of sadness to you, my Aliciane?”
“No, indeed not,” Aliciane said, assuming a gaiety she did not feel. Fears and 
self-questioning were for pampered wives, not for a barragana whose position 
depended on keeping her lord amused and cheery with her charm and beauty, her 
skills as an entertainer. “But the loveliest love songs are of sorrow in love, 
my lord. Would it please you more if I choose songs of laughter or valor?”
“Whatever you sing pleases me, my treasure,” Mikhail said kindly. “If you are 
weary or sorrowful you need not pretend to gaiety with me, carya.” He saw the 
flicker of distrust in her eyes, and thought, I am too sensitive for my own 
good; it must be pleasant never to be too aware of the minds of others. Does 
Aliciane truly love me, or does she only value her position as my acknowledged 
favorite? Even if she loves me, is it for myself, or only that I am rich and 
powerful and can make her secure? He gestured to the women, and they withdrew to 
the far end of the long room, leaving him alone with his mistress: present, to 
satisfy the decencies of the day that dictated a childbearing woman should never 
be unattended, but out of earshot. “I do not trust all these women,” he said.
“Lord, Deonara is truly fond of me, I think. She would not put anyone among my 
women with ill will to me or my child,” Aliciane said.
“Deonara? No, perhaps not,” Mikhail said, remembering that Deonara had been Lady 
of Aldaran for twice ten years and shared his hunger for a child to be heir to 
his estate. She could no longer promise him even the hope of one; she had 
welcomed the knowledge that he had taken Aliciane, who was one of her own 
favorites, to his bed and his heart. “But I have enemies who are not of this 
household, and it is all too easy to plant a spy with laran, who can relay all 
the doings of my household to someone who wishes me ill. I have kinsmen who 
would do much to prevent the birth of a living heir to my line. I marvel not 
that you look pale, my treasure; it is hard to credit wickedness that would harm 
a little child, yet I have never been sure that Deonara was not victim to 
someone who killed the children unborn in her womb. It is not hard to do; even a 
little skill with matrix or laran can break a child’s fragile link to life.”
“Anyone who wished you ill, Mikhail, would know you have promised me that my 
child will be legitimated, and would turn her evil will to me,” Aliciane 
soothed. “Yet I have borne this child without illness. You fear needlessly, my 
dear love.”
“Gods grant you are right! Yet I have enemies who would stop at nothing. Before 
your child is born, I will call a leronis to probe them; I will have no woman 
present at your confinement who cannot swear under truthspell that she wishes 
you well. An evil wish can snap a newborn child’s fight for life.”
“Surely that strength of laran is rare, my dearest lord.”
“Not as rare as I could wish it,” Mikhail, Lord Aldaran, said. “Yet of late I 
have strange thoughts. I find these gifts a weapon to cut my own hand; I who 
have used sorcery to hurl fire and chaos upon my enemy, I feel it now that they 
have strength to hurl them upon me, too. When I was young I felt laran as a gift 
of the gods; they had appointed me to rule this land, and dowered me with laran 
to make my rule stronger. But as I grow old I find it a curse, not a gift.”
“You are not so old, my lord, and surely no one now would challenge your rule!”
“No one who dares do so openly, Aliciane. But I am alone among those who hover 
waiting for me to die childless. I have meaty bones to pick… all gods grant your 
child is a son, carya.”
Aliciane was trembling. “And if it is not… oh, my dear lord…”
“Why, then, treasure, you must bear me another,” he said gently, “but even if 
you do not, I shall have a daughter whose dower will be my estate, and who will 
bring me the strong alliances I need; even a woman-child will make my position 
that much stronger. And your son shall be foster-brother and paxman, shield in 
trouble and strong arm. I truly love your son, Aliciane.”
“I know.” How could she have been trapped this way… finding that she loved the 
man whom, at first, she had simply thought to ensnare with the wiles of her 
voice and her beauty? Mikhail was kind and honorable, he had courted her when he 
might have taken her as lawful prey, he had assured her, unasked, that even if 
she failed to give him a living son, Donal’s future was secure. She felt safe 
with him, she had come to love him, and now she feared for him, too.
Caught in my own trap!
She said, almost laughing, “I need no such reassurance, my lord. I have never 
doubted you.”
He smiled, accepting that, the courtesy of a telepath. “But women are fearful at 
such times, and it is sure now that Deonara will bear me no child, even if I 
would ask it of her after so many tragedies. Do you know what it is like, 
Aliciane, to see children you have longed for, desired, love even before they 
were born, to see them die without drawing breath? I did not love Deonara when 
we were wed; I had never seen her face, for we were given to one another for 
family alliances; but we have endured much together, and although it may seem 
strange to you, child, love can come from shared sorrow as well as shared joy.” 
His face was somber. “I love you well, carya mea, but it was neither for your 
beauty nor even for the splendor of your voice that I sought you out. Did you 
know Deonara was not my first wife?”
“No, my lord.”
“I was wed first when I was a young man; Clariza Leynier bore me two sons and a 
daughter, all healthy and strong… Hard as it is to lose children at birth, it is 
harder yet to lose sons and daughter grown almost to manhood and womanhood. And 
yet I lost them—one after another, as they grew to adolescence. I lost them all 
three, with the descent of laran; they died in crisis and convulsions, all of 
them, of that scourge of our people. I myself was ready to die of despair.”
“My brother Caryl died so,” Aliciane whispered.
“I know; yet he was the only one of your line, and your father had many sons and 
daughters. You yourself told me that your laran did not descend at adolescence, 
playing havoc with mind and body, but that you grew slowly into it from 
babyhood, as with many of the Rockraven folk. And I can see that this is 
dominant in your line, for Donal is barely ten years old, and though I do not 
think his laran is full developed yet, still he has much of it, and he at least 
is not like to die on the threshold. I knew that for your children, at least, I 
need not fear. Deonara, too, came from a bloodline with early onset of laran, 
but none of the children she bore me lived long enough for us to know whether 
they had laran or no.”
Aliciane’s face twisted in dismay and he laid his arm tenderly about her 
shoulders. “What is it, my dear one?”
“All my life I have felt revulsion for this—to breed men like cattle!”
“Man is the only animal that thinks not to improve his race,” Mikhail said 
fiercely. “We control weather, build castles and highways with the strength of 
our laran, explore greater and greater gifts of the mind—should we not seek to 
better ourselves as well as our world and our surroundings?” Then his face 
softened. “But I understand that a woman as young as you thinks not in terms of 
generations, centuries; while one is yet young, you think only of self and 
children, but at my age it is natural to think in terms of all those who will 
come after us when we and our children are many centuries gone. But such things 
are not for you unless you wish to think of them; think of your child, love, and 
how soon we will hold her in our arms.”
Aliciane shrank, whispering, “You know, then, that it is a daughter I am to bear 
you—you are not angry?”
“I told you I would not be angry; if I am distressed it is only that you did not 
trust me enough to tell me this when first you knew,” Mikhail said, but the 
words were so gentle they were hardly a reproof. “Come, Aliciane, forget your 
fears; if you give me no son, at least you have given me a sturdy foster-son, 
and your daughter will be a powerful strength in bringing me a son-in-law. And 
our daughter will have laran.”
Aliciane smiled and returned his kiss; but she was still taut with apprehension 
as she heard the distant crackle of the unprecedented summer thunder, which 
seemed to come and go in time with the waves of her fear. Can it be that Donal 
is afraid of what this child will mean to him? she wondered, and wished 
passionately that she had the precognitive gift, the laran of the Aldaran clan, 
so that she might know that all would be well.



CHAPTER TWO
 
Here is the traitor!”
Aliciane trembled at the anger in Lord Aldaran’s voice as he strode wrathfully 
into her chamber, thrusting a woman ahead of him with his two hands. Behind him 
the leronis, his household sorceress, bearing the matrix or blue starstone which 
somehow amplified the powers of her laran, tiptoed; a fragile pale-haired woman, 
her pallid features drawn with terror of the storm she had unleashed.
“Mayra,” Aliciane said in dismay, “I thought you my friend, and friend to Lady 
Deonara. What has befallen that you are my enemy and my child’s?”
Mayra—she was one of Deonara’s robing-women, a sturdy middle-aged dame—stood 
frightened but defiant between Lord Aldaran’s hard hands. “No, I know nothing of 
what that sorceress-bitch has said of me; is she jealous of my place here, 
having no useful work but to meddle with the minds of her betters?”
“It will not serve you to put ill names on me,” said the leronis Margali. “I 
asked all these women but one question, and that under the truthspell, so that I 
would hear in my mind if they lied. Is your loyalty to Mikhail, Lord Aldaran, or 
to the vai domna, his lady Deonara? And if they said me no, or said yes with a 
doubt or a denial in their thoughts, I asked only, again under truthspell, if 
their loyalty were to husband or father or home-lord. From this one alone I got 
no honest answer, but only the knowledge that she was concealing all. And so I 
told Lord Aldaran that if there was a traitor among his women it could be only 
she.”
Mikhail let the woman go and turned her around to face him, not ungently. He 
said, “It is true that you have been long in my service, Mayra; Deonara treats 
you with the kindness of a foster-sister. Is it me you wish evil, or my lady?”
“My lady has been kind to me; I am angered to see her set aside for another,” 
said Mayra, her voice shaking. The leronis behind her said, in passionless tone, 
“No, Lord Aldaran, there she speaks no truth, either; she holds no love for you 
nor for your lady.”
“She lies!” Mayra’s voice rose to a half-shriek. “She lies—I wish you no ill 
save what you have brought on yourself, lord, by taking the bitch of Rockraven 
to your bed. It is she who has put a spell on your manhood, that bitch-viper!”
“Silence!” Lord Aldaran quivered as if he would strike the woman, but the word 
was enough; everyone within range was smitten dumb, and Aliciane trembled. Only 
once before had she heard Mikhail use what was called, in the language of laran, 
the command-voice. There were not many who could summon enough control over 
their laran to use it; it was not an inborn gift, but one that required both 
talent and skilled training. And when, in that voice, Mikhail, Lord Aldaran, 
commanded silence, none within earshot could form an audible word.
The silence in the room was so extreme that Aliciane could hear the smallest of 
sounds: some small insect clicking in the woodwork of the paneling, the 
frightened breathing of the women, the far-off crackle of thunder. It seems, she 
thought, that all through this summer we have had thunder, more than I can 
remember in any year before… What nonsense to have in my thoughts now, when I 
stand before a woman who might have meant my death, had she attended my 
childbed.. ..
Mikhail glanced at her, where she stood trembling and propping herself upright 
by the arm of a chair. Then he said to the leronis, “Attend the lady Aliciane, 
help her to sit, or to lie down on her bed if she feels better so…” and Aliciane 
felt Margali’s strong hands supporting her, easing her into the chair. She shook 
with anger, hating the physical weakness she could not control.
This child saps my strength as never Donal did… Why am I so weakened? Is it that 
woman’s evil will, wicked spells … ? Margali laid her hands on Aliciane’s 
forehead and she felt soothing calm radiating out from them. She tried to relax 
under them, to breathe evenly, to calm the frantic restlessness she could sense 
in the movements of her child within her body. Poor little one… she is afraid, 
too, and no wonder….
“You—” Lord Aldaran’s voice commanded, “Mayra, tell me why you bear me ill will, 
or would seek to harm the lady Aliciane or her child!”
“Tell you!”
“You will, you know,” Mikhail of Aldaran said. “You will tell us more than you 
ever believed you would say, whether you do so of your free will and painlessly, 
or whether it is dragged from you shrieking! I have no love for torturing 
womenfolk, Mayra, but I will not harbor a scorpion-ant within my chamber, 
either! Save us this struggle.” But Mayra faced hun, silent and defiant, and 
Mikhail shrugged faintly, a tautness Aliciane knew—and would not have dared 
defy— settling down over his face. He said, “On your own head, Mayra. Margali, 
bring your starstone—no. Better still, send for kirizani.”
Aliciane trembled, though Mikhail was showing mercy in his own way. Kirizani was 
one of half a dozen drugs distilled from the plant resins of kireseth flowers, 
whose pollen brought madness when the Ghost-wind blew in the hills; kirizani was 
that part of the resin which lowered the barriers against telepathic contact, 
laying the mind bare to anyone who would probe within it. It was better than 
torture, and yet… She quailed, looking at the raging purpose on Mikhail’s face, 
at the smiling defiance of the woman Mayra. They all stood silent while the 
kirizani was brought, a pale liquid in a vial of transparent crystal.
Mikhail uncapped it and said quietly, “Will you take it without protest, Mayra, 
or shall the women hold you and pour it down your throat like a horse being 
dosed?”
Mayra’s face flushed; she spit at him. “You think you can make me speak with 
your sorcery and drugs, Lord Mikhail? Ha—I defy you! You need no evil will of 
mine—enough lurks already in your house and in the womb of your bitch-mistress 
there! A day will come when you pray you had died childless—and there will be no 
other! You will take no other to your bed, no more than you have done while the 
bitch of Rockraven grew heavy with her witch-daughter! My work is done, vai 
dom!” She flung the respectful term at him like a taunt. “I need no more time! 
From this day you will father neither daughter nor son—your loins will be empty 
as a winter-killed tree! And you will cry out and pray—”
“Silence that evil banshee!” Mikhail said, and Margali, starting upright from 
the fainting Aliciane, raised her jeweled matrix, but the woman spit again, 
laughed hysterically, gasped, and crumpled to the floor. In the stunned silence 
Margali went to her, laid a perfunctory hand to her breast.
“Lord Aldaran, she is dead! She must have been spelled to die on questioning.”
The man stared in dismay at the lifeless body of the woman, unanswered questions 
unspoken on his lips. He said, “Now we shall never know what she has done, or 
how, or who was the enemy who sent her here to us. I would take my oath Deonara 
knows nothing of it.” But the words held a question, and Margali laid her hand 
on the blue jewel and said quietly, “On my life, Lord Aldaran, the Lady Deonara 
has no ill will to Lady Aliciane’s child; this she has told me often, that she 
is glad for you and for Aliciane, and I know when I am hearing truth.”
Mikhail nodded, but Aliciane saw the lines around his mouth deepen. If Deonara, 
jealous of Lord Aldaran’s favor, had wished Aliciane some harm, that at least 
would have been understandable. But who, she wondered, knowing little of the 
feuds and power struggles of Aldaran, could wish evil to a man so good as 
Mikhail? Who could hate him so much as to plant a spy among his wife’s 
waiting-women, to do evil to the child of a barragana, to cast, perhaps, 
laran-powered curses on his manhood?
“Take her away,” Aldaran said at last, his voice not entirely steady. “Hang her 
body from the castle heights for kyorebni to pick; she has earned no faithful 
servant’s burial rites.” He waited, impassive, while tall guardsmen came and 
bore away Mayra’s dead body, to be stripped and hanged for the great birds of 
prey to peck asunder. Aliciane heard thunder crackling in the distance, then 
nearer and nearer, and Aldaran came toward her, his voice now softened to 
tenderness.
“Have no more fear, my treasure; she is gone and her evil will with her. We will 
live to laugh at her curses, my darling.” He sank into a chair nearby, taking 
her hand in gentle fingers, but she sensed, through the touch, that he, too, was 
distressed and even frightened. And she was not strong enough to reassure him; 
she felt as if she were fainting again. Mayra’s curses rang in her ears, like 
the reverberating echoes in the canyons around Rockraven when as a child she had 
shouted into them for the amusement of hearing her own voice come back to her 
multiplied a thousandfold from all quarters of the wind.
You will father neither daughter nor son… . Your loins will be empty as a 
winter-killed tree… A day will come when you pray you had died childless… The 
reverberating remembered sound swelled, overwhelmed her; she lay back in the 
chair, near to losing consciousness.
“Aliciane, Aliciane—” She felt his strong arms around her, raising her, carrying 
her to her bed. He laid her down on the pillows, sat beside her, gently stroking 
her face.
“You must not be frightened of shadows, Aliciane.”
She said, trembling, the first thing that came into her head. “She cursed your 
manhood, my lord.”
“I feel not much endangered,” he said with a smile.
“Yet—I myself have seen and wondered… you have taken no other to your bed in 
these days when I am so heavy, as would have been your custom.”
A faint shadow passed over his face, and at this moment their minds were so 
close that Aliciane regretted her words; she should not have touched on his own 
fear. But he said, firmly putting away fear in cheerfulness, “Why, as for that, 
Aliciane, I am not so young a man that I cannot live woman-less for a few moons. 
Deonara is not sorry to be free of me, I think; my embraces have never meant 
more to her than duty, and dying children. And in these days, it seems, except 
for you, women are not so beautiful as they were when I was young. It has been 
no hardship to me, to forbear asking what is no pleasure to you to give; but 
when our child is born and you are well again, you shall see if that fool 
woman’s words have any evil effect on my manhood. You may yet give me a son, 
Aliciane, or, if not, at least we shall spend many joyous hours together.”
She said, shaking, “May the Lord of Light grant it, indeed.” He bent and kissed 
her tenderly, but the touch of his lips again brought them close, with shared 
fear and, abruptly, shared pain, tearing at her.
He straightened as if shocked, calling to her women. “Attend my lady!”
She clung to his hands. “Mikhail, I am frightened,” she whispered, and picked up 
his thought, Indeed this is no good omen, that she should go into labor with the 
sound of that witch’s curses still in her ears… She felt, too, the strong 
discipline with which he curbed and controlled even the thought, that fear might 
not spiral, heightened by each mind through which it passed. He said, with 
gentle command, “You must try to think of our child only, Aliciane, and lend her 
strength; think of our child only—and of my love.”
  
It was nearing sunset. Clouds massed on the heights beyond Castle Aldaran, tall 
stormclouds piling higher and higher, but where Donal soared the sky was blue 
and cloudless. His slight body lay stretched along a wooden framework of light 
woods, between wide wings of thinnest leather built out on a narrow frame. Borne 
up by the currents of air, he soared, dipping a hand to either side to balance 
on the strong gusts to left or to right. The air bore him aloft, and the small 
matrix-jewel fastened along the crosspiece. He had made the levitation glider 
himself, with only a little help from the stable-men. Several of the boys in the 
household had such toys, as soon as their training in the use of the star-stones 
was such as to maintain their levitation skills without undue danger. But most 
of the lads in the household were at their lessons; Donal had slipped away to 
the castle heights and soared away alone, even though he knew that the penalty 
would be to forbid him the use of the glider, perhaps for days. He could feel 
the stresses, the fear, everywhere in the castle.
A traitor executed, dying before touched, a death-spell on her. She had cursed 
Lord Aldaran’s manhood…
Gossip had run around Castle Aldaran like wildfire, fueled by the few women who 
had actually been in Aliciane’s chamber and seen anything; they had seen too 
much to keep silent, too little to give a true account.
She had flung curses at the little barragana and Aliciane of Rockraven had 
fallen down in labor. She had cursed Lord Aldaran’s manhood—and it was true that 
he had taken no other to his bed, he who had always before taken a new woman 
with every change of the moons in the sky. A new, ominous question in the 
gossiping made Donal shiver: Was it the Lady of Rockraven who had spelled his 
manhood so he would desire no other, that she might keep her place in his arms 
and in his heart?
One of the men, a coarse man-at-arms, had laughed, a deep, suggestive laugh, and 
said, “That one needs no spells; if Lady Aliciane cast her pretty eyes on me, I 
would gladly pawn my manhood,” but the arms-master said firmly, “Be still, 
Radan, Such talk is unseemly among young lads, and look, you—see who stands 
among them? Go to your work; do not stand here and gossip and tell dirty tales.” 
When the man had gone, the arms-master said kindly, “Such talk is unseemly, but 
it is only jesting, Donal; he is distressed because he has no woman of his own, 
and would speak so of any fair woman. He means no disrespect to your mother, 
Donal. Indeed, there will be great rejoicing at Aldaran if Aliciane of Rockraven 
gives him an heir. You must not be angry at unthinking speech; if you listen to 
every dog that barks, you will have no leisure to learn wisdom. Go to your 
lessons, Donal, and do not waste time resenting what ignorant men say of their 
betters.”
Donal had gone, but not to his lessons; he had taken his glider to the castle 
heights and soared out on the air currents, and now rode them, distressing 
thoughts left behind, memory in abeyance, wholly caught up in the intoxication 
of soaring, bird-fashion, now swooping to the north, now turning back west to 
where the great crimson sun hung low on the peaks.
A hawk must feel like this, hovering… Under his sensitive fingertips, the 
wood-and-leather wing tilted downward faintly, and he focused on the current, 
letting it bear him down the draft. His mind sunk into the hyperawareness of the 
jewel, seeing the sky not as blue emptiness but as a great net of fields and 
currents which were his to ride, now floating down, down until it seemed he 
would strike on a great crag and be dashed asunder, then at the last minute 
letting a sharp updraft snatch him away, hovering down the wind… He floated, 
mindless, soaring, wrapped in ecstasy.
The green moon, Idriel, hung low, a gibbous semi-shape in the reddening sky; the 
silver crescent of Mormallor was the palest of shadows; and violent Liriel, the 
largest of the moons, near to full, was just beginning to float up slowly from 
the eastern horizon. A low crackle of thunder from the massy clouds hanging 
behind the castle roused memory and apprehension in Donal. He might not be 
chastised for slipping away from lessons at a time like this, but if he remained 
out after sunset he would certainly be punished. Strong winds sprang up at 
sunset, and about a year ago, one of the pageboys at the castle had smashed his 
glider and broken an elbow on one of the rocks below. He had been lucky, they 
knew, not to kill himself. Donal cast a wary eye back at the walls of the 
castle, seeking for an updraft that would carry him to the heights—otherwise he 
must drift down to the slopes below the castle and carry his glider, which was 
light but hugely awkward, all the way up again. Feeling the faintest of air 
pressures, magnified through the awareness of the matrix, he caught an updraft 
which, if he rode it carefully, would carry him above and behind the castle, and 
he could float down to the roofs.
Riding up it, he could see, with a shiver, the swollen naked figure of the woman 
who hung there, her face already torn by the kyorebni who hovered and swooped 
there. Already she was unrecognizable, and Donal shuddered. Mayra had been kind 
to him in her own way. Had she truly cursed his mother? He shuddered with his 
first real awareness of death.
People die. They really die and are pecked to bits by birds of prey. My mother 
could die in childbirth, too… His body twitched in sudden terror and he felt the 
fragile wings of the glider, released from control of his mind and body, flutter 
and slip downward, falling… Swiftly he mastered it, brought it up, levitating 
his body until he caught a current again. But now he could feel the faint 
tension and shock in the air, the building static.
Thunder crackled above him; a bolt of lightning flashed to the heights of Castle 
Aldaran, leaving a smell of ozone and a faint burned smell in Donal’s nostrils. 
Behind the deafening roar, Donal saw without hearing the flare and play of 
lightning in the massed clouds above the castle. In sudden fright, he thought, I 
must get down, out of here; it is not safe to fly in an oncoming storm. … He had 
been told again and again to scan the sky for lightning in the clouds before 
letting his glider take off.
A sudden violent downdraft caught him, sent the fragile wood-and-leather 
apparatus plummeting down; Donal, really frightened, clung hard to the 
handholds, with sense enough not to try to fight it too soon. It felt as if it 
would smash him down on the rocks, but he forced himself to lie limp along the 
struts, his mind searching ahead for the crosscurrent. At just the right moment 
he tensed his body, focusing into the matrix awareness, felt levitation and the 
crosscurrent carry him up again.
Now. Quickly, and carefully. I must get up to the level of the castle, catch the 
first current that glides down. There is no time to waste, … But now the air 
felt heavy and thick and Donal could not read it for currents. In growing dread, 
he sent his awareness out in all directions, but he sensed only the strong 
magnetic charges of the growing storm.
This storm is wrong, too! It’s like the one the other day. It’s not a real storm 
at all, it’s something else. Mother! Oh, my mother! It seemed to the frightened 
child, clinging to the struts of the glider, that he could hear Aliciane crying 
out in terror, “Oh, Donal, what will become of my boy,” and he felt his body 
convulse in terror, the glider slipping from his control, falling… falling… If 
it had been less light, less broad-winged, it would have smashed onto the rocks, 
but the air currents, even though Donal could not read them, bore him along. 
After a few moments his fall stopped, and he began to drift sideways again. Now, 
using laran—the levitational strength given body and mind by the matrix jewel— 
and his trained awareness searching for the traces of currents through the 
magnetic storm, Donal began to fight for his life. He forced away the voice he 
could almost hear, his mother’s voice crying out in terror and pain. He forced 
away the fear which let him see his own body lying broken into bits on the crags 
below. He forced himself to submerge wholly into his own heightened laran, 
making the wood-and-leather wings extensions of his own outstretched arms, 
feeling the currents that blew and battered at them as if they buffeted his own 
hands, his own legs.
Now… ride it upward… just so far … try to gain a few lengths toward the west… He 
forced himself to go limp as another smashing bolt of lightning leaped from a 
cloud, feeling it burst beyond him. No control… it isn’t going anywhere… it has 
no awareness… and the maxims of the kindly leronis who had taught him what 
little he knew: The trained mind can always master any force of nature… 
Ritually, Donal reminded himself of that.
I need not fear wind or storm or lightning, the trained mind can master… But 
Donal was only ten years old, and resentfully he wondered if Margali had ever 
flown a glider in a thunderstorm.
A deafening crash socked him momentarily mindless; he felt the sudden drench of 
rain along his chilled body, and fought to stop the trembling which sought to 
wrest control of the fluttering wings from his mind.
Now. Firmly. Down, and down, along this current…right to the ground, along the 
slope … no time to play with another updraft. Down here I will be safe from the 
lightning…
  
His feet had almost touched the ground when another harsh upcurrent seized the 
wide wings and flung him upward again, away from the safety of the slopes. 
Sobbing, fighting the mechanism, he fought to force it down again, throwing 
himself over the edge and hanging vertically, grasping the struts over his head, 
letting the wide wings slow his fluttering fall. He sensed, through his skin, 
the lightning bolt and all his strength went out to divert it, to thrust it 
elsewhere. His hands clung frantically to the struts above his head as he heard 
the lightning and the deafening blast, saw with dazed eyes one of the great 
standing rocks on the slope split asunder with a great crashing roar. His feet 
touched ground; he fell hard, rolling over and over, feeling the glider’s struts 
smash and break to splinters. Pain cannoned through his shoulder as he fell, but 
he had enough strength and awareness left to go limp, as he had been taught to 
do in arms-practice, to fall without the muscular resistance which could break 
bones. Alive, bruised, sobbing, he lay stunned on the rocky slope, feeling the 
currents of lightning darting, aimlessly, around him, thunder rolling from peak 
to peak.
When he had recovered his breath, he picked himself up. Both wing-struts of the 
glider were smashed, but it could be repaired; he was lucky that his arms were 
not smashed like the struts. The sight of the splintered rock turned him sick 
and dizzy, and his head throbbed; but he realized that with all this, he was 
lucky to be alive. He picked up the broken toy, letting the splintered wings 
hang folded, and began slowly to trudge up the slope toward the castle gates.
  
“She hates me,” Aliciane cried in terror. “She does not want to be born!”
Through the darkness that seemed to hover around her mind she felt Mikhail catch 
and hold her flailing hands.
“My dearest love, that is folly,” he murmured, holding the woman against him, 
firmly controlling his own fears. He, too, sensed the strangeness of the 
lightning which flashed and crackled around the high windows, and Aliciane’s 
terror reinforced his own dread. It seemed there was another in the room, 
besides the frightened woman, besides the calm presence of Margali, who sat with 
her head bent, not looking at either of them, her face blue-lighted with the 
glimmer of the matrix stone. Mikhail could feel the soothing waves of calm 
Margali sent out, trying to surround them all with it; he tried to let his own 
mind and body surrender to the calm, relax to it. He began the deep rhythmic 
breathing he had been taught for control, and after a little he felt Aliciane, 
too, relax and float with it
Where, then, whence the terror, the struggle…
It is she, the unborn… it is her fear, her reluctance ...
Birth is an ordeal of terror; there must be someone to reassure her, someone who 
awaits her with love… Aldaran had done this service at the birth of all his 
children; sensing the formless fright and rage of the unformed mind, thrust by 
forces it could not comprehend. Now, searching his memories (had any of 
Clariza’s children been so strong? Deonara’s babes, none of them had been able 
even to fight for their lives, poor little weaklings… ), he reached out, 
searching for the unfocused thoughts of the struggling child, torn by awareness 
of the mother’s pain and fright. He sought to send out soothing thoughts of 
love, of tenderness; not in words, for the unborn had no knowledge of language, 
but he formed them into words for his own sake and Aliciane’s, to focus their 
emotions, to give a feeling of warmth and welcome.
You must not be afraid, little one; it will soon be over… you will breathe free 
and we will hold you in our arms and love you… you are long awaited and dearly 
loved… He sought to send out love and tenderness, to banish from his mind the 
frightening thought of the sons and daughter he had lost, when all his love 
could not follow them into the darkness their developing laran had cast on their 
minds. He tried to blot out memory of the weak and pitiful struggles of 
Deonara’s children, who had never lived to draw breath… Did I love them enough? 
If I had loved Deonara more, would her children have fought harder to live?
“Draw the curtains,” he said after a moment, and one of the women in the chamber 
tiptoed to the window and closed out the darkening sky. But the thunder roared 
in the room, and the flare of the lightning could be seen even through the drawn 
curtains.
“See how she does, the little one,” the midwife said, and Margali rose quietly, 
came to lay gentle hands around Aliciane’s body, sinking her awareness into the 
woman, to monitor her breathing, the progress of the birth. A woman with laran, 
bearing a child, could not be physically examined or touched, for fear of 
hurting or frightening the unborn with a careless pressure or touch. The leronis 
must do this, using the perception of her own telepathic and psychokinetic 
powers. Aliciane felt the soothing touch, and her troubled face relaxed, but as 
Margali withdrew she cried out in sudden terror.
“Oh, Donal, Donal—what will become of my boy?”
Lady Deonara Ardais-Aldaran, a slight aging woman, tiptoed to Aliciane’s side, 
and took the slender fingers in hers. She said soothingly, “Do not fear for 
Donal, Aliciane. Avarra forbid it should be needful, but I swear to you that I 
will, from this day forth, be foster-mother to him, as tenderly as if he were 
one of my own sons.”
“You have been kind to me, Deonara,” Aliciane said, “and I sought to take 
Mikhail from you.”
“Child, child—this is no time to think of this; if you can give Mikhail what I 
could not, then you are my sister and I will love you as Cassilda loved Camilla, 
I swear it.” Deonara bent and kissed Aliciane’s pale cheek. “Set your mind at 
rest, breda; think only of this little one who comes to our arms. I will love 
her too.”
Held tenderly in the arms of her child’s father, of the woman who had sworn to 
welcome her child as her own, Aliciane knew that she should be comforted. Yet, 
as lightning flared on the heights and rumbled around the walls of the castle, 
she felt terror all through and pervading her. Is it the child’s terror or mine? 
Her mind swam into darkness under the soothing of the leronis, under the 
flooding reassurances of Mikhail, pouring out love and tenderness. Is it for me 
or only for the child? It no longer seemed to matter; she could see no further. 
Always before, she had had some faint sense of what would come after, but now it 
seemed there was nothing in the world but her own fear, the child’s fear, the 
formless, wordless rage. It seemed to her that the rage focused with the 
thunder, that the birth pains tearing her were brightening and darkening as the 
lightning came and went… thunder crashing not on the heights outside but in and 
around her own violated body… terror, rage, fury expending itself within her… 
the lightning bringing fury and pain. She struggled for breath and cried out and 
her mind sank, almost with relief, into dark, and silence, and nothingness…
“Ai! She is a little fury,” the midwife said, gingerly holding the struggling 
child. “You must calm her, domna, before I cut her life from her mother’s, or 
she will struggle and bleed overmuch—but she is strong, a hearty little woman!”
Margali bent over the shrieking infant. The face was dark red, contorted into a 
furious scream of rage; the eyes, squinted almost shut, were a blazing blue. The 
round little head was covered with thick red fuzz. Margali laid her slender 
hands along the naked body of the child, crooning softly to her. Under the touch 
the baby calmed a little and stopped fighting; and the midwife was able to sever 
the umbilical cord and tie it. But when the woman took the infant and wrapped 
her in a warmed blanket, she began to shriek again and struggle and the woman 
laid her down, drawing back a shocked hand.
“Ai! Evanda have mercy, she is one of those! Well, when she is grown, the little 
maiden need not fear rape, if she can strike already with laran. I have never 
heard of this in a babe so young!”
“You frightened her,” Margali said, smiling; but as she took the child, her 
smile slid off. Like all of Deonara’s women, she had loved the gentle Aliciane. 
“Poor child, to lose so loving a mother, so soon!”
Mikhail of Aldaran knelt, his face drawn with anguish, beside the body of the 
woman he had loved. “Aliciane! Aliciane, my beloved,” he mourned. Then he raised 
his face, in bitterness. Deonara had taken the wrapped infant from Margali and 
was holding it, with the fierce hunger of thwarted motherhood, to her meager 
breast.
“You are not ill content, are you, Deonara—that none will vie with you to mother 
this child?”
“That is not worthy of you, Mikhail,” Deonara said, holding Aliciane’s child 
close. “I loved Aliciane well, my lord; would you have me cast aside her child, 
or can I best show my love by rearing her as tenderly as if she were my own? 
Take her, then, my husband, until you find another love.” Try as she would, Lady 
Aldaran could not keep the bitterness from her voice. “She is your only living 
child. And if already she has laran, she will need much care to rear her. My 
poor babes never lived even this long.” She put the child into Dom Mikhail’s 
arms, and he stood looking down, with infinite tenderness and grief, at his only 
child.
Mayra’s curse rang in his mind: You will take no other to your bed… your loins 
will be empty as a winter-killed tree. As if his own dismay communicated itself 
to the infant in his arms she began to struggle again and shriek in the blanket. 
Beyond the window the storm raged.
Dom Mikhail looked into the face of his daughter. Infinitely precious she seemed 
to the childless man; the more so if the curse should be true. She was rigid in 
his arms, squalling, her small face contorted as if she were trying to outshout 
the rage of the storm outside, her tiny pink fists clenched with rage. Yet 
already he could see in her face a miniature blurred copy of Aliciane’s—the 
arched brows and high cheekbones, the eyes blazing blue, the fuzz of red hair.
“Aliciane died to give me this great gift. Shall we give her her mother’s name, 
in memory?”
Deonara shuddered and flinched. “Would you bestow on your only daughter the name 
of the dead, my lord? Seek a name of better omen!”
“As you will. Give her what name pleases you, domna.”
Deonara said, faltering, “I would have named our first daughter Dorilys, had she 
lived long enough to be named. Let her bear that name, in token that I will be a 
mother to her.” She touched the rose-petal cheek with a finger. “How do you like 
that name, little woman? Look—she sleeps. She is weary with so much crying…”
Beyond the windows of the birth-chamber the storm muttered into silence and died 
away, and there was no sound but the slow dripping of the last raindrops 
outside.



CHAPTER THREE
Eleven Years Later
 
It was the dark hour before dawn. Snow fell silently over the monastery of 
Nevarsin, already buried under deep snow.
There was no bell, or if there was, it rang silently, unheard, in Father 
Master’s quarters. Yet in every cell and dormitory, brothers and novices and 
students moved silently, as if on that single noiseless signal, out of sleep.
Allart Hastur of Elhalyn came awake sharply, something in his mind tuned and 
receptive to the call. In his first years he had often slept through it, but no 
one in the monastery might waken another; part of the training here was that the 
novices should hear the inaudible and see what was not there to be seen.
Nor did he feel cold, though he was covered, by rule, only with the outer cowl 
of his long robe; he had by now disciplined his body so that it would generate 
heat to warm him as he slept. With no need of light, he rose, drew the cowl over 
the simple inner garment he wore night and day, and thrust his feet into rude 
sandals woven of straw. Into his pockets he thrust the small bound prayer book, 
the pen case and sealed ink-horn, his own bowl and spoon; now in the pockets of 
the robe were all the items which a monk might own or use. Dom Allart Hastur was 
not yet a fully sworn brother of Saint-Valentine-of-the-Snows at Nevarsin. It 
would be a year before he could achieve that final detachment from the world 
which lay below him—a troubling world, and one which he remembered every time he 
fastened the leather strap of his sandals; for in the world of the Domains below 
him, sandal-wearer was the ultimate insult for a male, implying effeminate 
behavior, or worse. Even now, as he fastened the sandal-strap, he was forced to 
calm his mind from that memory by the three slow breaths, pause, three more 
breaths paced to a murmured prayer for the cause of the offense; but Allart was 
painfully aware of the irony in this.
To pray for peace for my brother, who put this insult on me, when it was he who 
drove me here, for my very sanity’s sake? Aware that he still felt anger and 
resentment, he did the breathing ritual again, firmly dismissing his brother 
from his mind, remembering the words of the Father Master.
“You have no power over the world or the things of the world, my son; you have 
renounced all desire for that power. The power you have come here to attain is 
the power over the things within. Peace will come only when you become fully 
aware that your thoughts are not from outside yourself; they come from within, 
and thus are wholly yours, the only things in this universe over which it is 
legitimate to have total power. You, not your thoughts and memories, rule your 
mind, and it is you, no other, who bid them to come and go. The man who allows 
his own thoughts to torment him is like the man who clasps a scorpion-ant to his 
breast, bidding it bite him further.”
Allart repeated the exercise, and at the end of it, the memory of his brother 
had vanished from his mind. He has no place here, not even in my mind and 
memory. Calm now, his breathing coming and going in a small white cloud about 
his mouth, he left the cell and moved silently down the long corridor.
The chapel, reached by a brief passage through the falling snow, was the oldest 
part of the monastery. Four hundred years ago, the first band of brothers had 
come here to be above the world they wished to renounce, digging their monastery 
from the living rock of the mountain, hollowing out the small cave in which, it 
was said, Saint-Valentine-of-the-Snows had lived out his life. Around the 
hermit’s remains, a city had grown: Nevarsin, the City of Snows. Now several 
buildings clustered here, each one built with the labor of monkish hands, in 
defiance of the ease of these days; it was the brothers’ boast that not a single 
stone had been moved with the aid of any matrix, or with anything other than the 
toil of hands and mind.
The chapel was dark, a single small light glowing in the shrine where the statue 
of the Holy Bearer of Burdens stood, above the last resting-place of the saint. 
Allart, moving quietly, eyes closed as the rule demanded, turned into his 
assigned place on the benches; as one, the brotherhood knelt. Allart, eyes still 
closed by rule, heard the shuffle of feet, an occasional stumble of some novice 
who must still rely on the outer instead of the inner sight to move his clumsy 
body about the darkness of the monastery. The students, unsworn, with minimal 
teaching, stumbled in the darkness, ignorant of why the monks neither allowed 
nor required light. Whispering, pushing one another, they stumbled and sometimes 
fell, but eventually they were all in their assigned places. Again there was no 
discernible sound, but the monks rose with a single disciplined movement, 
following again some invisible signal from Father Master, and their voices rose 
in the morning hymn:
“One Power created
Heaven and Earth
Mountains and valleys
Darkness and light;
Male and female
Human and nonhuman.
This Power cannot be seen
Cannot be heard
Cannot be measured
By anything except the mind
Which partakes of this Power;
I name it Divine…”
This was the moment of every day when Allart’s inward questions, searchings, and 
dismay wholly vanished. Hearing the voices of his brothers singing, old and 
young, treble with childhood or rusty with age, loosing his own voice in the 
great affirmation, he lost all sense of himself as a separate, searching, 
questing entity. He rested, floating, in the knowledge that he was a part of 
something greater than himself, a part of the great Power which maintained the 
motion of moons, stars, sun, and the unknown Universe beyond; that here he had a 
true place in the harmony; that if he vanished, he would leave an Allart-sized 
hole in the Universal Mind, something never to be replaced or altered. Hearing 
the singing, he was wholly at peace. The sound of his own voice, a finely 
trained tenor, gave him pleasure, but no more than the sounds of each voice in 
the choir, even the rusty and untuneful quavering of old Brother Fenelon next to 
him. Whenever he sang with his brothers, he recalled the first words he had ever 
read of Saint-Valentine-of-the-Snows, words which had come to him during the 
years of his greatest torment, and which had given him the first peace he had 
known since he left his childhood behind.
“Each one of us is like a single voice within a great choir, a voice like no 
other; each of us sings for a few years within that great choir and then that 
voice is forever silenced, and other voices take its place; but every voice is 
unique and none is more beautiful than another, or can sing another’s song. I 
call nothing evil but the attempt to sing to another’s tune or in another’s 
voice.”
And Allart, reading those words, had known that from childhood he had been 
attempting, at the command of his father and brothers, tutors, arms-masters and 
grooms, servants and superiors, to sing to a tune, and in a voice, which could 
never be his own. He had become a cristoforo, which was believed unseemly for a 
Hastur; a descendant of Hastur and Cassilda, a descendant of gods, one who bore 
laran; a Hastur of Elhalyn, near to the holy places at Hali where the gods once 
had walked. All the Hasturs, from time immemorial, had worshiped the Lord of 
Light. Yet Allart had become a cristoforo, and a time had come when he had left 
his brethren and renounced his inheritance and come here to be Brother Allart, 
his lineage half forgotten even by the brethren of Nevarsin.
Forgetful of self, and yet all-mindful of his own individual and unique place in 
the choir, in the monastery, in the Universe, Allart sang the long hymns; later 
he went, his fast still unbroken, to his assigned work of the morning, bringing 
breakfast to the novices and students in the outer refectory. He carried the 
steaming jugs of tea and hot bean-porridge to the boys, pouring the food into 
stoneware bowls and mugs, noticing how the cold young hands curved around the 
heat to try to warm themselves. Most of the boys were too young to have mastered 
the techniques of internal heat, and he knew that some of them wore their 
blankets wrapped under their cowls. He felt a detached sympathy for them, 
remembering his own early sufferings with the cold before his untrained mind 
could learn how to warm his body; but they had hot food and slept under extra 
blankets and the more they felt the cold, the sooner they would apply themselves 
to conquering it.
He kept silence (though he knew he should have reproved them) when they grumbled 
about the coarseness of the food; here in the quarters of the children, food 
rich and luxurious, by contrast, was served. He himself had tasted hot food only 
twice since entering the full monastic regimen; both times when he had done 
extraordinary work in the deep passes, rescuing snowbound travelers. Father 
Master had judged the chilling of his body had gone to a point where it 
endangered his health, and had ordered him to eat hot food and sleep under extra 
blankets for a few days. Under ordinary conditions, Allart had so mastered his 
body that summer and winter were indifferent to him, and his body made full use 
of whatever food came his way, hot or cold.
One disconsolate little fellow, a pampered son of the Lowland Domains with 
carefully cut hair curled around his face, was shivering so hard, wrapped in 
cowl and blanket, that Allart while spooning him out a second portion of 
porridge—for the children were allowed to eat as much as they wished, being 
growing boys—said gently, “You will not feel the cold so much in a little while. 
The food will warm you. And you are warmly clad.”
“Warmly?” the child said, disbelieving. “I haven’t my fur cloak, and I think I 
am going to die of the cold!” He was near to tears, and Allart laid a hand 
compassionately on his shoulder.
“You won’t die, little brother. You will learn that you can be warm without 
clothes. Do you know that the novices here sleep with neither blanket nor cowl, 
naked on the stone? And no one here has died of the cold yet. No animal wears 
clothing, their bodies being adapted to the weather where they live.”
“Animals have fur,” protested the child, sulkily. “I’ve only got my skin!”
Allart laughed and said,“And that is proof you do not need fur; for if you 
needed fur to keep warm, you would have been born furred, little brother. You 
are cold because since childhood you have been told to be cold in the snow and 
your mind has believed this lie; but a time will come, even before summer, when 
you too will run about barefoot in the snow and feel no discomfort. You do not 
believe me now, but remember my words, child. Now eat up your porridge, and feel 
it going to work in the furnace of your body, to bring heat to all your limbs.” 
He patted the tearstained cheek, and went on with his work.
He, too, had rebelled against the harsh discipline of the monks; but he had 
trusted them, and their promises had been truthful. He was at peace, his mind 
disciplined to control, living only one day at a time with none of the 
tormenting pressure of foresight, his body now a willing servant, doing what it 
was told without demanding more than it needed for well-being and health.
In his years here he had seen four batches of these children arrive, crying with 
cold, complaining about harsh food and cold beds, spoiled, demanding—and they 
would go away in a year, or two, or three, disciplined to survival, knowing much 
of their past history and competent to judge their own future. These, too, 
including the pampered little boy who was afraid he would die of cold without 
his fur cloak, would go away hardened and disciplined. Without deliberation, his 
mind moved into the future, trying to see what would become of the child, to 
reassure himself. He knew it—his sternness with the child was justified…
Allart tensed, his muscles stiffening as they had not done since his first year 
here. Automatically, he breathed to relax them, but the sudden dread remained.
I am not here. I cannot see myself at Nevarsin in another year… Is it my death I 
see: Or am I to go forth? Holy Bearer of Burdens, strengthen me…
It had been this that brought him here. He was not, as some Hasturs were, 
emmasca, neither male nor female, long-lived but mostly sterile; though there 
were monks in this monastery who had indeed been born so, and only here had they 
found ways to live with this, which in these days was an affliction. No; he had 
known from childhood that he was a man, and had been so trained, as was fitting 
to the son of a royal line, fifth from the throne of the Domains. But even as a 
child, he had had another trouble.
He had begun to see the future almost before he was able to talk; once, when his 
foster-father had come to bring him a horse, he had frightened the man by 
telling him that he was glad he had brought the black instead of the gray he had 
started out with.
“How did you know I started to bring you the gray?” the man had asked.
“I saw you giving me the gray,” Allart had said, “and then I saw you giving me 
the black, and I saw that your pack fell and you turned back and did not come at 
all.”
“Mercy of Aldones,” the man had whispered. “It is true that I came near to 
losing my pack in the pass, and if I had lost it I would have had to turn back, 
having little food for the journey.”
Only slowly had Allart begun to realize the nature of his laran; he saw, not the 
one future, the true future alone, but all possible futures, fanning out ahead 
of him, every move he made spawning a dozen new choices. At fifteen, when he was 
declared a man and went before the Council of Seven to be tattooed with the mark 
of his Royal House, he found his days and nights torture, for he could see a 
dozen roads before him at every step, and a hundred choices each spurting new 
choices, till he was paralyzed, never daring to move for terror of the known and 
the new unknown. He did not know how to shut it out, and he could not live with 
it. In arms-training he was paralyzed, seeing at every stroke a dozen ways a 
movement of his own could disable or kill another, three ways every stroke aimed 
at him could land or fail to land. The arms-training sessions became such a 
nightmare that eventually he would stand still before the arms-master, cowering 
like a frightened girl, unable even to lift his sword. The leronis of his 
household tried to reach his mind and show him the way out of this labyrinth, 
but Allart was paralyzed with the different roads he could see for her training, 
and with his own growing sensitivity to women, could see himself seizing her 
mindlessly, and in the end he hid himself in his room, letting them call him 
coward and idiot, refusing to move or take a single step for fear of what would 
happen, knowing himself a freak, a madman…
When Allart had finally stirred himself to make his long, terrifying journey—at 
every step seeing the false step which could plunge him into the abyss, to be 
killed or lie broken for days on the crags below the path, seeing himself 
fleeing, turning back—Father Master had welcomed him and heard his story, 
saying, “Not a freak or a madman, Allart, but much afflicted. I cannot promise 
you will find your true road here, or be cured, but perhaps we can teach you to 
live with it.”
“The leronis thought I could learn to control it with a matrix, but I was 
afraid,” Allart had confessed, and it was the first time he had felt free to 
speak of fear; fear was the forbidden thing, cowardice a vice too unspeakable to 
mention for a Hastur.
Father Master nodded and said, “You did well to fear the matrix; it might have 
controlled you through your fear. Perhaps we can show you a way to live without 
fear; failing that, perhaps you can learn a way to live with your fears. First 
you will learn that they are yours.”
“I have always known this. I have felt guilty enough about them—” Allart 
protested, but the old monk had smiled.
“No. If you truly believed they were yours, you would not feel guilt, or 
resentment, or anger. What you see is from outside yourself, and may come, or 
not, but is beyond your control. But your fear is yours, and yours alone, like 
your voice, or your fingers, or your memory, and therefore yours to control. If 
you feel powerless over your fear, you have not yet admitted that it is yours, 
to do with as you will. Can you play the rryl?”
Startled at this mental jump, Allart admitted that he had been taught to play 
the small, handheld harp after a fashion.
“When your strings would not at first make the sounds you wished, did you curse 
the instrument, or your unskilled hands? Yet a time came, I suppose, when your 
fingers were responsive to your will. Do not curse your laran because your mind 
has not yet been trained to control it.” He let Allart think that over for a 
moment, then said, “The futures you see are from outside, generated by neither 
memory nor fear; but the fear arises within you, paralyzing your choice to move 
among those futures. It is you, Allart, who create the fear; when you learn to 
control your fear, then you can look unafraid at the many paths you may tread 
and choose which you will take. Your fear is like your unskilled hand on the 
harp, blurring the sound.”
“But how can I help being afraid? I do not want to fear.”
“Tell me,” Father Master said mildly, “which of the gods put the fear into you, 
like a curse?” Allart was silent, shamed, and the monk said quietly, “You speak 
of being afraid. Yet fear is something you generate in yourself, from your 
mind’s lack of control; and you will learn to look at it and discover for 
yourself when you choose to be afraid. The first thing you must do is to 
acknowledge that the fear is yours, and you can bid it come and go at will. 
Begin with this; whenever you feel fear that prevents choice, say to yourself: 
‘What has made me feel fear? Why have I chosen to feel this fear preventing my 
choice, instead of feeling the freedom to choose?’ Fear is a way of not allowing 
yourself to choose freely what you will do next; a way of letting your body’s 
reflexes, not the needs of your mind, choose for you. And as you have told me, 
mostly, of late, you have chosen to do nothing, so that none of the things you 
fear will come upon you; so your choices are not made by you but by your fear. 
Begin here, Allart. I cannot promise to free you of your fear, only that a time 
will come when you are the master, and fear will not paralyze you.” Then he had 
smiled and said, “You came here, did you not?”
“I was more afraid to stay than to come,” Allart said, shaking.
Father Master had said, encouragingly, “At least you could still select between 
a greater and a lesser fear. Now you must learn to control the fear and look 
beyond it; and then a day will come when you will know that it is yours, your 
servant, to command as you will.”
“All the Gods grant it,” Allart had said, shivering. So his life here had begun… 
and had endured for six years now. Slowly, one by one, he had mastered his 
fears, his body’s demands, learning to seek out among the bewildering fan-shaped 
futures the one least harmful. Then his future had narrowed, until he saw 
himself only here, living one day at a time, doing what he must… no more and no 
less.
Now, after six years, suddenly what he saw ahead was a bewildering flow of 
images: travel, rocks and snow, a strange castle, his home, the face of a woman… 
Allart covered his face with his hands, again in the grip of the old paralyzing 
fear.
No! No! I will not! I want to stay here, to live my own destiny, to sing to no 
other man’s tune and in no other man’s voice…
For six years he had been left to his own destiny, subject only to the futures 
determined by his own choices. Now the outside was breaking in on him again; was 
someone outside the monastery making choices in which he must be involved, one 
way or another? All the fear he had subdued in the last six years crowded in on 
him again; then, slowly, breathing as he had been taught, he mastered it.
My fear is my own; I am in command of it, and I alone can choose… Again he 
sought to see, among the thronging images, one path in which he might remain 
Brother Allart, at peace in his cell, working for the future of his world in his 
own way…
But there was no such future path, and this told him something; whatever outside 
choice was breaking in on him, it would be something which he could not choose 
to deny. A long time he struggled, kneeling on the cold stone of his cell, 
trying to force his reluctant body and mind to accept this knowledge. But in the 
end, as he now knew he had power to do, he mastered his fear. When the summons 
came he would meet it unafraid.
  
By midday, Allart had faced enough of the bewildering futures which spread out, 
diverging endlessly, before him, to know at least a part of what he faced. He 
had seen his father’s face—angry, cajoling, complaisant—often enough in these 
visions to know, at least in part, what was the first trial facing him.
When Father Master summoned him, he could face the ancient monk with calm and an 
impassive control.
“Your father has come to speak with you, my son. You may see him in the north 
guest chamber.”
Allart lowered his eyes; when at last he raised them, he said, “Father, must I 
speak with him?” His voice was calm, but the Father Master knew him too well to 
take this calm at face value.
“I have no reason to refuse him, Allart.”
Allart felt like flinging back an angry reply, “I have!” but he had been trained 
too well to cling to unreason. He said quietly, at last, “I have spent much of 
this day schooling myself to face this; I do not want to leave Nevarsin. I have 
found peace here, and useful work. Help me to find a way, Father Master.”
The old man sighed. His eyes were closed—as they were most of the time, since he 
saw more clearly with the inner sight—but Allart knew they beheld him more 
clearly than ever.
“I would indeed, for your sake, son, that I could see such a way. You have found 
content here, and such happiness as a man bearing your curse can find. But I 
fear your time of content is ended. You must bear in mind, lad, that many men 
never have such a time of rest to learn self-knowledge and discipline; be 
grateful for what you have been given.”
Oh, I am sick of this pious talk of acceptance of those burdens laid upon 
us—Allart caught back the rebellious thought, but Father Master raised his head 
and his eyes, colorless as some strange metal, met Allart’s rebellious ones.
“You see, my boy, you have not really the makings of a monk. We have given you 
some control over your natural inclinations, but you are by nature rebellious 
and eager to change what you can, and changes can be made only down there.” His 
gesture took in a whole wide world outside the monastery. “You will never be 
content to accept your world complacently, son, and now you have the strength to 
fight rationally, not to lash out in blind rebellion born of your own pain. You 
must go, Allart, and make such changes in your world as you may.”
Allart covered his face with his hands. Until this moment he had still 
believed—like a child, like a credulous child!—that the old monk held some power 
to help him avoid what must be. He knew that six years in the monastery had not 
helped him grow past this; now he felt the last of his childhood drop away, and 
he wanted to weep.
Father Master said with a tender smile, “Are you grieving that you cannot remain 
a child, in your twenty-third year, Allart? Rather, be grateful that after all 
these years of learning, you have been made ready to be a man.”
“You sound like my father!” Allart flung at him angrily. “I had that served up 
to me morning and night with my porridge—that I was not yet manly enough to fill 
my place in the world. Do not you begin to speak so, Father, or I shall feel my 
years here were all a lie!”
“But I do not mean what your father means, when I say you are ready to meet what 
comes as a man,” Father Master said. “I think you know already what I mean by 
manhood, and it is not what my lord Hastur means; or was I mistaken when I heard 
you comfort and encourage a crying child this morning? Don’t pretend you do not 
know the difference, Allart.” The stern voice softened. “Are you too angry to 
kneel for my blessing, child?”
Allart fell to his knees; he felt the touch of the old man on his mind.
“The Holy Bearer of Burdens will strengthen you for what must come. I love you 
well, but it would be selfish to keep you here; I think you are too much needed 
in that world you tried to renounce.” As he rose, Father Master drew Allart into 
a brief embrace, kissed him, and let him go.
“You have my leave to go and clothe yourself in secular garments, if you will, 
before you present yourself to your father.” Again, for the last time, he 
touched Allart’s face. “My blessing on you always. We may not meet again, 
Allart, but you will be often in my prayers in the days to come. Send your sons 
to me, one day, if you will. Now go.” He seated himself, letting his cowl drop 
over his face, and Allart knew he had been dismissed from the old man’s thoughts 
as firmly as from his presence.
Allart did not avail himself of Father Master’s permission to change his 
garments. He thought angrily that he was a monk, and if his father liked it not, 
that was his father’s trouble and none of his own. Yet part of this rebellion 
came from the knowledge that when he turned his thoughts ahead he could not see 
himself again in the robes of a monk, nor here in Nevarsin. Would he never come 
again to the City of Snows?
As he walked toward the guest chamber, he tried to discipline his breathing to 
calm. Whatever his father had come to say to him, it would not be bettered by 
quarreling with the old man as soon as they met. He swung open the door and went 
into the stone-floored chamber.
Beside the fire burning there, in a carven chair, an old man sat, erect and 
grim, his fingers clenched on the chair-arms. His face had the arrogant stamp of 
the lowland Hasturs. As he heard the measured sweep of Allart’s robe brushing on 
the stone, he said irritably, “Another of you robed spooks? Send me my son!”
“Your son is here to serve you, vai dom.”
The old man stared at him. “Gods above, is it you, Allart? How dare you present 
yourself before me in this guise!”
“I present myself as I am, sir. Have you been received with comfort? Let me 
bring you food or wine, if you wish.”
“I have already been served so,” the old man said, jerking his head at the tray 
and decanter on the table. “I need nothing more, except to speak with you, for 
which purpose I undertook this wretched journey!”
“And I repeat, I am here and at your service, sir. Had you a hard journey? What 
prompted you to make such a journey in winter, sir?”
“You!” growled the old man. “When are you going to be ready to come back where 
you belong, and do your duty to clan and family?”
Allart lowered his eyes, clenching his fists till his nails cut deep in his palm 
and drew blood; what he saw in this room, a few minutes from now, terrified him. 
In at least one of the futures diverging now from his every word, Stephen 
Hastur, Lord Elhalyn, younger brother of Regis II, who sat on the throne of 
Thendara, lay here on the stone floor, his neck broken. Allart knew that the 
anger surging in him, the rage he had felt for his father since he could 
remember, could all too easily erupt in such a murderous attack. His father was 
speaking again, but Allart did not hear, fighting to force mind and body to 
composure.
I do not want to fall upon my father and kill him with my two hands! I do not, I 
— do — not! And I will not! Only when he could speak calmly, without resentment, 
he said, “I am sorry, sir, to displease you. I thought you knew that I wished to 
spend my life within these walls, as a monk and a healer. I would be allowed to 
pronounce my final vows this year at midsummer, to renounce my name and 
inheritance and dwell here for the rest of my life.”
“I knew you had once said so, in the sickness of your adolescence,” Dom Stephen 
Hastur said, “but I thought it would pass when you were restored to health of 
body and mind. How is it with you, Allart? You look well and strong. It seems 
that these cristoforo madmen have not starved you nor driven you quite mad with 
deprivations—not yet.”
Allart said amiably, “Indeed they have not, sir. My body, as you can see, is 
strong and well, and my mind at peace.”
“Is it so, son? Then I shall not begrudge the years you have spent here; and by 
whatever methods they achieved this miracle, I shall forever be grateful to 
them.”
“Then compound your gratitude, vai dom, by giving me leave to remain here where 
I am happy and at peace, for the rest of my life.”
“Impossible! Madness!”
“May I ask why, sir?”
“I had forgotten that you did not know,” Lord Elhalyn said. “Your brother Lauren 
died, three years ago; he had your laran, only in worse form still, for he could 
not manage to distinguish between past and future; and when it came upon him in 
all strength, he withdrew inside himself and never spoke again, or responded to 
anything outside, and so died.”
Allart felt grieved. Lauren had been the merest child, a stranger, when he left 
home; but the thought of the boy’s sufferings dismayed him. How narrowly he 
himself had escaped that fate! “Father, I am sorry. What pity you could not have 
sent him here; they might have been able to reach him.”
“One was enough,” Dom Stephen said. “We need no weakling sons; better die young 
than pass on such a weakness in the blood. His Grace, my brother Regis, has but 
a single heir; his elder son died in battle against those invaders at Serrais, 
and his only remaining son, Felix, who will inherit his throne, is frail in 
health. I am next, and then your brother Damon-Rafael. You stand within four 
places of the throne, and the king is in his eightieth year. You have no son, 
Allart.”
Allart said, with a violent surge of revulsion, “With such a curse as I bear, 
would you have me pass it to another? You have told me how it cost Lauren his 
life!”
“Yet we need that foresight,” Stephen Hastur said, “and you have mastered it. 
The leroni of Hali have a plan for fixing it in our line without the instability 
which endangered your sanity and killed Lauren. I tried to speak of this to you 
before you left us, but you were in no shape to think of the needs of the clan. 
We have made compact with the Aillard clan for a daughter of their line, whose 
genes have been so modified that they will be dominant, so that your children 
will have the sight, and the control to use it without danger. You will marry 
this girl. Also she has two nedestro sisters, and the leroni of the Tower have 
discovered a technique which will assure that you will father only sons on all 
of these. If the experiment succeeds, your sons will have the foresight and the 
control, too.” He saw the disgust in Allart’s face and said, enraged, “Are you 
no more than a squeamish boy?”
“I am a cristoforo. The first precept of the Creed of Chastity is to take no 
woman unwilling.”
“Good enough for a monk, not a man! Yet none of these will be unwilling when you 
take her, I assure you. If you wish, the two who are not your wives need not 
even know your name; we have drugs now which will mean that they carry away only 
the memory of a pleasant interlude. And every woman wishes to bear a child of 
the lineage of Hastur and Cassilda.”
Allart grimaced in revulsion. “I want no woman who must be delivered to me 
drugged and unconscious. Unwilling does not only mean fighting in terror of 
rape; it would also mean a woman whose ability to give, or refuse, free consent 
had been destroyed by drugs!”
“I would not suggest it,” said the old man angrily, “but you have made it clear 
that you are not ready to do your duty by caste and clan of your own free will! 
At your age, Damon-Rafael had a dozen nedestro sons by as many willing women! 
But you, you sandal-wearer—”
Allart bent his head, fighting the reflex of anger which prompted him to take 
that frail old neck between his hands and squeeze the life out of it. 
“Damon-Rafael spoke his mind often enough on the subject of my manhood, Father. 
Must I hear it from you as well?”
“What have you done to give me a better opinion of you? Where are your sons?”
“I do not agree with you that manhood must be measured by sons alone, sir; but I 
will not argue the point with you now. I do not wish to pass on this curse in my 
blood. I know something of laran. I feel you are wrong in trying to breed for 
greater strength in these gifts. You can see in me—and in Lauren, even more—that 
the human mind was never intended to bear such weight. Do you know what I mean 
if I speak of recessives and lethal genes!”
“Are you going to teach me my business, youngster?”
“No, but in all respect, Father, I will have no part in it If I were ever to 
have sons—”
“There is no if about it. You must have sons.”
The old man’s voice was positive, and Allart sighed. His father simply did not 
hear him. Oh, he heard the words with his ears. But he did not listen; the words 
went through and past him, because what Allart was saying did not agree with the 
fixed belief of Lord Elhalyn—that a son’s prime duty was to breed the sons who 
would carry on the fabled gifts of Hastur and Cassilda, the laran of the 
Domains.
Laran, sorcery, psi power, which enabled these families to excel in the 
manipulation of the matrix stones, the starstones amplifying the hidden powers 
of the mind; to know the future, to force the minds of lesser men to their own 
will, to manipulate inanimate objects, to compel the minds of animal and 
bird—laran was the key to power beyond imagining, and for generations the 
Domains had been breeding for it.
“Father, hear me, I beg you.” Allart was not angry or argumentative now, but 
desperately in earnest. “I tell you, nothing but evil can come of this breeding 
program, which makes of women only instruments to breed monsters of the mind, 
without humanity! I have a conscience; I cannot do it.”
His father sneered, “Are you a lover of men, that you will not give sons to our 
caste?”
“I am not,” Allart said, “but I have known no woman. If I have been cursed with 
this evil gift of laran—”
“Silence! You blaspheme our forefathers and the Lord of Light who gave us 
laran!”
Now Allart was angry again. “It is you who blaspheme, sir, if you think the gods 
can be bent to human purposes this way!”
“You insolent—” His father sprang up, then, with an enormous effort, controlled 
his rage. “My son, you are young, and warped by these monkish notions. Come back 
to the heritage to which you were born, and you will learn better. What I ask of 
you is both right and needful if the Hasturs are to prosper. No”—he gestured for 
silence when Allart would have spoken—“on these matters you are still ignorant, 
and your education must be completed. A male virgin”—try as he might, Lord 
Elhalyn could not keep the contempt from his voice— “is not competent to judge.”
“Believe me,” Allart said, “I am not indifferent to the charms of women. But I 
do not wish to pass on the curse of my blood. And I will not.”
“That is not open to discussion,” Dom Stephen said, menace in his voice. “You 
will not disobey me, Allart. I would think it disgrace if a son of mine must 
father his sons drugged like some reluctant bride, but there are drugs which 
will do that to you, too, if you leave us no choice.” Holy Bearer of Burdens, 
help me! How shall I keep from killing him as he stands here before me?
Dom Stephen said more quietly, “This is no time for argument, my son. You must 
give us a chance to convince you that your scruples are unfounded. I beg of you, 
go now and clothe yourself as befits a man and a Hastur, and make ready to ride 
with me. You are so needed, my dear son, and—do you not know how much I have 
missed you?” The genuine love in his voice thrust pain through Allart’s heart. A 
thousand childhood memories crowded in on him, blurring past and future with 
their tenderness. He was a pawn to his father’s pride and heritage, yes, but 
with all this, Lord Elhalyn sincerely loved all his sons, had been genuinely 
afraid for Allart’s health and sanity—or he would never have sent him to a 
cristoforo monastery, of all places on the face of this world! Allart thought, I 
cannot even hate him; it would be so much easier if I could!
“I will come, Father. Believe me, I have no wish to anger you.”
“Nor I to threaten you, lad.” Dom Stephen held out his arms. “Do you know, we 
have not yet greeted one another as kinsmen? Do these cristoforos bid you 
renounce kin-ties, son?”
Allart embraced his father, feeling with dismay the bony fragility of the old 
man’s body, knowing that the appearance of domineering anger masked advancing 
weakness and age. “All the gods forbid I should do so while you live, my father. 
Let me go and make ready to ride.”
“Go, then, my son. For it displeases me more than I can say, to see you in this 
garb so unfitting for a man.”
Allart did not answer, but bowed and went to change his clothes. He would go 
with his father, yes, and present the appearance of a dutiful son. With certain 
limits, he would be so. But now he knew what Father Master had meant. Changes 
were needful in his world, and he could not make them behind monastery walls.
He could see himself riding forth, could see a great hawk hovering, the face of 
a woman… a woman. He knew so little of women. And now they meant to deliver up 
to him not one but three, drugged and complaisant… that he would fight to the 
end of his will and conscience; he would be no part of this monstrous breeding 
program of the Domains. Never. The monkish garb discarded, he knelt briefly, for 
the last time, on the cold stones of his cell.
“Holy Bearer of Burdens, strengthen me to bear my share of the world’s weight…” 
he murmured, then rose and began to clothe himself in the ordinary dress of a 
nobleman of the Domains, strapping a sword at his side for the first time in 
over six years.
“Blessed Saint-Valentine-of-the-Snows, grant I may bear it justly in the world…” 
he whispered, then sighed, and looked for the last time on his cell. He knew, 
with a sorrowful inner knowledge, that he would never set eyes on it again.



CHAPTER FOUR
 
The chervine, the little Darkovan stag-pony, picked its way fastidiously along 
the trail, tossing its antlers in protest at the new fall of snow. They were 
free of the mountains now, Hali no more than three days’ ride away. It had been 
a long journey for Allart, longer than the seven days it had taken to ride the 
actual distance; he felt as if he had traveled years, endless leagues, great 
chasms of change; and he was exhausted.
It took all the discipline of his years at Nevarsin to move securely through the 
bewilderment of what he now saw, legions of possible futures branching off ahead 
of him at every step, like different roads he might have taken, new 
possibilities generated by every word and action. As they traveled the dangerous 
mountain passes, Allart could see every possible false step which might lead him 
over a precipice, to be smashed, as well as the safe step he actually took. He 
had learned at Nevarsin to thread his way through his fear, but the effort left 
him weak and weary.
And another possibility was always with him. Again and again, as they traveled, 
he had seen his father lying dead at his feet, in an unfamiliar room.
I do not want to begin my life outside the monastery as a patricide! Holy Bearer 
of Burdens, strengthen me… ! He knew he could not deny his anger; that way lay 
the same paralysis as in fear, to take no step for fear it would lead to 
disaster.
The anger is mine, he reminded himself with firm discipline. I can choose what I 
will do with my anger, and I can choose not to kill. But it troubled him to see 
again and again, in that unfamiliar scene which grew familiar as he traveled 
with the vision, the corpse of his father, lying in a room of green hangings 
bordered with gold, at the foot of a great chair whose very carvings he could 
have drawn, so often had he seen it with the sight of his laran.
It was hard, as he looked upon the face of his living father, not to look upon 
him with the pity and horror he would feel for the newly and shockingly dead: 
and it was a strain on him to show nothing of this to Lord Elhalyn.
For his father, as they traveled, had put aside his words of contempt for 
Allart’s monkish resolution, and ceased entirely to quarrel with him about it. 
He spoke only kindly to his son, mostly of his childhood at Hali before the 
curse had descended on Allart, of their kinfolk, the chances of the journey. He 
spoke of Hali, and the mining done in the Tower there, by the powers of the 
matrix circle, to bring copper and iron and silver ore to the surface of the 
ground; of hawks and chervines, and the experiments which his brother had made 
breeding, with cell-deep changes, rainbow-colored hawks, or chervines with 
fantastic jewel-colored antlers like the fabled beasts of legend.
Day by day Allart recaptured some of his childhood love for his father, from the 
days before his laran and the cristoforo faith had separated them, and again he 
felt the agony of mourning, seeing that accursed room with the green hangings 
and gold, the great carven chair, and his father’s face, white and stark and 
looking very surprised to be dead.
Again and again on this road other faces had begun to come out of the dimness of 
the unknown into the possible future. Most of them Allart ignored as he had 
learned in the monastery, but two or three returned repeatedly, so that he knew 
they were not the faces of people he might meet, but people who would come into 
his life; one, which he dimly recognized, was the face of his brother 
Damon-Rafael, who had called him sandal-wearer and coward, who had been glad to 
be rid of his rivalry, that he alone might be Elhalyn’s heir.
I wish that my brother and I might be friends and love one another as brothers 
should. Yet I see it nowhere among all the possible futures…
And there was the face of a woman, returning continually to the eyes of his 
mind, though he had never seen her before. A small woman, delicately made, with 
eyes dark-lashed in her colorless face and hair like masses of spun black glass; 
he saw her in his visions, a grave face of sorrow, the dark eyes turned to him 
in anguished pleading. Who are you? he wondered. Dark girl of my visions, why do 
you haunt me this way?
Strange for Allart after the years in the monastery, he had begun to see erotic 
visions, too, of this woman, see her laughing, amorous, her face lifted to his 
own for a caress, closed under the rapture of his kiss. No! he thought. No 
matter how his father should tempt him with the beauty of this woman, he would 
hold firm to his purpose; he would father no child to bear this curse of his 
blood! Yet the woman’s face and presence persisted, in dreams and waking, and he 
knew she was one of those his father would seek as a bride for him. Allart 
thought it would indeed be possible that he would be unable to resist her 
beauty.
Already I am half in love with her, he thought, and I do not even know her name!
One evening, as they rode down toward a broad green valley, his father began to 
speak again of the future.
“Below us lies Syrtis. The folk of Syrtis have been Hastur vassals for 
centuries; we will break our journey there. You will be glad to sleep in a bed 
again, I suppose?”
Allart laughed. “It is all one, Father. During this journey I have slept softer 
than ever I did at Nevarsin.”
“Perhaps I should have had such monkish discipline, if old bones are to make 
such journeys! I will be glad of a mattress, if you will not! And now we are but 
two days’ ride from home, and we can plan for your wedding. You were handfasted 
at ten years old to your kinswoman Cassandra Aillard, do you not remember?”
Try as he might, Allart could remember nothing but a festival where he had had a 
suit of new clothes and had been made to stand for hours and listen to long 
speeches by the grown-ups. He told his father so, and Dom Stephen said, genial 
once more, “I am not surprised. Perhaps the girl was not even there; I think she 
was only three or four years old then. I confess I, too, had doubts about this 
marriage. Those Aillards have chieri blood, and they have an evil habit of 
bearing, now and then, daughters who are emmasca—they look like beautiful women, 
but they never become ripe for mating, nor do they bear children. Their laran is 
strong, though, so I risked the handfasting, and when the girl had become a 
woman, I had our own household leronis examine her in the presence of a midwife, 
who gave it as her opinion that the girl was a functioning female and could bear 
children. I have not seen her since she was a tiny girl, but I am told she has 
grown up to be a fine-looking maiden; and she is Aillard, and that family is a 
strong alliance to our clan, one we need greatly. You have nothing to say, 
Allart?”
Allart forced himself to speak calmly.
“You know my will on that matter, Father. I will not quarrel with you about it, 
but I have not changed my mind. I have no wish to marry, and I will father no 
sons to carry on this curse in our blood. I will say no more.”
Again, shockingly, the room with the green and gold hangings, and his father’s 
dead face, swam before his mind, so strongly that he had to blink hard to see 
his father riding at his side.
“Allart,” his father said, and his voice was kind, “during these days when we 
have journeyed together, I have come to know you too well to believe that. You 
are my own son, after all, and when you are back in the world where you belong, 
you will not long keep these monkish notions. Let us not speak of it, kihu 
caryu, until the time is upon us. The gods know I have no will to quarrel with 
the last son they have left me.”
Allart felt his throat tighten with grief.
I cannot help it. I have come to love my father. Is this how he will break my 
will at last, not with force but with kindness? And again he looked on his 
father’s dead face in the room hung with gold and green, and the face of the 
dark maiden of his visions swam before his blurring eyes.
  
Syrtis Great House was an ancient stone keep, fortified with moat and 
drawbridge, and there were great outbuildings of wood and stone, and an 
elaborate courtyard, under shelter of a glasslike canopy of many colors; 
underfoot were colored stones, laid together with a precision no workman could 
have accomplished, so that Allart knew the Syrtis folk were of the new-rich, who 
could make full use of the ornamental and difficult matrix technology to have 
such beautiful things constructed. How can he find so many of the laran-gifted 
to do his will?
The old lord Syrtis was a plump soft man, who came into the courtyard himself to 
welcome his overlord, falling to his knees in fawning politeness, rising with a 
smile that was almost a smirk when Dom Stephen drew him into a kinsman’s 
embrace. He embraced Allart, too, and Allart flinched from the man’s kiss on his 
cheek.
Ugh, he is like a fawning house cat!
Dom Marius led them into his Great Hall, filled with sybaritic luxury, seated 
them on cushioned divans, called for wine. “This is a new form of cordial, made 
from our apples and pears; you must try it… I have a new amusement; I will talk 
of it when we have dined,” Dom Marius of Syrtis said, leaning back into the 
billowy cushions. “And this is your younger son, Stephen? I had heard some rumor 
that he had forsaken Hali and become a monk among the cristoforos, or some such 
nonsense. I am glad it is only a vicious lie; some people will say anything.”
“I give you my word, kinsman, Allart is no monk,” Dom Stephen said. “I gave him 
leave to dwell at Nevarsin to recover his health; he suffered greatly in 
adolescence from threshold sickness. But he is well and strong, and came home to 
be married.”
“Oh, is it so?” Dom Marius said, regarding Allart with his wide, blinking eyes, 
encased in wide pillows of fat. “And is the fortunate maiden known to me, dear 
boy?”
“No more than to me,” Allart said in grudging politeness. “I am told she is my 
kinswoman Cassandra Aillard; I saw her but once, when she was a baby girl.”
“Ah, the domna Cassandra! I have seen her in Thendara; she was present at the 
Festival Ball in Comyn Castle,” Dom Marius said with a leer.
Allart, thought, disgusted, He only wants us to know he is important enough to 
be invited there!
Dom Marius called servants to bring their supper. He followed the recent fad for 
nonhuman servants, cralmacs, artificially bred from the harmless trailmen of the 
Hellers, with matrix-modified genes by human insemination. To Allart the 
creatures seemed ugly, neither human nor trailman. The trailmen, strange and 
monkeylike though they were, had their own alien beauty. But the cralmacs, 
handsome though some of them undeniably were, had for Allart the loathsomeness 
of something unnatural.
“Yes, I have seen your promised bride; she is fair enough to make even a true 
monk break his vows,” Dom Marius sniggered. “You will have no regrets for the 
monastery when you lie down with her, kinsman. Though all those Aillard girls 
are unlucky wives, some being sterile as riyachiyas and others so fragile they 
cannot carry a child to birth.”
He is one of those who like to foretell catastrophe, too, Allart thought. “I am 
in no great hurry for an heir; my elder brother is alive and well and has 
fathered nedestro sons. I will take what the gods send.” Eager to change the 
subject, he asked, “Did you breed the cralmacs on your own estate? Father told 
me as we rode of my brother’s experiments in breeding ornamental chervines 
through matrix-modification; and your cralmacs are smaller and more graceful 
than those bred at Hali. They are good, I remember, only for mucking out stables 
and such heavy work, things it would be unsuitable to ask one’s human vassals to 
do.”
He said this with a sudden pang—How quickly I forget!—remembering that in 
Nevarsin he had been taught that no honest work was beneath the dignity of a 
man’s own hands. But the words had diverted Dom Marius again into boasting.
“I have a leronis from the Ridenow, captured in battle, who is skillful with 
such things. She thought I was kind to her, when I assured her she would never 
be used against her own people—but how could I trust her in such a battle?—and 
she made no trouble about doing other work for me. She bred me these cralmacs, 
more graceful and shapely indeed than any I had before. I will give you breeding 
stock, male and female, if you will, for a wedding gift, Dom Allart; no doubt 
your lady would welcome handsome servants. Also the leronis bred for me a new 
strain of riyachiyas; will you see them, cousin?”
Lord Elhalyn nodded, and when they finished the meal the promised riyachiyas 
were brought in. Allart looked on them with an inner spasm of revulsion: exotic 
toys for jaded tastes. In form they were women, fair of face, slender, with 
shapely breasts lifting the translucent folds of their draperies, but too narrow 
of hip and slender of waist and long of leg to be genuine women. There were four 
of them, two fair-haired, two dark; otherwise identical. They knelt at Dom 
Marius’s feet, moving sinuously, the curve of their slender necks, as they 
bowed, swanlike and exquisite, and Allart, through his revulsion, felt an 
unaccustomed stirring of desire.
Zandru’s hells, but they are beautiful, as beautiful and unnatural as demon 
hags!
“Would you believe, cousin, that they were borne in cralmac wombs? They are of 
my seed, and that of the leronis,” he said, “so that a fastidious man, if they 
were human, might say they were my daughters, and indeed, the thought adds a 
little—a little something,” he said, sniggering. “Two at a birth—” He pointed to 
the fair-haired pair and said, “Leila and Rella; the dark ones are Ria and Tia. 
They will not disturb you with much speech, though they can talk and sing, and I 
had them taught to dance and to play the rryl and to serve food and drink. But, 
of course, their major talents are for pleasure. They are matrix-spelled, of 
course, to draw and bind—I see you cannot take your eyes from them, nor”—Dom 
Marius chuckled— “can your son.”
Allart started and angrily turned away from the horribly enticing faces and 
bodies of the inhumanly beautiful, lust-inspiring creatures.
“Oh, I am not greedy; you shall have them tonight, cousin,” Dom Marius said, 
with a lewd chuckle. “One or two, as you will. And if you, young Allart, have 
spent six years of frustration in Nevarsin, you must be in need of their 
services. I will send you Leila; she is my own favorite. Oh, the things that 
riyachiya can do, even a sworn monk would yield to her touch.” He grew grossly 
specific, and Allart turned away.
“I beg you, kinsman,” he said, trying to conceal his loathing, “do not deprive 
yourself of your favorite.”
“No?” Dom Marius’s cushiony eyes rolled back, in feigned sympathy. “Is it so? 
After so many years in a monastery, do you prefer the pleasures to be found 
among the brethren? I myself seldom desire a ri’chiyu, but I keep a few for 
hospitality, and some guests desire a change now and then. Shall I send you 
Loyu? He is a beautiful boy indeed, and I have had all of them modified to be 
almost without response to pain, so that you can use him any way you choose, if 
you desire.”
Dom Stephen said quickly, seeing that Allart was about to explode, “Indeed, the 
girls will do well enough for us. I compliment you on the skill of your leronis 
at breeding them.”
When they had been taken to the suite of rooms allotted to them, Dom Stephen 
said, enraged, “You will not disgrace us by refusing this courtesy! I will not 
have it gossiped here that my son is less than a man!”
“He is like a great fat toad! Father, is it a reflection on my manhood that the 
thought of such filth overwhelms me with loathing? I would like to fling his 
foul gifts in his sniggering face!”
“You weary me with your monkish scruples, Allart. The leroni never did better 
than when they bred us the riyachiyas; nor will your wife-to-be thank you if you 
refuse to have one in your household. Can you be so ignorant as not to know that 
if you lie with a breeding woman, she may miscarry? It is part of the price we 
pay for our laran, which we have bred with such difficulty into our line, that 
our women are fragile and given to miscarry, so that we must spare them when 
they are with child. If you turn your desires on a riyachiya only she need not 
be jealous, as if you had given your affections to a real girl who would have 
some claim on your thoughts.”
Allart turned his face away; in the Lowlands this kind of speech between the 
generations was the height of indecency, had been from the days when group 
marriage was commonplace and any man of your father’s age could be your father, 
any woman of an age to be your mother could have been your mother indeed; so 
that the sexual taboo was absolute between generations.
Dom Stephen said defensively, “I would never so far forget myself, Allart, 
except that you have not been willing to do your duty by our caste. But I am 
sure you are enough my son that you will come to life with a woman in your 
arms!” He added, crudely, “You need not be scrupulous; the creatures are 
sterile.”
Allart thought, sick with disgust, I may not wait for the room with the green 
and gold hangings, I may kill him here and now, but his father had turned away 
and gone into his own chamber.
He thought, enraged, as he made ready for bed, of how corrupt they had become. 
We, the sacred descendants of the Lord of Light, bearing the blood of Hastur and 
Cassilda—or was that only a pretty fairy tale? Were the laran gifts of the 
families descended from Hastur no more than the work of some presumptuous 
mortal, meddling with gene-matter and brain-cells, some sorceress with a matrix 
jewel modifying germ plasm as Dom Marius’s leronis did with those riyachiyas, 
making exotic toys for corrupt men?
The gods themselves—if indeed there are any gods—must turn sick at the sight of 
us!
The warm, luxurious room sickened him; he wished himself back at Nevarsin, in 
the solemn night silence. He had turned out the light when he heard an almost 
noiseless foot-step and the girl Leila, in her flimsy draperies, stole softly 
across the floor to his side.
“I am here for your contentment, vai dom.”
Her voice was a husky murmur; her eyes alone betrayed that she was not human, 
for they were dark brown animal eyes, great soft, strange unreadable eyes.
Allart shook his head.
“You can go away again, Leila, I will sleep alone tonight”
Sexual images tormented him, all the things he might do, all the possible 
futures, an infinitely diverging set of probabilities hinging on this moment. 
Leila sat on the edge of the bed; her soft slender fingers, so delicate that 
they seemed almost boneless, stole into his. She murmured, pleading, “If I do 
not please you, vai dom, I will be punished. What would you have me do? I know 
many, many ways to give delight.”
He knew his father had maneuvered this situation. The riyachiyas were bred and 
taught and spelled to be irresistible; had Dom Stephen hoped she would break 
down Allan’s inhibitions?
“Indeed, my master will be very angry if I fail to give you pleasure. Shall I 
send for my sister, who is as dark as I am fair? And she is even more skilled. 
Or would it give you pleasure to beat me, Lord? I like to be beaten, truly I 
do.”
“Hush, hush!” Allart felt sick. “No one would want anyone more beautiful than 
you.” And indeed, the shapely young body, the enchanting little face, the loose 
scented hair falling across him, were enticing. She had a sweet, faintly musky 
scent; somehow before he touched her he had believed that the riyachiyas would 
smell animal, not human.
Her spell is on me, he thought. How then could he resist? With a sense of 
deathly weariness, as he felt her slender fingertips trace a line of awareness 
down his bare neck from earlobe to shoulder, he thought, What does it matter? I 
had indeed resolved to live womanless, never to pass on this curse I bear. But 
this poor creature is sterile, I cannot father a child on her if I would. 
Perhaps when he knows I have done his will in this, he will be less ready to put 
insults on me and call me less than a man. Bearer of Burdens, strengthen me! I 
but make excuses for what I want to do. Why should I not? Why must I alone 
resist what is given by right to every man of my caste? His mind was spinning. A 
thousand alternate futures spun out before him: in one he seized the girl in his 
hands and wrung her neck like the animal he knew her to be; in another he saw 
himself and the girl entwined in tenderness, and the image swelled, driving the 
awareness of lust into his body; in another he saw the dark maiden lying dead 
before him… So many futures, so much death and despair… Spasmodically, 
desperately, trying to blot out the multiple futures, he took the girl in his 
arms and drew her down on the bed. Even as his lips came down on hers, he 
thought of despair, futility. What does it matter, when there is all this ruin 
before me…?
He heard, as if from nowhere, her small cries of pleasure, and in his 
wretchedness, thought, At least she is not unwilling, and then he did not think 
again at all, which was an enormous relief.



CHAPTER FIVE
 
When he woke, the girl was gone, and Allart lay without moving for a moment, 
overcome with sickness and self-contempt. How shall I keep from killing that 
man, that he brought this upon me… ? But as his father’s dead face swam before 
his eyes in the familiar room with green and gold hangings, he reminded himself 
sternly, The choice was mine; he provided only the opportunity.
Nevertheless, he felt overwhelming self-contempt as he moved around the room, 
making ready to ride. In the night past he had learned something about himself 
that he would rather not have known.
In his six years in Nevarsin it had been no trouble to him to keep to the 
womanless precincts of the monastery, to live without thought of women; he had 
never been tempted, even at midsummer festival when even the monks were free to 
join in the revelry, to seek love or its counterfeit in the lower town. So it 
had never occurred to him that he would find it difficult to keep his 
resolve—not to marry, not to father children bearing the monstrous curse of 
laran. Yet, even through his loathing and revulsion for the thing Leila was, not 
even human, six years of self-imposed celibacy had been cast aside in minutes, 
at the touch of a riyachiya’s obscenely soft fingertips.
Now what is to become of me? If I cannot keep my resolve for a single night. … 
In the crowding, diverging futures he saw before his every step, there was a new 
one, and it displeased him: that he might become some such creature as old Dom 
Marius, refusing marriage indeed, sating his lust with these unnaturally bred 
pleasure girls, or worse.
He was grateful that their host did not appear at breakfast; he found it hard 
enough to face his father, and the vision of his father’s dead face came near to 
blotting out the real, live presence of the old man, good-natured over his 
buttered bread and porridge. Sensing his son’s unspoken anger (Allart wondered 
if his father had had reports from servants, or even if he had stooped low 
enough to question the girl Leila, to verify that Allart had proved his 
masculinity), Dom Stephen kept silence until they were donning their 
riding-cloaks, then said, “We will leave the riding-animals here, son; Dom 
Marius has offered us an air-car which will take us directly to Hali, and the 
servants can bring the riding-animals on in a few days. You have not ridden in 
an air-car since you were very small, have you?”
“I do not remember that I rode in one even then,” said Allart, interested 
against his will. “Surely they were not common in such times.”
“No, very uncommon, and of course they are toys for the wealthy, demanding a 
skilled laran operator as they do,” Lord Elhalyn said. “They are useless in the 
mountains; the crossdrafts and winds would dash any heavier-than-air vehicle 
against the crags. But here in the Lowlands it is safe enough, and I thought 
such a flight would divert you.”
“I confess I am curious,” Allart said, thinking that Dom Marius of Syrtis 
certainly spared no pains to ingratiate himself with his overlord. First he put 
his favorite pleasure girls at their disposal, and now this! “But I heard at 
Nevarsin that these contrivances were not safe in the Lowlands either. While war 
rages between Elhalyn and Ridenow, they are all too easily attacked.”
Dom Stephen shrugged, saying, “We all have laran; we can make short work of any 
attackers. After six years in a monastery, no doubt your fighting skills are 
rusty when it comes to sword and shield, but I have no doubt you could strike 
anyone who attacked us out of the sky. I have fire-talismans.” He looked 
shrewdly at his son, then said, “Or are you going to tell me that the monks have 
made you such a man of peace that you will not defend your life or the life of 
your kinsmen, Allart? I seem to remember that as a boy you had no stomach for 
fighting.”
No, for at every stroke I saw death or disaster for myself or another, and it is 
cruel of you to taunt me with childish weakness which was no fault of mine, but 
of your own accursed hereditary Blood-Gift… But aloud Allart said, forcing 
himself to ignore the shocking dead face of his father which persisted in 
appearing before his eyes, blurring his father’s living face, “While I live, I 
will defend my father and my Lord to the death, and the gods do so to me and 
more also if I fail or falter.”
Startled, warmed by something in Allart’s voice, Lord Elhalyn put out his arms 
and embraced his son. For the first time Allart could remember, to him or 
anyone, the old man said, “Forgive me, dear son, that was not worthy of me. I 
should not so accuse you unmerited,” and Allart felt tears stinging his eyes.
Gods forgive me. He is not cruel, or if he is, it is only out of fear for me, 
too… He truly wills to be kind…
The air-car was long and sleek, made of some gleaming glassy material, with 
ornamental stripes of silver down the length of it, a long cockpit with four 
seats, open to the sky. Cralmacs rolled it out from its shed, onto the 
ornamented paving of the inner courtyard, and the operator, a slender young man 
with the red hair which proclaimed the minor nobility of the Kilghard Hills, 
approached them with a curt bow, a mere perfunctory reverence; a highly trained 
expert, a laranzu of this kind, needed to be deferential to no man, not even to 
the brother of the king at Thendara.
“I am Karinn, vai dom. I have orders to take you to Hali. Please take your 
seats.”
He left it to the cralmacs to lift Dom Stephen into his seat, and to fasten the 
straps around him, but as Allart took a place, Karinn lingered a moment before 
going to his own seat. He said, “Have you ever ridden in one of these, Dom 
Allart?”
“Not since I can remember. Is it powered by such a matrix as you alone can 
handle? That would seem beyond belief!”
“Not entirely; in there”—Karinn pointed—“is a battery charged with energy to run 
the turbines; it would indeed demand more power than one man has at his command, 
to levitate and move such an apparatus, but the batteries are charged by the 
matrix circles, and my laran, at this moment, is needed only to guide and 
steer—and to be aware of attackers and evade them.” His face was somber. “I 
would not defy my overlord, and it is no part of my duty to refuse to do as I am 
bid, but—have you laran?”
As Karinn spoke, the unease in Allart clarified, with a sudden sharp vision of 
this air-car bursting asunder, exploding, falling out of the sky like a stone. 
Was this only a distant probability or did it truly lie before them? He had no 
way of knowing.
“I have laran enough to be uneasy at trusting myself to this contraption. 
Father, we will be attacked. You know that?”
“Dom Allart,” Karinn said, “this contraption, as you call it, is the safest 
means of transport ever devised by starstone technology. You are vulnerable to 
attack between here and Hali, should you go a-horse, for three days; in an 
air-car you will be there before midday and they must place their attackers very 
precisely. Furthermore, it is easier to defend yourself with laran than against 
such weapons as they may send against you with armed men. I can see a day coming 
on Darkover when all the Great Houses will have such weapons and devices to 
protect themselves against envious rivals or rebellious vassals; and then there 
will be no more wars, either, for no sane men will risk this kind of death and 
destruction. Such contraptions as this, vai dom, may be only expensive toys for 
rich men now, but they will bring us such an age of peace as Darkover has never 
known!”
He spoke with such conviction and enthusiasm that Allart doubted his own rising 
vision of dreadful warfare with weapons ever more dreadful. Karinn must be 
right. Such weapons would surely restrain sane men from making war at all, and 
so he who invented the most terrible weapens worked the harder for peace.
Taking his seat, Allart said, “Aldones, Lord of Light, grant you speak with true 
vision, Karinn. And now let us see this miracle.”
I have seen many possible futures which never came to pass. I have found this 
morning that I love my father well, and I will cling to the belief that I will 
never lay hands upon him, no more than I would wring the neck of that poor 
harmless little riyachiya in the night past. I will not fear attack, either, but 
I will guard against it, while I take pleasure in this new means of travel. He 
let Karinn show him how to fasten the straps that would hold him in his seat if 
the air became turbulent, and the device that swiveled his seat behind a 
magnified pane of glass, giving him instant view of any attackers or menace.
He listened closely as the laranzu, taking his own seat and fastening himself 
into place, bent his head in alert concentration and the battery-powered turbine 
began to roar. He had practiced enough in boyhood, in the tiny gliders levitated 
by small matrixes and soaring on the air currents around the Lake of Hali, to be 
aware of the elementary principles of heavier-than-air flight, but it was 
incredible to him that a matrix circle, a group of close-linked telepath minds, 
could charge a battery strongly enough to power such enormous turbines. Yet 
laran could be powerful, and a matrix could amplify the electric currents of the 
brain and body enormously, a hundredfold, a thousandfold. He wondered how many 
minds with laran it took, operating for how long, to charge such batteries with 
the tremendous humming power of those roaring turbines. He would have liked to 
ask Karinn— but would not disturb the laranzu’s concentration—why such a vehicle 
could not be adapted to ground transit, but quickly realized that for any ground 
vehicle roads and highways were needed. Someday, perhaps, roads would be 
practical, but on the rough terrain from the Kilghard Hills north, ground 
transit would probably always be limited to the feet of men and animals.
Quickly, with the humming power, they skimmed along a level runway surfaced with 
glassy material which must have been poured there by matrix-power, too; then 
they were airborne, rising swiftly over treetops and forests, moving into the 
very clouds with an exhilarating speed that took Allart’s breath away. It was as 
far beyond the soaring he had done on gliders, as the gliders were above the 
slow plodding of a chervine! Karinn motioned, and the air-car turned its vast 
wings southward and flew over the forests to the south.
They had flown for a considerable time. Allart was beginning to feel the straps 
constricting his body, and wished he might loosen them for a little, when he 
felt within himself, with a spurt of sudden excitement, alertness and fear.
We are seen, pursued—we will be attacked!
Look to the west, Allart—
Allart squinted his eyes into the light. Small shapes appeared there, one, two, 
three—were they gliders? If they were, such an air-car could outrun them 
swiftly. And, indeed, Karinn, with swift motions of his hands, was turning the 
air-car to evade the pursuers. For a moment it seemed they would not be 
followed; one of the gliding forms—These are not gliders! Are they hawks?—soared 
up, up, above them, higher and higher. It was indeed a hawk, but Allart could 
feel human intelligence, human, awareness, watching them with malevolent will. 
No natural hawk had ever had eyes which glittered so, like great jewels! No, 
this is no normal bird! Restless with unease, he watched the soaring flight of 
the bird as it went higher and higher, winging with long, swift flapping strokes 
into the sky above them…
Suddenly a narrow, gleaming shape detached itself from the bird and fell down, 
plummeting, arrowlike, toward the car. Allart’s vision, even before thought, 
provided him with the knowledge of what would happen if that long, deadly shape, 
gleaming like glass, should strike the air-car: they would explode into 
fragments, each fragment coated with the terrible clingfire, which clung to what 
it touched and went on burning and burning, through metal and glass and flesh 
and bone.
Allart grasped the matrix he wore about his neck, jerked it with shaking fingers 
from the protecting silks. There is so little time… Focusing into the depths of 
the jewel, he altered his awareness of time so that now the glassy shape fell 
ever more slowly, and he could focus on it, as if taking it between invisible 
fingers of force… Slowly, slowly, carefully… he must not risk having it break 
while it could fall into the air-car and fragments of clingfire destroy flesh 
and car. His slowed awareness spun accelerated futures through his mind—he saw 
the air-car exploding in fragments, his father slumping over and blazing up with 
clingfire in his hair, Karinn going up like a torch, and the air-car falling out 
of control, heavier than a stone… but none of those things would be allowed to 
happen!
With infinite delicacy, his mind focused into the pulsing lights of his matrix, 
and his eyes closed, Allart manipulated the glassy shape away from the air-car. 
He sensed resistance, knew the one guiding the device was fighting him for 
control of it. He struggled silently, feeling as if his physical hands were 
trying to keep hold of a greased and wriggling live thing while other hands 
fought to wrest it away, to fling it at him.
Karinn, quickly, get us higher if you can so that it will break below us…
He felt his body slump against the straps as the air-car angled sharply upward; 
saw, with a fragment of his mind, his father collapse in his seat, thinking with 
swift contrition, He is old, frail, his heart cannot take much of this… but the 
main part of his mind was still in those fingers of force that struggled with 
the now-writhing device, which seemed to squirm under the control of his mind. 
They were nearly free of it now—
It exploded with a wild crash that seemed to rock all space and time, and Allart 
felt sharp burning pain in his hands; swiftly he withdrew his consciousness from 
the vicinity of the exploded device, but the burning still resonated in his 
physical hands. Now he opened his eyes and saw that the device had indeed 
exploded well below them, and fragments of clingfire were falling in a molten 
shower to set ablaze the forests below. But one fragment of the glassy shell had 
been flung upward, over the rim of the air-car, and the thin fire was spreading 
along the edge of the cockpit, reaching fingers of flame toward where his father 
lay slumped and unconscious.
Allart fought against his first impulse—to lean over and beat out the fire with 
his hands. Clingfire could not be extinguished that way; any fragment that 
touched his hands would burn through his clothing and his flesh and through to 
the bone, as long as there was anything left to be consumed. He focused again 
into the matrix—there was no time to take out the fire-talisman Karinn had given 
him, he should have had it ready!—calling his own fire and flaring it out toward 
the clingfire. Briefly it flamed high, then with a last gutter of light, the 
clingfire died and was gone.
“Father—” he cried, “are you hurt?”
His father held out shaking hands. The outer edge and the littlest finger were 
seared, blackened, but there was, as far as Allart could see, no greater hurt. 
Dom Stephen said in a weak voice, “The gods forgive me that I called your 
courage into question, Allart. You saved us all. I fear I am too old for such a 
struggle. But you mastered the fire at once.”
“Is the vai dom wounded?” Karinn called from the controls. “Look! They have 
fled.” Indeed, low on the horizon, Allart could see the small retreating shapes. 
Did they put real birds under spell by matrix to carry their vicious weapons? Or 
were they some monstrous, mutant-bred things, no more birds than the cralmacs 
were human; or some dreadful matrix-powered mechanical device that had been 
brought to deliver their deadly weapon? Allart could not guess, and his father’s 
plight was such that he did not feel free to pursue their attackers even in 
thought.
“He is shocked and a little burned,” he called anxiously to Karinn. “How long 
will it be before we are there?”
“But a moment or two, Dom Allart. I can see the gleam of the lake. There, 
below—”
The air-car circled, and Allart could see the shoreline and the glimmering 
sands, like jewels, along the shores of Hali… Legend says that the sands where 
Hastur, son of Light, walked, were jeweled from that day… And there the curious 
lighter-than-water waves that broke incessantly along the shore. To the north 
were shining towers, the Great House of Elhalyn, and at the far end of the lake, 
the Tower of Hali, gleaming faintly blue. As Karinn glided downward, Allart 
unfastened his restraining straps and clambered to his father’s side, taking the 
burned hands in his own, focusing into the matrix to look with the eyes of his 
mind and assess the damage. The wound was minor indeed; his father was only 
shocked, his heart racing, more frightened than hurt.
Below them, Allart could see servants in the Hastur colors running out on the 
landing field as the air-car descended, but he held his father’s hands in his 
own, trying to blot out all that he could foresee. Visions, none of them true… 
the air-car did not explode in flame… what I see need not come—it is only what 
may come, borne of my fears….
The air-car touched the ground. Allart called, “Bring my lord’s body-servants! 
He is hurt; you must carry him within!” He lifted his father in his arms, and 
lowered him into the waiting arms of the servants, then followed as they carried 
the frail figure within.
From somewhere a familiar voice, hateful from years ago, said, “What has come to 
him, Allart? Were you attacked in the air?” and he recognized the voice of his 
elder brother, Damon-Rafael.
Briefly he described the encounter, and Damon-Rafael said, nodding, “That is the 
only way to handle such weapons. They used the hawk-things, then? They have sent 
them upon us only once or twice before, but once they burned an orchard of 
trees, and nuts were scarce that year.”
“In the name of all the gods, brother, who are these Ridenow? Are they of the 
blood of Hastur and Cassilda, that they can send such laran weapons upon us?”
“They are upstarts,” Damon-Rafael said. “They were Dry-towns bandits in the 
beginning, and they moved into Serrais and forced or bullied the old families of 
Serrais to give them their women as wives. The Serrais had strong laran, some of 
them, and now you can see the result—they grow stronger. They talk truce, and I 
think we must make truce with them, for this fighting cannot go on much longer. 
But their terms will not compromise. They want unquestioned ownership of the 
Domain of Serrais, and they claim that with their laran they have a right to it… 
But this is no time to speak of war and politics, brother. How does our father? 
He seemed not much hurt, but we must get a healer-woman to him at once, come—”
In the Great Hall, Dom Stephen had been laid on a padded bench and a 
healer-woman was kneeling at his side, smearing ointments on the seared fingers, 
bandaging them in soft cloths. Another woman held a wine cup to the old lord’s 
lips. He stretched a hand to his sons as they hurried toward him, and 
Damon-Rafael knelt at his side. Looking at his brother, Allart thought it was a 
little like looking into a blurred mirror; seven years his senior, Damon-Rafael 
was a little taller, a little heavier, like himself fair-haired and gray-eyed as 
were all the Hasturs of Elhalyn, his face beginning to show signs of the passing 
years.
“The gods be praised that you are spared to us now, Father!”
“For that you must thank your brother, Damon; it was he who saved us.”
“If only for that, I give him welcome home,” Damon-Rafael said, turning and 
drawing his brother into a kinsman’s embrace. “Welcome, Allart. I hope you have 
come back to us in health, and without the sick fancies you had as a boy.”
“Are you hurt, my son?” Dom Stephen asked, looking up at Allart with concern. “I 
saw you were in pain.”
Allart spread out his hands before him. He had not been touched physically by 
the fire at all, but with the touch of his mind he had handled the fire-device, 
and the resonances had vibrated to his physical hands. There were red seared 
marks all along his palms, spreading up to his wrists, but the pain, though 
fierce, was dreamlike, nightmarish, of the mind and not of damaged flesh. He 
focused his awareness on it and the pain receded as the reddish marks began 
slowly to fade.
Damon-Rafael said, “Let me help you, brother,” and took Allart’s fingers in his 
own hands, focusing closely on them. Under his touch the red marks paled to 
white. Lord Elhalyn smiled.
“I am well pleased,” he said. “My younger son has come back to me strong and a 
warrior, and my sons stand together as brothers. This day’s work has been well 
done, if it has shown you—”
“Father!” Allart leaped toward him as the voice broke off with shocking 
suddenness. The healer-woman moved swiftly to his side as the old man fought for 
breath, his face darkening and congesting; then he slumped again, slid to the 
floor, and lay without moving.
Damon-Rafael’s face was drawn with horror and grief. “Oh, my father—” he 
whispered, and Allart, standing in shock and dread at his side, looked up for 
the first time around the Great Hall, seeing for the first time what he had not 
seen in the confusion: the green and gold hangings, the great carved chair at 
the far end of the room.
So it was my father’s Great Hall where he lay dead, and I did not even see till 
it was too late… My foresight was true, but I mistook its cause… Even knowing 
the many futures does nothing to avoid them….
Damon-Rafael bent his head, weeping. He said to Allart, holding out his arms, 
“He is dead; our father has gone into the Light,” and the brothers embraced, 
Allart trembling with shock at the sudden and unexpected descent of the future 
he had foreseen.
All around them, one by one, the servants knelt, turning to the brothers; and 
Damon-Rafael, his face drawn with grief, his breath coming ragged, forced 
himself to composure as the servants spoke the formula.
“Our Lord is dead. Live long, our Lord,” and kneeling, held out their hands in 
homage to Damon-Rafael.
Allart knelt and, as was fitting and right under the law, was the first to 
pledge to the new overlord of Elhalyn, Damon-Rafael.



CHAPTER SIX
 
Stephen, Lord Elhalyn, was laid to rest in the ancient burying ground by the 
shores of Hali; and all the Hastur kin of the Lowland Domains, from the Aillards 
on the plains of Valeron, to the Hasturs of Carcosa, had come to do him honor. 
King Regis, stooped and old, looking almost too frail to ride, had stood beside 
the grave of his half-brother, leaning heavily on the arm of his only son.
Prince Felix, heir to the throne of Thendara and the crown of the Domains, had 
come to embrace Allart and Damon-Rafael, calling them “dear cousins.” Felix was 
a slight, effeminate young man with gilt hair and colorless eyes, and he had the 
long, narrow pale face and hands of chieri blood. When the funeral rites were 
ended there was a great ceremony. Then the old king, pleading age and ill 
health, was taken home by his courtiers, but Felix remained to do honor to the 
new Lord of Elhalyn, Damon-Rafael.
Even the Ridenow lord had sent an envoy from far Serrais, proffering an unasked 
truce for twice forty days.
Allart, welcoming guests in the hall, came suddenly upon a face he knew—though 
he had never set eyes upon her before. Dark hair, like a cloud of darkness under 
a blue veil; gray eyes, but so darkly lashed that for a moment the eyes 
themselves seemed as dark as the eyes of some animal. Allart felt a strange 
tightening in his chest as he looked upon the face of the dark woman whose face 
had haunted him for so many days.
“Kinsman,” she said courteously, but he could not lower his eyes as custom 
demanded before an unmarried woman who was a stranger to him.
I know you well. You have haunted me, dreams and waking, and already I am more 
than half in love with you… Erotic images attacked him, unfitting for this 
company, and he struggled with them.
“Kinsman,” she said again, “why do you stare at me in such unseemly fashion?”
Allart felt the blood rising in his face; indeed it was discourtesy, almost 
indecency, to stare so at a woman who was a stranger to him, and he colored at 
the thought that she might possess laran, might be aware of the images that 
tormented him. He finally found a scrap of his voice.
“But I am no stranger to you, damisela. Nor is it discourtesy that a man shall 
look his handfasted bride directly in the face; I am Allart Hastur, and soon to 
be your husband.”
She raised her eyes and returned his gaze fairly. But there was tension in her 
voice. “Why, is it so? Still, I can hardly believe that you have borne my image 
in your mind since you last looked on my face, when I was an infant girl of four 
years. And I had heard, Dom Allart, that you had withdrawn yourself to Nevarsin, 
that you were ill or mad, that you wished to be a monk and renounce your 
heritage. Was it only idle gossip, then?”
“It is true that I had such thoughts for a time. I dwelt for six years among the 
brethren of Saint-Valentine-of-the-Snows, and would gladly have remained there.”
If I love this woman, I will destroy her … I will father children who will be 
monsters… she will die in bearing them… Blessed Cassilda, foremother of the 
Domains, let me not see so much, now, of my destiny, since I can do so little to 
avert it…
“I am neither ill nor mad, damisela; you need not fear me.”
“Indeed,” said the young woman, meeting his eyes again. “You do not seem 
demented, only very troubled. Is it the thought of our marriage which troubles 
you, then, cousin?”
Allart said, with a nervous smile, “Should I not be well-content, to see what 
beauty and grace the gods have given me in a handfasted bride?”
“Oh!” She moved her head, impatient. “This is no time for pretty speeches and 
flatteries, kinsman! Or are you one of those who think a woman is a silly child, 
to be turned away with a courtly compliment or two?”
“Believe me, I meant you no discourtesy, Lady Cassandra,” he said, “but I have 
been taught that it is unseemly to share my own troubles and fears when they are 
still formless.”
Again the quick, direct look from the dark-lashed eyes.
“Fears, cousin? But I am harmless and a girl! Surely a lord of the Hasturs is 
afraid of nothing, and surely not of his pledged bride!”
Before the sarcasm he flinched. “Would you have the truth, Lady? I have a 
strange form of laran; it is not foresight alone. I do not see only the future 
which will be, but the futures which might come to pass, those things which may 
happen with ill luck or failure; and there are times when I cannot tell which of 
them are generated by causes now in motion, and which are born of my own fear. 
It was to master this that I went to Nevarsin.”
He heard her sharp indrawn breath.
“Avarra’s mercy, what a curse to carry! And have you mastered it, then, 
kinsman?”
“Somewhat, Cassandra. But when I am troubled or uncertain, it rushes in upon me 
again, so that I do not see only the joy which marriage to one such as you might 
bring me.” Like a physical pain in his heart, Allart felt the bitter awareness 
of all the joys they might know, if he could bring her to return his love, the 
years ahead which might turn to brightness… Fiercely he slammed the inner door, 
closing his mind against it. Here was no riyachiya, to be taken without thought, 
for a moment’s pleasure!
He said harshly, and did not know how his own pain brought a rasp to his voice 
and coldness to his speech, “But I see, as well, all the griefs and catastrophe 
which may come; and till I can see my way through the false futures born of my 
own fears, I can take no joy in the thought of marriage. It is intended as no 
discourtesy to you, my lady and my bride.”
She said, “I am glad you told me this. You know, do you not, that my kinsmen are 
angry because our marriage did not take place two years ago, when I was legally 
of age. They felt you had insulted me by remaining in Nevarsin. Now they wish to 
be sure you will claim me without further delay.” Her dark glance glinted with 
humor. “Not that they care a sekal for my wedded bliss, but they are never done 
reminding me how near you stand to the throne, and how fortunate I am, and how I 
must captivate you with my charm so you will not escape me. They have dressed me 
like a fashion puppet, and dressed my hair with nets of copper and silver, and 
loaded me with jewels, as if you were going to buy me in the market. I half 
expected you to open my mouth and look at my teeth to be sure my loins and 
withers were strong!”
Allart could not help laughing. “On that score your kinfolk need have no fear, 
Lady; surely no man living could find any flaw in you.”
“Oh, but there is,” she said ingenuously. “They were hoping you would not 
notice, but I will not try to hide it from you.” She spread her narrow, ringed 
hands before him. The slender fingers were laden with jewels, but there were six 
of them, and as his eyes fell on the sixth, Cassandra colored deeply and tried 
to draw them under her veil. “Indeed, Dom Allart, I beg you not to stare at my 
deformity.”
“It seems to me no deformity,” he said. “Do you play the rryll? It seems to me 
that you could strike chords with more ease.”
“Why, so it does—”
“Then let us never again think of it as defect or deformity, Cassandra,” he 
said, taking the slight six-fingered hands in his own and pressing his lips to 
them. “In Nevarsin, I saw children with six or seven fingers where the extra 
fingers were boneless or without tendons, so that they could not be moved or 
flexed; but you have full control of them, I see. I, too, am something of a 
musician.”
“Truly? Is it because you were a monk? Most men have no patience for such 
things, or little time to learn them with the arts of war.”
“I would rather be musician than warrior,” Allart said, pressing the narrow 
fingers again to his lips. “The gods grant us enough peace in our days that we 
may make songs instead of war.” But as she smiled into his eyes, her hand still 
against his lips, he noted that Ysabet, Lady Aillard, was watching them, and so 
was his brother Damon-Rafael, and they looked so self-satisfied that he turned 
sick. They were manipulating him into doing their will, despite his resolve! He 
let her hand go as if it had burned him.
“May I conduct you to your kinswoman, damisela?”
  
As the evening progressed, the festivities decorous but not somber—the old lord 
had been decently laid to rest, and he had a proper heir, so there was no doubt 
the Domain would prosper—Damon-Rafael sought out his brother. Despite the 
feasting, Allart noticed he was still quite sober.
“Tomorrow we ride for Thendara, where I shall be invested Lord of the Domain. 
You must ride with us, brother; you must be warden and heir-designate for 
Elhalyn. I have no legitimate sons, only nedestro; they will not legitimate a 
nedestro heir until it is certain that Cassilde will give me none.” He looked 
across the room at his wife, a cold, almost bitter look. Cassilde Aillard-Hastur 
was a pale, slight woman, sallow and worn.
“The Domain will be in your hands, Allart, and in a sense I am at your mercy. 
How runs the proverb? ‘Bare is back without brother.’”
Allart wondered how, in the name of all the gods, brothers could be friends, or 
anything but the crudest of rivals, with such inheritance laws as these? Allart 
had no ambition to displace his brother as head of the Domain, but would 
Damon-Rafael ever believe that? He said, “I would indeed that you had left me 
within the monastery, Damon.”
Damon-Rafael’s smile was skeptical, as if he feared that his brother’s words 
concealed some devious plot. “Is it so? Yet I watched you speaking with the 
Aillard woman, and it was obvious you could hardly await the ceremony . You are 
like to have a legitimate son before I do; Cassilde is frail, and your bride 
looks strong and healthy.”
Allart said with concealed violence, “I am in no hurry to wed!”
Damon-Rafael scowled. “Yet the Council will not accept a man of your years as 
heir unless you agree to marry at once; it is scandalous that a man in his 
twenties should be still unwedded and without even any natural sons.” He looked 
sharply at Allart. “Can it be that I am luckier than I think? Are you, perhaps, 
an emmasca? Or even a lover of men?”
Allart grinned wryly. “I grieve to disappoint you. But as for being emmasca, you 
saw me stripped and shown to Council when I came to manhood. And if you wished 
for me to become a lover of men, you should have made certain that I never came 
among the cristoforos. But I will return to the monastery, if you like.”
He thought, for a moment, almost in elation, that this would be the answer to 
his torment and perplexities. Damon-Rafael did not want him to breed sons who 
might be rivals to his own; and so perhaps he could escape the curse of 
fathering sons who would carry his own tragic laran. If he were to return to 
Nevarsin… he was surprised at the pain of the thought.
Never to see Cassandra again…
Damon-Rafael shook his head, not without regret. “I dare not anger the Aillards. 
They are our strongest allies in this war; and they are vexed that Cassilde has 
not cemented the alliance by giving me an heir of Elhalyn and Aillard blood. If 
you avoid the marriage I will have another enemy, and I cannot afford the 
Aillards for enemies. Already they fear I have found a better match for you. But 
I know our father had reserved two nedestro half-sisters of the Aillard clan for 
you, with modified genes, and what will I do if you should have sons by all 
three of them?”
Revulsion, as when Dom Stephen had first spoken of this, surged in Allart again. 
“I told my father I had no wish for that.”
“I would rather that any sons of Aillard blood should be mine,” Damon-Rafael 
said, “yet I cannot take your pledged wife; I have a wife of my own, and I 
cannot make a lady of such an exalted clan into my barragana. It would be a 
matter for blood-feud! Although if Cassilde were to die in childbirth, as she 
has been likely to do any time these past ten years, and may do at any time in 
the future, then—” His eyes sought out Cassandra where she stood near her 
kinswomen, appraisingly moving up and down her body; and Allart felt a quite 
unexpected anger. How dare Damon-Rafael talk that way? Cassandra was his!
Damon-Rafael said, “Almost I am tempted to delay your marriage for a year. 
Should Cassilde die in bearing the child she now carries, I would be free to 
make Cassandra my wife. I suppose they would even be grateful, when she came to 
share my throne.”
“You speak treason,” Allart said, genuinely shocked now. “King Regis still sits 
on the throne, and Felix is his legitimate son and will succeed him.”
Damon-Rafael’s shrug was contemptuous. “The old king? He will not live a year. I 
stood by his side today by our father’s grave; and I, too, have some of the 
foresight of the Hasturs of Elhalyn. He will lie there before the seasons turn 
again. As for Felix—well, I have heard the rumors, and no doubt you have heard 
them, too. He is emmasca; one of the elders who saw him stripped was bribed, 
they say, and another had faulty eyesight. Whatever the truth, he has been 
married seven years, and his wife looks not like a woman who has been well 
treated in her marriage bed; nor has there ever been so much as a rumor that she 
was breeding. No, Allart. Treason or no, I tell you I will be on the throne 
within seven years. Look with your own foresight.”
Allart said very quietly, “On the throne, or dead, my brother.”
Damon-Rafael looked at him with enmity and said, “Those old she-males of the 
Council might prefer the legitimate son of a younger brother to the nedestro of 
the elder. Will you thrust your hand within the flame of Hali and pledge to 
support the claim of my son, legitimate or no?”
Allart fought to find the true sight through images of a kingdom raging in 
flames, a throne within his grasp, storms raging across the Hellers, a keep 
tumbling as if blasted by earthquake—no! He was a man of peace; he had no will 
to fight with his brother for a throne, see the Domains run red with the blood 
of a terrible fratricidal war. He bowed his head.
“The gods ordained it, Damon-Rafael, when you were born my father’s eldest son. 
I will swear what oath you require of me, my brother and my lord.”
In Damon-Rafael’s look triumph mingled with contempt. Allart knew that if their 
positions had been reversed, he would have had to fight to the death for his 
inheritance. He tensed with dislike as Damon-Rafael embraced him and said, “So, 
I will have your oath and your strong hand to guard my sons; then perhaps the 
old saying is true, and I need not feel my back bare and brotherless.”
He looked with regret across the room again at Cassandra, wrapped in her blue 
veil. “I suppose—No, I am afraid you must take your bride. All the Aillards 
would be offended if I made her barragana, and I cannot keep you both unwed for 
another year against the possibility that Cassilde might die and I should be 
free to wed again.”
Cassandra—in his hands? Damon-Rafael, who thought of her only as a pawn for a 
political alliance, to cement the support of her kinfolk? The thought sickened 
him. Yet Allart recalled his own resolve: to take no wife, to father no sons to 
bear the curse of his laran. He said, “In return for my support, then, brother, 
spare me this marriage.”
“I cannot,” Damon-Rafael said regretfully, “though I would willingly take her 
myself. But I dare not offend the Aillards that way. Never mind, you may not 
long be burdened with her; she is young, and many of those Aillard women have 
died in bearing their first child. It is likely she will do so, too. Or she may 
be like Cassilde, fertile enough, but bearing only stillborn babes. If you keep 
her breeding and miscarrying for a few years, my sons will be safe and no one 
would claim you had not done your best for our clan; it will be her fault, not 
yours.”
Allart said, “I would not want to treat any woman so!”
“Brother, I care not at all how you treat her, so that you wed her and bed her 
and the Aillards are bound to us by kin-ties. I did but suggest a way you might 
be rid of her without discredit to your own manhood.” He shrugged, dismissing 
the matter. “But enough of this. We will ride for Thendara tomorrow, and when 
the heirship is settled, then we will ride here for your wedding again. Will you 
drink with me?”
“I have drunk enough,” Allart lied, eager to avoid further contact with his 
brother. His foresight had seen truly. Not in all the worlds of probability was 
it written anywhere that he and Damon-Rafael would be friends, and if 
Damon-Rafael should come to the throne—and Allart’s laran told him that might 
very well be—it might be that Allart must even guard his life, and the lives of 
his sons.
Holy Bearer of Burdens, strengthen me! Another reason I should father no sons to 
come after me—that I must fear for them, too, at my brother’s hands!



CHAPTER SEVEN
 
In amiable mood, eager to do honor to his young kinsman, His Grace Regis II had 
agreed to perform the ceremony of marriage; his lined old face glowed with 
kindliness as he spoke the ritual words and locked the copper-chased bracelets, 
the catenas, first on Allart’s wrist and then on Cassandra’s.
“Parted in fact,” he said, unlocking the bracelets, “may you never be so in 
spirit or in heart.” They kissed, and he said, “May you be forever one.”
Allart felt Cassandra trembling as they stood, hands joined by the precious 
metal.
She is afraid, he thought, and no wonder. She knows nothing of me; her kinsmen 
sold her to me as they might have sold a hawk or brood mare.
In earlier days (Allart had read something of Domain history at Nevarsin), 
marriages like this would have been unthinkable. It had been considered a form 
of selfishness for women to bear children to one man alone, and the gene pool 
had been broadened by increasing the number of possible combinations. Briefly 
Allart wondered if that had been how they first bred the accursed laran into 
their race; or was it true that they were descended from the children of gods 
who came here to Hali and fathered sons to rule over their kindred? Or were the 
tales true of crosses with the nonhuman chieri, who gave their caste both the 
sexless emmasca, and the gift of laran?
Whatever had happened, these long-past and mostly forgotten days of group 
marriage had vanished as families began to climb to power; inheritance, and the 
breeding program, had made exact knowledge of paternity important. Now a man Is 
judged only by his sons, and a woman by her abilities as a breeder of sons—and 
she knows it is only for this that she has been given to me!
But the ceremony had come to a close, and Allart felt his wife’s hands cold and 
shaking in his as he bent to touch her lips, briefly, in the ritual kiss which 
ended it, and led her out to dance in an explosion of congratulations, goodwill, 
and applause from his gathered kinsmen and peers. Allart, hypersensitive, felt 
the sharp-edged overtones in the congratulatory words, and thought that few of 
them meant their goodwill. His brother Damon-Rafael probably meant his goodwill 
sincerely. Allart had stood before the holy things at Hali that morning, 
thrusting his hand into the cold fire that did not burn unless the speaker knew 
himself forsworn, and pledged his honor as Hastur to support his brother’s 
wardenship of the clan, and his sons’ succession to the throne. The other 
kinsmen congratulated him because he had made a politically powerful alliance 
with the strong clan of the Aillards of Valeron, or because they hoped to ally 
themselves with him by marriage through the sons and daughters this marriage 
might engender, or simply because they took pleasure in the sight of a wedding, 
and the drinking and dancing and revelry, making a welcome break from the 
official mourning for Dom Stephen.
“You are silent, my husband,” Cassandra said.
Allart started, hearing a pleading note in her voice. It is worse for her, poor 
girl. I was consulted—somewhat—about this marriage; she was not even allowed to 
say yea or nay. Why do we do this to our women, since it is through them that we 
keep these precious inheritances which have come to mean so much to us!
He said gently, “My silence was not meant for you, damisela. This day has given 
me much to think about; that is all. But I am churlish to think so deeply in 
your presence.”
The level eyes, so deeply lashed that they appeared dark, met his, with a gleam 
of humor in their depths. “Again you are treating me like a maiden to be 
flattered into silence with a pretty compliment; and I presume to remind you, my 
lord, that it is hardly seemly to call me damisela when I am your wife.”
“God help me, yes,” he said, despairing, and she looked at him, a faint frown 
stitching itself across her smooth brow.
“Is it so unwilling that you have been wed? I was brought up since childhood to 
know I must marry as my kinsmen bade me; I thought a man more free to choose.”
“I think no man is free; at least, not here in the Domains.” He wondered if this 
was why there was so much revelry at a wedding, so much dancing and drinking—in 
order that the sons and daughters of Hastur and Cassilda might forget they were 
being bred like stud-animals and brood-mares for the sake of the accursed laran 
that brought power to their line!
But how could he forget? Allart was again in the grip of the out-of-focus time 
sense which was the curse of his laran, futures diverging from this very moment 
with the land flaming in war and struggle, hovering hawks like those which had 
flung clingfire at his air-car, great broad-winged gliders with men hanging from 
them, fires rising in the forests, strange snowcapped peaks from the ranges 
beyond Nevarsin which he had never seen, the face of a child surrounded with the 
pale blaze of lightnings… Are all these things coming into my life, truly, or 
are they only things which may come?
Did he have any control over any of them at all, or would some relentless fate 
thrust them all upon him? As they had thrust Cassandra Aillard upon him as his 
wife, this woman standing before him… A dozen Cassandras, not one, looking up at 
him—aglow with love and passion he knew he could arouse, torn with hatred and 
loathing (yes, he could rouse that, too), limp with exhaustion, dying with a 
curse, dying in his arms… Allart closed his eyes in a vain effort to shut out 
the faces of his wife.
Cassandra said, in real alarm, “My husband! Allart! Tell me what is wrong with 
you, I beg!”
He knew he had frightened her, and sought to control the crowding futures, to 
put to practice the techniques he had learned at Nevarsin, to narrow down the 
dozen women she had become—might become, would become—into the one who stood 
before him now.
“It is not anything you have done, Cassandra. I have told you how I am cursed.”
“Is there nothing that can help you?”
Yes, he thought savagely, it would have helped most of all if neither of us had 
ever been born; if our ancestors, may they freeze forever in Zandru’s darkest 
hell, could have refrained from breeding this curse into our line! He did not 
speak it, but she picked up the thought, and her eyes widened in dismay.
But just then kinsmen and kinswomen burst in on their momentary solitude. 
Damon-Rafael claimed Cassandra for a dance with an arrogant, “She will be all 
yours soon enough, brother!” and someone else thrust a glass into his hand, 
demanding that he join in the revelry which, after all, was in his honor!
Trying to conceal rage and rebellion—after all, he could not blame his guests 
for the whole system!—he let himself be persuaded to drink, to dance with young 
kinswomen who evidently had so little to do with his future that their faces 
remained reassuringly one, not altered continually by the crisscrossing 
probabilities of his laran. He did not see Cassandra again until Damon-Rafael’s 
wife Cassilde, and their kinswomen, were leading her from the hall for the 
formal bedding.
Custom demanded that the bride and husband be put to bed in the presence of 
their assembled peers, as proof that the marriage had been duly made. Allart had 
read at Nevarsin that there had been a time, soon after the establishment of 
marriage for inheritance and the catenas, when public consummation had been 
required, too. Fortunately Allart knew that would not be demanded of him. He 
wondered how anyone had ever managed it!
It was not long before they led him, in a tumult of the usual jokes, into the 
presence of his bride. Custom demanded, too, that a bride’s bedding-gown should 
be more revealing than anything she had ever worn before—or would ever wear 
again. In order, Allart thought cynically, that all might see she had no hidden 
flaw that would impair her value as breeding-stock!
The gods grant they have not drugged her into complaisance… He looked sharply to 
see if her eyes were drug-blurred, whether they had dosed her with aphrodisiacs. 
He supposed this was merciful for a girl given unwilling to a complete stranger; 
no one, he supposed, would have much heart for fighting a terrified girl into 
submission. Again conflicting futures, conflicting possibilities and obligations 
crowded into his mind with images of lust fighting for place with other futures 
in which he saw her lying dead in his arms. What had Damon-Rafael told him? That 
all of her sisters had died with the birth of their first child…
With a chorus of congratulations, the kinsmen withdrew, leaving them alone. 
Allart rose and threw down the bar of the lock. Returning to her side, he saw 
the fear in her face and the gallant effort she made to hide it
Does she fear I shall fall on her like a wild animal? But aloud he said only, 
“Have they drugged you with aphrosone or some such potion?”
She shook her head. “I refused it. My foster-mother would have made me drink it, 
but I told her I did not fear you.”
Allart asked, “Then why are you trembling?”
She said, with that flash of spirit he had seen in her before, “I am cold, my 
lord, in this near-naked gown they insisted I must wear!”
Allart laughed. “It seems I have the better of it, then, being robed in fur. 
Cover yourself, then, Lady—it would have not needed that for me to desire you—I 
forgot, you do not like to be complimented, or flattered!” He came up and sat on 
the edge of the great bed beside her. “May I pour you some wine, domna?”
“Thank you.” She took the glass, and as she sipped he saw the color come back 
into her face. Gratefully she tugged the fur robe up, to her shoulders. He 
poured some for himself, turning the stem of the goblet in his fingers, trying 
to think how he must say what must be said without offending her. Again the 
crowding futures and possibilities threatened to overwhelm him, so that he could 
see himself ignoring his scruples, taking her into his arms with all the pent-up 
passion of his life. How she would come alive with passion and love, the years 
of joy they would share… and again, confusingly, blurring the face of the woman 
and the moment before him, another woman’s face, tawny and laughing, surrounded 
by masses of copper hair…
“Cassandra,” he said, “did you want this marriage?”
She did not look at him. “I am honored by this marriage. We were handfasted when 
I was too young to remember. It must be different for you, you are a man and 
have choice, but I had none. Whatever I did as a child, I heard nothing but this 
or that will or will not be suitable when you are wed to Allart Hastur of 
Elhalyn.”
He said, the words wrung from him, “What joy it must be to have such security, 
to see only one future instead of a dozen, a hundred, a thousand… not to have to 
tread your way among them like an acrobat who dances upon a stretched rope at 
Festival Fair!”
“I never thought of that. I thought only that your life was more free than mine, 
to choose…”
“Free?” He laughed without amusement. “My fate was as sealed as yours. Lady. Yet 
we may still choose among the futures I can see, if you are willing.”
She said in a low voice, “What is left for us to choose now, my lord? We are 
wedded and bedded; it seems to me that no more choice is possible. Only this; 
you can use me cruelly or gently, and I can bear all with patience or disgrace 
my caste by fighting you away and forcing you, like the victim of some old bawdy 
song, to bear the marks of my nails and teeth. Which indeed,” she said, her eyes 
glinting up at him in a laugh, “I would think it shameful to do.”
“The gods forbid you should have cause,” he said. For a moment, so poignant were 
the images roused by her words, it seemed that all other futures had really been 
wiped out. She was his wife, given to him consenting, even willing, and wholly 
at his mercy. He could even make her love him.
Then why do we not yield together to our destiny, my love…?
But he forced himself to say, “A third choice remains still, my lady. You know 
the law; whatever the ceremony, this is no marriage until we make it so, and 
even the catenas can be unlocked, if we petition.”
“If I should so anger my kinsmen, and bring the wrath of the Hasture upon them, 
then the string of alliances on which the reign of the Hasturs is built will 
come crashing down. If you seek to return me to my kinsmen because I found no 
favor with you, there will be no peace for me, and no happiness.” Her eyes were 
wide and desolate.
“I thought only— A day might come when you could be given to one more to your 
liking, my girl.”
She said shyly, “What makes you think I could find one more to my liking?”
He realized with sudden dread that the worst had happened. Fearing she would be 
given to an insensitive brute who would think of her only as a brood-mare, 
finding that instead he spoke to her as to an equal, the girl was ready to adore 
him!
If he so much as touched her hand, he knew, his resolve would vanish; he would 
cover her with kisses, draw her into his arms—if only to wipe out the crowding 
futures he could see building up from this crucial moment, wipe them all out in 
a single moment by some positive action, whatever it might be.
His voice sounded strained, even to himself. “You know the curse I bear. I see 
not the true future alone, but a dozen futures, any one of which may come true, 
or mock me by never coming to pass. I had resolved never to marry, that I might 
never transmit this curse to any son of mine. This was why I had resolved to 
renounce my heritage and become a monk; I can see, all too clearly, what 
marriage with you might bring about. Gods above,” he cried out, “do you think me 
indifferent to you?”
“Are your visions always true, Allart?” she pleaded. “Why must we deny our 
destiny? If these things are ordained, they will come about, whatever we do now, 
and if not, they cannot trouble us.” She raised herself to her knees, flung her 
arms around him.
“I am not unwilling, Allart. I—I—I love you.”
For the barest instant Allart could not help tightening his arms around her. 
Then, fighting the shamed memory of how he had surrendered to the temptation of 
the riyachiya, he seized her shoulders in his hands and thrust her away with all 
his strength. He heard his own voice harsh and ice-cold, as if it belonged to 
someone else.
“Do you still expect me to believe they have not drugged you with aphrodisiacs, 
my lady?”
She went rigid, tears of anger and humiliation welling in her eyes. He wanted, 
as he had never wanted anything in his life, to draw her back to rest against 
his heart.
“Forgive me,” he begged. “Try to understand. I am fighting to—to find my way out 
of this trap they have led us into. Don’t you know what I have seen? All roads 
lead there, it seems—that I will do what is expected of me, that I will breed 
monsters, children tormented worse by laran than ever I was, dying as my young 
brother died, or worse, living to curse us that they were ever born. And do you 
know what I have seen for you, at the end of every road, my poor girl? Your 
death, Cassandra, your death in bearing my child.”
She whispered, her face white, “Two of my sisters so died.”
“Yet you wonder why. I am not rejecting you, Cassandra. I am trying to avoid the 
frightful destiny I have seen for both of us. God knows, it would be easy 
enough… Along most of the lines of my future, I see it, the course it would be 
easiest to take; that I should love you, that you should love me, that we will 
walk hand in hand into that terrible tragedy the future holds for us. Tragedy 
for you, Cassandra. And for me. I—” He swallowed, trying to steady his voice. “I 
would not bear the guilt of your death.”
She began to sob. Allart dared not touch her; he stood looking down at her, 
heart-wrung, wretched. “Try not to cry,” he said, his voice ragged. “I cannot 
bear it. The temptation is always there, to do the easiest thing, and trust to 
luck to lead us through; or if all else fails, to say, ‘It is our destiny and no 
man can fight against fate.’ For there are other choices. You might be barren, 
you might survive childbirth, our child might escape the curse of our joint 
laran. There are so many possibilities, so many temptations! And I have resolved 
that this marriage shall be no marriage at all, until I see my way clear before 
me. Cassandra, I beg you, agree to this.”
“It seems that I have no choice,” she said, and looked up at him, desolate. “Yet 
there is no happiness, either, in our world, for a woman who finds no favor with 
her husband. Until I am pregnant, my kinswomen will give me no peace. They have 
laran, too, and if this marriage is not consummated, sooner or later they will 
know that, too, and the same troubles we foresaw from refusing the marriage will 
be on us. Either way, my husband, it seems that we are the game who may stay in 
the trap or walk to the cookpot; either way lies ruin.”
Calmed by the seriousness with which she sought to think about and evaluate 
their predicament, Allart said, “I have a plan, if you will follow me in it, 
Cassandra. Most of our kinsmen, before they come to my age, take their turn in a 
Tower, using their laran in a matrix circle which can give energy and power and 
a good life to our people. I was excused this duty because of my poor health, 
but the obligation should be filled. Also, the life of the court is not the best 
life for a young wife who—” He choked on the words. “Who might be breeding. I 
will petition for leave to take you to the Tower of Hali, where we will do our 
share of work in a matrix circle. So we will not face your kinswomen or my 
brother, and we can dwell apart without provoking talk. Perhaps, while we are 
there, we can find some way out of this dilemma.”
Cassandra’s voice was submissive. “Let it be as you will. But our kin will think 
it strange that we choose this during the first days of our marriage.”
“They may think what they will,” Allart said. “I think it no crime to give false 
coin to thieves, or to lie to one who questions beyond courtesy. If I am 
questioned by anyone who has a right to an answer, I shall say that I shirked 
this obligation during my early manhood, and I wish to satisfy it now, so that 
you and I may go away together with no remaining unfulfilled obligations 
overshadowing our lives. You, my lady, may say what you will.”
Her smile glinted at him; again Allart felt the wrench of heartbreak.
“Why, I will say nothing at all, my husband. I am your wife and I go where you 
choose to go, needing no more explanation than that! I do not say that I love 
this custom, nor that if you chose to demand it of me, I should obey without 
strife. I doubt you would find me such a submissive wife after all, Dom Allart. 
But I can use the custom where it suits my purposes!”
Holy Bearer of Burdens, why could not my fate have given me a woman I would be 
glad to put aside, not this one it would have been so easy for me to love! 
Exhausted with relief, he bowed his head, took up her slender fingers and kissed 
them.
She saw the broken weariness in his face and said, “You are very weary, my 
husband. Will you not lie down now and sleep?”
Again the erotic images were torturing him, but he pushed them aside. “You do 
not know much of men, do you, chiya?”
She shook her head.“How could I? Now it seems I am not to know,” she said, and 
looked so sad that, even through his resolve, Allart felt a distant regret
“Lie down and sleep if you will, Cassandra.”
“But will you not sleep?” she asked naïvely, and he had to laugh.
“I will sleep on the floor; I have slept in worse places, and this is luxury 
after the stone cells of Nevarsin,” he said. “Bless you, Cassandra, for 
accepting my decision!”
She gave him a faint smile. “Oh, I have been taught that it is a wife’s duty to 
obey. Though it is a different obedience than I foresaw, still, I am your wife 
and will do as you command. Good night, my husband.”
The words were gently ironic. Stretched on the soft rugs of the chamber, Allart 
summoned all the discipline of his years at Nevarsin and finally managed to blot 
out from his mind all the images of Cassandra awakened to love; nothing remained 
but the moment, and his resolve. But once, before dawn, he thought he could hear 
the sound of a woman crying, very softly, as if muffling the sound in silks and 
coverlets.
The next day they departed for Hali Tower; and there they remained for half a 
year.



CHAPTER EIGHT
 
Early spring again in the Hellers, Donal Delleray, called Rockraven, stood on 
the heights of Castle Aldaran, wondering idly if the Aldaran forefathers had 
chosen this high peak for their keep because it commanded much of the country 
around. It sloped down toward the distant plains, and behind it rose toward the 
far impassable peaks where no human thing dwelled, but only trailmen and the 
half-legendary chieri of the far Hellers, in their fastnesses surrounded by 
eternal snow.
“They say,” he said aloud, “that in the farthest of these mountains, so far in 
the snows that even the most skilled mountaineer would fail before he found his 
way through the peaks and crevasses, there is a valley of unending summer, and 
there the chieri have withdrawn since the coming of the children of Hastur. That 
is why we never see them now, in these days. There the chieri dwell forever, 
immortal and beautiful, singing their strange songs and dreaming immortal 
dreams.”
“Are the chieri really so beautiful?”
“I do not know, little sister; I have never seen a chieri,” Donal said. He was 
twenty now, tall and whiplash thin, dark-tanned, dark-browed, a straight and 
somber young man who looked older than he was. “But when I was very small, my 
mother told me once that she had seen a chieri in the forests, behind a tree, 
and that she had the beauty of the Blessed Cassilda. They say, too, that if any 
mortal wins through to the valley where the chieri dwell, and eats of their food 
and drinks of their magical waters, he, too, will be gifted with immortality.”
“No,” Dorilys said. “Now you are telling me fairy tales. I am too old to believe 
such things.”
“Oh, you are so old,” Donal teased. “I look daily to see your back stoop over 
with age and your hair turn gray!”
“I am old enough to be handfasted,” Dorilys said with dignity. “I am eleven 
years old, and Margali says I look as if I were already fifteen.”
Donal gave his sister a long, considering look. It was true; at eleven Dorilys 
was already taller than many women, and her slender body had already some hint 
of a woman’s shapely roundness.
“I do not know if I want to be handfasted,” she said, suddenly sulky. “I do not 
know anything of my cousin Darren! Do you know him, Donal?”
“I know him,” Donal said, and his face went bleak. “He was fostered here, with 
many other lads, when I was a boy.”
“Is he handsome? Is he kind and well-spoken? Do you like him, Donal?”
Donal opened his mouth to speak and then shut it again. Darren was the son of 
Lord Aldaran’s younger brother, Rakhal. Mikhail, Lord Aldaran, had no sons, and 
this marriage would mean that their children would inherit and consolidate the 
two estates; this was the way great Domains were built. It would be pointless to 
prejudice Dorilys against her promised husband because of boyish differences.
“You must not judge by that, Dorilys; we were children when we knew one another, 
and we fought as boys do; but he is older now, and so am I. Yes, he is 
good-looking enough, I suppose, as women judge such things.”
“It seems hardly fair, to me,” Dorilys said. “You have been more than a son to 
my father. Yes, he said so himself! Why can you not inherit his estate, since he 
has no son of his own?”
Donal forced himself to laugh. “You will understand these things better when you 
are older, Dorilys. I am no blood kin to Lord Aldaran, though he has been a kind 
foster-father to me, and I can expect no more than a fosterling’s part in his 
estate; and that only because he pledged my mother—and yours—that I should be 
well provided for. I look for no more inheritance than this.”
“That is a foolish law,” Dorilys said vehemently, and Donal, seeing the signs of 
angry emotion in her eyes, said quickly, “Look down there, Dorilys! See, between 
the fold in the hills, you can see the riders and the banners. That will be Lord 
Rakhal and his entourage riding up toward the castle, come for your handfasting. 
So you must run down to your nurse and let her make you beautiful for the 
ceremony.”
“Very well,” Dorilys said, diverted, but she scowled as she started down the 
stairway. “If I do not like him, I will not marry him. Do you hear me, Donal?”
“I hear you,” he said, “but that is a little girl speaking, chiya. When you are 
a woman you will be more sensible. Your father has chosen carefully to make a 
marriage which will be suitable; he would not give you in marriage unless he 
were sure this would be the best for you.”
“Oh, I have heard that again and again, from Father, from Margali. They all say 
the same, that I must do as I am told and when I am older I will understand why! 
But if I do not like my cousin Darren I will not marry him, and you know there 
is no one who can make me do anything I do not want to do!” She stamped her 
foot, her rosy face flushed with pettish anger, and ran toward the stairway 
leading down into the castle. As if in echo to her words, there was a faint, 
faraway roll of thunder.
Donal remained looking over the railing, lost in somber thought. Dorilys had 
spoken with the unconscious arrogance of a princess, of the pampered only 
daughter of Lord Aldaran. But it was more than that, and even Donal felt a qualm 
of dread when Dorilys spoke so positively.
There is no one who can make me do anything I do not want to do. It was all too 
true. Willful since birth, no one had ever dared to cross her too seriously, 
because of the strange laran with which she had been born. No one quite knew the 
extent of this strange power; no one had ever dared to provoke it knowingly. 
Even while she was still unweaned, anyone who touched her against her will had 
felt the power she could fling—expressed, then, only as a painful shock— but the 
gossip of servants and nurses had exaggerated it and spread frightening tales. 
When, even as a baby, she screamed in rage, or hunger, or pain, lightnings and 
thunder had rolled and crashed about the heights of the castle; not only the 
servants, but the children fostered in the castle, had learned to fear her 
anger. Once, in her fifth year, when a fever had laid her low, delirious for 
days, raving and unconscious, not recognizing even Donal or her father, 
lightning bolts had crashed wildly all those nights and days, striking 
dangerously near the towers of the castle, random, terrifying. Donal, who could 
control the lightnings a little himself (though nothing like this), had wondered 
what phantoms and nightmares pursued her in delirium, that she struck so 
violently against them.
Fortunately as she grew older she longed for approval and affection, and Lady 
Deonara, who had loved Dorilys as her own, had been able to teach her some 
things. The child had Aliciane’s beauty and her pretty ways, and in the last 
year or two, she had been less feared and better liked. But still the servants 
and children feared her, calling her witch and sorceress when she could not 
hear; not even the boldest of the children dared offend her to her face. She had 
never turned on Donal, nor on her father, nor on her foster-mother Margali, the 
leronis who had brought her into the world; nor, during Lady Deonara’s lifetime, 
had she ever gone against Deonara’s will.
But since Deonara’s death, Donal thought (sadly, for he, too, had loved the 
gentle Lady Aldaran), no one has ever gainsaid Dorilys. Mikhail of Aldaran 
adored his pretty daughter, and denied her nothing, in or out of reason, so that 
the eleven-year-old Dorilys had the jewels and playthings of a princess. The 
servants would not, because they feared her anger and the power which gossip had 
exaggerated so enormously. The other children would not, partly because she was 
highest in rank among them, and partly because she was a willful little tyrant 
who never shrank from enforcing her domination with slaps, pinches, and blows.
It is not too bad for a little girl—a pretty, pampered little girl—to be willful 
beyond all reason, and for everyone to fear her, and give her everything she 
wants. But what will happen when she grows to womanhood, if she does not learn 
that she cannot have all things as she will? And who, fearing her power, will 
dare to teach her this?
Troubled, Donal turned down the stairs and went inside, for he, too, must be 
present at the hahdfasting, and at the ceremonies beforehand.
  
In his enormous presence-chamber, Mikhail, Lord Aldaran, awaited his guests. The 
Aldaran lord had aged since the birth of his daughter; a huge, heavy man, 
stooped now and graying, he had something still of the look of an ancient, 
molting hawk; and when he raised his head it was not unlike the stirring of some 
such ancient bird on its block—a ruffle of feathers, a hint of concealed power, 
in abeyance and still there, dormant.
“Donal? Is it you? It is hard to see in this light,” Lord Aldaran said, and 
Donal, knowing that his foster-father did not like to admit that his eyes were 
not as sharp as they had been, came toward him.
“It is I, my lord.”
“Come here, dear lad. Is Dorilys ready for the ceremony tonight? Do you think 
she is content with the idea of this marriage?”
“I think she is too young to know what it means,” Donal said. He had dressed in 
an ornate dyed-leather suit, high indoor boots fringed at the top and carved, 
his hair confined in a jeweled band; about his neck a firestone flashed crimson. 
“Yet she is curious. She asked me if Darren were handsome and well-spoken, if I 
liked him. I gave her small answer to that, I fear, but I told her she must not 
judge a man on a boy’s quarrels.”
“Nor must you, my boy,” Aldaran said, but he said it gently.
“Foster-father—I have a boon to ask of you,” Donal said.
Aldaran smiled and said, “You have long known, Donal, any gift within reason 
that I can give is yours for the asking.”
“This will cost you nothing, my lord, except some thought. When the Lord Rakhal 
and Lord Darren come before you tonight to discuss the matter of Dorilys’s 
marriage gifts, will you introduce me to the company by my father’s name, and 
not as Donal of Rockraven as you are used to do?”
Lord Aldaran’s nearsighted eyes blinked, giving him more than ever the air of 
some gigantic bird of prey blinded by the light. “How is this, foster-son? Would 
you disown your mother, or her place here? Or yours?”
“All gods forbid.” Donal said.
He came and knelt at Lord Aldaran’s side. The old man laid a hand on his 
shoulder, and at the touch the unspoken words were clear to both of them: But 
only a bastard wears his mother’s name. I am orphaned, but no bastard.
“Forgive me, Donal,” the old man said at last. “I am to blame. I wished—I wished 
not to remember that Aliciane had ever belonged to any other man. Even when she 
had—had left me, I could not bear to remind myself that you were not, in sober 
truth, my own son.” It was like a cry of pain. “I have so often wished that you 
were!”
“I, too,” said Donal. He could remember no other father, wished for no other. 
Yet Darren’s bullying voice seemed as fresh in his ears as it had been ten years 
ago:
“Donal of Rockraven; yes, I know, the barragana’s brat. Do you even know who 
fathered you, or are you a son of the river? Did your mother lie in the forest 
during a Ghost-wind and come home with no-man’s son in her belly?” Donal had 
flown at him, then, like a banshee, clawing and kicking, and they had been 
dragged apart, still howling threats at each other. Even now, it was not 
pleasant to think of young Darren’s scornful gaze, the taunts he had made.
There was tardy apology in Lord Aldaran’s voice. “If I have wronged you out of 
my own hunger to call you my son, believe I never meant to throw doubt on the 
honor of your own lineage, nor to conceal it. I think in what I mean to do 
tonight you will find how truly I value you, dear son.”
“I need nothing but that,” Donal said, and sat beside him on a low footstool.
Aldaran reached for his hand and they sat like that until a servant, bringing 
lights, proclaimed: “Lord Rakhal Aldaran of Scathfell, and Lord Darren.”
Rakhal of Scathfell was like his brother had been ten years ago, a big hearty 
man in the prime of life, his face open and jovial, with that good-fellowship 
devious men often assume as a way of proclaiming that they are concealing 
nothing, when the truth is often quite the reverse. Darren was like him, tall 
and broad, no more than a year or two older than Donal, sandy-red hair swept 
back from a high forehead, a straightforward look which made Donal think, at 
first glance, Yes, he is handsome, as girls reckon such things. Dorilys will 
like him. … He told himself that his faint sense of foreboding was no more than 
a distaste for seeing his sister taken from his own exclusive protection and 
charge and given to another.
I cannot look that Dorilys should remain with me always. She is heir to a great 
Domain; I am her half-brother, no more, and her well-being must lie in other 
hands than mine.
The lord Aldaran rose from his seat and advanced a few steps toward his brother, 
taking his hands warmly.
“Greetings, Rakhal. It is too long since you have come to me here at Aldaran. 
How goes all at Scathfell? And Darren?” He embraced his kinsmen, one after the 
other, leading them to sit near him. “And you know my foster-son, half-brother 
to your bride, Darren. Donal Delleray, Aliciane’s son.”
Darren lifted his eyebrows in recognition and said, “We were taught 
arms-practice together, and other things. Somehow I had thought his name was 
Rockraven.”
“Children are given to such misconceptions,” Lord Aldaran said firmly. “You must 
have been very young then, nephew, and lineage means little to young lads. 
Donal’s grandparents were Rafael Delleray and his wife di catenas Mirella 
Lindir. Donal’s father died young, and his widowed mother came here as 
singing-woman. She bore me my only living child. Your bride, Darren.”
“Indeed?” Rakhal of Scathfell looked on Donal with a courteous interest, which 
Donal suspected of being as spurious as the rest of his good humor.
Donal wondered why it should matter to him what the Scathfell clan thought of 
him.
Darren and I are to be brothers-by-marriage. It is not a relationship I would 
have sought. He, Donal, was honorably born, honorably fostered in a Great House; 
that should have been enough. Looking at Darren, he knew it would never be 
enough, and wondered why. Why should Darren Aldaran, heir to Scathfell, bother 
to hate and resent the half-brother of his promised wife, the fosterling of her 
father?
Then, looking at Darren’s falsely hearty smile, suddenly he knew the answer. He 
was not much of a telepath, but Darren might as well have shouted it at him.
Zandni’s hells, he fears my influence over Lord Aldaran! The laws of inheritance 
by blood are not yet so firm, in these mountains, that he is certain of what may 
happen. It would not be the first time a nobleman had sought to disinherit his 
lawful heir for one he considered more suitable; and he knows my foster-father 
thinks of me as a son, not a fosterling.
To do Donal credit, the thought had never crossed his mind before. He had known 
his place—bound to Lord Aldaran by affection, but not by blood—and accepted it. 
Now, the thought awakened because the men of Scathfell had provoked it, he 
wondered why it could not be so; why could the man he called “Father,” to whom 
he had been a dutiful son, not name his heir as he chose? The Aldarans of 
Scathfell had that inheritance; why should they swell their holdings almost to 
the size of a kingdom by adding Aldaran itself to their estate?
But Lord Rakhal had turned away from Donal, saying heartily, “And now we are 
brought together over the matter of this marriage, so that when we are gone, our 
young people may hold our joined lands for their doubled portion. Are we to see 
the girl, Mikhal?”
Lord Aldaran said, “She will come to greet the guests, but I felt it more 
suitable to settle the business part of our meeting without her presence. She is 
a child, not suited to listen while gray beards settle matters of dowries and 
marriage gifts and inheritance. She will come to pledge herself, Darren, and to 
dance with you at the festivities. But I beg of you to remember that she is 
still very young and there can be no thought of actual marriage for four years 
at least, perhaps more.”
Rakhal chuckled. “Fathers seldom think their daughters ripe to marry, Mikhail!”
“But in this case,” Aldaran said firmly, “Dorilys is no more than eleven; the 
marriage di catenas must take place no sooner than four years from now.”
“Come, come. My son is already a man; how long must he wait for a bride?”
“He must wait those years,” Aldaran said firmly, “or seek one elsewhere.”
Darren shrugged. “If I must wait for a little girl to grow up, then I suppose I 
must wait. A barbarous custom this, to pledge a grown man to a girl who has not 
yet put aside her dolls!”
“No doubt,” Rakhal of Scathfell said, in his hearty and jovial manner, “but I 
have felt this marriage was important ever since Dorilys was born, and have 
spoken often of it to my brother in the past ten years.”
Darren said, “If my uncle was so opposed before this, why has he given way now?”
Lord Aldaran’s shoulders went up and down in a heavy shrug. “I suppose because I 
am growing old and am at last resigned to the knowledge that I should have no 
son; and I would rather see the estate of Aldaran pass into the hands of 
kinfolk, than into the hands of a stranger.”
Why, at this moment, after ten years, Aldaran wondered, should he think of a 
curse flung by a sorceress many years dead? From this day your loins shall be 
empty. It was true that he had never thought seriously, from Aliciane’s death, 
of taking another woman to his bed.
“Of course it could be argued,” Rakhal of Scathfell said, “that my son is lawful 
heir to Aldaran, anyway. The lawgivers might well argue that Dorilys deserves no 
more than a marriage portion, and that a lawfully born nephew is nearer in 
inheritance than a barragana’s daughter.”
“I do not grant the right of those so-called lawgivers to offer any judgment in 
that matter!”
Scathfell shrugged. “In any case this marriage will settle it without appeal to 
the law, with the two claimants to marry. The estates shall be joined; I am 
willing to settle Scathfell on Dorilys’s eldest son, and Darren shall hold 
Castle Aldaran as warden for Dorilys.” Aldaran shook his head.
“No. In the marriage contract it is provided; Donal shall be his sister’s warden 
till she is five-and-twenty.”
“Unreasonable,” protested Scathfell. “Have you none other way to feather your 
fosterling’s nest? If he has no property from father or mother, can you not 
settle some on him by gift?”
“I have done so,” Aldaran said. “When he came of age, I gave him the small 
holding of High Crags. It is derelict, since those who held it last spent their 
time in making war on their neighbors, and not in farming; but Donal, I think, 
can bring it back to fruitfulness. It only remains to find him a suitable wife, 
and that shall be done. But he shall be warden for Dorilys.”
“This looks not as if you trusted us, Uncle,” protested Darren. “Think you, 
truly, we would deprive Dorilys of her rightful heritage?”
“Of course not,” said Aldaran, “and since you have no such thoughts, how can it 
matter to you who is warden for her fortune? Of course, if you had indeed some 
such notion, you would have to protest Donal’s choice. A paid hireling as warden 
could be bribed, but certainly not her brother.”
Donal heard all this in amazement He had not known, when his foster-father sent 
him to report on the estate of High Crags, that Aldaran designed it for him; he 
had reported fairly on the work it would take to put it in order, and on its 
fine possibilities, without believing his foster-father would give him such an 
estate. Nor did he have any idea that Aldaran would use this marriage-contract 
to make him Dorilys’s guardian.
On second thought, this was reasonable. Dorilys was nothing to the Aldarans of 
Scathfell except an obstacle in their way to Darren’s inheriting. If Lord 
Aldaran should die tomorrow, only he, as warden, could prevent Darren from 
taking Dorilys immediately in marriage despite her extreme youth, after which 
Darren could make use of her estate as he chose. It would not be the first time 
a woman had been quietly made away with, once her inheritance was safely in her 
husband’s hands. They might wait till she had borne a child, to make it look 
legal; but everyone knew that young wives were prone to die in childbirth, and 
the younger they were, the more likely to die so. Tragic, of course, but not 
uncommon.
With Donal as her warden, and the wardenship extended until Dorilys was a full 
five-and-twenty, not just old enough to marry legally and bear children, then 
even if she should die, Donal would be there as her warden and guardian of any 
child she might bear; and her estate could not fall undisputed into Darren’s 
hands.
He thought, My foster-father spoke truly when he said I should know tonight how 
much he valued me. It may be that he trusts me because he has no one else to 
trust. But at least he knows that I will protect Dorilys’s interests even before 
my own.
Aldaran of Scathfell had not accepted this peacefully; he was still arguing the 
point and did not cede it until Lord Aldaran reminded his brother that three 
other mountain lords had all made suit for Dorilys, and that she might have been 
handfasted at any time to anyone her father chose, even to one of the Lowlands 
Hasturs or Altons.
“Indeed she was pledged once before, since Deonara’s Ardais kinfolk were eager 
to handfast her to one of their sons. They felt they had the best claim, since 
Deonara never bore me a living son. But the boy died shortly afterward.”
“Died? How did he die?”
Aldaran shrugged. “An accident of some sort, I heard. I do not know the 
details.”
Nor did Donal. Dorilys had been visiting her Ardais kin at the time, and had 
come home shocked by the death of her promised husband, even though she had 
hardly known him and had not really liked him. She had told Donal, “He was a 
big, rough, rude boy and he broke my doll.” Donal had not questioned her. Now he 
wondered. Young as Donal was, he knew that if some child stood in the way of an 
advantageous alliance, that child might not live long.
And the same could be said of Dorilys…
“On this point, my mind is made up,” Lord Aldaran said, with an air of good 
nature, but firmly. “Donal, and Donal alone, shall be warden for his sister.”
“This is an insult to your kin, Uncle,” Darren protested, but the Lord of 
Scathfell silenced his son.
“If it must be, then it must be,” he said. “We should be grateful that the 
maiden who is to be one of our family has a trustworthy kinsman to protect her; 
her interests are ours, of course. It shall be as you wish, Mikhail.” But his 
look at Donal, eyes veiled and thoughtful, put the young man on his guard.
I must look to myself, he thought. There is probably no danger till Dorilys is 
grown and the marriage consummated, since if Aldaran still lived he could name 
another warden.
But if Aldaran should die, or Dorilys once wedded and taken to Scathfell, my 
chances would not be great to live very long.
He wished suddenly that Lord Aldaran were not dealing with kinsmen. If he had 
been dealing with strangers he would have had a leronis present, with truthspell 
to make lying or double-dealing impossible. But, although Aldaran might not 
trust his kinsmen overmuch, he could not insult them by insisting on haying a 
sorceress, and a truthspell, to bind the bargains.
They set their hands on it, and signed the contract provided—Donal, too, was 
required to sign—and the matter was done. Then they were all embracing as 
kinsmen and going down into the room where the other guests had assembled to 
celebrate this occasion with feasting, dancing, and revelry.
But Donal, seeing Darren of Scathfell’s eyes on him, thought again, coldly, I 
must guard myself.
This man is my enemy.



CHAPTER NINE
 
When they went down into the Great Hall, Dorilys was there with her 
foster-mother, the leronis Margali, receiving their guests. For the first time, 
she was dressed not as a little girl but as a woman, in a long gown of blue, 
embroidered at neck and sleeves with gold traceries. Her shining copper hair was 
braided low on her neck and caught into a woman’s butterfly-clasp. She looked 
far older than her years; she might have been fifteen or sixteen, and Donal was 
struck by her beauty, yet he was not wholly pleased to see this abrupt change.
His foreboding was justified when Darren, presented to Dorilys, blinked at her, 
obviously smitten. He bowed over her hand, saying gallantly, “Kinswoman, this is 
a pleasure. Your father had given me to believe I was being handfasted to a 
little girl, and here I find a lovely woman awaiting me. It is even as I 
thought—no father ever believes his daughter ripe for marriage.”
Donal was stricken with sudden foreboding. Why had Margali done this? Aldaran 
had written it so carefully into the marriage contract that there could be no 
marriage until Dorilys had reached fifteen. He had emphasized strongly that she 
was only a little girl, and now they had given the lie to that argument by 
presenting Dorilys before all the assembled guests as a grown woman. As Darren, 
still murmuring gallant words, led Dorilys out for the first dance, Donal looked 
after them, troubled.
He asked Margali about this, and she shook her head.
“It was not by my will, Donal; Dorilys would have it so. I would not cross her 
when her mind was so strongly set to it. You know as well as I do that it is not 
wise to provoke Dorilys when she will have something. The gown was her mother’s, 
and although I am sorry to see my little girl so grown up, still, if she is 
grown to it—”
“But she is not,” Donal said, “and my foster-father spent a considerable time 
convincing Lord Scathfell that Dorilys was still a child, and far too young to 
marry. Margali, she is only a little girl, you know that as well as I!”
“Yes, I know, and a very childish one, too,” Margali said, “but I could not 
argue with her on the eve of a festival. She would have made her displeasure 
felt all too greatly! You know as well as I, Donal. I can sometimes get her to 
do my will in important things, but if I tried to enforce my will on her in 
little things, she would soon stop listening to me when I sought to command her 
in the most serious ones. Does it matter, really, what dress she wears for her 
handfasting, since Lord Aldaran has written it, you say, into the marriage 
contract, that she shall not be bound till she is fifteen?”
“I suppose not, while my foster-father is still hale and strong enough to 
enforce his will,” Donal said, “but the memory of this may cause trouble later, 
if something should happen within the next few years.” Margali would not betray 
him—she had been kind to him from earliest childhood, she had been his mother’s 
friend—but still it was unwise to speak so of the lord of a Domain and he 
lowered his voice. “Lord Scathfell would have no scruples in forcing the child 
into marriage for his own ambitions, and to seize Aldaran for his own; nor would 
Darren. If she had been shown tonight for the child she is, public opinion might 
put some damper, however small, on any such plan. Now those who see her tonight 
dressed in a woman’s garments, and evidently already full-grown, will not be 
inclined to inquire about her real age; they will simply remember that at her 
handfasting she looked like a grown woman, and assume that those folk of 
Scathfell had right on their side, after all.”
Margali looked worried now, too, but she tried to shrug it aside. “I think you 
are letting yourself make nightmares without cause, Donal. There is no reason to 
think Lord Aldaran will not live another score of years; certainly long enough 
to protect his daughter from being taken in marriage before she is old enough. 
And you know Dorilys—she is a creature of whim; tonight it may please her to 
play the lady in her mother’s gowns and jewels, but tomorrow it will be 
forgotten and she will be playing at leapfrog and jackstones with the other 
children, so that no one living could think her anything but the little child 
she is in truth.”
“Merciful Avarra, grant it may be so,” said Donal gravely.
“Why, I see no reason to doubt it, Donal… Now you must do your duty by your 
foster-father’s guests, too; there are many women waiting to dance with you, and 
Dorilys, too, will be wondering why her brother does not lead her out to dance.”
Donal tried to laugh, seeing Dorilys, returning at Darren’s side, entirely 
surrounded by a group of the young men, the minor nobility of the hills, 
Aldaran’s Guardsmen. It might be true that Dorilys was amusing herself, playing 
the lady, but she was making a very successful pretense of it, laughing and 
flirting, all too obviously enjoying the flattery and admiration.
Father will not remonstrate with her. She looks all too much like our mother; 
and he is proud of his beautiful daughter. Why should I worry, or grudge Dorilys 
her amusements? No harm can come to her among our kinsmen, at a formal dance, 
and tomorrow, no doubt, it will be as Margali foresaw, Dorilys with her skirts 
tucked up to her knees and her hair in a long tail, tearing about like the 
little hoyden she is, and Darren can see the real Dorilys, the child who is 
young enough to enjoy dressing up in her mother’s frock but still far from 
womanhood.
Trying to thrust aside his misgivings, Donal applied himself to his duties as 
host, chatting politely with a few elderly dowagers, dancing with young women 
who had somehow been forgotten or neglected, unobtrusively coming between Lord 
Aldaran and importunate hangers-on who might trouble him by making inconvenient 
requests too publicly to be refused. But whenever his eyes turned in Dorilys’s 
direction, he saw her surrounded by recurrent waves of young men, and she was 
all too evidently enjoying her popularity.
The night was far advanced before Donal had a chance to dance, at last, with his 
sister; so far that she thrust out her lip, pouting like the child she was, when 
he came up to her.
“I thought you would not dance with me at all, brother, that you would leave me 
to all these strangers!”
Her breath was sweet, but he smelled the traces on it of wine, and asked with a 
slight frown, “Dorilys, how much have you been drinking?”
She dropped her eyes guiltily. “Margali said to me that I should drink no more 
than one cup of wine, but it is a sad thing if at my own handfasting I am to be 
treated as a little girl who should be put to bed at nightfall!”
“Indeed I think you are no more,” Donal said, almost laughing at the tipsy 
child. “I should tell Margali to come and take you to your nurse. You will be 
sick, Dorilys, and then no one will think you a lady, either.”
“I do not feel sick, only happy,” she said, leaning her head back and smiling up 
at him. “Come, Donal, don’t scold me. All evening I have waited to dance with my 
darling brother; won’t you dance with me?”
“As you will, chiya.” He led her onto the dance floor. She was an expert dancer, 
but halfway through the dance she tripped over the unaccustomed long skirt of 
her gown and fell heavily against him. He caught her close to keep her from 
falling, and she threw her arms about him, laying her head on his shoulder, 
laughing.
“O-oh, maybe I have drunk too much, as you said—but each of my partners offered 
to drink with me at the end of a dance and I did not know how to refuse and be 
polite. I must ask Margali what is polite to say in such 
circum—circum-stanshes.” Her tongue tripped on the word and she giggled. “Is 
this what it feels like to be drunk, Donal, giddy and feeling as if all my 
joints were made of strung beads like the dolls the old women sell in the 
markets of Caer Donn? If it is, I think I like it.”
“Where is Margali?” Donal asked, looking about the dance floor for the leronis; 
inwardly he resolved there should be some harsh words spoken to the lady. “I 
will take you to her at once, Dori.”
“Oh, poor Margali,” Dorilys said with an innocent stare. “She is not well; she 
said she was so blinded with headache that she could not see, and I made her go 
to lie down and rest.” She added, with a defensive pout, “I was tired of having 
her standing over me with that reproving scowl, as if she were Lady Aldaran and 
I only a servant! I will not be ordered about by servants!”
“Dorilys!” Donal reproved angrily. “You must not speak so. Margali is a leronis 
and a noblewoman, and Father’s kinswoman; you must not speak of her that way! 
She is no servant! And your father saw fit to put you in her care, and it is 
your duty to obey her, until you are old enough to be responsible for yourself! 
You are a very naughty little girl! You must not give your foster-mother 
headaches, and speak to her rudely. Now, look—you have disgraced yourself by 
getting tipsy in company as if you were some low-bred wench from the stables! 
And Margali is not even here to take charge of you!” Inwardly he was dismayed. 
Donal himself, her father, and Margali were the only persons on whom Dorilys had 
never turned her willfulness.
If she will no longer allow herself to be ruled by Margali, what are we to do 
with her? She is spoiled and uncontrollable, and yet I had hoped Margali could 
keep her in hand till she was grown.
“I am really ashamed of you, Dorilys, and Father will be very displeased when he 
knows how you have served Margali, who has always been so good and kind to you!”
The child said, lifting her stubborn little chin, “I am Lady Aldaran and I can 
do exactly what I want to do!”
Donal shook his head in dismay. The incongruity of this struck him, that she 
looked so much like a grown woman— and a very lovely one, at that—and spoke and 
acted like the spoiled and passionate child she was. I would that Darren could 
see her now; he would realize what a baby she is, beyond the gown and jewels of 
a lady.
Yet, Donal thought, she was not quite a baby; the laran she carried, already 
strong as his own, had allowed her to give Margali a violent headache. Perhaps 
we should think ourselves fortunate that she does not seek to bring thunder and 
lightning upon us, as I am sure she could do if she were really angry! Donal 
thanked the gods that for all Dorilys’s strange laran, she was not a telepath 
and could not read his thoughts, as he could sometimes read the thoughts of 
those around him.
He said, coaxingly, “But you should not stay here in company when you are 
drunken, chiya; let me take you to your nurse, upstairs. The hour is late, and 
soon our guests will be going to their beds. Let me take you away, Dorilys.”
“I don’t want to go up to bed,” Dorilys said sulkily. “I have had only this one 
dance with you, and Father has not yet danced with me, and Darren made me 
promise that he should have other dances later. Look—now he comes to claim 
them.”
Donal urged, in a troubled whisper, “But you are in no state to dance, Dorilys; 
you will be falling over your own feet.”
“No, I will not, truly… Darren,” she said, moving toward her handfasted partner, 
raising her eyes to his with a guile that looked adult. “Dance with me; Donal 
has been scolding me as an older brother thinks he has the right to do, and I am 
weary of listening to him.”
Donal said, “I was trying to convince my sister that this party has gone on long 
enough for a girl so young. Perhaps she will be more ready to hear wisdom from 
you, Darren, who are to be her husband.” If he is drunk, Donal thought angrily, 
I will not give her into his charge, even if I must quarrel with him in this 
public place.
But Darren seemed well in command of his faculties. He said, “Indeed it is late, 
Dorilys; what do you think—”
Abruptly there was an outcry of shouting at the far end of the hall.
“Good God!” Darren exclaimed, turning toward the clamor. “It is Lord Storn’s 
younger son and that young whelp from Darriel Forst. They will be at blows; they 
will draw steel.”
“I must go,” Donal said in consternation, recalling his duties as his father’s 
master of ceremonies, official host at this occasion, but he glanced, troubled, 
at Dorilys. Darren said, with unusual friendliness, “I will look after Dorilys, 
Donal. Go and see to them.”
“I thank you,” Donal said, hastily. Darren was sober, and he would have a vested 
interest in keeping his affianced wife from behaving too scandalously in public. 
He hurried toward the sound of the angry words, where the two youngest members 
of the rival families were engaged in a loud and angry dispute. Donal was 
skilled at such tactics. He came quickly up to them, and by joining in the 
dispute, convinced each of the quarreling men that he was on his side; then 
tactfully eased them apart. Old Lord Storn took charge of his quarrelsome son, 
and Donal took young Padreik Darriel into his own charge. It was some time 
before the young man sobered, apologized, and sought out his kinsmen to take his 
leave; then Donal looked around the ballroom for his sister and Darren. But he 
could see no sign of them, and wondered if Darren had managed to persuade his 
sister to leave the dance floor and go to her nurse.
If he has influence over Dorilys, perhaps we should even be grateful for that. 
Some of the Aldarans have the commanding voice; Father had it when he was 
younger. Has Darren managed to use it on Dorilys?
His eyes sought for Darren, without success, and he began to feel a vague sense 
of foreboding. As if to emphasize his fears, he heard a faint, distant roll of 
thunder. Donal could never hear thunder without thinking of Dorilys. He told 
himself not to be ridiculous; this was the season for storms in these mountains. 
Nevertheless, he was afraid. Where was Dorilys?
  
As soon as Donal had hurried away toward the quarreling guests, Darren laid his 
hand under Dorilys’s arm. He said, “Your cheeks are flushed, damisela; is it the 
heat of the ballroom, with so many people, or have you danced to weariness?”
“No,” Dorilys said, raising her hands to her hot face, “but Donal thinks I have 
drunk too much wine and came to scold me. As if I were a little girl still in 
his care, he wanted me to be put to bed like a child!”
“It does not seem to me that you are a child,” Darren said, smiling, and she 
moved closer to him.
“I knew you would agree with me!”
Darren thought, Why did they tell me she was a little girl? He looked up and 
down the slender body, emphasized by the long close-fitting gown. No child this! 
And still they think to put me off! Does that old goat of an uncle of mine think 
to play for time in the hopes of making a more advantageous marriage, or give 
himself time to declare the bastard of Rockraven his heir?
“Truly, it is hot here,” Dorilys said, moving still closer to Darren, her 
fingers warm and sweaty on his arm, and he smiled down at her.
“Come, then. Let us go out on the balcony where it is cooler,” Darren urged, 
drawing her toward one of the curtained doors.
Dorilys hesitated, for she had been carefully brought up by Margali and knew it 
was not considered proper for a young woman to leave a dancing floor except with 
a kinsman. But she thought, defensively, Darren is my cousin, and also my 
promised husband,
Dorilys felt the cool air from the mountains towering over Castle Aldaran, and 
drew a long sigh, leaning against the balcony rail.
“Oh, it was so hot in there. Thank you, Darren. I am glad to be out of that 
crowded place. You are kind to me,” she said, so ingenuously that Darren, 
frowning, looked at the young woman in surprise.
How childish she was for a girl so obviously adult! He wondered, fleetingly, if 
the girl were feeble-minded or even an idiot. What did it matter, though? She 
was heir to the Domain of Aldaran, and it only remained for Darren to engage her 
affections, so that she would protest if her kinsmen sought for some reason to 
deprive him of his due by breaking off the marriage. The sooner it took place, 
the better; if was disgraceful, that his uncle wanted him to wait four years! 
The girl was obviously marriageable now, and the insistence on delay seemed to 
him completely unreasonable.
And if she were so childish, his task would be all the easier! He pressed the 
hand she laid trustingly in his and said, “No man living would hesitate an 
instant to do such a kindness, Dorilys—to maneuver for a moment alone with his 
promised bride! And when she is as lovely as you, even the kindness becomes more 
of a pleasure than a duty.”
Dorilys felt herself coloring again at the compliment. She said, “Am I 
beautiful? Margali told me so, but she is only an old woman, and I do not think 
she is any judge of beauty.”
“You are indeed most beautiful, Dorilys,” Darren said, and in the dim light 
streaming in patches from the ballroom, she saw his smile.
She thought, Why, he really means it; he is not only being kind to me! She felt 
the first childish stirrings of awareness of her own power, the power of beauty 
over men. She said, “I have been told my mother was beautiful; she died when I 
was born. Father says I look like her; did you ever see her, Darren?”
“Only when I was a boy,” Darren said, “but it is true. Aliciane of Rockraven was 
counted one of the loveliest women from the Kadarin to the Wall around the 
World. There were those who said she had put a spell on your father, but she 
needed no witchcraft but her own beauty. You are indeed very like her. Have you 
her singing voice as well?”
“I do not know,” Dorilys said. “I can sing in tune, so my music-mistress says, 
but she says I am too young to know whether I will have a fine voice, or only a 
love of music and some little skill. Are you fond of music, Darren?”
“I know little about it,” he said, smiling and moving closer to her, “and it 
needs not a beautiful voice to make a woman lovely in my eyes. Come—I am your 
cousin and kinsman and your promised husband; will you kiss me, Dorilys?”
“If you want me to,” she said pliantly, and turned her cheek to him for his 
kiss. Darren, wondering again if the girl were teasing him or simply dim-witted, 
took her face between his hands, turning it toward him, and kissed her on the 
lips, his arms going around her to draw her against him.
Dorilys, submitting to the kiss, and through the tipsy blur of her sensations, 
felt a faint, wary stir of caution. Margali had warned her. Oh, Margali is 
always trying to spoil my fun! She leaned against Darren, letting him draw her 
tight against him, enjoying the touch, opening her mouth to his repeated kisses. 
Dorilys was no telepath, but she had laran, and she picked up a diffuse blur of 
his emotion, the arousal within him, the dim sense, This may not be so bad after 
all, and wondered why that should surprise him. Well, after all, she supposed it 
must be annoying for a young man to be told he was to be married off to a cousin 
he did not know, and she felt fuzzily glad that Darren thought her beautiful. He 
went on kissing her, slowly, repeatedly, sensing that she did not protest the 
kisses. Dorilys was too drunk, too unaware, to realize very clearly what was 
happening, but when his fingers moved to unlace her bodice, moving inside to cup 
over her bare breasts, she felt suddenly abashed and pushed him away.
“No, Darren, it is unseemly. Really, you must not,” she protested, feeling her 
tongue thick in her mouth. For the first time she was aware that perhaps Donal 
was right; she should not have drunk so much. Darren’s face was flushed, and he 
seemed unwilling to let her go. She took his hands firmly between her firm 
little fingers and pushed them away.
“No, Darren, don’t!” Her hands went to cover her exposed breasts; she fumbled to 
relace the strings.
“No, Dorilys,” he said thickly, so thickly that she wondered if he had drunk too 
much, too. “It’s all right; it is not unseemly. We can be married as soon as you 
will. You will like being married to me; won’t you?” He drew her close and 
kissed her again, hard and insistently. He murmured, “Dorilys, listen to me. If 
you will let me take you, now, then your father will allow the marriage rites to 
take place at once.”
Now Dorilys was beginning to be wary; she drew her mouth away from his, moved 
away from him, beginning, through the blur, to wonder if she should have come 
out here at all, alone with him. She was still innocent enough not to be quite 
sure what it was he wanted of her, but she knew it was something she ought not 
to do, and even more, something he ought really not to ask. She said, her hands 
trembling as she sought to lace her bodice, “My father—Margali says I am not yet 
old enough to be married.”
“Oh, the leronis. What does an old virgin know of love and marriage?” Darren 
said. “Come here and kiss me again, my little love. No, now, be still in my 
arms. Here, let me kiss you—like this—”
She could feel the intensity now in the kiss, frightening, his face the face of 
a stranger, swollen, dark with intent, his hands no longer caressing but strong, 
insistent.
“Darren, let me go,” she begged him. “Really, really, you must not!” Her voice 
was trembling in panic. “My father will not like it. Take your hands from me! I 
beg you, kinsman— cousin!” She pushed at him, but she was a child, and still 
half drunk, and Darren was a grown man, cold sober. Her blurred laran picked up 
his intent, his determination, the touch of cruelty behind it.
“No, don’t fight me,” he muttered. “When it is over, your father will be all too 
glad to give you to me at once, and that will not displease you; will it, my 
little one, my beauty? Here, let me hold you.”
Dorilys began to struggle, in sudden terror. “Let me go, Darren! Let me go! My 
father will be very angry; Donal will be angry with you. Let me go, Darren, or I 
will cry out for help!”
She saw the awareness of that threat in his eyes, and opened her mouth to shriek 
for help, but he was aware of her intent and his hand, hard and determined, 
clasped over her mouth, smothering the cry, while he drew her closer to him. 
Terror suddenly gave way to anger in Dorilys. How dare he! Under the flooding 
rage, she reached out, in a way she had been able to do since babyhood if one 
touched her against her will, striking…
Darren’s hand fell from hers, and with a smothered cry, he grated with pain, 
“Ah, you little demon, how dare you!” and swung back his hand, striking her so 
hard on the cheek that she was knocked nearly senseless. “No woman alive does 
this to me! You are not unwilling; you want to be teased and flattered! No more; 
it is too late for that!”
As she fell to the floor, he knelt beside her, tearing at his clothes. Dorilys, 
in wild rage and fright, struck out again, hearing the crash of thunder through 
her own shriek, seeing the brilliant white flare that struck Darren. He reeled 
back, his face contorted, fell heavily atop her. In terror, she pushed him aside 
and scrambled up, gasping, sick, exhausted. He lay insensible, not moving. 
Never, never had she struck so hard, never…Oh, what have I done!
“Darren,” she pleaded, kneeling beside his motionless form. “Darren, get up! I 
didn’t mean to hurt you, only you mustn’t try to maul me like that. I don’t like 
it. Darren! Darren! Did I really hurt you? Cousin, kinsman, speak to me!” But he 
was silent, and in sudden terror, heedless of her disheveled hair and torn gown, 
she ran toward the door of the ballroom.
Donal! It was the only thought in her mind. Donal will know what to do! I must 
find Donal!
Donal, alert to his sister’s cry of panic, resounding in his mind even though it 
was not audible within the ballroom, bad made a hasty excuse to the elderly 
friend of his grandfather who had come to speak with him, and hurried in search 
of her, led by the soundless cry.
That bastard Darren! He opened the balcony door and his sister fell into his 
arms, her hair half unbound, her dress open at the throat.
“Dorilys! Chiya, what has happened?” he said, his heart pounding, his throat 
sticking with dread. Gods above, would even Darren presume to lay rough hands on 
a girl of eleven?
“Come, bredilla. No one must see you like this. Come, smooth your hair, chiya; 
lace your bodice, quickly,” he urged, thinking grimly that this must be kept 
from their father. He would quarrel with his kinsmen of Scathfell. It never 
crossed Donal’s mind that such a quarrel might redound to his personal benefit. 
“Don’t cry, little sister. No doubt he was drunk and did not know what he was 
doing. Now you see why a young woman must not drink so much she has not her wits 
about her, to keep young men from getting such ideas. Come, Dorilys, don’t cry,” 
he begged.
She said, her voice shaking, “It’s Darren… I hurt him. I don’t know what’s 
wrong; he just lies there and will not speak to me. He kissed me too roughly. At 
first I wanted him to kiss me, but then he grew rough and I made him stop, and 
he hit me—and I was angry and I—I made the lightning come, but I didn’t want to 
hurt him, really I didn’t. Please, Donal, come and see what is wrong with him.”
Avarra, merciful goddess! Donal, his breath coming in gasps, followed his sister 
onto the dark balcony, kneeling beside Darren, but already he knew what he 
should find. Darren, his face raised to the dark sky, lay motionless, his body 
already growing cold.
“He’s dead, Dorilys; you’ve killed him,” he said, drawing her into his arms in 
fierce protectiveness, feeling her whole body shaking like a tree in the wind. 
Around the heights of Castle Aldaran the thunders crashed and rolled, slowly 
fading into silence.



CHAPTER TEN
 
And now,” said Lord Scathfefl somberly, “if the gods will, we shall hear the 
truth of this dreadful business.”
The guests had been cleared away, escorted to their rooms or to their horses. 
Over the heights of Castle Aldaran the great red sun was beginning to show a wet 
crimson face through the heavy banks of cloud. Darren’s body had been carried to 
the chapel deep in tht heart of the castle. Donal had never liked Darren, but he 
could not keep back pity as he saw the young man lying stark and astonished, his 
clothing disarrayed, his head flung back in the spasm of agony and terror which 
had ended his life. He came to an undignified end, Donal thought, and would have 
arranged the young man’s clothing in more seemly fashion; then it occurred to 
him that this would remove all traces of Dorilys’s only defense.
Blood-guilt on so young a child, he thought with a shudder, and stepped back 
from the corpse and went out to Lord Aldaran’s presence-chamber.
Margali had been roused from the heavy sleep which had fallen over her at the 
cessation of pain; she was there, a thick shawl thrown over her night-robe, 
Dorilys sobbing in her arms. The girl looked like an exhausted child now, her 
face blotched with long crying, her hair coming down in stray locks and 
tendrils, her swollen eyelids drooping sleepily over her eyes. She had almost 
stopped crying, but every now and then a renewed spasm of sobs would shake her 
thin shoulders. She was sitting in Margali’s lap like the child she was, though 
her long legs dragged on the floor. Her elaborate gown was bedraggled and 
crushed.
Over the child’s head Margali looked at Lord Mikhail of Aldaran and said, “Will 
you have truthspell, then, my lord? Very well, but let me at least call her 
nurse and put the child to bed. She has been awake all night, and you can see—” 
She moved her head, indicating the weeping, disheveled Dorilys, clinging to her.
“I am sorry, mestra. Dorilys must remain,” Aldaran said. “We must hear what she 
has to say, too, I fear, and under truthspell… Dorilys”— his voice was 
gentle—“let go of your foster-mother, my child, and go and sit there beside 
Donal. No one will hurt you; we only want to know what happened.”
Reluctantly, Dorilys loosed her grip from Margali’s neck. She was rigid, gripped 
with terror. Donal could not help but think of a rabbithorn before a pack of 
mountain beasts. She came and sat on the low bench beside him. Donal put out his 
hand to her and the childish fingers gripped it, painfully tight. With her free 
hand she wiped her smeared face on the sleeve of her gown.
Margali took her matrix from the silken bag around her throat, gazed for a 
moment into the blue jewel, and her low, clear voice was distinctly audible, 
though she was almost whispering, in the silence of the presence-chamber.
“In the light of the fire of the jewel, let the truth lighten this room where we 
stand.”
Donal had seen the setting of truthspell many times, and it had never ceased to 
awe him. From the small blue jewel, a glow began, slowly suffused the face of 
the leronis, crept out into the room, creeping slowly from face to face. Donal 
felt the shimmer of the light on his own face, saw it glowing on the blotched 
face of the child at his side, saw it lightening the face of Rakhal of Scathfell 
and the paxman who stood motionless at his back. In the blue light Mikhail of 
Aldaran looked more than ever like some aged and molting bird of prey, 
motionless on his block, but when he raised his head the power and the menace 
were there, silent potential.
Margali said, “It is done, my lord. The truth alone may be spoken here while 
this light endures.”
Donal knew that if falsehoods were knowingly spoken under the truthspell, the 
light would vanish from the face of the speaker, showing instantly that he lied.
“Now,” said Mikhail of Aldaran, “you must tell us what you know of this, 
Dorilys. How came Darren to die?”
Dorilys raised her face. She looked pitiable, her face smeared and blotched with 
weeping, her eyes swollen, and again she wiped her nose on the elaborate sleeves 
of her gown. She clung hard to Donal’s hand, and he could feel her trembling. 
Aldaran had never before used the commanding voice on his daughter. After a 
moment she said, “I—I didn’t know he was dead,” and blinked rapidly as if she 
were about to cry again.
Rakhal of Scathfell said, “He is dead. My eldest son is dead. Have no doubt 
about that, you—”
“Silence!” With the sound of the commanding voice, even Lord Scathfell let his 
voice die into quiet. “Now, Dorilys, tell us what befell between Darren and you. 
How came the lightnings to strike him?”
Dorilys slowly gained command of her voice. “We were warm from dancing, and he 
said we should go out on the balcony. He began to kiss me, and he—” Her voice 
shook again, uncontrollably. “He unlaced my gown and touched me, and he would 
not stop when I bade him.” She blinked hard, but the truthlight on her face did 
not falter. “He said I should let him take me now so that Father could not delay 
the marriage. And he kissed me roughly; he hurt me.” Her hands went up to cover 
her face, and she shook with a fresh outburst of sobs.
Aldaran’s face was set like stone. He said, “Don’t be afraid, my daughter; but 
you must let our kinsmen see your face.”
Donal took Dorilys’s hands in his. He could feel the agony of her fear and shame 
as if it were pulsing out through her small hands.
She said, stammering, into the unflickering truthlight, “He—he hit me hard when 
I pushed him away, and he knocked me down on the floor, and then he got down on 
the floor beside me, and I was—I was scared, and I hit him with the lightnings. 
I didn’t want to hurt him; I only wanted him to take his hands off me!”
“You! You killed him, then! You struck him with your witch-lightnings, you fiend 
from hell!” Scathfell rose, advanced from his seat, his hand raised as if to 
strike.
“Father! Don’t let him hurt me!” Dorilys cried out in shrill terror. A blue 
blaze of lightning struck outward, and Rakhal of Scathfell reeled back, stopped 
dead in his tracks, clutching at his heart. The paxman came and supported his 
faltering lord to his seat.
Donal said, “My lords, if she had not struck him down, I would myself have 
called challenge on him! To seek to ravish a girl of eleven!” His hand clutched 
at his sword as if the dead man stood before him.
Aldaran’s voice was filled with sorrow and bewilderment as he turned to Lord 
Scathfell. “Well, my brother, you have seen. I regret this, more than I can say; 
but you have seen the truthlight on the child’s face, and it seems to me there 
is little fault in her, either. How came your son to attempt a thing so unseemly 
at his own handfasting—to try to rape his intended bride?”
“It never occurred to me that he would need to rape,” Scathfell said, anger 
beating through his words. “It was I who told him, simply, to make sure of her. 
Did you truly think we would agree to wait for years while you sought out a more 
advantageous marriage? A blind man could have seen that the girl was 
marriageable, and the law is clear: if a handfasted couple lie together, the 
marriage is legal from that moment. It was I who told my son to make sure of his 
bride.”
“I should have known,” Aldaran said bitterly. “You did not trust me, brother? 
But here stands the leronis who brought my daughter to the light. Under 
truthspell, Margali, how old is Dorilys?”
“It is true,” the leronis said into the blue truthlight. “I took her from 
Aliciane’s dead body eleven summers ago. But even if she had been of 
marriageable age, my lord of Scathfell, why should you connive at the seduction 
of your own niece?”
“Yes, we should hear that, too,” Mikhail of Aldaran said. “Why, my brother? 
Could you not trust the dues of kin?”
“It is you who have forgotten kinship’s dues,” Scathfell flung at him. “Need you 
ask, brother? When you would have had Darren wait years while you schemed to 
find some way to give all to the bastard of Rockraven, whom you call fosterling. 
That bastard son you will not even acknowledge!”
Without stopping to think, Donal rose from his seat and stepped to the paxman’s 
place, three steps behind Mikhail of Aldaran. His hand hovered a few niches 
above his sword-hilt Lord Aldaran did not look around at Donal, but the words 
were wrenched from him.
“Would to all the gods that your words were true! Would that Donal had been born 
of my blood, lawfully or unlawful! No man could ask more in kinsman or son! But 
alas—alas, with grief I say it—and in the light of truthspell, Donal is not my 
son.”
“Not your son? Truly?” Scathfell’s voice was contorted with fury. “Why, then, 
why else would an old man so forget kinship’s dues if he were not unseemly 
besotted with the boy? If not your son, then it must be he is your minion!”
Donal’s hand flashed to sword-hilt. Aldaran, sensing his intent, reached out and 
gripped Donal’s wrist in steel fingers, squeezing until Donal’s hand relaxed and 
he let the sword slide back into the scabbard, undrawn.
“Not beneath this roof, foster-son; he is still our guest.” Then he let Donal’s 
wrist go, advancing on the lord of Scathfell, and Donal thought again of a hawk 
swooping on his prey. “Had any man but my brother spoken such words I would tear 
the lie from his throat. Get out! Take up the body of that foul ravisher you 
called son, and all your lackeys, and get you gone from my roof before indeed I 
forget the dues of kin!”
“Your roof indeed, but not for long, my brother,” Scathfell said between his 
teeth. “I will tear it down stone from stone around your head, ere it goes to 
the bastard of Rockraven!”
“And I will burn it over my own head, before it goes to any son of Scathfell,” 
Lord Aldaran retorted. “Be gone from my house before high noon, else my servants 
shall drive you forth with whips! Get you back to Scathfell, and think lucky I 
do not harry you forth from that stronghold as well, which you hold by my favor. 
I make allowance for your grief, or I would have revenge in your heart’s blood 
for what you have said and done here today! Get you gone to Scathfell, or where 
you will, but come into my presence no more, nor call me again brother!”
“Brother no more, nor overlord,” Scathfell said in a rage. “The gods be thanked, 
I have other sons, and a day will come when we hold Scathfell of our own right, 
and not by your leave and favor. A day will come when we hold Aldaran as well, 
and yonder murdering sorceress who hides behind the mask of a weeping girl-baby 
shall be held to account with her own blood! From hence, Mikhail of Aldaran, 
look to yourself, and your witch-daughter, and to the bastard of Rockraven whom 
you will not own your son! The gods alone know what hold he has on you! Some 
filthy spell of witchcraft! I will breathe no longer this air polluted with the 
foul sorceries of this place!” Turning, his paxman at his heels, Lord Scathfell 
went forth, with a slow and measured step, from Aldaran’s presence-chamber. His 
last look was for Dorilys, a look so full of loathing that Donal turned cold.
When brethren are at odds, enemies step in to widen the gap, Donal thought. Now 
his foster-father had quarreled with all his kin. And I, who alone stand by him 
now—I am not even his son!
  
When the folk of Scathfell had departed, Margali said firmly, “Now, my lord, by 
your leave, I shall take Dorilys away to her bed.”
Aldaran, starting out of a brooding apathy, said, “Yes, yes, take the child 
away, but return to me here when she sleeps.”
Margali took the sobbing child away, and Aldaran sat motionless, head down, lost 
in thought.
Donal forbore to disturb him, but when Margali returned, he asked, “Shall I go?”
“No, no, lad, this concerns you, too,” Aldaran said, sighing as he looked up at 
the leronis. “No blame to you, Margali, but what are we to do now?”
Margali said, shaking her head, “I cannot control her anymore, my lord. She is 
strong and willful, and soon the stresses of puberty will be upon her. I beg 
you, Dom Mikhail, to place her in charge of someone stronger than I, and better 
fitted to teach her control of her laran, or worse things than this may follow.”
Donal wondered, What could be worse than this?
As if picking up the unspoken question, Aldaran said, “Every other child I have 
fathered has died in adolescence of the threshold sickness which is the curse of 
our line. Must I fear that for her, too?”
Margali said, “Have you thought, my lord, of sending her to the vai leroni of 
Tramontana Tower? They would care for her, and teach her the uses of her laran. 
If anyone alive could bring her through adolescence unharmed, it is they.”
Donal thought, That is certainly the right solution. “Yes, Father,” he said 
eagerly. “You will remember how kind they were to me whenever I went there. They 
would have been glad to have me among them, if you could have spared me from 
your side. Even so, they always welcomed me among them as guest and friend, and 
they taught me much about the use of my laran, and would have gladly taught me 
more. Send Dorilys to them, Father.”
Aldaran’s face had brightened imperceptibly; then he frowned again. “To 
Tramontane? Would you shame me before my neighbors, then, Donal? Am I to show my 
weakness, that they can spread the word abroad to all the folk in the Hellers? 
Am I to be made the subject of gossip and scorn?”
“Father, I think you wrong the folk of Tramontana,” Donal said, but he knew it 
would do no good. He had reckoned without Dom Mikhail’s pride.
Margali said, “If you will not entrust her to your neighbors at Tramontana, Dom 
Mikhail, then I beg of you to send her to Hali or Neskaya, or to one of the 
Towers in the Lowlands. I am no longer young enough, or strong enough, to teach 
her or control her. All the gods know, I have no wish to part with her. I love 
her as if she were my own child, but I cannot handle her anymore. In a Tower 
they are schooled to do so.”
Aldaran thought about that for some time. Finally he said, “I think she is too 
young to be sent to a Tower. But there are‘ old ties of friendship between 
Aldaran and Elhalyn. For the sake of that old friendship, perhaps the lord of 
Elhalyn will send a leronis from Hali Tower to care for her. This would excite 
no comment. Any household with laran has need of some such person, to teach the 
young people of that household. Will you go, Donal, and ask that someone shall 
come to Aldaran to dwell in our household and teach her?”
Donal rose and bowed. The thought of Dorilys, safe in Tramontana Tower among his 
friends, had attracted him; but perhaps it had been too much to ask that his 
foster-father should make his weakness known to his neighbors. “I shall ride 
today, if you will, my lord, as soon as I can assemble an escort befitting your 
rank and dignity.”
“No,” Aldaran said, heavily. “You will ride alone, Donal, as befits a suppliant. 
I have heard that there is a truce between the Elhalyn and the Ridenow; you will 
be safe enough. But if you go alone, it will be clear that I am beseeching their 
help.”
“As you will,” Donal said. “I can ride tomorrow, then. Or even this night.”
“Tomorrow will be time enough,” Aldaran said. “Let the folk of Scathfell get 
well away to their homes. I want no word of this to get around the mountains.”



CHAPTER ELEVEN
 
At the far end of the Lake of Hali, the Tower rose, a narrow, tall structure, 
made of pale translucent stone. Most of the more demanding work of the matrix 
circle was done at night. At first Allart had not understood this, thinking it 
superstition or meaningless custom. As time passed, however, he had begun to 
realize that the night hours, while most people slept, were the most free of 
intruding thoughts, the random vibrations of other minds. In the deserted night 
hours, the matrix circle workers were free to send their conjoined minds into 
the matrix crystals which enormously amplified the electronic and energon 
vibrations of the brain, transforming power into energy.
With the tremendous power of the linked minds and the giant artificial matrix 
lattices which the technicians could build, these mental energies could mine 
deep-buried metals to the surface in a pure molten flow; could charge batteries 
for the operation of air-cars or the great generators which lighted the castles 
of Elhalyn and Thendara. Such a circle had raised the glistening white towers of 
the castle at Thendara from the living rock of the mountain peak where it stood. 
From the many Towers like this one flowed all the energy and technology of 
Darkover, and it was the men and women of the Tower circles who created it.
Now, in the shielded matrix chamber—shielded, not only by taboo and tradition, 
and the isolation of Hali, but by force-fields which could strike an intruder 
dead or mindless—Allart Hastur sat before a low, round table, hands and mind 
linked with the six others of his circle. All the energies of his brain and body 
were concentrated into a single flow toward the Keeper of the circle. The Keeper 
was a slight, steel-strong young man; his name was Coryn, and he was a cousin of 
Allart’s, about his own age. Seated before the giant artificial crystal, he 
seized the massed energon flows of the six who sat around the table, pouring 
them through the intricate inner crystal lattices, directing the stream of that 
energy into the rows of batteries ranged before them on the low table. Coryn did 
not move or speak, but as he pointed a narrow, commanding hand toward one 
battery after another, the linked, blank-faced members of the circle poured 
every atom of their focused energies into the matrix and through the body of the 
Keeper, sending enormous charges of energy into the batteries, one by one.
Allart was ice-cold, cramped, but he did not know it; he was unaware of his 
body, unaware of anything except the pouring streams, the flow of energy which 
rushed through him. Dimly, without thought, it reminded him of the ecstatic 
union of minds and voices of the morning hymns of Nevarsin, this sense of unique 
blending and separateness, of having found his own place in the music of the 
universe…
Outside the circle of linked hands and minds, a white-robed woman sat, her face 
in her hands, nothing visible but the falling streams of her long copper-colored 
hair. Her mind moved ceaselessly around and around the circle, monitoring one 
after another of the motionless figures. She eased the tension of a muscle 
before it could impair concentration, soothed a sudden cramp or itch before it 
could intrude into the concentration of the man or woman in the circle; made 
certain breathing did not falter, nor any of the small automatic movements which 
kept the neglected bodies in good order—the rhythmic blinks of the eyes to avoid 
strain, the faint shift of position. If breathing faltered, she went into 
rapport with the breather and starting the smooth rhythm again, lending smooth 
pace to a faltering heart. The linked members of the circle were not conscious 
of their own bodies, had not been conscious of them for hours. They were aware 
only of their linked minds, floating in the blazing energies they poured into 
the batteries. Time had stopped for them in an endless instant of massive union; 
only the monitor was conscious of the passing hours. Now, not seeing but sensing 
that the hour of sunrise was still some time away, she was aware of some tension 
in the circle that should not be there, and sent her questing mind from one to 
another of the linked figures.
Coryn. The Keeper himself, trained for years in mind and body to endure just 
this strain… no, he was in no distress. He was cramped, and she checked his 
circulation; he was cold but was not yet aware of it. His condition had not 
altered since the early hours of the night. Once his body was linked and locked 
into one of the comfortably balanced postures he could maintain unmoving for 
hours, it was well with him.
Mira? No, the old woman who had been monitor before Renata herself was calm and 
unaware, floating peacefully in the energy nets, focused on the outflows of 
force, random dreaming, blissful.
Barak? The sturdy, swarthy man, the technician who had built the artificial 
matrix lattice to the requirements of this circle, was cramped. Automatically 
Renata descended into his body-awareness, eased a muscle before pain could 
intrude into his concentration. Nothing else was amiss with him.
Allart? How had a newcomer to the circle come to have such control? Had it been 
his Nevarsin training? His breathing was deep and slow, unfaltering, the flow of 
oxygen to his limbs and heart unceasing. He had even learned the most difficult 
trick of a matrix circle, the long hours unmoving, without undue pain or 
cramping.
Arielle? She was the youngest of the circle in years, yet at sixteen she had 
spent a full two years here in Hali, and had achieved the rank of mechanic. 
Renata checked her carefully: breathing, heart, the sinuses which sometimes gave 
Arielle trouble because of the dampness here in the lake country. Arielle was 
from the southern plains. Finding nothing amiss, Renata checked further. No, 
nothing wrong, not even a full bladder to cause tension. Renata thought, I 
wondered if Coryn had made her pregnant, but it is not that. I checked her 
carefully before she entered the circle, and Arielle knows better than that…
It must be the other newcomer, then, Cassandra… Carefully monitoring, she 
checked heart, breathing, circulation. Cassandra was cramped, but not in much 
pain from it, not enough to notice. Renata felt Cassandra’s awareness, a random 
troubled flutter, and sent a quick, reassuring thought to calm her before it 
could disturb the others. Cassandra was new to this work, and had not yet come 
to take the routine intrusion of a monitor’s touch on body and mind with 
complete acceptance. It took Renata some seconds to soothe Cassandra before she 
could go into the deeper internal monitoring.
Yes, it is Cassandra. It is her strain we are all sharing… She should not have 
come into the circle at this time, with her woman’s cycles about to come upon 
her. I thought she knew better than that… But Renata never thought of blaming 
Cassandra, only herself. I should have made certain of that. Renata knew how 
hard it was, in the early days of learning, to confess weakness or admit to 
limitations.
She moved into rapport with Cassandra, trying to calm her tension, but she 
realized Cassandra was not yet able to work with her in that kind of total 
closeness. She sent a careful, warning thought to Coryn, a gentle touch akin to 
the softest of murmurs.
We must break soon… be ready when I signal to you.
The flow of energies did not pause or falter, but the barest outside flutter of 
Coryn’s attention replied, Not yet; there is still an entire row of batteries 
which must be charged, then he sank back into the linkage of the circle without 
a ripple.
Now Renata was troubled. The word of the Keeper was law in the circle; yet it 
was the responsibility of the monitor to keep custody of the well-being of the 
bodies of the linked members. So far she had carefully shielded her thoughts and 
her concern from all of them, but from somewhere she felt, now, a faint 
awareness, a withdrawal of total energy from the circle, which should not have 
been there. Allart is aware of Cassandra. He is too aware of her for this stage. 
He should not, linked into the circle like this, know she is alive, any more 
than another. As yet it was only a flicker and she compensated by gently nudging 
Allart’s awareness back to his own focus of energy. She tried to hold Cassandra 
steady, as if, on a steep stairway, she had lent the other woman the support of 
her arm. But once the intensity of concentration was broken, something in the 
stream of energies faltered, wavered, as a wind ruffles the face of the waters. 
One by one she felt the disturbance run around the circle, only a flicker, but 
at this high level of concentration, disrupting. Barak shifted his weight 
uneasily. Coryn coughed, Arielle snuffled, and Renata felt Cassandra’s breathing 
falter, grow heavy. Now imperative, she sent out a second warning:
We must break, Coryn. It is near time….
This time the backlash was definitely irritable, and it reverberated through all 
the linked minds like an alarm bell. Allart heard the sound in his mind as he 
had heard the soundless bells of Nevarsin, and began slowly to recover his 
independent focus. Coryn’s irritation was like a stinging slap; he felt it like 
the twitching of some internal strand as he felt Cassandra’s consciousness drop 
away. It was like plucking forth an ingrown strand, as if some deep root planted 
in his being was jerked forth all bloody. One by one he felt the circle break 
and disintegrate, not the gentle withdrawal it had been in the earlier times, 
but this time falling apart painfully. He heard Mira gasping with effort, 
Arielle sniffle as if she were going to cry. Barak groaned, stretching a 
painfully cramped limb. Allart knew enough not to move too quickly at first; he 
moved with the slowest, most careful of motions, as if coming awake from a very 
deep sleep. But he was troubled and distressed. What had happened to the circle? 
Certainly their work had not been completed…
One by one, around the table, the others were coming up from the depths of the 
matrix trance. Coryn looked white and shattered. He did not speak, but the 
intensity of his anger, directed at Renata, was painful to them all.
I told you, not yet. Now we will have this all to do again, for less than a 
dozen batteries… Why did you break just now? Was there anyone in this circle too 
weak to endure for just a little more? Are we children playing jackstones, or a 
responsible mechanics’ circle?
But Renata paid no attention, and Allart, his conscious mind flicking back into 
focus, saw that Cassandra had fallen sideways, her long dark hair scattered 
along the tabletop. He shoved back his low chair and sprang to her side, but 
Renata was there before him.
“No,” she said, and with a flicker of dismay, Allart heard the commanding voice 
focused against him. “Don’t touch her! This is my responsibility!” In his 
extreme sensitization Allart picked up the thought Renata had not spoken aloud: 
You have done too much already; you are responsible for this…
I? Holy Bearer of Burdens, strengthen me! I, Renata?
Renata was kneeling beside Cassandra, her fingertips spread at the back of 
Cassandra’s neck, just touching her at the nerve center there. Cassandra 
stirred, and Renata said soothingly, “It’s all right, love; you’re all right 
now.”
Cassandra murmured, “I’m so cold, so cold.”
“I know, it will pass in a few minutes.”
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—I was sure—” Cassandra looked around, dazed, at the 
edge of tears. She flinched before Coryn’s angry glare.
“Let her alone, Coryn. It’s not her fault,” Renata said, not looking up.
Coryn said, with a gesture of deep irony, “Z’par servu, vai leronis… Have we 
your leave to test the batteries? While you minister to our bride?”
Cassandra was struggling against sobs. Renata said, “Don’t mind Coryn; he is as 
tired as we all are. He didn’t mean that as it sounded.”
Arielle went to a side table, took up a metal tool—the matrix circles had first 
call on all the scarce metals of Darkover—and, wrapping her hand in insulating 
material, went to the batteries, touching them one after another to elicit the 
spark indicating they were fully charged. The other members of the circle rose 
cautiously, stretching cramped bodies. Renata still knelt at Cassandra’s side; 
finally she withdrew her hands from the pulse circuits at the other woman’s 
throat.
“Try to stand up now. Move around if you can.”
Cassandra chafed her thin hands together. “I am as cold as if I had spent the 
night in Zandru’s coldest hell. Thank you, Renata. How did you know?”
“I am a monitor. It is my duty to know such things.” Renata Leynier was a 
slight, tawny young woman, with masses of copper-gold hair, but her mouth was 
too wide for beauty, her teeth somewhat crooked, her nose splotched with 
freckles. Her eyes, though, were wide and gray and beautiful.
“When you have had a little more training, Cassandra, you will be able to sense 
them for yourself, and tell us when you are not well enough to join a circle. At 
such a time, as I thought you knew, your psychic energy leaves your body with 
your blood, and you need all your strength for yourself. Now you must go to bed 
and rest for a day or two. Certainly you must not work in the circle again, or 
do any work demanding so much effort and concentration.”
Allart came toward them, troubled. “Are you ill, Cassandra?”
Renata answered for her. “Overwearied, no more, and in need of food and rest.” 
Mira had gone to a cupboard at the far end of the room and was setting out some 
of the food and wine kept there so that the circle members could refresh 
themselves at once from the tremendous energy-drains of their work. Renata went 
and searched among the provisions for a long bar of compressed nuts, sticky with 
honey. She put it into Cassandra’s hand, but the dark-haired woman shook her 
head.
“I do not like sweets. I will wait for a proper breakfast.”
“Eat it,” Renata said, in command voice. “You need the strength.”
Cassandra broke off a piece of the sticky confection and put it unto her mouth. 
She grimaced at the cloying taste, but chewed it obediently. Arielle joined 
them, and throwing down the tool and taking a handful of dried fruits, she put 
them greedily into her mouth. When she could speak plain she said, “The last 
full dozen of the batteries are not charged, and the last three we finished will 
have to be done again; they are not to full capacity.”
“What a nuisance!” Coryn glared at Cassandra.
“Let her alone!” Renata insisted. “We have all been beginners!”
Coryn poured himself some wine and sipped it. “I am sorry, kinswoman,” he said 
at last, smiling at Cassandra, his normal good nature taking over again. “Are 
you wearied, cousin? You must not exhaust yourself for a few batteries.”
Arielle wiped her fingers, sticky with the honeyed fruit. “If there is any work 
more tedious from Dalereuth to the Hellers than charging batteries, I cannot 
imagine it.”
“Better that than mining,” Coryn said. “Whenever I work with metals, I come out 
exhausted for half a moon. I am glad there is no more work to be done this year. 
Every time we go into the earth for mining, I come back to consciousness feeling 
as if I had lifted every spoonful of it with my own two hands!”
Allart, disciplined by the years of arduous physical and mental training at 
Nevarsin, was less weary than the others, but his muscles were aching with 
tension and inactivity. He saw Cassandra break another piece of the sticky 
honey-nut confection, felt her grimace as she put it into her mouth. They were 
still in rapport and he felt her revulsion for the oversweet stuff as if he were 
eating it himself.
“Don’t eat that if you don’t like it. Surely on the shelves there is something 
more to your liking,” he said, and turned to rummage in them.
Cassandra shrugged. “Renata said this would restore me more quickly than 
anything else. I don’t mind.”
Allart took a piece of it himself. Barak, who had been sipping a cup of wine, 
finished it and came toward them.
“Are you recovered, kinswoman? The work is indeed fatiguing when you are new to 
it, and there are no suitable restoratives here.” He laughed aloud. “Perhaps you 
should have a spoonful or so of kireseth honey; it is the best of all 
restoratives after long weariness, and you especially should—” Abruptly he 
coughed and turned away, pretending he had choked on the last swallow in his 
glass, but they all heard the words in his mind as if he had spoken them aloud. 
You especially should take such restoratives, since you are so new-made a bride 
and have more need of them… but before the words had escaped his tongue, Barak 
had recalled what indeed they all knew, having been in close telepathic rapport 
with Allart and Cassandra: the real state of affairs between them.
The only amend he could make for the tactless jest was to turn away, pretend the 
words unthought as they had been unspoken. There was a brief silence in the 
matrix chamber and then they all began talking very loudly and all at once about 
something else. Coryn took up the metal tool and checked a couple of the 
batteries himself. Mira rubbed her cold hands and said she was ready for a hot 
bath and a massage.
Renata put an arm around Cassandra’s waist.
“You, too, sweetheart. You are cold and cramped. Go down now; send for some 
proper breakfast and have a hot bath. I will send my own bath-woman; she is 
extra skilled at massage, and can loosen those tight muscles and nerves of yours 
so you can sleep. Don’t feel guilty. All of us overworked in our first season 
here. No one likes to admit weakness, and we have all done it. When you have had 
some hot food and a bath and massage, then lie down and sleep. Have her put hot 
bricks at your feet and cover you well.”
Cassandra demurred. “I do not like to deprive you of her services.”
“Chiya, I do not let myself get into such a state anymore. Go now. Tell Lucetta 
I said to tend you as she does me when I am out of the circle. Do as you are 
told, cousin. This is my business, to know what you need even when you do not 
know it yourself,” she said. Allart thought she sounded motherly, as if she were 
a generation Cassandra’s senior, instead of a girl Cassandra’s own age or less.
“I will go down, too,” Mira said. Coryn drew Arielle’s hand through his arm and 
they left together. Allart was about to follow when Renata laid a feather-light 
hand on his arm.
“Allart, if you are not too weary, I would like a word with you.”
Allart had been thinking of his luxurious room on a lower floor, and a cool 
bath, but he was not really weary; he said so, and Renata nodded.
“If this is the training of the Nevarsin brethren, perhaps we should acquire it 
for our circles. You are as steady and unwearied as Barak, and he has been part 
of our circles almost as long as I have been alive. You should teach us 
something of your secrets! Or do the brethren pledge you to secrecy?”
Allart shook his head. “It is only a discipline of breathing.”
“Come. Shall we walk outdoors in the sunshine?” Together they went down to the 
ground level, stepped through the force-field which protected the Tower circle 
against intrusion when they were working, and went into the growing brilliance 
of the morning. Allart walked silently beside Renata. He was not unduly tired, 
but he was tense and sleepless, his nerves jangling. As always when he relaxed 
his barriers even a little, his laran wove conflicting futures around him, 
diverging but just as perceptible as the green lawns sloping away toward the 
lake and the cloudy shores of Hali.
Silent, they walked side by side along the shore. Liriel, the violet moon, just 
past full, was setting dimly over the lake. Green Idriel, the palest of 
crescents, hung high and pale over the faraway rim of mountains.
Allart knew—he had known when first he set eyes on Renata—that this was the 
other of the two women he had seen again and again, and again, in the diverging 
futures of his life. From that first day in the Tower he had been on guard 
against her, speaking no more than the barest courtesies, avoiding her as much 
as it was possible to avoid anyone in the close quarters of the Tower. He had 
come to respect her competence as a monitor, to value her quick laughter and 
good humor, and this morning, watching her ministering to Cassandra’s collapse, 
he had been touched by her kindness.
But until this moment they had never exchanged a single word outside the line of 
their duties in the circle.
Now hampered by fatigue he saw Renata’s face, not as it was—gentle, impersonal, 
withdrawn, the look of a Tower-trained monitor at work, speaking of professional 
things—but as it might be in any of the diverging, fanning futures which might 
come to pass. Although he had barricaded himself against it, never allowing such 
thoughts freedom, he had seen her warmed by love, known the tenderness she could 
summon, had possessed her as if in a dream. This, overlaid upon the real state 
of affairs between them, confused and embarrassed him, as if he must face a 
woman about whom he had dreamed erotically, and conceal it from her. No. No 
woman had any part in his life except Cassandra, and he had firmly resolved how 
limited that part should be. He steeled himself against any lowering of these 
barriers and looked on Renata with the cold, impersonal gaze, almost hostile, of 
the Nevarsin monk.
They walked together, hearing the whispering sound of the soft cloud-waves. 
Allart had grown up on the shores of Hali, and had heard it all his life, but 
now he seemed to hear it freshly through Renata’s ears.
“I never tire of this sound. It is so like, and so unlike, water. I suppose no 
one could swim in this lake?”
“No, you would sink. Slowly, it is true, but you would sink; it will not hold 
you up. But you can breathe it, you know, so it does not matter if you sink. 
Many times in my boyhood I have walked along the lake-bottom to watch the 
strange things within it.”
“You can breathe it? And you will not drown?”
“No, no, it is not water at all—I do not know what it is. If you breathe it too 
long, you will become faint, and feel too weary even to take breaths, and there 
is some danger that you will become unconscious and die without remembering to 
breathe. But for a little while it is exhilarating. And there are strange 
creatures. I do not know whether to call them fish or bird, nor could I say 
whether they swim in the cloud or fly through it, but they are very beautiful. 
They used to say that to breathe the cloud of the lake conferred long life and 
that was why we Hasturs are long-lived. They say, too, that when Hastur, the son 
of the Lord of Light, fell to the shores at Hali, he gave immortality to those 
who dwelt there, and that we Hasturs lost that gift because of our sinful lives. 
But these things are all fairy tales.”
“You think so being a cristoforo?”
“I think so being a man of reason,” Allart said, smiling. “I cannot conceive of 
a god who would meddle with the laws of the world he created.”
“Yet the Hasturs are long-lived, in truth.”
“I was told at Nevarsin that all those of the blood of Hastur bear chieri blood; 
and the chieri are all but immortal.”
Renata sighed. “I have heard, too, that they are emmasca, neither man nor woman, 
and thus free of the perils of being either. I think I envy them that.”
It struck Allart that Renata gave tirelessly of her own strength; yet there was 
none to care if she herself was overwearied.
“Go and rest, kinswoman. Whatever you have to say to me, it cannot be so urgent 
that it cannot wait till you have had the food and rest to which you were so 
quick to send my dear lady.”
“But I would rather say it while Cassandra is sleeping. I must say it to one of 
you, and though I know you will think it an intrusion, you are older than 
Cassandra and better able to endure what I must say. Well, enough of apology and 
preamble… You should not have come here with Cassandra new-made a bride and your 
marriage still unconsummated.”
Allart opened his mouth to speak, but she gestured him to silence. “I warned 
you, remember, that you would think it an intrusion of your privacy and hers. I 
have been in the Tower since I was fourteen; I know the courtesies of such 
things. But also I am monitor here, and responsible for the well-being of 
everyone in the Tower. Anything which interferes— no, hear me out, 
Allart—anything which impairs your functioning, disrupts us all. I knew before 
you had been here three days that your bride was virgin still, but I did not 
intrude, not then. I thought perhaps you had been married for political reasons 
and did not like one another. But now, after half a year, it is obvious that you 
are madly in love. The tension between you is disrupting us all, and making 
Cassandra ill. She is so tense all the time that she cannot even properly 
monitor the state of her own nerves and body, which she should be able to do by 
now. I can do it for her, a little, when you are in the circle, but I cannot do 
it all the time and I ought not to do for her what she should learn to do for 
herself. Now, I am sure you had some good reason for coming here in this state, 
but whatever your reasons, you knew too little of how a Tower circle must 
function. You can endure this; you have had the Nevarsin training and you can 
function even when you are unhappy. Cassandra cannot. It is as simple as that.”
Allart said defensively, “I did not think Cassandra was so unhappy.”
Renata looked at him and shook her head. “If you do not know, it is only that 
you have not allowed yourself to know. The wisest thing would be to take her 
away until things are settled between you; then, if you wish, you can return. We 
are always in need of trained workers, and your training at Nevarsin is very 
valuable. As for Cassandra, I think she has the talent to become a monitor, even 
a technician if the work interests her. But not now. This is a time for the two 
of you to be alone, not disrupting us all with your unsolaced needs.”
Allart listened, cold with dismay. His own life had been lived so long under 
iron discipline that it had never occurred to him that his own needs, or 
Cassandra’s unhappiness, could interfere to a hair’s weight with the circle. But 
of course he should have known.
“Take her away, Allart. Tonight would not be too soon.”
Allart said through mounting misery, “I would give all I possess, I think, if I 
were free to do that. But Cassandra and I have pledged one another—”
He turned away, but the thoughts were clear in his mind, and Renata looked at 
him in dismay.
“Cousin, what could prompt you to a vow so rash? I do not speak only of your 
duty to kinsmen and clan.”
“No,” said Allart. “Don’t speak of that, Renata, not even in friendship. I have 
heard all too much of that and I need no one to remind me. But you know what 
kind of laran I have and what a curse it has been to me. I would not perpetuate 
it in sons and grandsons. This breeding program among those families with laran, 
which prompts you to speak of duty to caste and kin, it is wrong, it is evil. I 
will not pass it on!” He spoke vehemently, trying to blot out the sight of 
Renata’s face, not as it was, grave with kindly concern, but as it might be, all 
pity wakened, tenderness and passion.
“A curse indeed, Allart! I, too, have many fears and doubts about the breeding 
program. I do not think any woman in the Domains is ever free of them. Yet, 
Cassandra’s unhappiness, and yours, is needless.”
“There is more, and worse,” Allart said desperately. “At the end of every road I 
can foresee, it seems, Cassandra lies dead in bearing my child. Even if I could 
compromise my conscience to father a child who might bear this curse, I could 
not bring that fate on her. So we have pledged to live apart.”
“Cassandra is very young and a virgin,” Renata said, “and may be excused for 
knowing no better than that, though it seems wicked to me to keep a woman in 
ignorance of anything which may so closely affect her life. But surely the 
choice you have made is too extreme, since it is apparent even to outsiders that 
you love each other. You can hardly be unaware that there are ways—” She turned 
her face away, embarrassed, as she spoke. Such things were not spoken of much 
even between husband and wife. Allart was embarrassed, too.
She cannot be older than Cassandra! In the name of all the gods, how does a 
young woman, gently reared, of good family and still unmarried, come to know of 
such things?
The thought was very clear in his mind, and Renata could not help picking it up. 
She said dryly, “You have been a monk, cousin, and for that reason alone I am 
willing to admit that perhaps you really do not know the answer to that 
question. Perhaps you still believe that it is men alone who have such needs, 
and that women are immune to them. I do not want to scandalize you, Allart, but 
women in the Tower need not, and cannot, live by the foolish laws and customs of 
this time, which pretend that women are no more than toys to serve men’s 
desires, with none of their own, save to breed sons for their clans. I am no 
virgin, Allart. Any one of us— man or woman—must learn, before we have been long 
in the circle, to face our own needs and desires, or we cannot put all our 
strength into the work we do. Or, if we try, such things happen as befell this 
morning—or worse, much worse.”
Allart looked away from her, embarrassed. His first, almost automatic thought 
was pure reaction to his childhood teachings. The men of the Domains know this, 
and still let their women come here?
Renata shrugged, answering the unspoken question.
“It is the price they pay for the work we do—that we women shall to some extent 
be freed, for our term here, of the laws which emphasize inheritance and 
breeding. I think most of them choose not to inquire too closely. Also, it is 
not safe for a woman working in the circles to interrupt her term with 
pregnancy.” She added after a moment, “If you wish, Mira can instruct 
Cassandra—or I myself. Perhaps she would take it more easily from a girl her own 
age.”
If anyone had told me, while I dwelt at Nevarsin, that there was any woman alive 
with whom I could speak openly of such things, and that woman neither wife nor 
kinswoman, I would never have believed it. I had never thought there could be 
simple honesty between man and woman, this way.
“That would solve our worst fears, indeed, while we dwelt in the Tower. Perhaps 
we can have—this much. Indeed, we spoke of this, a little.” Cassandra’s words 
echoed in his mind as if they had been spoken only moments ago, not half a 
season gone by:
“I can bear it, as things are now, Allart, but I do not know if I could hold to 
such a resolve. I love you, Allart. I cannot trust myself. Sooner or later I 
would want your child, and it is easier this way, without the possibility and 
the temptation…”
Hearing the echo in his mind, Renata said indignantly, “Easier for her, 
perhaps—” and stopped herself. “Forgive me, I have no right. Cassandra, too, is 
entitled to her own needs and desires, not to what you or I think she ought to 
feel. When a girl has been taught, since she was old enough to understand the 
words, that a woman’s reason for living is to bear children to her husband’s 
caste and clan, it is not easy to change that, or to find some other purpose for 
living.” She fell silent, and Allart thought her voice sounded too bitter for 
her youth. He wondered how old she was, and they were so close in rapport that 
Renata answered the unspoken question.
“I am only a month or two older than Cassandra. I am not yet free of the desire 
to bear a child someday, but I had fears very like yours about this breeding 
program. Of course it is only men who are allowed to voice such fears and 
qualms; women are not supposed to think of such things. I sometimes feel that 
women in the Domains are not supposed to think at all! But my father was 
indulgent with me, and I won the promise that I should not marry till I was 
twenty, and that I might have training in a Tower, and I have learned much. For 
instance, Allart, if you and Cassandra chose to have a child, and she became 
pregnant, then with the aid of a monitor she could probe the unborn deeply, into 
the very germ plasm. If it should bear the kind of laran you fear, or any lethal 
recessive which could kill Cassandra in bearing it, she need not bring it to 
birth.”
Allart said violently, “It is evil enough that we Hasturs meddle with the stuff 
of life of breeding riyachiyas and such abominations by genetic manipulation of 
our seed! But to do that with my own sons and daughters? Or to destroy, 
willingly, a life I myself have given? The thought sickens me!”
“I am not the keeper of your conscience, or of Cassandra’s,” Renata said. “This 
is only one choice; there must be others more to your liking. Yet I think it a 
lesser evil. I know that someday I shall be forced to marry, and if I am pledged 
to bear children to my caste, I will find myself caught between two choices 
which seem to me almost equally cruel: to bear, perhaps, monsters of laran to my 
caste, or to destroy them unborn in my womb.” Allart saw her shudder.
“It was for this I became a monitor, that I might not contribute, unknowing, to 
this breeding program which has brought these monstrosities into our race. Now, 
knowing what I must do has made it the less endurable; I am not a god, to 
determine who will live and who will die. Perhaps you and Cassandra have done 
right after all, to give no life you must take away again.”
“And while we await these choices,” Allart said bitterly, “we charge batteries 
that idle folk may play with air-cars, and light their homes without dirtying 
their hands on resin and pitch, and mine metals to spare others the labor of 
bringing them from the ground, and we create weapons ever more fearful, to 
destroy lives over which we have no shadow of right.”
Renata went very white. “No! Now, that I had not heard. Allart, is this your 
foresight, is war to break out again?”
“I saw, and spoke unthinking,” Allart said, staring at her in dread. The sounds 
and sights of war were already around him, blurring her presence, and he 
thought, Perhaps I will be killed in battle, be spared further wrestling with 
destiny or conscience!
“It is your war and none of mine,” she said. “My father has no quarrel with 
Serrais and no allegiance to Hastur; if the war breaks out anew, he will send 
for me, demanding again that I return home to marry. Ah, merciful Avarra, I am 
filled with good advice as to how you and your lady shall conduct your marriage 
and I have neither courage nor wisdom to face my own! Would that I had your 
foresight, Allart, to know which of many evil choices would bring the least of 
wrong.”
“Would that I could tell you,” he said, taking her hands for a moment. With the 
gesture Allart’s laran clearly showed Renata and himself riding away northward 
together… where? For what purpose? The image faded and was gone, to be replaced 
by a whirl of images: The swooping flight of a great bird—or was it truly a 
bird? A child’s face terrified, frozen in the glare of lightnings. A rain of 
clingfire falling, a great tower breaking, crumbling, smashing into rubble. 
Renata’s face all ablaze with tenderness, her body under his own… Dazed with the 
swirling pictures, he struggled to shut away the crowding futures.
“Perhaps this is the answer!” Renata said with sudden violence. “To breed 
monsters and let them loose on our people, make weapons ever more fearful, wipe 
out our accursed race and let the gods make another, a people without this 
dreadful, monstrous curse of laran!”
In the aftermath of her outburst it was so still that Allart could hear 
somewhere the morning sounds of wakening birds chirping, the soft wet sounds of 
the cloud-waves along the shores of Hali. Renata drew a long, shuddering breath. 
But when she spoke again she was calm, the disciplined monitor.
“But this is afar from what it was laid on me to say to you. For the sake of our 
work, you and Cassandra must not again work in the same matrix circle until all 
is well with you; till you have given and received your love and come to terms 
with it, or until you have decided for all time that it shall never be so, and 
you can be friends without indecision or desire. For the time, perhaps, you can 
be placed in different circles for working; after all, there are eighteen of us 
here, and you can work separately. But if you do not go away together, one of 
you must go. Even in separate circles, there is too much tension between you for 
you to dwell together under this roof. I think you should be the one to go. You 
have had, at Nevarsin, some teaching to master your laran, and Cassandra has 
not. But it is for you to say, Allart. In law, your marriage has made you 
Cassandra’s master, and if you wish to exercise the right, the keeper of her 
will and conscience, too.”
He ignored the irony. “If you think it would profit my lady to remain,” he said, 
“then she shall stay and I will go.” Bleakness came over him. He had found 
happiness at Nevarsin and been driven forth, never to return. Now he had found 
useful work here, the full possession of his laran gift, and was he to go forth 
from here, too?
Is there no place for me on the face of this world? Must I forever be driven, 
homeless, by the winds of circumstance? Then he was wryly amused at himself. He 
complained because his laran showed him too many futures, now he was dismayed 
because he saw none. Renata, too, was driven by choices not under her own 
control.
“You have worked all the night, cousin,” he said, “and then you have stayed here 
and wrestled with my troubles and my wife’s, and taken no thought for your own 
weariness.”
Her smile glinted deep in her eyes, though it did not reach her mouth. “Oh, it 
has eased me to think of troubles other than my own; didn’t you know that? The 
burdens of others are light to the shoulders. But I will go and sleep. And you?”
Allart shook his head. “I am not sleepy. I think perhaps I will go and walk in 
the lake for a little while, look at the strange fish or birds or whatever they 
may be and try to decide again what they are. Did our forefathers breed them, I 
wonder, with their passion for breeding strange things? Perhaps I, too, will 
find peace in regarding something afar from my own troubles. Bless you, 
kinswoman, for your kindness.”
“Why? I solved nothing. I have given you more worries, that is all,” she said. 
“But I will go and sleep, and perhaps dream an answer to all our troubles. Is 
there such a laran as that, I wonder?”
“Probably,” Allart said, “but no doubt it has been given to someone who knows 
not how to use it for his own good; that is how these things happen in this 
world. Otherwise we might somehow find our way out of these worries and be like 
the game-pawn which manages to wriggle off the board without being captured. Go 
and sleep, Renata. All gods forbid you should bear the burden of our fears and 
worries, even in dreams.”



CHAPTER TWELVE
 
That evening, when Allart joined the members of his circle in the lower hall at 
Hali, he found them all talking excitedly, the six who had worked with him that 
morning, and all the others. Across the room he caught Renata’s eyes; she was 
pale with dread. He asked Barak, who stood at the edge of the circle, “What is 
it, what’s happened?”
“The war is upon us again. The Ridenow have launched an attack with bowmen and 
clingfire arrows, and Castle Hastur, in the Kilgbard Hills, is under siege by 
air-cars and incendiaries. Every able-bodied man of Hastur and Aillard 
allegiance is out to combat the fire raging in the forests, or to defend the 
castle. We had word from the relays at Neskaya. Arielle was in the relay nets 
and heard—”
“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… bredhiva … 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.”
“Not love you?” Allart whispered again. “I love you as my blessed forefather 
loved Robardin’s daughter on the shores of Hali centuries ago. Not want you, 
Cassandra?” He held her to him, covering her with kisses, and he felt that his 
kisses were breathing life into her as the breath of his lungs had given her 
life at the depths of the lake. He was almost beyond thought, beyond remembering 
the pledge they had made to one another, but a final, despairing thought crossed 
his mind before he drew the blankets aside.
I can never let her go, not now. Merciful Avarra, have pity on us!



CHAPTER THIRTEEN
 
Allart sat at Cassandra’s side, looking into her sleeping face. Physically she 
was not much the worse for her experience in the lake. Even now he was not 
certain whether it had been a genuine attempt at suicide, or only an impulse 
born of deep unhappiness, compounded by illness and exhaustion. But in the days 
since then he had hardly left her side. He had come so close to losing her!
The others in the Tower had left them much to themselves. As they had known the 
state of affairs between himself and Cassandra, he sensed they knew the change 
that had come, but it did not seem to matter.
Now, he knew, as soon as Cassandra was able to leave her bed, some decision must 
be made. Should he leave the Tower and take her with him, send her to a place of 
safety (for if they were making weapons here, the Tower would be under attack), 
or should he go away himself and leave her here for the laran training he knew 
she must have?
Yet again and again, his own laran gave him visions of riding away to the north, 
Renata at his side. Cassandra’s absence from these visions frightened him. What 
was to become of her?
He saw strange banners overhead, war, the clashing of swords, the explosion of 
strange weapons, fire, death. Maybe that would be best for us both…
He found it impossible to keep to the disciplined calm he had learned at 
Nevarsin. Cassandra was ever-present in his mind, his thoughts and emotions as 
hypersensitive to her as his body.
He had broken the pledge they had made to one another.
After seven years in Nevarsin, I am still weak, still driven by the senses and 
not by the mind. I took her without thought, as if she had been one of old Dom 
Marius’s pleasure girls.
He heard the soft knock at the door, but even before it registered on his ears, 
he knew—it has come. He stooped and kissed the sleeping woman, with an aching 
sense of farewell, then went to the door, opening it in a split second after the 
knock, so that Arielle blinked in surprise.
“Allart,” she whispered. “Your brother, the lord Elhalyn, is below in the 
Stranger’s Hall and asks to speak with you. I will remain with your wife.”
Allart went down to the Stranger’s Hall, the only room in the Tower into which 
outsiders were permitted to come. Damon-Rafael was there, his paxman noiseless 
and unmoving at his back.
“You lend us grace, brother. How may I serve you?”
“I suppose you have heard of the truce’s end?”
“Then you have come to summon me to arms?”
Damon-Rafael said with a contemptuous laugh, “Do you suppose I should come 
myself for that? Anyhow, you would serve me better here; I have little faith, 
after all those years of monkish seclusion, in your skill at arms or any of the 
manly arts. No, brother, I have another mission for you, if you will accept it.”
It took all of Allart’s hard-won discipline to remain silent at the taunt, 
remarking quietly that he was at the service of his brother and his overlord.
“You have dwelled beyond the Kadarin; have you ever traveled to the Aldaran 
lands, near Caer Donn?”
“Never; only to Ardais and Nevarsin.”
“Still, you must know that clan grows over-powerful. They hold Castle Aldaran at 
Caer Donn, as well as Sain Scarp and Scathfell; and they make alliances with all 
the others, with Ardais and Darriel and Storn. They are of Hastur kin, but Lord 
Aldaran came not to my accession as lord of Elhalyn, nor has he come to 
midsummer festival in Thendara for many years. Now, with this war breaking forth 
again, he is like a great hawk in his mountain aerie, ready to swoop down on the 
Lowlands whenever we are torn by strife and cannot resist him. If all those who 
owe allegiance to Aldaran were to strike us at once, Thendara itself could not 
hold. I can foresee a day when all the Domains from Dalereuth to the Kilghard 
Hills might lie under the lordship of Aldaran.”
Allart said, “I knew not you had the foresight, brother.”
Damon-Rafael moved his head with a quick, impatient gesture. “Foresight? That 
takes not much reading! When kinsmen quarrel, enemies step in to widen the gap. 
I am trying to negotiate another truce—it profits us nothing to set the land 
aflame—but with our cousins of Castle Hastur under seige, it is not easy. Our 
carrier-birds are flying night and day with secret dispatches. Also, I have 
leroni working in relays to send messages, but of course we can entrust nothing 
secret to them; what is known to one is known to all with laran. Now we come to 
the service I ask of you, brother.”
“I listen,” Allart said.
“It is long since a Hastur sent a kinsman on diplomatic mission to Aldaran. Yet 
we need such a tie. The Storns hold lands to the west of Caer Dorm, close to 
Serrais across the hills, and they might find it useful to join with the 
Ridenow. Then all of the alliances within the Hellers could be drawn into this 
war. Do you think you might persuade Lord Aldaran to hold himself and his 
liegemen neutral in this war? I do not think he would join it on our side, but 
he might be willing to stay out of it entirely. You are Nevarsin-trained; you 
know the language of the Hellers well. Will you go for me, Allart, and try to 
keep Mikhail, Lord Aldaran, from joining in this war?”
Allart studied his brother’s face. This seemed all too simple a mission. Did 
Damon-Rafael plot some treachery, or did he simply want Allart out of the way, 
so that the Hasturs of Elhalyn would not have loyalties divided between the 
brothers?
“I am at your command, Damon-Rafael, but I know little diplomacy of that sort.”
“You will carry letters from me,” Damon-Rafael said, “and you will write secret 
dispatches and send them to me by carrier-birds. You will write open dispatches, 
which spies on both sides will certainly see; but you will also write secret 
dispatches, and send them under a matrix-lock which none but I can open or read. 
Surely you can arrange a lock spelled shut so that if other eyes fall upon them 
they will be destroyed?”
“That is simple enough,” Allart said, and now he understood. There could not be 
many people to whom Damon-Rafael would willingly give the unique pattern of his 
own body and brain to set a matrix-lock; such a lock was a common tool for 
assassins, like the homing device Coryn had mentioned.
So I am one of the two or three persons living to whom Damon-Rafael will entrust 
that power over him; because I am sworn to defend him and his sons.
“I have arranged it so you will have a cover for your mission,” Damon-Rafael 
said. “We have captured an envoy from Aldaran, fearing he had been sent to 
declare for the Ridenow. But the messenger, when my household leronis probed his 
sleep, told us he was on a personal mission for Lord Aldaran. I don’t know all 
the details, but it has nothing to do with the war. His memory has been 
matrix-cleansed, and when he speaks with your Keeper, which he will do soon, I 
suppose, he will not know that he was ever captured or that he has been probed 
at all. I have arranged with our cousin Coryn that you will be, ostensibly, in 
charge of the truce flag which will escort Aldaran’s messenger northward to the 
Kadarin. No one will notice if you simply continue and ride with them to 
Aldaran. Is that satisfactory to you?”
What choice have I? But I have known for days now that I must ride northward; 
only I did not know it was to Aldaran. And what has Renata to do with this? But 
aloud he said to Damon-Rafael only, “It seems you have thought of everything.”
“At sunset, my paxman will ride here to give you documents qualifying you as my 
ambassador, and instructions for sending messages, and access to carrier-birds.” 
He rose, saying, “If you wish, I will pay a courtesy visit to your lady. It 
should be thought this is a family visit without any secret purpose.”
“I thank you,” Allart said, “but Cassandra is not well, and has kept her bed. I 
shall convey her your respectful compliments.”
“Do so, by all means,” Damon-Rafael said, “although, I suppose, since you have 
chosen to dwell with her in the Tower, there is no reason to send 
congratulations. I do not imagine she is already carrying your child.”
Not now, perhaps never… Allart felt again the surge of desolation. He said aloud 
only, “No, we have not as yet any such good fortune.” Damon-Rafael had no way of 
knowing the real state of affairs between himself and Cassandra, neither the 
pledge they had made one another nor the circumstances in which it had been 
broken. He was only twisting a knife at random. There was no need to waste anger 
on his brother’s malice, but Allart was angry.
Still, he was bound to obey Damon-Rafael as overlord of Elhalyn, and 
Damon-Rafael was so far right. If the Northmen from the Hellers joined this war, 
there would be ravage and disaster.
I should be grateful, he thought, that the gods have sent me such an honorable 
way to serve in this war. If I can persuade the Aldarans to neutrality I will 
indeed do well for all the vassals of Hastur.
As Damon-Rafael rose to depart, Allart said, “Truly, I thank you, brother, for 
entrusting me with this mission,” and his words were so heartfelt that 
Damon-Rafael stared at him with surprise. When he embraced Allart at parting 
there was a touch of warmth in the gesture. The two would never be friends, but 
they were nearer to it at this moment than they had been for years or Allart 
knew it sadly—were ever likely to be again.
  
Later that night he was summoned again to the Stranger’s Hall, this time, he 
supposed, to meet with Damon-Rafael’s envoy, bearing safe-conducts and 
dispatches.
Coryn met him outside the door.
“Allart, do you speak the languages of the Hellers?”
Allart nodded, wondering if Damon-Rafael had taken Coryn into his confidence and 
why.
“Mikhail of Aldaran has sent us a messenger,” Coryn said, “but his command of 
our language is uncertain. Will you come and speak to him in his own tongue?”
“Gladly,” Allart said, and.thought, Not Damon-Rafael’s envoy, then, but 
Aldaran’s messenger. Damon-Rafael said he had been mind-probed. I think that 
unjust, but, after all, this is war.
When he came with Coryn into the Stranger’s Hall, he recognized the messenger’s 
face. His laran had shown it to him again and again, though he had never known 
why: a dark-haired, dark-browed, youthful face, looking at him with tentative 
friendliness. Allart greeted him in the formal speech of the Hellers.
“You lend us grace, siarbainn,” he said, giving it the special inflection which 
made the archaic word for stranger mean, friend-still-unknown. “How may I serve 
you?”
The strange youth rose and bowed.
“I am Donal Delleray, foster-son and paxman to Mikhail, Lord Aldaran. I bring 
his words, not my own, to the vai leroni of Hali Tower.”
“I am Allart Hastur of Elhalyn; this, my kinsman and cousin, Coryn, tenerezu of 
Hali. Speak freely.”
He thought, Surely this is more than coincidence, that Aldaran should send a 
messenger just as my brother devises his plan. Or did he devise his plan to fit 
the messenger’s coming? The gods strengthen me—I see plots and counterplots 
everywhere!
Donal said, “First, vai domyn, I am to bear you Lord Aldaran’s apologies for 
sending me in his place. He would not hesitate to come as suppliant and 
petitioner, but he is old, and hardly fitted to bear the long road from Aldaran. 
Also, I can ride more quickly than he. Indeed, I had thought to be here within 
eight days’ ride, but I seem to have lost a day on the road.”
Damon-Rafael and his damned mind-probing, Allart thought, but he said nothing, 
waiting for Donal to make his request.
Coryn said, “It is our pleasure to do courtesy to Lord Aldaran; what does he 
ask?”
“Lord Aldaran bids me say that his daughter, his only living child and heir, is 
cursed with laran such as he has never known before. The aged leronis who has 
cared for her since her birth no longer knows what to do with her. The child is 
of an age when my father fears lest threshold sickness destroy her. He comes, 
then, as suppliant, to ask of the vai leroni if they know of one who will come 
to care for her during these crucial seasons.”
This was not unknown, that a Tower-trained leronis might go to guide and care 
for some young heir during the troubled years of adolescence, when threshold 
sickness took such toll of the sons and daughters of their caste. A laranzu from 
Arilinn Tower had first counseled Allart to seek sanctuary at Nevarsin. And, 
Allart thought, if Aldaran was beholden to Hali for such a service, Aldaran 
would be all the more ready to refrain from angering Elhalyn by coming into this 
war.
Allart said, “The Hasturs of Elhalyn, and those who serve them in Hali Tower, 
will be pleased to serve Lord Aldaran in this matter.” He asked Coryn in their 
own language, “Who shall we send?”
“I thought you would go,” Coryn said. “You are none too eager to remain and 
become entangled in this war.”
“I shall go, indeed, at my brother’s bidding and on his mission,” Allart said, 
“but it is not seemly that a laranzu shall have the training of a maiden. Surely 
she needs a woman to guide her.”
“Yet there is none to spare,” said Coryn. “Now that I am to lose Renata, I shall 
need Mira for monitoring. And, of course, Cassandra is not even well enough 
trained for monitoring, far less for work of this sort, teaching a young girl to 
control her gift.”
Allart said, “Could not Renata fulfill this mission? It seems to me that this 
would remove her from the combat zone, as much as returning to Neskaya.”
“Yes, Renata is the obvious choice,” Coryn said, “but she is not to go to 
Neskaya. Did you not hear? No,” he answered his own question. “While Cassandra 
has been ill, you have stayed with her and you did not hear the word from the 
relays. Dom Erlend Leynier has sent word that she is not to go to Neskaya Towers 
but to go home to her wedding. It has twice been delayed already. I do not think 
she would wish to delay it again to go to some godforgotten corner of the 
Hellers, to teach some barefoot mountain girl how to handle her laran!”
Allart looked apprehensively at young Donal. Had he heard the offensive remark? 
But Donal, like a proper messenger, was staring straight before him, appearing 
neither to hear or see anything but what concerned him directly. If he did know 
enough of the Lowland tongue to understand Coryn’s words, or had enough laran to 
read their thoughts, neither Coryn nor Allart would ever know.
“I do not think Renata is in such a great hurry to be married,” Allart demurred.
Coryn chuckled. “I think you mean you are in no hurry for Renata to be married, 
cousin.” Then, at the glare of rage in Allan’s eyes, he said hastily, “I was but 
jesting, cousin. Tell young Delleray that we will ask the damisela Renata 
Leynier if she will undertake the journey northward.”
Allart repeated the formal phrases to Donal, who bowed and replied, “Say to the 
vai domna that Mikhail, Lord Aldaran, would not have her make this tremendous 
service unremunerated. In gratitude, she will be dowered as if she were his 
younger daughter, when the time comes for her to marry.”
“That is generous,” Allart said, as indeed it was. The use of laran could not be 
bought or sold like ordinary service; tradition stated it should be used only in 
service to caste or clan and was not for hire. This was the usual compromise. 
The Leyniers were wealthy, but they had no such wealth as the Aldarans, and this 
would give Renata the dower of a princess.
After a few more courtesies, they had young Donal conducted to a chamber to 
await the final arrangements. Coryn said regretfully, as he and Allart went 
through the force-field into the main part of the Tower, “Perhaps I should have 
arranged this journey for Arielle. She is a Di Asturien, but she is nedestro and 
has no dower to speak of. Even if my brother would give me leave to marry, which 
is not likely, he would not allow me to wed with a poor girl.” He laughed 
bitterly. “But it matters not… even if she were dowered with all the jewels of 
Carthon, a Hastur of Carcosa could not wed with a nedestro of Di Asturien; and 
if Arielle had such a dowry, her father would surely offer her to another, and I 
should lose her.”
“You are long unmarried,” Allart said, and Coryn shrugged.
“My brother is not eager for me to have an heir. I have laran enough, and I have 
fathered half a dozen sons for their accursed breeding program, on this girl and 
that, but I have not bothered to see the babes, though they say they all have 
laran. It is better not to get too fond of them, since I understand that every 
attempt to breed the Hastur gift to Aillard or Ardais has meant they die in 
threshold sickness, poor little brats. It is hard on their mothers, but I have 
no intention of letting myself be heart-wrung, too.”
“How can you take it so casually?”
For a moment the mask of indifference broke and Coryn looked out at him in real 
distress.
“What else can I do, Allart? No son of Hastur has a life he can call his own, 
while the leroni of this damned stud-service they call our caste make all our 
marriages and even arrange the fathering of our bastards. But we are not all 
like you, able to tolerate living the life of a monk!” Then he was stony-faced, 
impassive again. “Well, it is not an unpleasant duty to my clan, after all. 
While I dwell here as Keeper, there are plenty of times when I am no use to any 
woman, which is almost as good as being a monk… Arielle and I are willing to 
take what we can have when occasion permits. I am not like you, a romantic 
seeking a great love,” he added defensively, and turned away. “Will you ask 
Renata if she will go, or shall I?”
“You ask her,” Allart said. He knew already what she would say, knew they would 
ride northward together. He had seen it again and again; it could not be 
avoided.
Was it unavoidable, then, that he would love Renata, forgetting his love and his 
honor and his pledge to Cassandra?
I should never have left Nevarsin, he thought. Would that I had flung myself 
from the highest crag before I let them force me away!



CHAPTER FOURTEEN
 
Renata hesitated at the door of the room, then, knowing that Cassandra was aware 
of her presence, went in without knocking. Cassandra was out of bed, although 
she still looked pale and exhausted. She had some needlework in her hands, and 
was setting small precise stitches in the petal of an embroidered flower, but as 
Renata’s eyes fell on it Cassandra colored and put it aside.
“I am ashamed to waste time on so foolish and womanly a pastime.”
Renata said, “Why? I, too, was taught never to let my hands sit idle, lest my 
mind find nothing to occupy itself but too much brooding on my own problems and 
miseries. Although my stitches were never so fine as yours. Are you feeling 
better now?”
Cassandra sighed. “Yes, I am well again. I suppose I can take my place among 
you. I suppose—” Renata, the empath, knew that Cassandra’s throat closed, unable 
to speak the words. I suppose they all know what I tried to do; they all despise 
me…
“There is not one of us feels anything for you save sympathy, sorrow that you 
could have been so unhappy among us, and none of us spoke or tried to ease your 
suffering,” Renata said gently.
“Yet I hear whispers around me; I cannot read what is happening. What are you 
concealing from me, Renata? What are you all hiding?”
“You know that the war has broken out afresh,” Renata began.
“Allart is to go to war!” It was a cry of anguish. “And he did not tell me.”
“If he has hesitated to say this, chiya, surely it is only that he fears you 
might be overcome again by despair, and act rashly.”
Cassandra lowered her eyes; gently as the words were spoken, they were a 
reproof, and well-deserved. “No, that will not happen again. Not now.”
“Allart is not to go to war,” Renata said. “Instead, he is being sent outside 
the combat area. A messenger has come from Caer Donn, and Allart is being sent 
to escort him, under a truce-flag. Lord Elhalyn has sent him on some mission to 
the mountain people there.”
“Am I to go with him?” Cassandra caught her breath, a flush of such pure joy 
spreading over her face that Renata was reluctant to speak and banish it.
At last she said gently, “No, cousin. That is not your destiny now. You must 
stay here. You have great need of the training we can give, to master your 
laran, so that you will never again be overcome like that. And since I am to 
leave the Tower, you will be needed as a monitor here. Mira will begin at once 
to teach you.”
“I? A monitor? Truly?”
“Yes. You have worked long enough in the circle so that your laran and your 
talents are known to us. Coryn has said that you will make a monitor of great 
skill. And you will be needed soon. With Allart’s and my departure, there will 
hardly be enough trained workers here to form two circles, and not enough 
trained to monitor.”
“So.” Cassandra was silent a moment. “In any case, I have an easier lot than 
other women of my clan, who have nothing to do but watch their husbands ride 
forth to battle and perhaps death. I have useful work to do here, and Allart 
need have no fear that he leaves me with child.” To answer Renata’s questioning 
look, she said, “I am ashamed, Renata. Probably you do not know… Allart and I 
made one another a pledge, that our marriage would remain unconsummated. I—I 
tempted him to break that vow.”
“Cassandra, Allart is not a child or an untried boy. He is a grown man, and 
fully capable of making such a decision for himself.” Renata smothered an 
impulse to laugh. “I doubt he would be complimented by the thought that you 
ravished him against his will.”
Cassandra colored. “Still, if I had been stronger, if I had been able to master 
my unhappiness—”
“Cassandra, it’s done and past mending; all the smiths in Zandru’s forges can’t 
mend a broken egg. You are not the keeper of Allart’s conscience. Now you can 
only look ahead. Perhaps it is just as well that Allart must leave you for a 
time. It will give you both the opportunity to decide what you wish to do in the 
future.”
Cassandra shook her head. “How can I alone make a decision that concerns us 
both? It is for Allart to say what shall come afterward. He is my husband and my 
lord!”
Suddenly Renata was exasperated. “It is that attitude which has led women to 
where they are now in the Domains! In the name of the Blessed Cassilda, child, 
are you still thinking of yourself only in terms of a breeder of sons and a toy 
of lust? Wake up, girl! Do you think it is only for that Allart desires you?”
Cassandra blinked, startled. “What else am I? What else can any woman be?”
“You are not a woman!” Renata said angrily. “You are only a child! Every word 
you say makes it evident! Listen to me, Cassandra. First, you are a human being, 
a child of the gods, a daughter of your clan, bearing laran. Do you think you 
have it only that you may pass it on to your sons? You are a matrix worker; soon 
you will be a monitor. Do you honestly think you are no good to Allart for 
anything but to share his bed and to give him children? Gods above, girl, that 
he could have from a concubine, or a riyachiya…”
Cassandra’s cheeks flushed an angry red. “It is not seemly to talk about such 
things!”
“But only to do them?” Renata retorted, at white heat. “The gods created us 
thinking creatures; do you suppose they meant woman to be brood animals alone? 
If so, why do we have brains and laran, and tongues to speak our thoughts, 
instead of being given only fair faces and sex organs and bellies to bear our 
children and breasts to nourish them? Do you believe the gods did not know what 
they were doing?”
“I do not believe there are any gods at all,” Cassandra retorted, and the 
bitterness in her voice was so great that Renata’s anger vanished. She, too, had 
known that kind of bitterness; she was not yet free of it.
She put her arms around the other girl, and said tenderly, “Cousin, you and I 
have no reason to quarrel. You are young and untaught; as you learn, here, to 
use your laran, perhaps you will come to think differently about what you are, 
within yourself—not only as Allart’s wife. Someday you may be the keeper of your 
own will and conscience, and not rely on Allart to make the decisions for both 
of you, nor lay on him the burden of your sorrows as well as his own.”
“I never thought of that,” said Cassandra, hiding her face against Renata’s 
shoulder. “If I had been stronger, I would not have laid this burden upon him. I 
have put upon him the guilt for my own unhappiness which drove me into the lake. 
Yet he was only doing what he felt he must do. Will they teach me here to be 
strong, Renata? As strong as you?”
“Stronger, I hope, chiya,” Renata said, kissing the other girl on the forehead, 
yet her own thoughts were grim. I am full of good advice for her, yet I cannot 
handle my own life. For the third time, now, I run away from marriage, into this 
unknown mission at Aldaran, for a girl I do not know and for whom I care 
nothing. I should stay here and defy my father, not run away to Aldaran to teach 
some unknown girl how to use the laran that her foolish forefathers bred into 
her mind and body! What is this girl to me, that I should neglect my own life to 
help her gain command of hers?
Yet she knew it had all been determined by what she was—a leronis, born with the 
talent, and fortunate enough to have been given Tower training to master it. 
Thus in honor bound to do whatever she could to help others less fortunate 
master their own unasked for, undesired laran.
Cassandra was calm now. She said, “Allart will not go without bidding me 
farewell… ?”
“No, no, of course not, my child. Coryn has already given him leave to withdraw 
from the circle, so this last night you spend under one roof, you may spend 
together to say your farewells.” She did not tell Cassandra that she herself was 
to accompany Allart on his ride northward; that would be for Allart to tell her, 
in his own time and in his own way. She only said, “In any case, as things are 
between you now, one of you should go. You know that when serious work begins in 
the circle, you must remain apart and chaste.”
“I do not understand that,” Cassandra said. “Coryn and Arielle—”
“—have worked together for more than a year in the circle; they know the limits 
of what is allowed and what is dangerous,” Renata said. “A day will come when 
you will know it, too, but as you are now, it would be difficult to recall or 
keep to those limits. This is your time to learn, with no distractions, and 
Allart would be”—she smiled at the other girl, mischievously—“a distraction. Oh, 
these men, that we can neither live at peace with them—nor without them!”
Cassandra’s laughter was momentary. Then her face convulsed again with weeping. 
“I know that all you say is true, and yet I cannot bear to have Allart leave me. 
Have you never been in love, Renata?”
“No, not as you mean it, chiya.” Renata held Cassandra close to her, torn, with 
the empath laran, anguished with the other woman’s pain, as Cassandra sobbed 
helplessly against her breast.
“What can I do, Renata? What can I do?”
Renata shook her head, staring bleakly into space. Will I ever know what it is 
to love that way? Do I want to know, or is such love as this only a trap into 
which women walk of their own free will, so that they have no more strength to 
rule their own lives? Is this how the women of the Comyn have become no more 
than breeders of sons and toys of lust? But Cassandra’s pain was very real to 
her. At last she said, hesitating, shy before the depths of the other woman’s 
emotion, “You could make it impossible for him to leave you, if you grieve like 
this, cousin. He would be too fearful for you, too guilty at the thought of 
leaving you to such despair.”
Cassandra struggled to control her sobs. Finally she said, “You are right. I 
must not add to Allart’s guilt and grief with my own. I am not the first, nor 
the last wife of a Hastur who must see him ride away from her, with no knowledge 
of when, or ever, he will return; but his honor and the success of his mission 
are in my hands, then. I must not hold that lightly. Somehow”—she set her small 
chin stubbornly—“I will find the strength to send him away from me; if not 
gladly, at least I will try to make sure that he goes without fear for me to add 
to his own.”
  
It was a small party that rode north from Hali the next day. Donal, as a 
suppliant, had ridden alone; Allart himself had only the banner-bearer to which, 
as heir to Elhalyn, he was entitled, and the messenger with a truce-flag; not so 
much as a single body-servant. Renata, too, had dispensed with lady companions, 
saying that in time of war such niceties need not be observed; she had brought 
only her nurse Lucetta, who had served her since childhood, and would have 
dispensed even with this attendance, save that an unmarried woman of the Domains 
could not travel without any female attendance.
Allart rode silently, apart from the rest, tormented by the memory of Cassandra 
at the moment of their parting, her lovely eyes filled with the tears she had 
struggled so valiantly not to shed before him. At least he had not left her 
pregnant; so far the gods had been merciful.
If there were any gods, and if they cared what befell mankind…
Ahead he could hear Renata chatting lightheartedly with Donal. They seemed so 
young, both of them. Allart knew he was only three or four years older than 
Donal, but it seemed he had never been as young as that. Seeing what will be, 
what may be, what may never be, it seems I live a lifetime in every day that 
passes. He envied the boy.
They were riding through a land bearing the scars of war, blackened fields with 
traces of fire, roofless houses, abandoned farms. So few travelers passed them 
on the road that after the first day Renata did not even bother to keep her 
cloak modestly folded about her face.
Once an air-car flew low overhead; it circled, dipped low to scrutinize them, 
then turned about and flew back southward. The guardsman with the truce-flag 
dropped back to ride at Allart’s side.
“Truce-flag or not, vai dom, I wish you had agreed to an escort. Those bastards 
of Ridenow may choose not to honor a truce-flag; and seeing your banners, it 
might occur to them that it would be worth much to capture the heir to Elhalyn 
and hold him to ransom from his Hastur kinfolk. It would not be the first time 
such a thing had happened.”
“If they will not honor a flag of truce,” Allart said reasonably, “it will avail 
us nothing to defeat them in this war, either, for they would not honor our 
victory or the terms of surrender. I think we must trust our enemies to abide by 
the rules of war.”
“I have had small faith in the rules of war, Dom Allart, since first I saw a 
village burned to ashes by clingfire—not soldiers alone, but old men and women 
and little children. I would prefer to trust in the rules of war with a 
considerable escort at my back!”
Allart said, “I have not foreseen it with my laran, that we will be under 
attack.”
The Guardsman only said dryly, “Then you are fortunate, vai dom. I have not the 
consolation of foresight or other sorcery,” and fell into stubborn silence.
On the third day of the journey, they crossed a pass which led downward to the 
Kadarin River, which separated the Lowland Domains from the territories held by 
the mountain folk—Aldaran, Ardais, and the lesser lords of the Hellers. Before 
they rode downward, Renata turned back to look over the lands from which they 
had come, where most of the Domains lay spread out before them. Renata looked on 
the distant hills and Towers, then cried out in dismay—forest fire was raging 
across the Kilghard Hills away south.
“Look where it rages!” she cried. “Surely it will trespass on Alton lands.” 
Allart and Donal, both telepaths, picked up her thought. Will my home, too, lie 
in flames down there in a war which is none of ours? Aloud she only said, her 
voice shaking, “Now I wish I had your foresight, Allart.”
The panorama of the Domains below them blurred before Allart’s eyes and he 
closed them in a vain attempt to shut out the diverging futures of his laran. If 
the powerful clan of the Altons was drawn into this war by an attack on their 
home country, no homestead or estate anywhere in the Domains would be safe. It 
would not matter to the Altons whether their homes were burned by fires 
deliberately set, or by those raging out of control after being set to attack 
elsewhere.
“How dare they use forest fire as a weapon,” Renata demanded furiously, “knowing 
it cannot be controlled, but is at the mercy of winds over which they have no 
power.”
“No,” said Allart, trying to comfort her. “Some of the leroni—you know that—can 
use their powers to raise clouds and rain to dampen the fires, or even snow to 
smother them.”
Donal drew his mount close to Renata’s. “Where lies your home, Lady?”
She pointed a slender hand. “There, between the lakes of Miridon and Mariposa. 
My home is beyond the hills, but you can see the lakes.”
Donal’s dark face was intent, as he said, “Have no fear, damisela. See—it will 
move upward along that ridge”—he pointed—“and there the winds will drive it back 
upon itself. It will burn out before tomorrow’s sunset.”
“I pray you are right,” she said, “but surely you are only guessing?”
“No, my lady. Surely you can see it, if you will only calm yourself. Certainly 
you, who are Tower-trained, can have no difficulty in reading how the air 
currents there will move this way, and the wind will rise there. You are a 
leronis; you must see that”
Allart and Renata regarded Donal in wonder and amazement. Finally Renata said, 
“Once when I was studying the breeding program, I read something of such a laran 
as that, but it was abandoned because it could not be controlled. But that was 
not in the Hastur kin, nor in the Delleray. Are you perhaps akin to the folk of 
Storn or Rockraven?”
“Aliciane of Rockraven—she who was fourth daughter to old Lord Vardo—was my 
mother.”
“Is it so?” Renata looked at him with open curisoity. “I believed that laran 
extinct, since it was one of those which came on a child before birth and 
usually killed the mother who bore such a child. Did your mother survive your 
birth?”
“She did,” Donal said, “but she died in bearing my sister Dorilys, who is to be 
in your care.”
Renata shook her head. “So the accursed breeding program among the Hastur kin 
has left its mark in the Hellers, too. Had your father any laran?”
“I do not know. I cannot recall that I ever looked on his face,” Donal said, 
“but my mother was no telepath, and Dorilys—my sister—cannot read thoughts at 
all. Such telepathy as I have must be the gift of my father.”
“Did your laran come on you in infancy, or suddenly, in adolescence?”
“The ability to sense air currents, storms, has been with me as long as I can 
remember,” Donal said. “I did not think it laran then, merely a sense everyone 
had to greater degree or less, like an ear for music. When I grew older I could 
control the lightning a little.” He told how in childhood he had diverted a bolt 
of lightning which might, otherwise, have struck the tree under which he and his 
mother had sheltered. “But I can do it only rarely and in great need, and it 
makes me ill; so I try only to read these forces, not to control them.”
“That is wisest,” Renata confirmed. “Everything we know of the more unusual 
laran has taught us how dangerous it is to play with these forces; rain at one 
place is drought at another. It was a wise man who said, ‘It is ill done to 
chain a dragon for roasting your meat.’ Yet I see you bear a star-stone.”
“A little, and only for toys. I can levitate and control a glider, such things 
as that. Such small things as our household leronis could teach me.”
“Were you a telepath from infancy, too?”
“No; that came on me when I was past fifteen, when I had ceased to expect it.”
“Did you suffer much from threshold sickness?” Allart asked.
“Not much; dizziness, disorientation for half a season or so. Mostly I was 
distressed because my foster-father forbade me my glider for that time!” He 
laughed, but they could both read his thoughts: I never knew how deeply my 
foster-father loved me, till I felt how deeply he feared then to lose me when I 
fell ill with threshold sickness.
“No convulsions?”
“None.”
Renata nodded. “Some strains have it more severely than others. You seem to have 
the relatively minor one, and Lord Aldaran’s kin the lethal form. Is there 
Hastur blood in your family?”
“Damisela, I have not the faintest notion,” Donal said stiffly, and the others 
heard his resentment as if he had spoken the words aloud: Am I a racing chervine 
or a stud animal to be judged on my pedigree?
Renata laughed aloud. “Forgive me, Donal. Perhaps I have dwelt too long in a 
Tower and had not considered how offensive another might consider such a 
question. I have spent so many years studying these things! Although indeed, my 
friend, if I am to care for your sister I must indeed study her lineage and 
pedigree as seriously as if she were a racing animal or a fine hawk, to find out 
how this laran came into her line, and what lethals and recessives she may be 
carrying. Even if they are quiet now, they could cause trouble when she comes to 
womanhood. But forgive me, I meant no offense.”
“It is I should beg your pardon, damisela, for being churlish when you are 
studying ways to help my sister.”
“Let us forgive one another then, Donal, and be friends.”
Allart, watching them, felt sudden bitter envy of these young people who could 
laugh and flirt and enjoy life even when burdened with impending disasters. Then 
he was suddenly ashamed of himself. Renata had no light burden; she could have 
placed all the responsibility on father or husband, yet she had worked since her 
childhood to know what she should do, how best to take responsibility, even if 
it meant destroying the life of an unborn child and bearing the reproach toward 
a barren woman in the Domains. Donal had had no careless youth either, living 
with the knowledge of his own strange laran which could destroy him and his 
sister.
He wondered if every human being, indeed, walked through life on a precipice as 
narrow as his own. Allart realized that he had been acting as if he alone bore 
an intolerable curse, and all others were lighthearted, carefree. He watched 
Renata and Donal laughting and jesting, and then he thought, and it was a new 
and strange thought to him, Perhaps Nevarsin gave me too exaggerated a 
seriousness about life. If they can live with the burdens they bear, and still 
be light of heart and enjoy this journey, perhaps they are wiser than I.
When he rode forward to join them he was smiling.
  
They came to Aldaran late in the afternoon of a gray and rainy day, little spits 
of sleet hiding in the wind and rain. Renata had wrapped her cloak over her face 
and protected her cheeks with a scarf, and the banner-bearer had put away his 
flag to protect it and rode muffled in his thick cape, looking dour. Allart 
found that the increasing altitude made his heart pound, so that he felt 
light-headed. But with every day’s ride Donal had seemed to cast off care and to 
look merry and youthful, as if the altitude and the worsening weather were only 
a sign of homecoming; even in the rain he rode bareheaded, the hood of his 
riding-cloak cast back, disregarding the sleet on his face, which was reddened 
with the wind and cold.
At the foot of the long slope that led upward to the castle, he paused and waved 
in a signal, laughing. Renata’s nurse grumbled, “Are we to ride ordinary animals 
up that goat-track, or do they think we are hawks that can fly?” Even Renata 
looked a little daunted by the last steep path.
“This is the Aldaran keep? It seems as inaccessible as Nevarsin itself!”
Donal laughed. “No, but in the old days, when my foster-father’s forebears had 
to keep it by force of arms, this made it impregnable—my lady,” he added, with 
sudden self-consciousness. During the days of the journey they had become
“Allart” and “Renata” and “Donal” to one another; Donal’s sudden return to 
formal courtesy made them realize that whatever happened, this period of 
forgetfulness was ended and the burden of their separate destinies lay upon them 
again.
“I trust the soldiers on those walls know we are not come to attack,” grumbled 
the guardsman who had borne the truce-flag.
Donal laughed and said, “No, we should be small indeed for a war party, I think. 
Look—there is my foster-father on the battlement, with my sister. Evidently he 
knew of our arrival.”
Allart saw the blank look slide down over Donal’s face, the look of the telepath 
in contact with those out of earshot.
A moment later Donal smiled gaily and said, “The horse path is not so steep, 
after all. On the far side of the castle there are steps carved from the rock, 
two hundred and eighty-nine of them. Would you prefer to climb up that way, 
perhaps? Or you, mestra?” he added to the nurse, and she made a sound of dismay. 
“Come, my foster-father awaits us.”
During the long ride, Allart had made use of the techniques he had learned at 
Nevarsin, to keep the crowding futures at a distance. Since he could do nothing 
whatever about them, he knew that allowing himself to dwell upon them, with 
morbid fears, was a form of self-indulgence he could no longer give mental 
lease. He must deal with whatever came, and look ahead only when he had some 
reasonable chance of deciding which of the possible futures could be rationally 
affected by some choice actually within his own power to control. But as they 
reached the top of the steep slope, coming in out of the sleet and winds of the 
height into a sheltered courtyard, with servants crowding about to take the 
horses, Allart knew he had lived this scene before in memory or foresight. 
Through the momentary disorientation he heard a shrill childish voice crying 
out, and it seemed to him that he saw a flare of lightnings, so that he 
physically shrank from the voice, in the moment before he actually heard it 
clearly. It was simple after all, no danger, no flare of strange lightning, 
nothing but a joyous child’s voice calling out Donal’s name—and a little girl, 
her long plaits flying, ran from the shelter of an archway and wrapped him in 
her arms.
“I knew it must be you, and the strangers. Is this the woman who is to be my 
guardian and teacher? What is her name? Do you like her? What is it like in the 
Lowlands? Do flowers truly bloom there all year as I have heard? Did you see any 
nonhumans as you traveled? Did you bring me back any gifts? Who are these 
people? What kind of animals are they riding?”
“Gently, gently, Dorilys,” reproved a deep voice. “Our guests will think us 
mountain barbarians indeed, if you chatter like an ill-taught gallimak! Let your 
brother go, and greet our guests like a lady!”
Donal let his sister cling tightly to his hand as he turned to his 
foster-father, but he let her go as Mikhail of Aldaran took him into a close 
embrace.
“Dearest lad, I have missed you greatly. Now will you not present our honored 
guests?”
“Renata Leynier, leronis of Hali Tower,” Donal said. Renata made a deep curtsy 
before Lord Aldaran.
“Lady, you lend us grace; we are deeply honored. Allow me to present my daughter 
and heir, Dorilys of Rockraven.”
Dorilys lowered her eyes shyly as she curtsied.
“S’dia shaya, domna,” she said bashfully.
Then Lord Aldaran presented Margali to Renata. “This is the leronis who has 
cared for her since she was born.”
Renata looked sharply at the old woman. Despite her pale, fragile features, her 
graying hair and the lines of age in her face, she still bore the indefinable 
stamp of power. Renata thought, If she has been in the care of a leronis since 
she was born, and Aldaran felt still that she needed stronger care and 
control—what, in the name of all the gods, does he fear for this charming little 
girl?
Donal was presenting Allart to his foster-father. Allart, bowing to the old man, 
raised his eyes to look into the hawklike face of Dom Mikhail, and knew abruptly 
that he had seen this face before, in dreams and foresight, knew it with mingled 
affection and fear. Somehow this mountain lord held the key to his destiny, but 
he could see only a vaulted room, white stone like a chapel, and flickering 
flames, and despair. Allart fought to dismiss the unwelcome, confusing images 
until some rational choice could be made among them.
My laran is useless, he thought, save to frighten me!
As they were being led through the castle to their rooms, Allart found himself 
nervously watching for the vaulted room of his vision, the place of flames and 
tragedy. But he did not see it, and he wondered if it was anywhere at Castle 
Aldaran at all. Indeed, it might be anywhere—or, he thought bitterly, nowhere.



CHAPTER FIFTEEN
 
Renata woke to sense the presence of an outsider; then she saw Dorilys’s pretty, 
childish face peeping around a curtain.
“I am sorry,” Dorilys said. “Did I wake you, domna?”
“I think so.” Renata blinked, grasping vaguely at fragments of a disappearing 
dream, fire, the wings of a glider, Donal’s face. “No, it does not matter, 
child; Lucetta would have waked me soon to go down to dinner.”
Dorilys came around the curtain and sat on the edge of the bed. “Was the journey 
very tiring, domna? I hope you will have recovered soon from your fatigue.”
Renata had to smile at the mixture of childishness and adult courtesy. “You 
speak casta very well, child; is it spoken so much here?”
“No,” Dorilys said, “but Margali was schooled in the Domains, at Thendara, and 
she said I should learn to speak it well so that if I went to Thendara there 
would be none who could call me mountain barbarian.”
“Then Margali did well, for your accent is very good.”
“Were you trained in a Tower, too, vai leronis?”
“Yes, but there is no need to be so formal as all that,” Renata said, 
spontaneously warming to the girl. “Call me cousin or kinswoman, what you will.”
“You look very young to be a leronis, cousin,” Dorilys said, choosing the more 
intimate of the two words.
Renata said, “I started when I was about your age.” Then she hesitated, for 
Dorilys seemed childish for the fourteen or fifteen she looked. If she was to 
educate Dorilys, as a nobleman’s daughter, she must quickly put a stop to so big 
a girl running about the courtyards with her hair flying, racing and shouting 
like a little girl. She wondered if, indeed, the girl was somewhat lacking in 
wit. “How old are you… fifteen?”
Dorilys giggled and shook her head. “Everyone says I look so, and Margali 
wearies me night and day with telling me I am too old to do this and too big to 
do that, but I am only eleven years old. I shall be twelve at summer harvest.”
Abruptly Renata revised her perceptions of the girl. She was not, then, a 
childish and ill-educated young woman, as she looked, but a highly precocious 
and intelligent preadolescent girl. It was perhaps her misfortune that she 
looked older than her years, for everyone would expect Dorilys to have a degree 
of experience and judgment she could hardly possess at that age.
Dorilys asked, “Did you like being a leronis? What is a monitor?”
“You will find that out when I monitor you, as I must do before I begin to teach 
you about laran,” Renata said.
“What did you do in the Tower?”
“Many things,” Renata said. “Bringing metals to the surface of the ground for 
the smiths to work them, charging batteries for lights and air-cars, working in 
the relays to speak without voice to those in the other Towers, so that what was 
happening in one Domain could be known to all, much faster than a messenger 
could ride…”
Dorilys listened, finally letting out a long, fascinated sigh. “And will you 
teach me to do those things?”
“Not all of them, perhaps, but you shall know such things as you have need to 
know, as the lady of a great Domain. And beyond that, such things as all women 
should know if they are to have control of their own lives and bodies.”
“Will you teach me to read thoughts? Donal and Father and Margali can read 
thoughts and I cannot, and they can talk apart and I cannot hear, and it makes 
me angry because I know they talk about me.”
“I cannot teach you that, but if you have the talent I can teach you to use it. 
You are too young to know whether you have it or not.”
“Will I have a matrix?”
“When you can learn to use it,” Renata said. She thought it strange that Margali 
had not already tested the child, taught her to key a matrix. Well, Margali was 
well on in years; perhaps she feared what her charge, headstrong and lacking in 
mature judgment, would do with the enormous power of a matrix. “Do you know what 
your laran is, Dorilys?”
The child lowered her eyes. “A little. You know what happened at my 
handfasting…”
“Only that your promised husband died very suddenly.”
Suddenly Dorilys began to cry. “He died—and everyone said I had killed him, but 
I didn’t, cousin. I didn’t want to kill him—I only wanted to make him take his 
hands off me.”
Looking at the sobbing child, Renata’s first, spontaneous impulse was to put her 
arms around Dorilys and comfort her. Of course she hadn’t meant to kill him! How 
cruel, to let a child so young carry blood-guilt! But in the instant before she 
moved, an intuitive flash of second thought kept her motionless.
However young she was, Dorilys had laran which could kill. This laran, in the 
hands of a child too young to exercise rational judgment about it… the very 
thought made Renata shudder. If Dorilys was old enough to possess this 
terrifying laran, she was old enough—she would have to be old enough—to learn 
control, and its proper use.
Controlling laran was not easy. No one knew better than Renata, a Tower-trained 
monitor, how difficult it could be, the hard work and self-discipline which went 
even into the earliest stages of that control. How could a spoiled, pampered 
little girl, whose every word had been law to her companions and adoring family, 
find the discipline and the inner motivation to tread that difficult path? 
Perhaps the death she had wrought, and her guilt and fear about it, might be 
fortunate in the long run. Renata did not like to use fear in her teaching, but 
at the moment she did not know enough about Dorilys to throw away any slight 
advantage she might have in teaching the girl.
So she did not touch Dorilys, but let her cry, looking at her with a detached 
tenderness of which her calm face and manner gave not the slightest hint. At 
last she said, voicing the first thing she herself had been taught in the early 
discipline of Hali Tower, “Laran is a terrible gift and a terrible 
responsibility, and it is not easy to learn to control it. It is your own choice 
whether you will learn to control it, or whether it will control you. If you are 
willing to work hard, a time will come when you will be in command, when you 
will use your laran and not let it use you. That is why I have come here to 
teach you, so that such a thing cannot happen again.”
  
“You are more than welcome here at Aldaran,” Mikhail, Lord Aldaran said, leaning 
forward from his high seat and catching Allart’s eyes. “It is long since I had 
the pleasure of entertaining one of my Lowland kin. I trust we will make you 
welcome. But I do not flatter myself that the heir to Elhalyn did the service 
which any paxman or banner-bearer could do, just for the sake of showing me 
honor. Not when the Elhalyn Domain is at war. You want something of me— or the 
Elhalyn Domain wants something, which may not be the same thing at all. Will you 
not tell me your true mission, kinsman?”
Allart pondered a dozen answers, watching the play of firelight on the old man’s 
face, knowing it was the curious foresight of his laran which caused that face 
to wear a hundred aspects—benevolence, wrath, offended pride, anguish. Had his 
mission alone the power to raise all those reactions in Lord Aldaran, or was it 
something yet to pass between them?
At last, weighing each word, he said, “My lord, what you say is true, although 
it was a privilege to travel north with your foster-son, and I was not sorry to 
be at some distance from this war.”
Aldaran raised an eyebrow and said, “I would have thought in time of war you 
would have been unwilling to leave the Domain. Are you not your brother’s heir?”
“His regent and warden, sir, but I am sworn to support the claim of his nedestro 
sons.”
“It seems to me you could have done better for yourself than that,” Dom Mikhail 
said. “Should your brother die in battle, you seem better fitted to command a 
Domain than any flock of little boys, legitimate or bastard, and no doubt the 
folk of your Domain would rather have it so. There’s a true saying: when the 
cat’s a kitten, rats make play in the kitchen! So it goes with a Domain;, in 
times like this, a strong hand is needful. In wartime a younger son, or one 
whose parentage is uncertain, can carve out for himself a position of power as 
he could never do at any other time.”
Allart thought, But I have no ambition to rule my Domain. However, he knew that 
Lord Aldaran would never believe this. To men of his sort, ambition was the only 
legitimate emotion for a man born into a ruling house. And it is this which 
keeps us torn with fratricidal wars… But he said nothing, if he did, Aldaran 
would immediately jump to the conclusion that he was an effeminate, or, worse, a 
coward. “My brother and overlord felt I could better serve my Domain on this 
mission, sir.”
“Indeed? It must be more important than I had believed possible,” Aldaran said, 
and he looked grim. “Well, tell me about it, kinsman, if it is a mission of such 
great moment to Aldaran that your brother must entrust it to his nearest rival!” 
He looked angry and guarded, and Allart knew he had not made a good impression. 
However, as Allart broached his mission, Aldaran slowly relaxed, leaning back in 
his chair, and when the young man had done he nodded slowly, letting out his 
breath with a long sigh.
“It is not so bad as I feared,” he said. “I have foresight enough, and I could 
read your thoughts a little—not much; where did you learn to guard them so?—and 
I knew you came to speak of this war to me. I feared you had come, for the sake 
of the old friendship between your father and me, to urge me to join with your 
folk in this war. Though I loved your father well, that I would have been 
reluctant to do. I might have been willing to aid in the defense of Elhalyn, if 
you were hard pressed, but I would not have wished to attack the Ridenow.”
“I have brought no such request, sir,” Allart said, “but will you tell me why?”
“Why? Why, you ask? Well, tell me, lad,” Aldaran said. “What grudge have you 
against the Ridenow?”
“I, myself? None, sir, save that they attacked an air-car in which I was riding 
with my father, and brought about his death. But all the Domains of the Lowlands 
have a grudge against the Ridenow because they have moved into the old Domain of 
Serrais and have taken their women in marriage.”
“Is that such a bad thing?” Aldaran asked. “Did the women of Serrais ask your 
aid against these marriages, or prove to you that they had been married against 
their will?”
“No, but—” Allart hesitated. He knew it was not lawful for women of the Hastur 
kin to marry outside that kinfolk. As the thought crossed his mind, Aldaran 
picked it up and said, “As I thought. It is only that you want these women for 
your own Domain, and those close akin to you. I had heard that the male line of 
Serrais is extinct; it is this inbreeding which has brought that line to 
extinction. If the women of Serrais wed back into the Hastur kin, I know enough 
of their bloodlines to predict that their laran will not survive another hundred 
years. They need new blood in that House. The Ridenow are healthy, and fertile. 
Nothing better could happen to the Serrais women than for the Ridenow to marry 
into their kindred.”
Allart knew that his face betrayed his revulsion, though he tried to hide it. 
“If you will forgive plain speaking, sir, I find it revolting to speak of the 
relationships between men and women only in terms of this accursed breeding 
program in the Domains.”
Aldaran snorted. “Yet you think it fitting to let the Serrais women be married 
off to Hasturs and Elhalyns and Aillards all over again? Isn’t that breeding 
them for their laran, too? They wouldn’t survive three more generations, I tell 
you! How many fertile sons have been born to Serrais in the last forty years? 
Come, come, do you think the lords who rule at Thendara are so charitable that 
they are trying to preserve the purity of Serrais? You are young, but you can 
hardly be so naïve as that. The Hastur kin would let Serrais die out before they 
let outlanders breed into it, but these Ridenow have other ideas. And that is 
the only hope for Serrais—some new genes! If you are wise, you people in the 
Domains will welcome the Ridenow and bind them to your own daughters with 
marriage ties!”
Allart was shocked. “The Ridenow—marry into the Hastur kin? They have no part in 
the blood of Hastur and Cassilda.”
“Their sons will have it,” Aldaran said bluntly, “and with new blood, the old 
Serrais line may survive, instead of breeding itself into sterility, as the 
Aillards are doing at Valeron, and as some of the Hasturs have done already. How 
many emmasca sons have been born into the Hasturs of Carcosa, or of Elhalyn, or 
Aillard, in the last hundred years?”
“Too many, I fear.” Against his will Allart thought of the lads he had known in 
the monastery; emmasca, neither male nor wholly female, sterile, some with other 
defects. “But I have not studied the matter.”
“Yet you presume to form an opinion on it?” Aldaran raised his eyebrows again. 
“I heard you had married an Aillard daughter; how many healthy sons and 
daughters have you? Though I need hardly ask. If you had, you would hardly be 
willing to swear allegiance to another man’s bastards.”
Stung, Allart retorted, “My wife and I have been wedded less than half a year.”
“How many healthy legitimate sons has your brother? Come, come, Allart; you know 
as well as I that if your genes survive, they will do so in the veins of your 
nedestro children, even as mine. My wife was an Ardais, and bore me no more 
living children than your Aillard lady is likely to bear you.”
Allart lowered his eyes, thinking with a spasm of grief and guilt, It is no 
wonder the men of our line turn to riyachiyas and such perversions. We can take 
so little joy in our wives, between guilt at what we do to them, or fear for 
what will befall them!
Aldaran saw the play of emotion on the young man’s face and relented. “Well, 
well, there is no need to quarrel, kinsman; I meant no offense. But we have 
followed a breeding program, among the kin of Hastur and Cassilda, that has 
endangered our blood more than any upstart bandits could do—and salvation may 
take strange forms. It seems to me that the Ridenow will be the salvation of 
Serrais, if you folk at Elhalyn do not hinder them. But that is neither here nor 
there. Tell your brother that even if I wished to join in the war, which I do 
not, I could do nothing of the sort. I am myself hard-pressed; I have quarreled 
with my brother of Scathfell, and it troubles me that he has, as yet, sought no 
revenge. What is he plotting? I have meaty bones to pick, here at Aldaran, and 
it seems to me sometimes that the other mountain lords are like kyorebni, 
circling, waiting… I am old. I have no legitimate heir, no living son at all, no 
single child of my own blood save my young daughter.”
Allart said, “But she is a fair child—and a healthy one, it seems—and she 
possesses laran. If you have no son, surely you can find somewhere a son-in-law 
to inherit your estate!”
“I had hoped so,” Aldaran said. “I think now it might even be well to marry her 
to one of those Ridenow, but that would bring down all the Elhalyn and Hastur 
kindred as well. It must depend, also, on whether your kinswoman can help her to 
survive the threshold at adolescence. I lost three grown sons and a daughter so. 
When I sought to wed into a line— such as my late wife, Deonara of Ardais—whose 
laran came early upon them, the children died before birth or in infancy. 
Dorilys survived birth and infancy, but with her laran, I fear she will not 
survive adolescence.”
“The gods forbid she should die so! My kinswoman and I will do all that we can. 
There are many ways now of preventing death in adolescence. I myself came near 
it, yet I live.”
“If that is so,” Aldaran said, “then am I your humble suppliant, kinsman. What I 
have is yours for the asking. But I beg you, remain and save my child from this 
fate!”
“I am at your service. Lord Aldaran. My brother has bidden me remain while I can 
be of use to you, or as long as needful to persuade you to remain neutral in 
this war.”
“That I promise you,” Aldaran said.
“Then you may command me, Lord Aldaran.” Then Allart’s bitterness broke through. 
“If you do not hold me too greatly in contempt, that I am not eager to return to 
the battlefield, since that seems to you the most fitting place for the young 
men of my clan!”
Aldaran bent his head. “I spoke in anger. Forgive me, kinsman. But I have no 
will to join this stupid war in the Lowlands, even though I feel the Hasturs 
should test the Ridenow before they admit them into their kindred. If the 
Ridenow cannot survive, perhaps they do not truly deserve to come into the line 
of Serrais. Perhaps the gods know what they are doing when they send wars among 
men, so that old lines of blood, softened by luxury and decadence, may die out, 
and new ones prevail, or come into them; new genetic material with traits tested 
by their ability to survive.”
Allart shook his head. “This may have been true in the older days,” he said, 
“when war was truly a test of strength and courage, so that the weaker did not 
survive to breed. I cannot believe it is so now, my lord, when such things as 
clingfire kill the strong and the weak alike, even women and little children who 
have no part in the quarrels of the lords…”
“Clingfire!” Lord Aldaran whispered. “Is it so, then—that they have begun to use 
clingfire in the Domains? But surely they can use it but little; the raw 
material is hard to mine from the earth and deteriorates so rapidly once it is 
exposed to the air.”
“It is made by matrix circles in the Towers, my lord. This is one reason I was 
eager to leave the area of this war. I would not be sent cleanly into battle, 
but would be put to make the hellish stuff.” Aldaran closed his eyes as if to 
shut out the unbearable.
“Are they all madmen, then, below the Kadarin? I had thought sheer sanity would 
deter them from weapons which must ravage conquerer and conquered alike! I find 
it hard to believe in any man of honor loosing such terrible weapons against his 
kin,” Aldaran said. “Remain here, Allart. All the gods forbid I should send any 
man back into such dishonorable warfare!” His face twisted. “Perhaps, if the 
gods are kind, they will exterminate one another, like the dragons of legend who 
consumed one another in their fire, leaving their prey to build on the scorched 
ground beneath them.”



CHAPTER SIXTEEN
 
Renata, head lowered, hurried across the courtyard at Aldaran. In her 
preoccupation, she ran hard into someone, murmured an apology, and would have 
hurried on, but felt herself caught and held.
“Wait a moment, kinswoman! I have hardly seen you since I came here,” Allart 
said.
Renata, raising her eyes, said, “Are you making ready to return to the Lowlands, 
cousin?”
“No, my lord of Aldaran has invited me to remain, to teach Donal something of 
what I learned at Nevarsin,” Allart said. Then, looking full into her face, he 
drew a breath of consternation. “Cousin, what troubles you? What is so 
dreadful?”
Confused, Renata looked at him, saying, “Why, I do not know.” Then, dropping 
into full rapport with his thoughts, she saw herself as she looked in his 
eyes—drawn, pale, her face twisted with grief and tragedy.
Is this what I am, or what I shall be? In sudden fear, she clung for a moment to 
him, and he steadied her, gently.
“Forgive me, cousin, that I frightened you. Indeed, I am beginning to feel that 
much of what I see exists only in my own fear. Surely there is nothing so 
frightful here, is there? Or is the damisela Dorilys such a little monster as 
the servants say?”
Renata laughed, but she still looked troubled. “No, indeed; she is the dearest, 
sweetest child, and as yet she has shown me only her most biddable and loving 
face. But— Oh, Allart, it is true! I am frightened for her; she bears a truly 
dreadful laran, and I am afraid for what I must say to the lord Aldaran, her 
father! It cannot but make him angry!”
“I have seen her only for a few minutes,” Allart said. “Donal was showing me how 
he controls the glider-toys, and she came down and begged to fly with us; but 
Donal said she must ask Margali, that he would not take the responsibility of 
letting her come. She was very cross, and went off in a great sulk.”
“But she did not strike at him?”
“No,” said Allart. “She pouted and said he did not love her, but she obeyed him. 
I would not want to let her fly until she could control a matrix, but Donal said 
he was given one when he was nine, and learned to use it without trouble. 
Evidently laran comes early on the Delleray kindred.”
“Or on those of Rockraven,” Renata said, but she still looked troubled. “I would 
not want to trust Dorilys with a matrix yet; perhaps never. But we will speak of 
that later. Lord Aldaran has agreed to receive me, and I must not keep him 
waiting.”
“Indeed you must not,” Allart said, and Renata went across the courtyard, 
frowning.
Outside the presence-chamber of the lord Aldaran, she found Dorilys. The little 
girl looked more controlled and civilized today, her hair neatly plaited, her 
dress an embroidered smock.
“I want to hear what you say to my father about me, cousin,” she said, sliding 
her hand confidingly into Renata’s.
Renata shook her head. “It is not good for little girls to listen to the 
councils of their elders,” she said. “I must say many things which you would not 
understand. I give you my word that everything concerning you will be told to 
you when the proper time comes, but that proper time is not now, Dorilys.”
“I am not a little girl,” Dorilys said, thrusting her lip out.
“Then you should not behave like one, pouting and stamping your foot as if you 
were five years old! Certainly such behavior will not convince me that you are 
old enough to listen with maturity to talk about your future.”
Dorilys looked more rebellious than ever. “Who do you think you are, to talk 
that way to me? I am Lady of Aldaran!”
“You are a child who will one day be Lady of Aldaran,” Renata said coldly, “and 
I am the leronis whom your father saw fit to entrust with the task of teaching 
you proper behavior befitting that high place.”
Dorilys pulled her hand free of Renata’s, staring sulkily at the floor. “I will 
not be spoken to in that way! I will complain of you to my father, and he will 
send you away if you are not kind to me!”
“You do not know the meaning of the word unkindness,” Renata said mildly. “When 
I entered the Tower of Hali as a novice to learn the art of monitor, no one was 
allowed to speak to me for forty days, nor to look into my eyes. This was to 
strengthen my reliance upon my laran.”
“I wouldn’t have put up with it,” Dorilys said, and Renata smiled.
“Then they would have sent me home, knowing I did not have the strength and 
self-discipline to learn what I must learn. I will never be unkind to you, 
Dorilys, but you must master yourself before you are fit to command others.”
“But it is different with me,” Dorilys argued. “I am Lady of Aldaran, and 
already I command all the women in the castle, and most of the men, too. You are 
not the Lady of your Domain, are you?”
Rehata shook her head. “No, but I am a Tower monitor. And even a Keeper is 
taught so. You have met your brother’s friend, Allart. He is Regent of Elhalyn, 
yet at Nevarsin, for his training, he slept naked on stone for three winters, 
and never spoke in the presence of any monk superior to him.”
“That’s horrible,” Dorilys said, making a face.
“No. We undertake these disciplines voluntarily, because we know we need to 
discipline our bodies and minds to obey us, so that our laran will not destroy 
us.”
“If I obey you,” Dorilys asked craftily, “will you give me a matrix and teach me 
to use it, so that I can fly with Donal?”
“I will when I think you can be trusted with it, chiya.”Renata said.
“But I want it now,” Dorilys argued.
Renata shook her head. “No,” she said. “Now go back to your rooms, Dorilys, and 
I will see you when I have finished with your father.” She spoke firmly, and 
Dorilys started to obey; then, after a few steps, she whirled around, stamping 
her foot angrily.
“You will not use command-voice on me again!”
“I will do what I think fit,” said Renata, unmoved. “Your father has put me in 
charge of you. Must I tell him I find you disobedient, and ask him to command 
you to obey me in all things?”
Dorilys shrank. “No, please—don’t tell Father on me, Renata!”
“Then obey me at once,” Renata repeated, using the forbidden command-voice. “Go 
back and tell Margali you have been disobedient, and ask her to punish you.”
Dorilys’s eyes filled with tears, but she moved away, lagging, out of the 
courtyard, and Renata let her breath go.
How would I have forced her to obey if she had refused? And a time will come 
when she will refuse, and I must be prepared for that!
One of the servants was staring, wide-eyed, having observed the little 
interchange. Renata picked up the woman’s thoughts without trying: I have never 
seen my little lady obey like that…without a word of protest!
So it was the first time Dorilys had to obey against her will, Renata thought. 
Margali, she knew, would punish Dorilys gently, only by setting her to sew long 
and uninteresting seams on skirts and shifts, and forbidding her to touch her 
embroidery-frames. It will not hurt our little lady to learn to do tasks for 
which she has no liking or talent.
But the confrontation had hardened her will for what she knew would be a 
difficult meeting with Lord Aldaran. She was grateful that he had agreed to 
receive her in the small study where he wrote his letters and saw the coridom 
about the business of his estates, rather than in the formal presence-chamber.
She found him dictating to his private secretary, but he broke off when she came 
in, and sent the man away. “Well, damisela, how are you getting along with my 
daughter? Do you find her obedient and biddable? She is headstrong, but very 
sweet and loving.”
Renata smiled faintly. “She is not very loving at this moment, I fear,” she 
said. “I have had to punish her, to send her to Margali to sit over her sewing 
for a while, and learn to think before she speaks.”
Lord Aldaran sighed. “I suppose no child can be brought up without some 
punishment,” he said. “I gave Donal’s tutors leave to beat him, if they must, 
but I was gentler with him than my father with me, for I forbade his tutors to 
strike him hard enough to leave bruises; while as a boy I often was beaten so 
that I could not sit in comfort for days. But you will not need to beat my 
daughter, I hope.”
“I would prefer not to,” Renata said. “I have always thought that solitary 
meditation over some tedious or boring task is punishment enough for most 
misbehavior. Still, I wish you would tell her, sometime, what you have told me, 
my lord. She seems to feel that her rank should excuse her from punishment or 
discipline.”
“You would like me to tell her that my tutors had leave to beat me when I was a 
lad?” Lord Aldaran chuckled. “Very well, I shall do so, by way of reminding her 
that even I have had to learn to rule myself. But did you come only for leave to 
punish my daughter, Lady? I had thought that when I put her in your charge, you 
would take that for granted.”
“And so I do,” Renata said. “But I had something far more serious to discuss 
with you. You brought me here because you feared the strength of your daughter’s 
laran, did you not? I have monitored her carefully, body and brain; she is still 
several moons short of puberty, I judge. Before that comes upon her, I would 
like to ask leave to monitor you, my lord, and Donal as well.”
Lord Aldaran raised his eyesbrows curiously. “May I ask why, damisela?”
“Margali has already told me all she can remember of Aliciane’s pregnancy and 
confinement,” Renata said, “so that I know some of what Dorilys inherited from 
her mother. But Donal, too, bears the heritage of Rockraven, and I would like to 
know what recessives Dorilys may be carrying. It is simpler to check Donal than 
to go into germ plasm. The same with you, my lord, since Dorilys bears not only 
your heritage but that of all your line. I would also like access to your 
genealogies, so that I can see if there are any traces in your line of certain 
kinds of laran.”
Lord Aldaran nodded. “I can see that you should be armed with such knowledge,” 
he said. “You may tell the keeper of the Aldaran archives that I give you 
freedom of all our records. Do you think, then, that she will survive threshold 
sickness in adolescence?”
“I will tell you that when I know more of what lies within her genes and 
heritage,” Renata said. “I will do what I can for her, I swear it, and so will 
Allart. But I must know what I am facing.”
“Well, I have no particular objection to being monitored.” Lord Aldaran said, 
“although it is a technique with which I am not familiar.”
“Deep monitoring of this sort was developed for the matrix circles working on 
the higher levels,” Renata said. “When we had done using it for that, we found 
it had other uses.”
“What must I do, then?”
“Nothing,” Renata said. “Simply make your mind and body as quiet and relaxed as 
you can, and try to think of nothing at all. Trust me; I shall not intrude into 
your thoughts, but only into your body and its deeper secrets.”
Aldaran shrugged. “Whenever you like,” he said.
Renata reached out, beginning the slow monitoring process; first monitoring his 
breathing, his circulation, then going deeper and deeper into the cells of body 
and brain. After a long time she gently withdrew, and thanked him, but she 
looked troubled and abstracted.
“What is the verdict, damisela?”
“I would rather wait until I have seen the archives, and worked with Donal,” she 
said, and bowed to him, leaving the room.
  
A few days later, Renata sent word asking if Lord Aldaran could receive her 
again.
When she came into his presence this time, she wasted no words.
“My lord, is Dorilys your only living child?”
“Yes, I told you that.”
“I know she is the only child you acknowledge. But is that only a manner of 
speaking, or the literal truth? Have you any unacknowledged bastards, by-blows, 
any child at all born of your blood?”
Aldaran shook his head, troubled.
“No,” he said. “Not one. I had several children by my first marriage, but they 
died in their adolescence, of threshold sickness; and Deonara’s babes all died 
before they were weaned. In my youth I fathered a few sons here and there, 
though none survived adolescence. As far as I know, Dorilys alone, on the face 
of this world, bears my blood.”
“I do not want to anger you, Lord Aldaran,” Renata said, “but you should get you 
another heir at once.”
He looked at her, and she saw the dismay and panic in his eyes.
“Are you warning me that she, too, will not survive adolescence?”
“No,” said Renata. “There is every reason to hope she will survive it; she may 
even become something of a telepath. But your heritage should not rest on her 
alone. She might, as Aliciane did, survive the bearing of a single child. Her 
laran, as near as I can tell, is sex-linked; one of the few gifts that are. It 
is recessive in boys; Donal has the ability to read air currents and air 
pressure, to feel the winds and sense the movement of storms, and even to 
control the lightning a little, though not to draw it or to generate it. But 
this gift is dominant in females. Dorilys might survive the birth of a son. She 
could not survive the birth of a daughter gifted unborn with such laran. Donal, 
too, should be warned to father only sons, unless he wishes to see their mothers 
struck down by this laran in their unborn daughters.”
Aldaran took this in slowly. At last he said, his face gray with torment, “Are 
you saying that Dorilys killed Aliciane?”
“I thought you knew that. This is one reason the Rockraven gift was abandoned by 
the breeding program. Some daughters, without the full strength of laran 
themselves, nevertheless had it to pass on to their daughters. I think Aliciane 
must have been one of these. And Dorilys had the full laran… During her 
birth—tell me—was there a storm?”
Aldaran felt his breath catch in his throat, recalling how Aliciane had cried 
out, in terror, “She hates me! She doesn’t want to be born!”
Dorilys killed her mother! She killed my beloved, my Aliciane… Desperately, 
struggling for fairness, he said, “She was a newborn child! How can you blame 
her?”
“Blame? Who speaks of blame? A child’s emotions are uncontrolled; they have had 
no training in controlling them. And birth is terrifying for a child. Did you 
not know that, my lord?”
“Of course! I was present when all of Deonara’s babes were born,” he said, “but 
I could calm them to some extent.”
“But Dorilys was stronger than most babes,” Renata said, “and in her fear and 
pain, she struck—and Aliciane died. She does not know this; I hope she will 
never know. But, knowing this, you can see why it is not safe to rely on her, 
alone, to pass your blood to future generations. Indeed, it would be safer for 
her never to marry, though I shall teach her, when she comes to womanhood, how 
to conceive sons only.”
“Would Aliciane had had such teaching,” said Lord Aldaran, with great 
bitterness. “I did not know this technique was known in the Domains.”
“It is not very commonly taught,” Renata said, “although those who breed 
riyachiyas know it, to breed nothing but females. It has not been taught lest 
the lords of great estates, hungry for sons, should upset the balance nature has 
given us, so that there would be too few women born. Yet, in such a case as 
this, I think, where such a frightful laran can strike the unborn, I think it 
justified. I will teach Dorilys, and Donal, too, if he wishes.”
The old man bowed his head. “What am I to do? She is my only child!”
“Lord Aldaran,” Renata said quietly, “I would like your permission, if I think 
it needful, to burn out her laran in adolescence to destroy her psi centers 
within the brain. It might save her life—or her reason.”
He stared at her in horror. “Would you destroy her mind?”
“No. But she would be free of laran” Renata said.
“Monstrous! I refuse absolutely!”
“My lord,” Renata said, and her face was drawn, “I swear to you. If Dorilys were 
the child of my own womb, I would ask you the same. Do you know she has killed 
three times?”
“Three? Three? Aliciane; Darren, my brother’s son—but that was justified, he 
attempted to ravish her!”
Renata nodded. She said, “She was handfasted once before, and the child died, 
did he not?”
“I thought that was an accident.”
“Why, so it was,” said Renata. “Dorilys was not six years old. She knew only 
that he had broken her doll. She had blocked it from her mind. When I forced her 
to remember it, she cried so pitifully, I think it would have melted the heart 
of Zandru’s self! So far she strikes only in panic. She would not, I think, even 
have killed the kinsman who tried to rape her, but she had no control. She could 
not stun, only kill. And she may kill again. I do not know if anyone living can 
teach her enough control over this kind of laran. I would not burden her with 
guilt, if she strikes again in a moment of fear or panic.”
Renata hesitated. Finally she said, “It is well known: power corrupts. Even now, 
I think, she knows no one dares to defy her. She is headstrong and arrogant. She 
may like the knowledge that everyone fears her. A girl on the threshold of 
adolescence has many troubles; at such times girls dislike their faces, their 
bodies, the color of their hair. They think others dislike them, because they 
have so many anxieties they cannot yet focus. If Dorilys comforts herself for 
these anxieties with the knowledge of her power—well, I know I would be 
frightened of her under these conditions!”
Aldaran stared at the floor of the room, black and white and inlaid with a 
mosaic of birds. “I cannot consent to having her laran destroyed, Renata. She is 
my only child.”
“Then, my lord,” Renata said bluntly, “you should marry again and get you 
another heir before it is too late; and at your age you should lose no time.”
“Do you think I have not tried that?” Aldaran said bitterly. Then, hesitating, 
he told Renata of the curse.
“My lord, surely a man of your intelligence knows that the power of such a curse 
is upon your mind, not your manhood.”
“So I told myself for many years. Yet I felt no desire for any woman, for many 
years after Aliciane died. After Deonara died, and I knew I had only a single 
nedestro girl-child surviving, I took others to my bed; yet none of them 
quickened. Of late I have begun to believe the curse had struck me before the 
sorceress voiced it, for while Aliciane was heavy with my child I took no other. 
For me that was unknown, that I should live half a year with no woman for my 
bed.” He shook his head, apologetically. “Forgive me, damisela. Such talk is 
unseemly to a woman of your years.”
“Speaking of such things I am not a woman but a leronis, my lord. Don’t trouble 
yourself about that. Have you never been monitored to test this, my lord?”
“I did not know such a thing was possible.”
“I will test it, if you will,” Renata said matter-of-factly. “Or if you would 
rather—Margali is your kinswoman, and nearer to your years—if it would trouble 
you less…”
The man stared at the floor. “I would feel less shamed before a stranger, I 
think,” he said in a low voice.
“As you will.” Renata quieted herself and sank deep into the monitoring of body 
and brain; cell deep.
After a time she said regretfully, “You are cursed, indeed, my lord. Your seed 
bears no spark of life.”
“Is such a thing possible? Did the woman merely know my shame, or did she cause 
this—this—” His voice died, between rage and dismay.
Renata said quietly, “I have no way of knowing, my lord. I suppose it is 
possible that some enemy could have done this to you. Although no one trusted 
with a matrix in the Towers would be capable of such a thing. We are sworn with 
many oaths against such abuse of our powers.”
“Can it be reversed? What the powers of sorcery have done, can they not undo?”
“I fear not, sir. Perhaps if it had been known at once, something—but after so 
many years, I fear it is an impossible task.”
Aldaran bowed his head. “Then I must pray to all the gods that you can somehow 
bring Dorilys undamaged through adolescence. She alone bears the heritage of 
Aldaran.”
Renata pitied the old man; he had had to face some painful and humiliating 
truths today. She said gently, “My lord, you have a brother, and your brother 
has sons. Even if Dorilys should not survive this—although, indeed, I pray 
Avarra may guard her from all harm—the Aldaran heritage will not be wholly lost. 
I beg you, sir, be reconciled to your brother.”
Aldaran’s eyes blazed with sudden, terrible exploding rage.
“Have a care, my girl! I am grateful for all you have done, and all you will do, 
for my child, but there are some things even you cannot say to me! I have sworn 
that I will tear down this castle stone by stone ere it falls to any son of 
Scathfell! Dorilys will reign here after me, or none!”
Cruel, arrogant old man! Renata found herself thinking. It would serve you right 
if that came, indeed, to pass! His pride is stronger than his love for Dorilys, 
or he would spare her this terrible destiny!
She bowed. “Then there is no more to be said, my lord. I will do what I can for 
Dorilys. Yet I beg you to remember, sir, that the world will go as it will, and 
not as you or I would have it go.”
“Kinswoman, I beg you, be not angry. I beg you not to let your anger at this 
sharp-tongued old man make you any less a friend to my little girl.”
“Nothing could do that,” Renata said, softening against her will to the old 
man’s charm. “I love Dorilys, and I will guard her as much as I may, even 
against herself.”
When she had left Aldaran, she walked for a long time on the battlements, 
troubled. She faced a very serious ethical problem. Dorilys probably could not 
survive childbirth. Could she reconcile it to her own strict code, to let the 
girl come unknowing to womanhood with that shocking curse? Should she warn 
Dorilys of what lay ahead for her?
She thought, angry again, that Lord Aldaran would expose Dorilys to such a death 
rather than accept the knowledge that his brother of Scathfell might inherit his 
domain.
Cassilda, blessed mother of the Hastur kin, she thought All gods be praised that 
I am not lord of a Domain!



CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
 
Summer in the Hellers was beautiful; the snows receded to the highest peaks, and 
even at dawn there was little rain or snow.
“A beautiful season, but dangerous, cousin Allart,” Donal said, standing at the 
height of the castle. “We have fewer fires than the Lowland Domains, for our 
snows remain longer, but our fires rage longer because of the resin-trees, and 
in the heat of these days they give off the volatile oils which ignite so 
quickly when the summer lightning storms rage. And when the resin-trees ignite—” 
He shrugged, spreading his hands, and Allart understood; he, too, had seen the 
volatile trees catch fire and go up like torches, throwing off showers of sparks 
which fell in liquid rain, spreading flame through the whole forest.
“It is a miracle that there are any resin-trees left, if this happens year after 
year!”
“True; I think if they grew less swiftly, these hills would be bare and the 
Hellers a wasteland from the Kadarin to the Wall around the World. But they grow 
swiftly, and in a year the slopes are re-covered.”
Allart said, fastening the straps of the flying-harness around his waist, “I 
have not flown in one of these since I was a boy. I hope I have not lost the 
knack!”
“You never lose it,” Donal said. “When I was fifteen and ill with threshold 
sickness, I could not fly for almost a year. I was dizzy and disoriented and 
when I was well again I thought I had forgotten how to fly. But my body 
remembered, as soon as I was airborne.”
Allart drew the last buckle tight. “Have we far to fly?”
“Riding, it would be more than most animals could do in two days; it lies by 
paths mostly straight up and down. But as the kyorebni fly, it is little more 
than an hour’s flight.”
“Would it not be simpler to take an air-car?” Then Allart remembered he had seen 
none in the Hellers.
Donal said, “The folk of Darriel experimented with such things. But there are 
too many crosscurrents and cross-drafts among the peaks here; even with a glider 
you must pick your day carefully for flying, and be wary of storms and changes 
in the wind. Once I had to sit on a crag for hours, waiting for a summer storm 
to subside.” He chuckled with the memory. “I came home as bedraggled and sad as 
a rabbithorn who has had to yield his hole to a tree-badger! But today, I think, 
we will have no such trouble. Allart, you are Tower-trained, do you know the 
folk at Tramontana?”
“Ian-Mikhail of Storn is Keeper there,” Allart said, “and I spoke with all of 
them in the relays, from time to time, during my half-year at Hali. But I have 
never been to Tramontana in the flesh.”
“They have always welcomed me there; indeed, I think they are always glad of 
visitors. They sit like hawks in their aerie, seeing no one from midsummer 
festival to midwinter night. It will be a pleasure for them to welcome you, 
cousin.”
“And for me,” Allart said. Tramontana was the most distant and farthest 
northward of the Towers, in almost total isolation from the others, though its 
workers passed messages through the relay-nets and exchanged information about 
the work they had done in developing new uses for matrix science. It had been 
the workers at Tramontana, he remembered, who devised the chemicals for 
fire-fighting, where they could be found in the deep caves under the Hellers, 
refining them, devising new ways to use them, all with the matrix arts.
“Is it not true that they have worked with matrixes to the twenty-fifth level?”
“I think so, cousin. There are thirty of them there, after all. It may be the 
farthest of the Towers, but it is not the smallest.”
“Their work with chemicals is brilliant,” Allart said, “although I think I would 
be afraid to do some of the things they have done. Yet their technicians say 
that once the lattices are mastered, a twenty-sixth-level matrix is no more 
dangerous than a fourth-level. I do not know if I would wish to trust myself to 
the concentration of twenty-five other people.”
Donal smiled ruefully. “I wish I knew more of these things. I know only what 
Margali has taught me, and what little they have had leisure to tell me, when I 
visit there, and I have seldom been given leave to stay more than a single day.”
“Indeed, I think you would have made a mechanic, or perhaps even a technician,” 
Allart said, thinking of how swiftly the lad had responded to his teaching, “but 
you have another destiny.”
“True; I would not abandon my father, nor my sister, and they need me here,” 
Donal said. “So there are many things I shall never do with a matrix, for they 
need the safety of a Tower. But I am glad to have learned what I could, and for 
nothing am I more glad than this,” he added, touching the leather-and-wood 
struts of the glider. “Are we ready to go, cousin?”
He stepped to the edge of the parapet, fluttered the long extended leather flaps 
of the glider wings to catch the air current, then stepped off into the air, 
soaring upward. Allart, his senses extended, could just feel the edge of the 
current; he stepped to the parapet edge, feeling an inner cramping at the 
height, the glimpse of the fearful gulf below him. Yet if a boy like Donal could 
fly without fear over that height… He focused on the matrix, stepped free, and 
felt the sudden dizziness of the long drop and swoop outward, the tug of the 
current that bore him upward. His body swiftly balanced itself, lying along the 
inner struts, leaning this way and that as he mastered the balance of the toy. 
He saw Donal’s glider, soaring hawklike above him, and caught an updraft 
carrying him along until they, flew side by side.
For the first minutes Allart was so preoccupied with the mastery of the glider 
that he did not look down at all, his entire consciousness caught up into the 
delicate balances, the pressure of the air and the energy currents he could 
dimly sense, all around him. Somehow it made him think of his days at Nevarsin, 
when he had first mastered his laran and had learned to see human beings as 
swirls, energy-nets of force like streaming currents, without the awareness of 
flesh and blood, of his solid body. Now he sensed that the insubstantial air was 
filled with the same streaming currents of force. If I have taught Donal much, 
he has given me no less in return, teaching me this mastery of air currents and 
the streams of force which permeate the air as they do the land and the waters… 
Allart had never before been aware of these currents in the air; now he could 
almost see them, could pick and choose among them, riding them up, up to a 
height where the winds dashed against the frail glider, racing along on the 
tremendous airstream, then picking a convenient current to dip down again to a 
safer height. He began, as he lay along the struts now, leaving a fragment of 
his consciousness to control the glider, to look down at the mountain panorama 
laid out below him.
Below them a quiet mountainous countryside stretched out, slope after slope of 
hills covered with dark forest, now and then the thickness giving way to slanted 
rows of trees, marching mechanically up and down a hillside—nut-farms, or 
plantations of edible fungus in the forest. Hillsides had been cleared for 
grasses where herds grazed, dotted with small huts where the herd-keepers lived, 
and now and again, beside the course of a racing mountain stream, a waterwheel 
set up for the making of cheeses, or the fibers which, matrix-enhanced, could be 
extracted from the bulk of the milk after whey and curds had been pressed out. 
He smelled the odd reek of a felt-ing-mill, and another of a mill where the 
scraps left after timbering were pressed into paper. On a rocky slope, he saw 
the entrance to a network of caves where the forge-folk lived and saw the glow 
of their fires, where flying sparks could not endanger forests or populated 
areas.
As they flew on, the hills became higher and more deserted. He felt Donal’s 
touch on his thoughts—the boy was developing into a skilled telepath who could 
attract his attention without troubling it— and Allart followed him down a long 
draft between two hills, to where the white glareless stone of Tramontana Tower 
gleamed in the noonlight. He saw a sentry on the heights raise his hand in 
greeting, and followed as Donal swooped down, folding the wings of his glider as 
he landed on his feet, sinking gracefully to his knees and rising in a single 
controlled movement, whipping off the glider wings in a long trail behind him; 
but Allart, less skilled at this game, found himself knocked off his feet, in a 
disorderly tangle of struts and ropes. Donal, laughing, came to help him 
disentangle himself.
“Never mind, cousin, I have landed that way many times myself,” he said, though 
Allart wondered how many years it had been since he had done so. “Come, Arzi 
will take your glider and keep it safe against our return,” he added, gesturing 
to the bent old man who stood beside him.
“Master Donal,” said the old man, in a dialect so thick that even Allart, who 
knew most of the Hellers dialects, found it hard to follow. “A joy, as ever, to 
welcome ye back among us. Y’ lend us grace, dom’yn,” he added, including Allart 
in his rude bow.
Donal said, “This is my old friend Arzi, who has served the Tower since before I 
was born, and welcomed me here three or four times a year since I was ten years 
old. Arzi— my cousin, Dom Allart Hastur of Elhalyn.”
“Vai dom.” Arzi’s bow was almost comical in its depth and deference. “Lord 
Hastur lends us grace. Ah, it’s a happy day—the vai leronyn will be glad indeed 
to welcome ye, Lord Hastur.”
“Not Lord Hastur,” Allart said gently, “only Lord Allart, my good man, but I 
thank you for your welcome.”
“Ah, it’s been many, many years since a Hastur came among us,” Arzi said. “Be 
pleased’t’ follow me, vai domyn.”
“Look what the winds have brought us,” called a merry voice, and a young girl, 
tall, slender, with hair as pale as snow on the distant peak, came running 
toward Donal, holding out her hands to him in welcome. “Donal, how glad we all 
are to see you again! But you have brought a guest to us!”
“I am glad to return, Rosaura,” Donal said, embracing the girl as if they were 
long-lost kin. The girl stretched out her hands to welcome Allart, with the 
swift touch of telepaths to whom this was more natural than the touch of 
fingertips. Allart, of course, had known who she was even before Donal spoke the 
name, but as they brushed against one another her face lighted again with a 
quick smile.
“Oh, but you are Allart, who was at Hali for half a year. I had heard you were 
in the Hellers, of course, but I had no notion fortune would bring you here to 
us, kinsman. Have you come to work with Tramontana Tower?”
Donal was watching with amazement at this meeting. “But you have not been here 
before, cousin,” he said to Allart.
“That is true,” Rosaura said. “Until this hour, none of us have looked upon our 
kinsman’s face, but we have touched him in the relays. This is a glad day for 
Tramontana, kinsman! Come and meet the rest of us.” Rosaura took them inside, 
and quickly they were surrounded by more than a dozen young men and women—some 
of the others were at work in the relays, others asleep after a night of 
work—all of whom welcomed Donal almost as one of themselves.
Allart’s emotions were mixed. He had managed not to think too much about what he 
had left behind at Hali Tower, and now he was meeting, face to face, minds he 
had touched in the relays there, putting faces and voices and personalities to 
people he had known only in the elusive, bodiless touch of mind to mind.
“Are you coming to Tramontana to stay, cousin? We can use a good technician.”
Regretfully, Allart shook his head. “I am committed elsewhere, though nothing 
would please me more, I think. But I have been long at Aldaran, without much 
news from the outside world. How goes the war?”
“Much as before,” said Ian-Mikhail of Storn, a slight, dark young man with 
curling hair. “There was a rumor that Alaric Ridenow, him they call the Red Fox, 
had been slain, but it was false. King Regis lies gravely ill, and Prince Felix 
has summoned the Council. If he should die, may his reign be long, there will be 
need for another truce while Felix is crowned, should he ever be crowned. And 
among your own kinsmen, Allart, word came through the relays that a son was born 
to your brother’s lady in the first tenday of the rose month. The boy does well, 
though the lady Cassilde has not recovered her strength and could not suckle him 
herself. There is some fear that she will not recover. But the boy has been 
proclaimed your brother’s heir.”
“The gods be thanked, and Evanda the merciful smile on the child.” Allart spoke 
the formula with real relief.
Now Damon-Rafael had a legitimate son; there was no question whether the Council 
would choose a legitimate brother over a nedestro son.
Yet, among the crowding futures, Allart saw himself crowned at Thendara. Angrily 
he tried to slam the door on his laran and the unwelcome possibilities. Have I 
some taint of my brother’s kind of ambition, after all?
“And,” said Rosaura, “I spoke with your lady but three days ago, in the relays.”
Allart’s heart seemed to clutch painfully and knock against his ribs. Cassandra! 
How long had it been since he had called her image to mind? “How does my lady?”
“She seems well and content,” Rosaura said. “You knew, did you not, that she has 
now been appointed full monitor for Coryn’s circle at Hali?”
“No, I had not heard.”
“She is a powerful telepath in the relay-nets. I wonder you could bring yourself 
to leave her behind. You have not been long married, have you?”
“Not yet a year,” Allart said. No, not long, a painfully short time to leave a 
beloved wife… He had forgotten that he was among trained telepaths, a Tower 
circle; for a moment he had dropped his barriers, saw the pain in his thoughts 
reflected all around him.
He said, “The fortunes of war, I suppose. The world will go as it will and not 
as you or I would have it.” He felt sententious, prim, as he mouthed the cliché, 
but they displayed the bland unrevealing non-contact, the mental turning-away 
which is the courtesy among telepaths when truths too revealing have been shown. 
He recovered his composure while Donal spoke of their errand.
“My father sent me for the first of the fire-chemicals to be taken to the 
station at the heart of the resin-tree forest; the others can be sent more 
slowly, with pack-animals. We are building a new fire station on the peak.” The 
talk became general, of fire-fighting, of the season and the early storms. One 
of the leronyn took Donal to make up a packet of the chemicals which could be 
carried back on the gliders, and Rosaura drew Allart aside.
“I regret the necessities which parted you so soon from your bride, kinsman; but 
if you like, and if Cassandra is in the relays, you can speak with her.”
Faced with the possibility, Allart felt his heart clench. He had resigned 
himself, told himself that if he never saw Cassandra again, at least they 
avoided the grimmest of the futures he had seen. Yet he knew he could not 
forbear this chance to speak with her.
The matrix chamber was like any other, the vaulted roof and blue window-lights 
below it admitting soft radiance, the monitor screen, the great relay lattice. A 
young woman in the soft loose robe of a matrix worker knelt before it, her face 
blank and calm with the distant look of a matrix technician with the mind 
attuned elsewhere, thoughts caught up in the relay-nets that linked all the 
telepaths in all the Towers of Darkover.
Allart took his place beside the girl in the relays, the inner part of his 
thoughts still troubled.
What shall I say to her? How can I meet her again, even this way?
But the old discipline held, the ritual breaths to calm his mind, his body 
locking itself in one of the effortless postures which could be maintained 
indefinitely without too much fatigue.
He cast himself into the vast spinning darkness, like the swoop of the glider 
over the great gulf. Thoughts whirled and spun past him like distant 
conversation in a crowded room, meaningless because he was unaware of their 
origin or context. Slowly, as he became more aware of the structure of the 
relay-net tonight, he felt a more definite touch, Rosaura’s voice.
Hali…
We are here, what would you have?
If the lady Cassandra Aillard-Hastur is among you, her husband is with us at 
Tramontana and begs a word with her…
Allart, is it you? As recognizable as her bright hair, her gay girlish smile, he 
touched Arielle. I think Cassandra is sleeping, but for this she will be glad to 
be wakened. Bear my greetings to my cousin Renata; I think of her often with 
love and blessings. I will waken Cassandra for you.
Arielle was gone. Allart was back in the floating silence, messages slipping 
past him without impinging on any part of his mind which could remember or 
register them. Then, without warning, she was there, beside him, around him, a 
presence almost physical… Cassandra!
Allart, my beloved….
The texture of tears, of amazement, disbelief, reunion; an instant, timeless 
(three seconds? three hours?), of absolute, ecstatic joining, like an embrace. 
It was like nothing except the moment when he had first possessed her and in 
that moment felt the barriers drop, felt her mind yield and blend into his, a 
joining more complete, a mutual surrender more total than the union of their 
bodies. Wordless, but complete; he was lost in it, felt her lose herself in it.
It could not be sustained for long at such a level; he felt it drop away, recede 
into ordinary thought, ordinary contact
Allart, how came you to Tramontana?
With the foster-son of Aldaran, to collect the first of the fire-fighting 
chemicals for the high fire season; it is upon us in the Hellers. He flashed to 
her a picture of the long, ecstatic flight here, the swoop of the glider, the 
wind racing past head and body.
We have had fires here, too. The Hali Tower was attacked with air-cars and 
incendiaries. He saw ravening flames on the shore, explosions, an air-car struck 
down and burning like a meteor as it fell, exploded by the linked minds of 
eleven at Hali, the dying shrieks of the flyer who had brought it in, drugged 
and suicidal…
But you are safe, my beloved?
I am safe, although we are all weary, working day and night… Many things have 
happened to me, my husband. I shall have much to tell you. When will you return 
to me?
That must be as the gods will, Cassandra, but I shall not delay any longer than 
I must. … As he formed the word-thoughts he knew they were true. The part of 
wisdom might be never to see her again. But even now he could foresee a day when 
he would hold her in his arms again, and he knew abruptly that even if death 
were the penalty, he would not turn away… nor would she.
Allart, are we to fear the entrance of the Aldarans into this war? Since you 
left us for the Hellers, we have all feared that more than anything else.
No, Aldaran is much beset by strife with his kin; he bears neither loyalty nor 
grudge to either side. I am here to teach laran to Lord Aldaran’s foster-son 
while Renata cares for his daughter… .
Is she very beautiful? In her thoughts, wordless yet unmistakable, he sensed 
rancor, jealousy. Was it for Renata or the unknown daughter? He heard her 
unspoken answer: both….
Very beautiful, yes… . Allart kept his thoughts light, amused. She is eleven 
years old… and no woman on the face of this world, not the Blessed Cassilda 
within her shrine, is half so beautiful as you, my beloved… Then another moment 
of the wholly blissful, ecstatic merging, joining, as if they were clasped 
together, with everything that they were, bodies, minds, souls… He must break 
it. Cassandra could not long sustain this, not if she was working as a monitor. 
Slowly, reluctantly, he let the contact drop away, disappear, fade into 
nothingness, but his whole mind and body were still full of her as if he could 
feel the print of her kiss on his mouth.
Dazed, weary, Allart let himself come back to awareness of the matrix chamber, 
cold and blue, around him, of his own cramped and shivering body. Slowly, after 
a long time, he moved, rose, quietly tiptoed out of the matrix chamber, leaving 
the workers in the relay-nets undisturbed. As he made his way down the long 
twisting stairs, he did not know whether or not he was grateful for the chance 
to speak with her.
It has forged anew a bond which it would have been better to break. In that long 
joining he had picked up many things which he had not, with his conscious mind, 
really understood, but he sensed that Cassandra, too, had tried in her own way 
to break that bond. He was not resentful. They were still bound, more strongly 
than ever, with the bonds of desire and frustration.
And love? And love?
What is love, anyway? Allart was not sure whether the thought was his own, or 
one he had somehow picked up from the confused mind of his young wife.
Rosaura met him at the bottom of the stairs. If she noted his dazed face, the 
traces of tears around his eyes, she said nothing; there were certain courtesies 
among Tower telepaths, where no strong emotion could ever be concealed. She only 
said, quietly matter-of-fact, “After a contact across so much space, you will be 
drained and weary. Come, cousin, and refresh yourself.”
Donal joined them at the meal, and half a dozen of the workers in the Tower who 
were not at their duties or resting. They were all a little manic with the 
relaxation of strain, the rare treat of company in their isolated place. 
Allart’s sorrow and revived longing for Cassandra were swept away on a tide of 
jesting and laughter. The food was strange to Allart, though good; a sweet white 
mountain wine he had never tasted, mushrooms and fungus cooked in a dozen 
different ways, a soft white boiled tuber or root of some kind mashed into 
little cakes and fried in fragrant oil, but there was no meat. Rosaura told him 
that they had resolved to experiment here with a diet of no animal flesh and see 
if it sensitized their awarenesses. This seemed strange and a little silly to 
Allart, but he had lived for years with such a diet at Nevarsin.
“Before you go, we have a message for your foster-father, Donal,” Ian-Mikhail 
said. “Scathfell has sent embassies to Sain Scarp, to Storn, to Ardais and 
Scaravel, and to the Castamirs. I do not know what it is all about, but as 
overlord to Scathfell he should be told. Scathfell would not trust it to the 
relays, so I fear it is some secret conspiracy, and we had heard rumors of a 
breach between your father and Lord Scathfell. Lord Aldaran should be warned.”
Donal looked troubled. “I thank you on my foster-father’s behalf. Of course we 
knew some such things must be happening, but our household leronis is old, and 
has been much occupied with the care of my sister, so we had heard nothing by 
way of the overworld.”
“Is your sister well?” Rosaura asked. “We should have liked to have her here 
with us at Tramontana for her testing.”
“Renata Leynier has come from Hali to care for her during adolescence,” Donal 
said, and Rosaura smiled.
“Renata from Hali; I know her well in the relays. Your sister will be well with 
her, Donal.”
Then it was time to make ready and go. One of the monitors brought them neatly 
made-up packets of the chemicals which, mixed with water or other fluids, would 
expand enormously into a white foam that would cover an incredible expanse of 
fire. More would be sent as soon as land convoy could be arranged. Donal went up 
to the high walk behind the tower and stood there scanning the skies. When he 
descended, he looked grave.
“There may be storms before sunset,” he said. “We should lose no time, cousin.”
This time Allart felt no hesitation about stepping off, drifting on a rising 
current of air, using the power of his matrix to carry him up and up, soaring. 
Yet he could not wholly give himself to the enjoyment of the experience.
The contact with Cassandra, blissful as it had been, had left him drained and 
troubled. He tried to put aside all these thoughts, flying demanded 
concentration on his matrix; preoccupation with outside thoughts was a luxury he 
could not afford. Yet again and again he saw faces cast before him by his laran: 
a big hearty man who oddly resembled Dom Mikhail of Aldaran; Cassandra weeping 
alone in her room at Hali, then rising and composing herself to work in the 
relays; Renata facing Dorilys with angry challenge… He brought himself back by 
force of will to the heights, the soaring rush of air past the glider, the air 
currents tingling painfully in his outstretched fingertips as if each finger 
were the pinion of a soaring hawk, himself neither man nor bird, swooping on the 
air. He knew that in this moment he shared Donal’s inner fantasy.
“There are storms ahead,” said Donal. “I am sorry to take you so far from our 
way when you are not used to flying, but we must go around them. It is not safe 
to fly so near a storm. Follow me, cousin.” He caught a handy air current and 
let himself drift, matrix-aided, away from the straight line to Aldaran.
Allart could see the storm ahead of them, sensing rather than seeing the charges 
of electricity leaping from cloud to cloud. They circled in a long, slow spiral 
almost to the ground, and Allart sensed Donal’s exasperation.
Are we going to have to land somewhere and wait out the storm? I would risk it, 
but Allart is unaccustomed to flying…
I will risk what you risk, kinsman Donal.
Follow me, then. It is like dodging a rain of arrows, but I have done it more 
than once… He dipped his wings, soared upward on a fast current, then darted 
swiftly between two clouds. Quickly! A charge of lightning has just struck and 
there is a little time until another can build up!
Allart felt the curious harsh tingle, and again they ran the gauntlet of darting 
lightning. He would have hung back, but he trusted Donal’s laran to guide them 
through, Donal knowing where and precisely when the lightning would strike. Yet 
Allart felt cold chills strike him. They flew through a sudden small rain squall 
and he clung, drenched and icy, to the struts of the glider, his wet clothes 
freezing against his skin. He followed Donal on the long sickening swoop of 
downdraft, snatched up at the last minute to ride a current up and up till they 
hung circling above the heights of Castle Aldaran.
Donal instructed, a voice in his mind: We cannot go down at once; there is too 
much charge on our gliders and clothing. When we put foot to ground it would 
knock us senseless. We must circle a while; soar, spread your hands to drain off 
the charge. …
Allart, following instructions, drifting in lazy, dreamy circles, knew that 
Donal was in the hawk-persona again, projecting himself into the mind and 
thoughts of a great bird. Circling above the castle; Allart had leisure to look 
down at Aldaran. In these months past it had become a second home to him, but 
now he beheld, with a sense of foreboding, a long caravan of riders winding up 
to the gates. Turning, Allart sent out a wordless cry of warning to Donal, as 
the caravan leader drew and brandished a sword, the sound of his yelling almost 
audible to Allart where he hung high above the battlements, above the steep 
tumbling waterfall.
“But there is no one there, kinsman,” Donal said, troubled. “What ails you? What 
did you see? Truly, there is no one there.”
Dazed, Allart blinked, a sudden giddiness making his wings flutter, and he 
tilted, automatically, to balance on the air. The road to Aldaran lay bare and 
deserted in the thickening twilight—neither riders, nor armed men, nor banners. 
His laran had shown him, only his laran, the foresight of what might, or might 
never, come to pass. It was gone.
Donal fluttered, swooped sidewise. His agitated alarm prompted Allart to follow 
him quickly. “We must get down, even if we are knocked senseless,” he, shouted, 
then sent a swift, agitated thought to Allart: There is another storm coining.
But I see no clouds.
This storm needs no clouds, Donal thought in dismay. This is the anger of my 
sister, generating lightning. The clouds will come. She would not strike us, 
knowing, but still we must get down as quickly as we can.
He let himself drop on a swift current, shifting his weight . on the glider so 
that he hung, vertically, using his weight and twisting his body like an acrobat 
to send the glider downward. Allart, more cautious and less experienced, 
followed a more conservative downward spiral, but he felt, still, the jolt of 
painful electricity as his feet touched the ground behind the castle. Donal, 
unbuckling his harness and shoving the glider in a jumble of ropes at the 
servant who came hurrying to take it, murmured, “What can it be? What has 
happened to upset or frighten Dorilys?” With a word of apology to Allart, he 
hurried away.



CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
 
Renata, too, heard the muttering of the summer thunder, without thinking too 
much about it, as she moved through the castle halls on her way to Dorilys’s 
apartments for their daily late-afternoon lesson.
Because Dorilys was younger than the novice workers in any Tower—and also 
because Dorilys had not, as they did, sought out this training of her own free 
will, pledging herself to endure uncomplaining all the discomforts and 
difficulties of the work—Renata had tried to make the teaching easy and 
pleasant, to devise games and amusements which would develop the girl’s use of 
laran without tedious exercises to tire or bore her. Dorilys was still too young 
to be tested formally for telepathy which rarely developed much in advance of 
puberty, but other forms of laran were earlier to arise, and Renata judged that 
Dorilys had a considerable amount of clairvoyance and, probably, some 
telekinetic power in addition to her formidable gift of generating or 
controlling lightnings. So she had taught her with simple games: hiding sweets 
and toys and letting her find them with her laran, blindfolding her and having 
her find her way among intricate obstacle courses of furniture or unfamiliar 
parts of the castle; having her pick her own possessions, blindfolded, out of a 
jumble of similar ones, by the “feel” of her own magnetism attached to them. She 
was a quick pupil, and enjoyed the lessons so much that on two or three 
occasions Margali had actually controlled her rebellious young charge by 
threatening to deprive her of them, as she did with her music lessons, unless 
she satisfactorily finished the other tasks of which she was not so fond.
As far as Renata could tell, Dorilys was wholly without the two gifts which 
would have made her a trainable Tower worker: telepathy, defined as the ability 
to read or pick up deliberate thought; and empathy, or the ability to feel 
another’s emotions or physical sensations in her own mind and body. But either 
might develop at adolescence—they often did—and if, at that time, she had some 
control of her own energy currents and flows, there would be less danger of the 
dreaded threshold sickness.
If it could only develop earlier—or later! It was the scourge of all the 
families with laran that these troubling facilities should develop at the same 
time the child was going through the physical and emotional upheavals of 
puberty. So many of those who bore these gifts found that the sudden onset of 
psi powers, developing sexuality, and the hormonal and temperamental liability 
of these times were an overload on body and brain. They developed enormous 
upheavals; sometimes crisis, convulsions, and even death followed. Renata 
herself had lost a brother to threshold sickness; no laran family survived 
unscathed.
Dorilys carried Aldaran blood on her father’s side, not the relatively stable 
Delleray, which was akin to the Hastur. What Renata knew of the Aldaran and 
Rockraven lines did not make her entirely hopeful, but the more Dorilys knew of 
the energy currents in her body, the nerve flows and energon runs, the more 
likely she would be to survive these upheavals without undue difficulty.
Now, as she approached Dorilys’s rooms, she sensed overtones of annoyance, weary 
patience (Renata herself considered the old leronis virtually a saint for 
putting up with this difficult and spoiled little girl), and the arrogance of 
Dorilys when she was crossed. Dorilys had seldom shown this pettish side to 
Renata, for she admired the young leronis and wanted her goodwill and liking. 
But she had never been disciplined firmly, and found it difficult to obey when 
her emotions went otherwise. It did not make it easier that, since Darren of 
Scathfell had been struck down, Margali was afraid of her charge, and could not 
conceal it
I am afraid of her, too, Renata thought, but she does not know it, and if I ever 
let her know, I will never again be able to teach her anything!
Outside the door, she heard Dorilys’s voice, just a petulant grumble. She 
heightened her sensitivity to hear Margali’s firm answer.
“No, child. Your stitching is a disgrace. There will be no music lesson, nor any 
lesson with the lady Renata, until you have taken out all those clumsy stitches 
and done them properly.” She added, in a coaxing tone, “You are not so clumsy as 
that; you are simply not trying. You can sew very neatly when you choose, but 
today you have decided you do not want to sew, and so you are deliberately 
making a mess of what you do. Now take out all of those stitches—no, use the 
proper ripping tool, child! Don’t try to take them out with your fingers, or you 
will tear the cloth! Dorilys, what is the matter with you today?”
Dorilys said, “I don’t like sewing. When I am Lady of Aldaran I will have a 
dozen sewing-women, and there is no reason I should learn. The lady Renata will 
not deprive me of my lesson because you say so!”
The rude and spiteful tone of her words decided Renata. The sewing was not 
important, but the self-discipline of working carefully and conscientiously at a 
task for which she had neither talent nor taste was a valuable teaching. Renata, 
a trained empath and monitor, felt as she opened the door the deep searing pain 
across Margali’s forehead, the lines of weariness in the older woman’s face. 
Dorilys was up to her old trick of giving Margali headaches when the older woman 
would not give her everything she wanted. Dorilys was sitting over the hated 
sewing, looking sweet and compliant, but Renata could see, as Margali could not, 
the triumphant smirk on her face as Renata came through the door. She flung the 
sewing to the floor, and rose, hurrying to Renata.
“Is it time for my lesson, cousin?”
Renata said coldly, “Pick up your sewing and put it away properly in its 
drawer—or better yet, sit down and finish it as you should.”
“I don’t have to learn to sew,” Dorilys said, pouting. “My father wants me to 
learn those things which you can teach me!”
“What I can teach you best,” Renata said firmly, “is to do what you have to do, 
when you have to do it, as well as you can do it, whether you want to do it or 
not. I do not care whether you can sew neatly or whether your stitches stagger 
like a chervine drunken on windfall apples”—Dorilys gave a small, triumphant 
giggle—“but you will not use your lessons with me to get the better of your 
foster-mother, or to evade what she wants you to do.” She glanced at Margali, 
who was white with pain, and decided the time had come for a showdown.
“Is she giving you headaches again?”
Margali said faintly, “She knows no better.”
“Then she shall learn better,” Renata said, her voice icy. “Whatever it is that 
you are doing, Dorilys, you will release your foster-mother at once, and you 
will kneel and beg her pardon, and then perhaps I shall continue to teach you.”
“Beg her pardon?” Dorilys said incredulously. “I won’t!”
Something in the tilt of the small chin, though Dorilys was said to resemble her 
dead mother, suddenly made Renata think of Lord Aldaran himself. She has her 
father’s pride, she thought, but she has not yet learned to mask it in courtesy 
and expedient compromise and charm. She is still young and we can see this 
willfulness in all its naked ugliness. Already she does not care who she hurts, 
as long as she gets her own way. And to her, Margali is not much better than a 
servant. Nor am I; she obeys me because it pleases her.
She said, “I am waiting, Dorilys. Beg Margali’s pardon at once, and never do so 
again!”
“I will, if she will promise not to order me around anymore,” Dorilys said 
sullenly.
Renata set her lips. So it was really a showdown, then. If I back down, if I 
allow her to set her own terms, she will never obey me again. And this teaching 
may save her life. I do not want power over her, but if I am to teach her, she 
must learn obedience; to rely on my judgment until she can trust her own and 
control it.
“I did not ask you on what terms you would beg her pardon,” Renata said. “I 
simply told you to do it I am waiting.”
“Renata,” Margali began.
But Renata said quietly, “No, Margali. Keep out of this. You know as well as I 
what the first thing is she must learn.” To Dorilys she said, her voice a 
whiplash, using the trained command-voice, “Kneel down at once and beg pardon of 
your foster-mother!”
Dorilys dropped automatically to her knees; then, springing up, she cried out 
shrilly, “I have told you never to use command-voice on me! I will not allow it, 
and neither will my father! He would not see me humiliated by begging her 
pardon!”
Dorilys, Renata thought, should have been thoroughly spanked before she was old 
enough, or strong enough, to get such exaggerated ideas of her own importance. 
But everyone has been afraid of her, and would not cross her. I do not blame 
them. I am afraid of her, too.
She knew she faced an angry child whose anger had killed. Yet I still have the 
upper hand. She is a child and she knows she is in the wrong, and I am a trained 
Tower technician and monitor. I must teach her, now, that I am stronger than she 
is. Because a day will come, when she is full-grown, when no one will be strong 
enough to control her; and before that time has come, she must be capable of 
controlling herself.
Her voice was a whiplash. “Dorilys, your father gave me charge of you in all 
things. He told me that if you disobeyed, I had his leave to beat you. You are a 
big girl, and I would not like to humiliate you that way, but I tell you—unless 
you obey me at once, and beg pardon of your foster-mother, I shall do exactly 
that, as if you were a baby too small to listen to the voice of reason. Do as I 
tell you, and at once!”
“I will not,” cried Dorilys, “and you cannot make me!” As if to echo her words, 
there was a harsh mutter of thunder outside the windows. Dorilys was too angry 
to hear it, but she sensed it, and flinched.
Renata thought, Good. She is still a little afraid of her own power. She does 
not want to kill again…
Then Renata felt across her own forehead the searing pain, like a tightening 
band… was she picking this up from Margali, with her own empath power? No; a 
quick look at the angry child showed her that Dorilys was taut, frowning, tense, 
concentrated with gritted anger. Dorilys was doing to her what she had done to 
Margali.
The little devil! Renata thought, torn between anger and unwilling admiration of 
the child’s power and spirit. If only all that strength and defiance can be 
turned to some useful purpose, what a woman she will make! Focusing on her 
matrix—which she had never done before in Dorilys’s presence, except to monitor 
her—Renata began to fight back, reflecting the energy at Dorilys. Slowly her own 
pain diminished and she saw the girl’s face go white with strain. She kept her 
voice calm with an effort.
“See? You cannot serve me so, Dorilys. I am stronger than you. I do not want to 
hurt you, and you know it. Now obey me, and we will have our lesson.”
She felt Dorilys strike out, angrily. Summoning all her own strength, she caught 
and held the child as if she had wrapped her physically in her arms, restraining 
body and mind, voice and laran. Dorilys tried to cry out, “Let me go,” and 
discovered, in terror, that her voice would not obey, that she could not make a 
single move… Renata, sensitive, empath, felt Dorilys’s terror as if it were in 
her own body, and ached with pity for her.
But she must know that I am strong enough to protect her from her own impulses, 
that she cannot strike me down without thinking, as she did with Darren. She 
must know that she is safe with me, that I will not let her hurt herself, or 
anyone else.
Now Dorilys was really afraid. For a moment, watching her bulging eyes, the 
frantic small trapped movements of her muscles, Renata felt such pity that she 
could not endure it. I do not want to hurt her, or to break her spirit, only to 
teach her … to protect her from her own terrible power! Someday she will know 
it, but now she is so frightened, poor little love…
She saw the small muscles in Dorilys’s throat moving, struggling to speak, and 
released the hold on the child’s voice; saw the tears starting from Dorilys’s 
eyes.
“Let me go, let me go!”
Margali turned entreating eyes on her; she, too, was suffering, seeing her 
beloved nursling so helpless.
The old leronis whispered, “Release her, Lady Renata. She will be good; won’t 
you, my baby?”
Renata said, very gently, “You see, Dorilys, I am still stronger than you. I 
will not allow you to hurt anyone, not even yourself. I know you do not really 
want to hurt or kill anyone for a moment’s anger because you cannot have your 
own way in all things.”
Dorilys began to sob, still held rigidly motionless in the grip of Renata’s 
laran.
“Let me go, cousin, I beg you. I will be good. I will, I promise. I am sorry.”
“It is not to me you must apologize, child, but to your foster-mother,” Renata 
reminded her gently, releasing her hold on the little girl.
Dorilys dropped to her knees and managed to sob out, “I am sorry, Margali. I did 
not mean to hurt you; I was only angry,” before she collapsed into incoherent 
crying.
Margali’s thin fingers, gnarled now with age, gently stroked Dorilys’s soft 
cheek. “I know that, dear heart. You would never hurt anyone; it is only that 
you do not think.”
Dorilys turned to Renata and whispered, her eyes wide with horror, “I could 
have—could have done to you what I did to Darren—and I love you, cousin, I love 
you.” She flung her arms around Renata, and Renata, still shaking, wrapped her 
arms around the thin, shaking child.
“Don’t cry anymore, sweetheart. I won’t let you hurt anyone. I promise,” she 
said, holding her tight. “I won’t ever let you hurt anyone.” She took her 
kerchief, dried Dorilys’s eyes. “Now put away your sewing properly, and we will 
have our lesson.”
She knows, now, what she is capable of doing, and she is beginning to be wise 
enough to be afraid of it. If I can only manage to control her until she is wise 
enough to control herself!
Outside the window the storm had died to a distant rumble, and then to nothing, 
silence.
  
But, hours later, Renata faced Allart, shaking with long-suppressed tension and 
fear.
“I was stronger than she—but not enough,” she whispered. “I was so frightened, 
kinsman!”
He said soberly, “Tell me about it. What are we to do with her?”
They were sitting in the drawing room of the small and luxurious suite of rooms 
which Lord Aldaran had ordered placed at Renata’s disposal.
“Allart, I hated to frighten her that way! There should be a better way to teach 
her than fear!”
“I do not see what choice you had,” Allart said soberly. “She must learn to fear 
her own impulses. There is more than one kind of fear.” This discussion 
intensified many of his own old anxieties, roused by contact with Cassandra, by 
the long flight with Donal, the surroundings of the Tower at Tramontana. “My own 
battle was fought with fear, the kind of fear that paralyzed me and kept me from 
action. I find little that is good in that kind of fear. Until I mastered it, I 
could do nothing. But it seems to me that she knows too little of caution, and 
fear may have to serve her until she learns rational caution.”
Renata repeated what she had thought during the battle of wills. “If there were 
only some way to harness all that strength, what a woman she could be!”
“Well,” said Allart, “that is, after all, why you are here. Don’t be 
discouraged, Renata. She is very young and you have time.”
“But not enough time,” Renata said. “I fear puberty will come on her before the 
winter’s end, and I do not know if that is enough time to teach her what she 
must learn, before that dreadful stress is placed on her.”
“You can do no more than your best,” Allart said, wondering if the images in his 
mind—a child’s face circled by lightning, Renata’s weeping in the vaulted room, 
her body swollen in pregnancy—were true images or fear alone. How could he 
distinguish between what would happen, what must happen, what might never 
happen?
Time is my enemy … For everyone else it runs one way only, but for me it 
straggles and bends upon itself and wanders into a land where never is as real 
as now…
But he banished self-pity and preoccupation again, looking into Renata’s 
troubled eyes. She seemed so young to him, no more than a girl herself, and 
burdened with such dreadful responsibility! Searching for something to lighten 
her dread, he told her, “I spoke through the relays to Hali; I bear greetings 
and love for you from Arielle.”
“Dear Arielle,” Renata said. “I miss her, too. What news from Hali, cousin?”
“My brother has a son, born to his wife and therefore legitimate,” Allart said. 
“And our king lies gravely ill and Prince Felix has summoned the Council. I know 
little more than that. Hali was attacked by incendiaries.”
Renata shivered. “Was anyone hurt?”
“No, I think not. Cassandra would surely have told me if there had been any 
serious injuries. But they are all overwearied, working night and day,” Allart 
said. Then he came out with what had been on his mind since he had spoken with 
his wife in the relays. “It weighs on me that I am here in safety when she must 
face such dangers! I should care for her and protect her, and I cannot.”
“You face your own dangers,” Renata said gravely. “Do not grudge her the 
strength to face her own. So she is full monitor now? I knew she had the talent, 
if she could endure the training.”
“Still, she is a woman, and I am better fitted to endure danger and hardship.”
“What troubles you, kinsman? Do you fear that if she is no longer dependent on 
you, she will not turn to you with love?”
Is it only that? Am I truly as selfish as that, that I want her weak and 
childlike, so that she will turn to me for strength and protection? He had 
picked up many things from Cassandra’s mind in their long, intense rapport that 
she had not consciously told him, and which he was only now beginning to bring 
into awareness. The timid childlike girl, swayed by impulse, wholly dependent on 
his love and care, had become a strong Tower-trained monitor, a woman, a skilled 
leronis. She still loved him, deeply, passionately—their communion had left him 
no doubt of that—but he was no longer the only thing in her world. Love had 
taken its place among many forces now motivating her, and was not the only one 
she would act upon.
It was painful for him to realize this; more painful to realize how unhappy the 
thought made him.
Would I truly have wanted to keep her like that, timid, virginal, frightened, 
belonging to me alone, seeing the world only through my eyes, knowing only what 
I wanted her to know, being only what I desired in a wife? Custom, the 
traditions of his caste and his pride of family, cried out, Yes, yes! But the 
larger world he had begun to see prompted him to be ashamed of that
Allart smiled ruefully, thinking this was not the first time Renata had 
interceded for his wife’s own good. Now there were other roads for Cassandra 
besides the solitary one he had seen at the end of their love, that she must 
inevitably die in bearing his child. How could he resent anything which removed 
that continuing terror from his mind?
“I am sorry, Renata! You came to me for comfort, and as usual, you have ended by 
comforting and reassuring me! Indeed, I wish I knew more of Dorilys’s laran, so 
I could advise you, but I agree with you that it will be a catastrophe if we 
cannot teach her in time. I saw Donal’s in action today, and it is most 
impressive—more even than when he read which way the fire would move. Now that 
the fire season is starting,” Allart suggested tentatively, “perhaps you could 
take her to the fire station, high on the peaks, and let Donal try to teach her 
a little of how to use this. He knows more of it than either you or I.”
“I think perhaps I must do that,” Renata agreed. “Donal, too, has survived the 
threshold, and it may give her confidence that she can do the same. I am glad 
that she does not read my thoughts; I do not want her to be terrified of what 
may come upon her with her womanhood, but she must be prepared to face that, 
too… She wants more than anything else to learn to fly, as the boys in the 
castle do before they are anywhere near her age. Margali says it is unseemly for 
a girl, but since her laran has to do with the elements, she should learn to 
face them close at hand.” Renata laughed and admitted, “I, too, would like to 
learn. Are you going to go all stiff and monkish on me and say it is unsuitable 
for a woman as for a young girl?”
Allart laughed, signaling with the gesture of a fencer who acknowledges a hit. 
“Are my years in Nevarsin still so plainly visible, cousin?”
“Dorilys will be so happy when I tell her,” Renata said, laughing, and Allart 
realized again, suddenly, how very young she was. She had the self-imposed 
dignity and sober manners of the monitor, she had assumed formal manners and 
self-discipline to teach Dorilys, but she was really only a young girl herself 
who should be as lighthearted and carefree as Dorilys.
“Then, Donal shall teach you both to fly,” he said. “I will speak with him, 
while you teach her to master a matrix and the art of levitating with it.”
Renata said, “I think she is old enough to learn to use a matrix. Now she will 
learn quickly, and not waste her energies upon testing me.”
“It will make it easier to go to the fire station,” Allart told her, “since the 
ride is difficult, and many of the men who work there, watching for fires, find 
it simpler to fly to the peaks.” He glanced self-consciously at the night beyond 
the windows. “Cousin, I must go; it is very late.”
He rose, their hands touching with the fingertip-touch of telepaths, somehow 
more intimate than a handclasp. They were lightly in rapport, still, and as he 
looked down into her lifted face, he saw it aglow, warmed with passion. He was 
aware of her all over again as he had taught himself not to be; the close 
contact with Cassandra, barriers down, had broken the facade of monklike 
austerity, of indifference to women, which he kept so firmly in place. She 
blurred into a dozen women in that momentary touch, his laran showing him the 
possible and the likely, the known and the impossible; and almost without 
volition, before he was fully aware of what he was doing, he had drawn her into 
his arms, was crushing her to him, breathless.
“Renata, Renata—”
She met his eyes, with a troubled smile. They were in such close contact that it 
was impossible to conceal his sudden awareness and hunger for her, and her 
immediate and unashamed response to it.
“Cousin,” she said gently. “What is it that you want? If I have roused you 
without meaning it, I am sorry. I would not knowing have done so, simply to show 
my power over you. Or is it only that you are very much alone and longing for 
anyone who can give you comfort, and sympathy?”
He drew away from her, dazed, but struck by her calm, her complete lack of shame 
or confusion. He wished that he himself were as calm.
“I am sorry, Renata. Forgive me.”
“For what?” she asked, her smile glinting deep in her eyes. “Is it an offense to 
find me desirable? If so, I hope I shall be offended that way many times.” Her 
small hand closed on his. “It is not so serious a thing as that, cousin. I only 
wanted to know how seriously you intended it; that is all.”
Allart muttered miserably, “I don’t know.” Confusion, loyalty to Cassandra, the 
memory of shame and disgust because he had been unable to resist the temptation 
of the riyachiya his father had pushed into his arms, overwhelmed him. Was it 
this which had led him to embrace Renata? The knowledge that she actually shared 
this upsurge of need and emotion confused him all over again.
A woman he could love without fear, one who was not wholly dependent on him… 
Then came a shaming thought: Or am I doing this because Cassandra is no longer 
wholly mine?
She said, laughing up at him, “Why do you refuse for yourself a freedom you have 
given to her?”
He almost stammered, “I do not want to—to use you for my own need, as if you 
were no more than a riyachiya.”
“Ah, no, Allart,” she said in a small voice, clinging to him. “I, too, am alone 
and in need of comfort, kinsman. Only I have learned that it is nothing shameful 
to say so and acknowledge it, and you have not, that is all…”
What Allart saw in her face shocked him with its openness.
He held her close to him, realizing suddenly that for all her strength, for all 
her invulnerable skill and wisdom, she was a girl, and frightened, and like 
himself facing troubles far beyond her ability to solve.
What have the men and women of the Domains done to one another, so that 
everything between us must be shrouded in fear or guilt for what has been or 
what may be. It is so rare that there can be simple kindliness or friendship 
between us, like this.
Holding Renata close in his arms, bending to kiss her very tenderly, he said 
almost in a whisper, “Let us comfort one another, then, cousin,” and led her 
into the inner room.



CHAPTER NINETEEN
 
Dorilys was wildly excited, chattering like a child half her age, but a little 
abashed when Margali dressed her in clothing borrowed from one of the young 
pages. Margali, too, was skeptical.
“Was this necessary, Lady Renata? She is hoyden enough already, without tearing 
about in boys’ clothes!” She looked with frowning disapproval at Renata, who had 
borrowed a pair of breeches from the hall-steward’s fifteen-year-old son.
Renata said, “She must learn to work with her laran, and to do that, she must 
confront the elements where they are, not where we might like them to be. She 
has worked very hard to master the matrix, so that I promised she might fly with 
Donal when she had done so.”
“But is it really needful for her to wear those unseemly breeches? It seems not 
modest to me.”
Renata laughed. “For flying? How modest would it be, do you think, if her gown 
should fill with the wind like a great sail and fly up about her ears? Those 
unseemly breeches seem to me the most modest garment she could possibly wear for 
flying!”
“I had not thought of that,” the old leronis confessed, laughing. “I, too, 
longed to fly when I was a young girl. I wish I were coming with you!”
“Come along, then,” Renata invited. “Surely you have skill enough to learn to 
control the levitators!”
Margali shook her head. “No, my bones are too old. There is a time to learn such 
things, and when that time is past, it is too late. It’s too late for me. But 
go, Renata. Enjoy it—and you, too, darling,” she added, kissing Dorilys’s cheek. 
“Is your tunic fastened? Have you a warm scarf? It is sure to be cold on the 
heights.”
Despite her brave words, Renata felt uneasy. Not since she was five years old 
had she showed the shape of her limbs in any public place. When they joined 
Allart and Donal in the courtyard, they, too, seemed abashed and did not look at 
her.
Renata thought, I hoped Allart had more sense! I have shared his bed, and yet he 
looks everywhere but at me, as if it came as a great surprise to him that I had 
legs like everyone else! How ridiculous is custom!
But Dorilys was quite without self-consciousness, strutting in her breeches, 
demanding to be noticed and admired.
“See, Donal! Now I will be able to fly as well as any boy!”
“And has Renata taught you to practice with the matrix, raising and lowering 
other objects before you tried it with yourself?”
“Yes, and I am good at it. Didn’t you say I was good at it, Renata?”
Renata smiled. “Yes, I think she has a talent for it, which a little practice 
will sharpen into skill.”
While Donal showed his sister the mechanism of the glider-toys, Allart came to 
help Renata with her straps. They stood side by side, watching Dorilys and her 
brother. The night they had spent together had cemented and strengthened their 
friendship; it had not really changed its nature. Renata smiled up at Allart, 
acknowledging his help, realizing with pleasure that she thought of him as she 
always did, as a friend, not a lover.
I do not know what love is. I do not think I really want to know…
She was fond of Allart. She had liked giving him pleasure. But both had been 
content to leave it there, a single shared impulse of loneliness, and not to 
build it into anything it was not. Their needs were basically too different for 
that.
Donal was now showing Dorilys how to read the air currents carefully, how she 
could use the focus of her matrix to amplify them and make them more perceptible 
to her senses. Renata listened carefully; if lads in the Hellers mastered these 
tricks before they were ten years old, surely a trained matrix worker could do 
it, too!
Donal made them all practice a while on the flat windswept area behind the 
castle, running with the winds and letting themselves rise on the currents, 
soaring high and circling, swooping down. Finally he declared himself satisfied 
and pointed to the peak far above them, where the fire station commanded a view 
of the whole valley beyond Caer Donn. “Do you think you can fly so far, little 
sister?”
“Oh, yes!” Dorilys was flushed and breathless, little tendrils of fine copper 
hair escaping from the long braid at her back, her cheeks whipped to crimson 
with the wind. “I love it. I would like to fly forever!”
“Come, then. But stay close to me. Don’t be afraid; you can’t fall, not as long 
as you keep your awareness of the air currents. Now, lift your wings, like 
this—”
He watched her step off and soar upward on a long rising current, rising and 
rising over a long gulf of sky. Renata followed, feeling the draft take her and 
toss her high, seeing Allart rising behind her. Dorilys caught a downdraft and 
was circling, hovering like a hawk, but Donal gestured her onward.
Higher and higher they flew, rising through a damp white cloud, emerging above 
it; now hovering and turning, soaring down until they came to rest on the peak. 
The fire watch station was an ancient structure of cobblestone and timbers; the 
ranger, a middle-aged man, long and lean, with pale gray eyes and the weathered 
look of one who spends much of his time peering into unfathomable distances, 
came to greet them, in surprise and pleasure.
“Master Donal! Has Dom Mikhail sent you with a message for me?”
“No, Kyril; it is only that we wished my sister to see how the fire station is 
managed. This is Lord Allart Hastur, and the lady Renata Leynier, leronis of 
Hali.”
“You are welcome,” the man said, courteously, but without undue servility; as a 
skilled professional, he owed deference to no one. “Have you ever been up to the 
peak before, little lady?”
“No. Father thought it too far for me to ride; also, he said you were too busy 
here during the fire season for guests.”
“Well, he was right,” Kyril said, “but I will be glad to show you what I can as 
I have leisure. Come inside, my dear.”
Inside the station were relief maps of the entire valley, a replica in miniature 
of the tremendous full-circle panorama seen from the windows of the building on 
every side. He pointed out to her the cloud-cover over parts of the valley, the 
areas marked on his map which had been burned over in recent seasons, the 
sensitive areas of resin-trees which had to be watched closely for any stray 
spark.
“What is that light flashing, Master Kyril?”
“Ah, you have sharp eyes, little one. It is a signal to me, which I must 
answer.” He took a mirrored-glass device with a small mechanical cover which 
could be opened and closed swiftly, and stepping to the opened window, began to 
flash a patterned signal into the valley. After a moment the flashing in the 
valley resumed. Dorilys started to ask a question, but he motioned her to be 
quiet, then bent over his map, marked it with chalk, and turned back to her.
“Now I can explain to you. That man signaled to me that he was building a 
cookfire there, while the herdmen take their count of his cattle. It is a 
precaution so that I will not think a forest fire has begun and call men 
together to fight it. Also, if the smoke remains more than a reasonable time for 
a herdman’s cookfire, I will know it is out of control and can dispatch someone 
to help with it before it spreads too far. You see”—he gestured in a circle all 
around the fire-tower— “I must know at every moment where every wisp of smoke 
is, in all this country, and what causes it.”
“You have the chemicals from Tramontana?” Donal asked.
“The first lot reached me just in time to stop a serious outbreak in the 
creek-bed there,” he said, indicating it on the map. “Yesterday a consignment 
was brought here, and others stored at the foot of the peak. It is a dry year, 
and there is some danger, but we have had only one bad burn, over by Dead Man’s 
Peak.”
“Why is it called Deak Man’s Peak?” Dorilys asked.
“Why, I do not know, little lady; it was so called in my father’s time and my 
grandfather’s. Perhaps at some time, someone found a dead man there.”
“But why would anyone go there to die?” Dorilys asked, looking up at the far 
crags. “To me it looks more like a hawk’s nest.”
“There were hawks there once,” Kyril said, “for I climbed to take some when I 
was a young man. But that was long, long ago.” He looked at the distant sea of 
smoke and flame; to the others it was blurred by distance. “There have been no 
hawks there for years…”
Renata interrupted the conversation, saying, “Dorilys, can you tell where the 
fire on that slope will move next?”
Dorilys blinked, her face going blank, staring into the distance. After a moment 
she gestured, and for a moment Allart, astonished, realized she was speaking so 
rapidly it was gibberish.
“What, child?” Renata asked, and Dorilys came back to herself.
She said, “It is so hard to say it in words, when I can see the fire where it 
was and where it is and where it is moving, from its start to its finish.”
Merciful Avarra, Allart thought. She sees it in three dimensions of time—past 
and present and future. Is it any wonder we find it hard to communicate with 
her! The second thought that hit him, hard, was that this might somehow have 
some bearing on his own curious gift… or curse!
Dorilys was trying to focus down, to search, struggling, for words to 
communicate what she saw.
“I can see where it started, there, but the winds drove it down the watercourse, 
and it turned—look—into the… I can’t say it! Into those net things at the edge 
of the wind-stream. Donal,” she appealed, “you see it, don’t you?”
He came and joined her at the window. “Not quite what you see, sister. I think 
perhaps no one sees it quite as you do; but can you see where it will move 
next?”
“It has moved—I mean, it will move there, where they will have the men all 
ganged together to fight it,” she said. “But it will come there only because 
they come. It can feel—No, that isn’t right! There aren’t any words.” Her face 
twisted and she looked as if she were almost crying. “My head hurts,” she said 
plaintively. “Can I have a drink of water?”
“There is a pump behind the door,” the man Kyril said. “The water is good; it 
comes from a spring behind the station. Be sure to hang up the cup when you have 
drunk, little lady.” As she went in quest of her drink, Renata and Donal 
exchanged long looks of amazement
Renata thought, I have learned more about her laran now in a few minutes than I 
have learned in half a season. I should have thought to come here before.
Kyril said in a low voice, “You know, of course, that there are not any men 
fighting the fire now; they controlled it and left it to burn out along the 
lower crags. Yet she saw them. I have seen nothing like this since the sorceress 
Alarie came here once with a fire-talisman to gain command of a great fire, when 
I was a young man. Is the child a sorceress, then?”
Renata, disliking the ancient word smacking so much of superstition, said, “No; 
but she has laran, which we are trying to train properly, to see these things. 
She took to the gliders like a young bird to the air.”
“Yes,” Donal said. “It took me far longer to master them. Perhaps she sees the 
currents more clearly than I can. For all we know, they are solid to her, 
something she can almost touch. I think Dorilys could learn to use a 
fire-talisman; the forge-folk have them, to bring metals from the ground to 
their forges.”
Renata had heard of this. The forge-folk had certain especially adapted 
matrixes, which they used for mining and for that purpose only; a technique both 
more crude and more developed than the highly technical mining methods of the 
Towers. She had the Tower technician’s distrust of matrix methods developed in 
this catch-as-catch-can, pragmatic way, without theory.
Kyril looked into the valley, saying, “The cookfire is out,” and erased the 
chalk mark on his map. “One less trouble, then. That valley is all as dry as 
tinder. May I offer you some refreshment, sir? My lady?”
“We have brought food with us,” Allart said. “Rather, we would be honored if you 
would share our meal.” He began to unwrap the packages of dried fruit, 
hard-baked bread, and dried meat that they had brought.
“I thank you,” Kyril said. “I have wine here, if I may offer you a cupful, and 
some fresh fruit for the little lady.”
They sat near the window so that Kyril could continue his watch. Dorilys asked, 
“Are you alone here all the time?”
“Why, no, lady. I have an apprentice who helps me, but he has gone down the 
valley today to see his mother, so for the day I am alone. I had not thought I 
would be entertaining guests.” He drew out his clasp-knife from his heavy boot 
and began to peel her an apple, spiraling the peel into delicately cut designs. 
She watched with fascination, while Renata and Allart watched the clouds moving 
slowly across the valley far below them, casting strange shadows. Donal came and 
stood behind them.
Renata asked him, in a low voice, “Can you, too, sense where the storms will 
move?”
“A little, now, when I can see them spread out this way before me. I think 
perhaps that when I am watching a storm I move a little outside of time, so that 
I see the whole storm, from start to finish, as Dorilys saw the whole fire a 
little while ago.” He glanced back at Dorilys, who was eating her apple, 
chattering with the ranger. “But somehow at the same time I see the lightnings 
in sequence, one after another, so that I know where each one will strike and 
which first, because I can see the pattern of where they move through time. That 
is why, sometimes, I can control them—but only a little. I cannot make them 
strike anywhere, as my sister does,” he added, lowering his voice so that it 
would not carry to the little girl. “I can only, now and again, divert them so 
that they will not strike where they have already begun to move.”
Allart listened, frowning, thinking of the sensitive divisions of time which 
this gift took. Donal, picking up his thoughts, said, “I think this must be a 
little like your gift, Allart. You move outside time, too; do you not?”
Allart said, troubled, “Yes, but not always into real time. Sometimes, I think, 
a kind of probability time, which will never happen, depending on the decisions 
of many, many other people, all crisscrossing. So that I see only a little part 
of the pattern of what will be or what may be. I don’t think a human mind could 
ever learn to sort it all out.”
Donal wanted to ask some questions about whether Allart had ever tested his gift 
under kirian, one of the telepathic drugs in use in the Towers, for it was well 
known that kirian somehow blurred the borders between mind and mind so that 
telepathy was easier, time not quite so rigid. But Renata was following her own 
line of question, her mind again on her charge.
“You all saw how the fire troubled her,” she said. “I wonder if that has 
something to do with the way she uses her gift—or strikes. Because in anger or 
confusion, she no longer sees a pattern of time clearly; for her there is 
nothing but that one moment, of rage, or anger, or fear… She cannot see it as 
only one of a progression of moments. You spoke of a fever she had as a child, 
when storms raged around the castle for days, and you wondered what dreams or 
delirium prompted them. Possibly there was some damage to the brain. Fevers 
often impair laran.” She considered for a long moment, watching the slow 
inexorable drifting of the storm clouds below them, which now masked a sizable 
part of the valley floor.
Dorilys came up behind them, winding her arms around Renata like an affectionate 
kitten trying to climb into a lap.
“Is it me you are talking about? Look down there, Renata. See the lightning 
inside the cloud?”
Renata nodded, knowing the storm was just beginning to build up enough 
electrical potential to show lightnings; she herself had not seen lightning yet.
“But there are lightnings in the air even when there are no clouds and no rain,” 
Dorilys said. “Can’t you see them, Renata? When I use them, I don’t really bring 
them, I just use them.” She looked sheepish, guilty, as she added, “When I gave 
Margali a headache, and tried to do it with you, I was using those lightnings I 
couldn’t see.”
Merciful gods, Renata thought, this child is trying to tell me, without knowing 
the words, that what she does is to tap the electrical potential field of the 
planet itself! Donal and Allart, picking up the thought, turned startled eyes on 
her, but Renata did not see them, suddenly shuddering.
“Are you cold, cousin?” the child asked solicitously. “It is so warm…”
All the gods at once be thanked that at least she cannot read minds as well…
Kyril had come over to the window, looking with concentrated attention at the 
curdled mass of gray that was the storm center and the lightnings just beginning 
to be visible within it. “You asked about my work, little lady. This is a part 
of it, to watch where the storm center moves, and see if it strikes anywhere. 
Many fires are set by lightning, though sometimes no smoke can be seen for a 
long time after.” He added, with an apologetic glance at the noblemen and 
Renata, “I think perhaps that some unknown forefather endowed me with a little 
foresight, because sometimes when I see a great strike I know that it will later 
blaze up. And so I watch it with a little more care, for some hours.”
Renata said, “I would like to inquire into your ancestors, and find how even 
this diluted trace of laran came into your blood.”
“Oh, I know that,” Kyril said, again almost apologetic. “My mother was a 
nedestro of the old lord of Rockraven’s brother—not he who rules there now, but 
the one before him.”
So how can I say there is any laran gift which is all evil, without potential 
use for good? Renata thought. Kyril had turned his own small inherited gift to a 
useful, skilled, and harmless profession.
But Donal was following his own thoughts.
“Is it so, then, Kyril? Why, then, we are kinsmen.”
“True, Master Donal, though I never sought to bring myself to their notice. 
Saving your presence, they are a proud people, and my mother was too humble for 
them. And I have no need of anything they could give.”
Dorilys slid her hand confidingly through Kyril’s. “Why, then, we are related, 
too, kinsman,” she said, and he smiled and patted her cheek.
“You are like your mother, little one; she had your eyes. If the gods will, you 
will have inherited her sweet voice, as you have her pretty ways.”
Renata thought, How she charms everyone, when she is not being proud or sullen! 
Aliciane must have had that sweetness.
“Come here, Dorilys,” she said. “Look at the storm; can you see where it will 
move?”
“Yes, of course,” Dorilys narrowed her eyes and squinted her face in a comical 
way, and Allart glanced at Renata for permission to question her pupil.
“Is its course fixed, then, not to be changed at all?”
Dorilys said, “It’s awfully hard to explain, kinsman. It could go this way or 
that, if the wind changed, but I can only see one or two ways the wind could 
change…”
“But the path is fixed?”
“Unless I tried to move it,” she said.
“Could you move it?”
“It’s not so much that I could move it,” Dorilys frowned in fierce concentration 
as she fumbled for words she had never been taught and did not know existed. 
“But I can see all the ways it could move. Well, let me show you,” she said.
Allart, sliding lightly into rapport with her mind, began to sense and see the 
thick gray high-piled storm clouds as she saw them, everywhere at once. Yet he 
could trace where the storm was now, where it had been, and at least four ways 
it might be.
“But what will be cannot be altered; can it, little cousin? It follows its own 
laws; does it not? You have nothing to do with it.”
She said, “There are places I could move it and places I could not, because the 
conditions are not right for it to go there. It’s like a stream of water,” she 
said, fumbling. “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; do you understand, cousin? I can’t explain,” she said plaintively. 
“It makes my head ache. Let me show you. See?” She pointed to the enormous 
anvil-shaped storm mass below. His sensitivity keyed into hers, he suddenly saw 
with his own gift, the probable track of the storm with others less probable 
through and over the most likely path; it faded into the nothingness of total 
unlikeliness and then impossibility at the far outer edges of his perceptions. 
Then Dorilys’s strange gift was his own gift, expanded, altered, strangely 
different, but basically the same: to see all the possible futures, the places 
where the storm might strike, the places where it might not because of its own 
nature…
And she could choose between them like himself, to a very limited degree because 
of the forces outside herself which moved them…
As I saw my brother on the throne, or dead, within seven years. There was no 
third choice, that he could choose to remain content as Lord Elhalyn, because of 
what he is. …
He felt almost overwhelmed by this sudden insight into the nature of time, and 
probability, and of his own laran. But Renata was more practical.
“Can you actually control it, then, Dorilys? Or just tell where it will go?” 
Allart followed her thought. Was this simply precognition, foreknowledge, or was 
it like the power of levitation, moving an inanimate object?
“I can move it anywhere it could go,” she said. “It could go there or there”—she 
pointed—“but not there because the wind couldn’t change that fast, or that hard. 
See?” Turning back to Kyril, she asked, “Is it likely to start a fire now?”
“I hope not,” the man said soberly, “but if the storm should move down toward 
High Crags there, where the resin-trees grow so thickly, we could have a bad 
fire.”
“Then we will not let it strike there,” Dorilys said, laughing. “It won’t hurt 
anything if the lightning strikes down there, near Dead Man’s Peak, where it is 
already all burned over; will it?” As she spoke a great blue-white bolt of 
lightning ripped from cloud to earth, striking Dead Man’s Peak with a searing 
blaze, leaving a glare of sparks on all their eyes. After a second or two they 
heard the great crash of the thunder rolling over them.
Dorilys laughed in delight. “It is better than the fire-toys the forge-folk set 
off for us at midwinter!” she cried, and again the great flare of lightning 
arched across the sky, and again, while she laughed excitedly, pleased with the 
new ability to do what she would with the gift she had borne, not knowing it, 
all her life. Again and again the great blue-white, green-white bolts ripped and 
flamed down on Dead Man’s Peak, and Dorilys shrieked with hysterical laughter.
Kyril stared at her, his eyes wide with awe and dread. “Sorceress,” he 
whispered. “Storm queen…”
Then the lightnings died, the thunders rambled and rolled into silence, and 
Dorilys swayed and leaned against Renata, her eyes dark circled, smudged with 
fatigue. Again she was a child exhausted, white and worn. Kyril lifted her 
tenderly and carried her down a short flight of stairs. Renata followed him. He 
laid her on his own bed.
“Let the little one sleep,” he said.
As Renata bent over the child to pull off her shoes, Dorilys smiled up at her 
wearily and was at once asleep.
Donal looked at her, questioning, as she came back to them.
“She is already asleep,” Renata said. “She could not fly like this; she has 
exhausted herself.”
“If you wish,” Kyril said diffidently, “you and the little lady can have my bed, 
vai domna, and tomorrow, when the sun comes out, I can flash a signal for them 
to bring riding animals for you to return home that way.”
“Well, we shall see,” Renata said. “Perhaps when she has slept a while, she will 
have recovered enough to fly back to Aldaran.” She moved behind him to the 
window, watching as his brow ridged in a worried frown.
“Look. The lightning has struck there, in that dry canyon,” he pointed. Renata, 
with all her extended perception, could not see the slightest wisp of smoke, but 
she did not doubt that he saw it. “There is no sun for me to flash a signal. By 
the time it comes out again the fire will have taken hold there, but if I could 
reach anyone—”
Allart thought, We should have telepaths stationed on these watchtowers, so that 
they could reach others stationed below at such times. If someone were standing 
by in the nearest village, armed with a matrix, Kyril or another could signal to 
have the fire put out.
But Donal was thinking of the requirements of the moment. He said, “You have the 
fire-fighting chemicals I brought from Tramontana. I will fly there in my glider 
and spread the chemicals where the lightning struck. That will damp the fire 
before it really starts.”
The old ranger looked at him, troubled. “Lord Aldaran would be ill pleased if I 
let his foster-son run such a danger!”
“It is no longer a question of letting me, old friend. I am a grown man, and my 
foster-father’s steward, and responsible for the well-being of all these people. 
They shall not be ravaged by fire if I can prevent it.” Donal turned, breaking 
into a run, down the stairs and through the room where Dorilys still lay in her 
stunned sleep. Kyril and Renata hurried after him. He was already buckling 
himself into his flying-harness.
“Give me the chemicals, Kyril.”
Reluctantly the ranger handed over the sealed water-cylinder, the packet of 
chemicals. When mixed together, they would expand into a foam that could cover 
and smother an extraordinary expanse of flames.
As he moved toward the open space, before he could break into the run of 
takeoff, she stopped him.
“Donal, let me go, too!” Would they really let him fly alone into such danger?
“No,” he said gently. “You are too new to flying, Renata. And there is some 
danger.”
She said aloud, and knew her voice was shaking, “I am not a court lady, to be 
sheltered against all dangers. I am a trained Tower worker, and I am used to 
sharing all the dangers I see!”
He reached out, took her shoulders gently between his hands. “I know,” he said 
softly, “but you have not the experience of flying; I should be hindered by 
having to stop and make certain you knew precisely what to do, and there is need 
for haste. Let me go, cousin.” His hands on her shoulders tightened and he 
pulled her into a quick, impulsive embrace.
“There is not as much danger as you think, not for me. Wait for me, carya.” He 
kissed her, swiftly.
She stood, still feeling the touch of his lips, watching him run toward the edge 
of the cliff, wings tilted to catch the wind. Donal soared off, and she stood 
shading her eyes against the glare, watching the glider shrink to hawk-size, 
sparrow-size, a pinpoint dipping behind the clouds. When it was gone she blinked 
hard, turned, and made her way inside the fire station.
Allart was standing at the windows, watching intently. He said as she joined 
him, “Since Dorilys showed me what she sees, I am somehow a little more able to 
control my foresight. It is a matter of shifting the perceptions for all times 
and seeing which is most real…”
“I am so glad, cousin,” she said, and meant it, knowing how painfully Allart had 
struggled with this curse of laran. But in spite of her very real concern for 
Allart, who was her kinsman, her lover, her friend, she discovered that she had 
no time to think of Allart now. All of her emotional tension was stretched 
outward, focused on that small distant fleck which was Donal’s glider, hovering 
high above the valley, dipping slowly, slowly down, skirting the edge of the 
storm-pattern. And suddenly, all her emotion, all the empathic laran of a 
Tower-trained monitor, surged into awareness, identity, and she was Donal. She 
was…
  
… flying high above the valley, sensing the taut energy-net currents strung 
across the sky as if they were banners flying from the heights of the castle, 
snapped in the wind, trailing forces. He spread his fingertips to drain off the 
tingle of the electricity, hovering, soaring, all his attention focused on the 
spot on the forest floor that Kyril had pointed out to him.
A thin wisp of smoke, curling, half concealed by leaves and the long gray-green 
needles of evergreens, lying fallen and crisped by frost and sun on the ground… 
It could smolder there unseen for days before blazing into a fire that could 
ravage all of the valley… It had been well that he came. This was all too near 
the estate of High Crags which his foster-father had given him.
I am a poor man. I have nothing to offer Renata even if such a lady would be my 
wife… nothing but this poor estate, here in fire-country and ravaged again and 
again by fire. I had thought I could marry, establish a household. Yet now it 
seems to me all too little to offer my dear lady. Why do I think she would have 
me?
(Standing frozen, intent at the wide windows, Renata shivered, not really there 
at all. Allart, turning to speak, saw it and let her be.)
Again, Renata’s awareness merged with his, Donal dropped down and down, hanging 
from the struts of the glider. He circled the small trailing wisp of smoke, 
studying it, unaware of how the storm above him moved and drifted and rumbled. 
The glider was dropping swiftly now, the wide wings slowing his fall just enough 
so that he could land on his feet, fall forward, braking his fall with his 
outstretched hands. He did not bother to unfasten the glider harness as he 
pulled the sealed water-cylinder from its place under the strut. After tearing 
it open with his teeth he tucked it under his arm while he ripped open the small 
packet of chemicals; then he dropped the chemicals into the water, held the 
pliable cylinder over the wisp of smoke, and watched as the green foam bubbled 
and surged out, foaming up and up endlessly, aiming and spilling around the 
forest floor, soaking quickly into the ground. The smoke was gone; only the last 
remnants of the oozing foam remained. Like all fire-fighters, Donal was 
astonished anew at how quickly a fire, once controlled at its source, could 
subside as if it had never been.
The most fickle of the elements, easiest to call, most difficult to control… The 
words came from nowhere in his mind and were as swiftly gone again. He folded 
the limp bag which had once been the water-cylinder, its impermeable material 
still smelling faintly of chemical slime, and tucked it under one of the ropes 
of the glider harness.
This was so simple; why did Renata fear for me? Looking into the sky, he knew. 
The clouds had gathered again around him, and it was certainly no weather for 
flying. There was no rain here, the air still heavy and sullen, oppressive and 
thick; but above him on the slopes of Dead Man’s Peak, the storm raged, heavy 
rain and black clouds laced intermittently by flares of lightning arching from 
cloud to the waiting ground. He was not really afraid, for he had been flying 
since he was a small boy. Frowning, he stood for a moment studying sky and air 
currents, the pattern of the storm, the winds, trying to calculate his best 
chances of return to the fire station with the least danger or difficulty.
At least the storm on Dead Man’s Peak has drowned the last vestiges of the fire.
Scanning the sky, Donal whipped off the glider harness and tucked the 
contraption, wings folded, under his arm. Walking very far with the wings 
trailing offered too much drag, and there was also the danger of catching and 
snagging them on something. He climbed a small, steep hillside from where he 
knew he could catch a wind, strapped himself into the glider harness again, and 
tried to take off. But the winds were swirling, capricious. Twice he made a 
short run, tried to catch enough wind in his wings to take off, but each time 
the wind shifted around and spilled him, once with a painful tumble to the 
ground.
Picking himself up, bruised, Donal swore. Was Dorilys playing again with winds 
and air currents, shifting wind and magnetic fields without knowing he was down 
there? No, surely, Renata and Allart would keep her from trying any such tricks. 
But if she were still sleeping, still enormously nerved up from the excitement 
of the day, her first flight, the effort of controlling her gift? Did her 
dreaming mind shift winds and air at will, then?
Without enthusiasm he contemplated the distant peak where the fire station 
stood. Was he going to have to climb up there on foot? He could hardly do that 
before dark. The road was good enough, for supplies had to be brought up to the 
fire station every tenday; he had heard this road had been matrix-surfaced, in 
the time of Dom Mikhail’s grandfather. But, still, he did not want to climb it. 
The best that could be said for it was that it was less trouble than scrambling 
up a rocky hillside. Yet if he could not catch a wind steady enough to lift him, 
with the aid of his matrix crystal, he must trudge up that road, carrying the 
glider under his arm!
He looked again at the sky, heightening his sensitivity to wind and air. The 
only wind steady enough to bear him up was blowing steadily toward the storm 
over Dead Man’s Peak. Yet if he could ride up on this wind, catching a 
crosscurrent somewhere that would carry him back toward the fire station… there 
was some risk to it, yes. If the wind was too brisk, he would be carried along 
into the storm raging there.
Yet if he took the time to climb all that way, it would be dark and dangerous. 
He must risk the wind blowing toward the peak. He took a little extra time to 
make certain his straps were snug and secure, inspected the struts and their 
fastenings, and finally discarded the plastic fabric of the water-container. It 
could be reclaimed some other time, and even a little extra weight might make 
the difference in what was going to be a fairly tricky flying maneuver. Then he 
ran toward the edge of the hill, focusing on his matrix, letting the wind and 
the force of levitation bear him upward; felt, with relief, the wind catch in 
the broad edge-planes of his glider and carry him up and outward, along on the 
rising current of the solid draft.
He rose, soaring high, racing along on the wind with such force that every strut 
and rope of the glider shuddered and he could hear a high singing note above the 
roar of wind past his ears. He felt a curious, cold, exhilarating fear, his 
senses strained to their limit, taken up with the delight of soaring on the 
wind. If I fall I could be smashed—but I will not fall! Like a hawk in its 
native element he circled, looking down at the valley below, the ragged rents in 
the clouds over the fire station, the thickly piled storm clouds, sullen with 
lightning, over Dead Man’s Peak. Circling again, he caught a cross-draft which 
would take him in the general direction of the fire station; he tilted his wings 
into it, a bird in his element, every sense given into the ecstasy of the 
flight. He was not aware of Renata’s mind linked with his, but he found himself 
thinking, I wish Renata could see this as I see it. Somehow in his mind he 
linked the ecstasy of that soaring long glide, the rush of wind past the struts, 
with the moment, all too brief, when he had held her and felt her mouth on his 
own…
Lightning crackled ominously, the metal clips at the end of the struts gleamed, 
suddenly, with bluish light, and Donal, tingling with undischarged electricity, 
realized that the storm had begun to move, swiftly on the wind, down the valley 
toward the fire station. He could not even descend; carrying this much 
electrical charge, he could not touch ground or he would be killed. He must 
circle until the charge was drained away. Through the sudden thunder, he 
realized that he was very much afraid. The storm was moving the wrong way. It 
should have drifted out past Dead Man’s Peak and now it was turning back. 
Suddenly he remembered the day of Dorilys’s birth, the day of his mother’s 
death. The storm had been wrong then, too! Dorilys, asleep, dreaming dreams of 
terror and power, reaching out to tap the forces of the storm. But why would she 
focus them on him, even in sleep?
Does she know that she is no longer the only female creature in my thoughts and 
in my heart? He fought to keep his place in the air, despite the stubborn 
downdraft that sought to carry him downward to the open space behind the fire 
station. He knew he must circle once more. Again the crackle of thunder in the 
air deafened him, and gusts and spurts of cold rain chilled him. Once again he 
felt the lightning moving around him, and with every last atom of his laran he 
reached out, twisted something, thrust it elsewhere…
It was gone. Thunder crackled through his body and he fell like a stone, with 
his last strength catching a current which could bring him in at the very edge 
of the open space behind the fire station. Or would he miss it, go tumbling down 
the side of the mountain to wind up, smashed, far below? Half-unconscious, he 
saw someone running below him, running toward where he would land. He fell 
heavily, staggering. His feet touched ground, and Renata caught him in her arms 
and held him, drenched and senseless against her for a moment before his weight 
overwhelmed her and they fell, together.
Wrung, exhausted, Renata held the unconscious Donal against her breast. His face 
was cold with rain and for a terrified moment she did not know if he were alive, 
then she felt the warmth of his breath against her, and her own world started to 
move again.
Now do I know what it is to love. To see nothing ahead except the one … to know, 
now, kneeling here as he lies stricken in my arms, that if he had been killed, 
in a very real sense I would have died here, too… Her fingers fumbled on the 
straps, loosening the miraculously undamaged glider. But his eyes opened; he 
pulled her down to him and their lips met, in a sudden, profound quiet. They 
neither saw nor heeded Allart and Kyril watching them. Once and for all, now and 
forever, they knew they belonged to one another. Whatever happened afterward 
would simply be confirmation of what they already knew.



CHAPTER TWENTY
 
As long as she lived, Renata knew, nothing in mind or memory would ever match 
the splendor of this season—high summer in the Hellers, and Donal at her side. 
Together they flew along the long valleys in their gliders, soaring from peak to 
peak, hiding beneath the crags from the summer storms, or lay side by side in 
the hidden canyons, hour after hour, watching clouds move across the sky, and 
turning from the sky to the green earth and to one another.
Day by day Dorilys came nearer to mastery of her strange gift, and Renata began 
to be more optimistic. Perhaps all would be well. Probably Dorilys should never 
risk bearing a child, certainly never a girl child, but she might survive 
puberty undamaged. In the flood of her own love, Renata felt she could not 
endure to rob Dorilys of that promise, that hope.
And I mocked Cassandra! Merciful Avarra, how young I was, how ignorant!
On one of the long, brilliant summer afternoons, they lay hidden in a green 
valley, looking up at the heights where Dorilys, with a few of the lads from the 
castle, was soaring like a bird, wheeling on the updrafts.
Donal said, “I am skilled enough with a glider, but I never could ride the winds 
as she does. I would not have dared. None of the boys is half so skilled or so 
fearless.”
“None of them has her gift,” Renata said, looking up into the dizzying violet 
depths of the sky, and blinking with sudden tears. Sometimes it seemed to her, 
in this first and last summer of their love, that Dorilys had become her own 
child, the girl child she knew she would never dare to bear to her lover; but 
Dorilys was theirs, theirs to teach and train, theirs to love.
Donal leaned over suddenly and kissed her, and then touched her eyelashes with a 
light finger. “Tears, beloved?”
Renata shook her head. “I have been looking too long into the sky, watching 
her.”
“How strange this is,” Donal said, taking her hands in his and kissing the 
slender fingers. “I had never thought—” His voice trailed off, but they were so 
deeply in rapport that Renata could follow his unspoken thoughts.
I never thought love would come to me like this. I knew that someday, soon or 
late, my foster-father would find me a wife, but to love like this… it does not 
seem real. I must somehow find courage to tell him, sometime… Donal tried hard 
to imagine himself going against custom and civilized behavior, walking into his 
foster-father’s study and saying to him, “Sir, I have not waited for you to find 
me a bride. There is a woman I wish to marry…” He wondered if Dom Mikhail would 
be very angry with him; or, worse, if he would blame Renata.
But if he knew that there would never again be any happiness in life for me, 
except with Renata… He wondered if Dom Mikhail could possibly ever have known 
what it was to love. His marriages had been properly arranged by his family; 
what could he possibly know of the emotion that swept them both up this way? He 
felt the wind blow cold on him and shivered, feeling a distant premonitory 
breath of thunder.
“No,” Renata said. “She knows the storm currents too well; she is not in any 
danger. Look! All the lads are following her now—” She pointed upward at the 
line of children, tipping and circling on the wings of the wind, arrowing back 
like a flight of wild birds toward the distant high crags of Aldaran. “Come, 
dear love. The sun will set soon, and the winds grow so strong at sunset; we 
must go back and join them.”
His hands trembled as he helped her to fasten the straps of her glider.
She whispered, “Of all the things you have shared with me, Donal, perhaps this 
is the most wonderful. I do not know if any other woman in the Hellers has ever 
been able to fly like this.” Donal saw, in the gathering sunset crimsons, the 
flicker of a tear on her lashes; but without a rebuff, she evaded his thoughts, 
tipping the wings of her glider and running away down the long valley, catching 
a swift draft and soaring up, up, and away from him, to hang on a long drift of 
air until he flew at her side.
That evening in the hall, when Dorilys had made her good nights and been sent 
away, Aldaran gestured to Allart and Renata to remain. The musicians were 
playing and some of the house-folk were dancing to the sound of the harps, but 
Dom Mikhail frowned as he spread out a letter.
“Look here. I sent an embassy to Storn to open negotiations for a marriage with 
Dorilys. Last year they were willing to speak of nothing else, but this year I 
receive only a reply that since Dorilys is so young, perhaps we should speak of 
it again when she is of an age to be married. I wonder—”
Donal said bluntly, “Dorilys has been handfasted twice, and both her affianced 
husbands met a violent death soon after. Dorilys is clever, and beautiful, and 
her dower is Castle Aldaran; but it would be surprising if it were not remarked 
that those who seek to wed her do not live long.”
Allart said, “If I were you, Lord Aldaran, I would wait to think further of 
marriage until Dorilys has passed puberty and is free of the danger of threshold 
sickness.”
Aldaran said, his breath catching in his throat, “Allart, have you foreseen… 
will she die of threshold sickness like the children of my first marriage?”
Allart said, “I have seen nothing of the kind.” He had tried, very hard, not to 
look ahead. It seemed now that he saw nothing except disasters, many of which 
could not be tied down to time or place. Again and again he had seen Castle 
Aldaran under siege, arrows flying, armed men striking, lightnings aflare and 
striking down on the keep. Allart had tried to do as he did at Nevarsin—to 
barricade it all away from his mind, to see nothing; for most of what he saw 
were lies and meaningless fear.
“Foresight is useless here, my lord. If I should see a hundred different 
possibilities, still, only one of them can come to pass. So it is meaningless to 
see ahead and fear the other ninety-and-nine. But if it were inevitable that 
Dorilys should die in threshold sickness at puberty, I do not think I would be 
able to avoid seeing it; and I have not.”
Dom Mikhail leaned his head in his hands, and said, “Would that I had some trace 
of your gift, Allart! For it seems to me that this is clear sign that the folk 
of Storn have been in communication with my brother of Scathfell; and they will 
not anger him because he still hopes to win Aldaran somehow, if I die without 
son or son-in-law to hold it for me. And that,” he said, pausing and moving his 
head with that quick hawklike movement, “will never be, while the four moons 
ride in the heaven and snow falls in midwinter!”
His eyes fell on Donal, and softened, and all of them could follow what he was 
thinking, that it was high time Donal, at least, was wed. Donal tensed knowing 
this was not the time to speak and cross him, but Dom Mikhail said only, “Go, 
children, join the dancers in the hall, if you will. I must think what to say to 
my kinsman of Storn,” and Donal breathed again.
But later that night, Donal said, “We must not delay much longer, beloved. Or a 
day will come when he will summon me and say, ‘Donal, here is your bride,’ and I 
will be put to the trouble of explaining to him why I cannot marry whatever 
spiritless daughter of one of his vassals he has found for me. Renata, shall I 
journey to the Kilghard Hills and make suit, then, in my own name for your hand? 
Would Dom Erlend, do you think, give his daughter to a poor man, lord of no more 
than the small holding at High Crags? You are daughter to a powerful Domain; 
your kinsmen will say I was quick to go wooing a rich dower.”
Renata laughed. “I have but a small dower of my own; I have three older sisters. 
And my father is so displeased that I have come here without his consent that he 
may even refuse me that! Such dower as I have is from Dom Mikhail, for my care 
of Dorilys, and he will hardly be sorry to keep it in his own family!”
“Still, he has been kinder to me than any father of my own blood could have 
been, and he deserves better of me than this double-dealing. Nor do I want your 
kinsmen to think I have seduced you while you dwelt under my foster-father’s 
roof, perhaps for the sake of that very dower.”
“Oh, that wretched dower! I know you do not care for that, Donal.”
“If it is necessary, my love, I will give up all claim on it and take you in 
your bare shift,” he said seriously.
Renata laughed and pulled his head down to her. “You would take me better 
without it,” she teased, loving the way he still blushed like a boy half his 
age.
She had never believed she could be so wholly lost to everything except her 
love. She thought, For all my years in the Tower, for all the lovers I have 
taken, I might as well have been a child Dorilys“s age! Once I knew what love 
could be, all the rest meant nothing, nothing at all, less than nothing…
“Still, Renata,” Donal said, resuming the conversation at last, “my 
foster-father should know.”
“He is a telepath. I am sure he knows. But I think he has not yet decided what 
he means to do about it,” Renata said, “and it would be quite unkind of us to 
force it upon his attention!”
Donal had to be content with that, but he wondered. How could Dom Mikhail ever 
have thought that Donal would go against custom this way, and turn his thoughts, 
unpermitted, upon a marriageable woman without the consent of her kin? He felt 
strange, alienated from the pattern he knew his life should have taken.
Looking at the troubled face of her lover, Renata sighed. In her solitary 
struggles with conscience in the Tower, she had realized that inevitably she 
must break away from the traditional patterns allotted to a woman of her clan. 
Donal had never, till now, faced the necessity for change.
“I shall send to my father, then, when it is too late for him to reply before 
midwinter, telling him that we are to be married at midwinter-night—if you still 
want me.”
“If I still want you? Beloved, how can you ask?” Donal reproached, and the rest 
of their conversation was not held in words.
  
Summer drew on. The leaves began to turn, Dorilys celebrated her birthday, and 
the first of the harvest was gathered in. On a day when all of Aldaran’s people 
had gone out to see the great wagons filled with sacks of nuts and jugs of the 
oil pressed from them borne into one of the outlying barns, Allart found himself 
standing next to Renata in an outlying part of the courtyard.
“Are you to remain for the winter, kinsman? I shall not leave Dorilys till she 
is safely past puberty; but you?”
“Donal has asked me to stay, and Dom Mikhail as well. I shall remain until I am 
summoned by my brother.” Beyond the words Renata sensed weariness and 
resignation. Allart was painfully longing for Cassandra; in one of his secret 
dispatches he had asked leave to return, which Damon-Rafael had refused.
Renata smiled, an ironic smile. “Now that your brother has a legitimate son, he 
is in no hurry for you to rejoin your wife, and perhaps father sons who might 
contest that claim to the Domain.”
Allart sighed, a sound too weary, Renata thought, for a man as young as Allart. 
“Cassandra will bear me no children,” he said. “I will not bring that danger 
upon her. And I have sworn in the fires of Hali to support the claim of my 
brother’s sons, legitimate or nedestro, to the Domain.”
Renata felt the tears which had been so near the surface for days now welling up 
and brimming over in her eyes. To keep them back, she made her voice hard and 
ironic. “To the Domain—yes, you have sworn. But to the crown, Allart?”
“I want no crown,” Allart said.
“Oh, I believe you,” Renata’s voice was waspish. “But will that brother of yours 
ever believe that?”
“I do not know.” Allart sighed. Did Damon-Rafael truly believe that Allart could 
not resist the temptation to wrest the Domain—or the crown—from his hands? Or 
did he simply wish to place the powerful lord Aldaran under an obligation to 
Elhalyn? Damon-Rafael would need allies, if he chose to struggle with Prince 
Felix for the throne at Thendara.
That struggle would not come for a while. Old King Regis still clung to life, 
and the Council would not disturb his deathbed. But when the king lay in an 
unmarked grave at Hali beside his forefathers, as the custom was, then—then the 
Council would not be slow to demand that Prince Felix display his fitness to 
inherit his father’s throne.
“An emmasca might make a good king,” Renata said, following his thoughts 
effortlessly, “but he can found no dynasty. Felix will not inherit And I read 
the last dispatch, too. Cassilde never recovered after the birth of her son, and 
died a few tendays after. So your brother has a legitimate son, but is seeking 
again for a wife. Now, no doubt, he repents he was so quick to marry you to 
Cassandra.”
Allart’s mouth curled in distaste, remembering what Damon-Rafael had said on 
that subject. “If Cassilde should die, as she has been likely to do any time 
these past few years, I would be free to take Cassandra myself.” How could even 
his brother have spoken that way of the woman who had borne him a dozen 
children, only to see them die?
Allart said, “Perhaps it is better this way,” but he sounded so dreary that 
Renata could not keep back the tears. He tipped her face gently up to his. “What 
is it, cousin? You are ever eager to comfort my troubles, yet you speak never of 
your own. What ails you, kinswoman?” His arms went out to encircle her, but it 
was the affectionate touch of a brother, a friend, not a lover, and Renata knew 
it. She sobbed, and Allart held her gently.
“Tell me, chiya,” he said, as tenderly as if she were Dorilys’s age, and Renata 
struggled to hold back her tears.
“I haven’t told Donal. I wanted to have his child. If it were so with me, my 
father could not force me to come home to Edelweiss and marry whatever man he 
had chosen for me… And so I conceived, but after a day or so, monitoring, I 
discovered that the child was female; and so I—” She swallowed, and Allart could 
feel her pain like a great agony within himself. “I could not let it live. I—I 
don’t regret it; who could, with that curse on the line of Rockraven? And yet—I 
look at Dorilys and I cannot help but think, I have had to destroy what could 
have been like that, beautiful and—and—” Her voice broke and she sobbed 
helplessly for a moment against Allart.
And I thought I could force a choice like this upon Cassandra… There was nothing 
Allart could say. He held Renata, letting her cry softly against him.
She quieted at last, murmuring, “I know I did right. It had to be. But I—I 
couldn’t tell Donal, either.”
What in the name of all the gods, are we doing to our women? What have we 
wrought in our blood and genes, to bring this on them? Holy Bearer of Burdens, 
it is your blessing, not your curse, that I am parted from Cassandra…
Even as he spoke he seemed to see Cassandra’s face, racked with fear, fear like 
Renata’s. Trying to put it aside, he tightened his arms around Renata and said 
gently, “Still you know you have done right, and that knowledge will strengthen 
you, I hope.” Then, slowly, searching for words, he told her of the moment of 
foresight, when he had seen her far advanced in pregnancy, terrified, 
despairing. “I have not seen that of late in my visions,” he reassured her. 
“Probably that possibility existed only during the short time you were actually 
pregnant, and afterward—afterward, that future simply ceased to be; since you 
had taken the action which could prevent it. Don’t be regretful.”
Still, he was unsure: he had not seen anything of late. He had tried hard to 
blot out any use of his foresight and its dreadful thronging possible futures. 
Was it true that now, with the female child Renata had conceived already 
destroyed, there was no cause for fear? But he had reassured her. She looked 
calmer, and he would not disturb her again.
“I know I did right,” Renata said. “Yet of late Dorilys has grown so sweet, so 
biddable and gentle. Now that she has some command of her laran, the storms seem 
to rage no longer.”
Yes, thought Allart. It has been long since my sleep or my waking was disturbed 
by those dreadful visions of a vaulted room, of a child’s face framed in awful 
lightnings… Had all these tragedies, too, moved out of the realm of the 
possible, as Dorilys mastered her terrible gift?
“Yet, in a way, that makes it worse,” Renata said, “to know there might have 
been another such child, and now she will never live… Well, I suppose I must 
simply think of Dorilys as the daughter I shall never dare to have… Allart, she 
has invited her father and Donal to hear her play and sing this afternoon; will 
you come, too? She has begun to develop a truly fine singing voice; will you 
come and hear it?”
“With pleasure,” Allart said sincerely.
  
Donal was there already, and Lord Aldaran, and several of the women of the 
household, including Dorilys’s music-mistress, a young noblewoman of the house 
of Darnel. Darkly beautiful, with dark hair and dark-lashed eyes, she reminded 
Allart briefly of Cassandra, though they were not really much alike. Still, as 
Lady Elisa sat with her head bent over the rryl, tuning the strings, he noted 
that she, too, had six fingers on her hands. He remembered what he had said to 
Cassandra at their wedding, “May we live in a time when we can make songs, not 
war!” How brief that hope had been! They lived in a land torn with war among 
mountains and Domains alike, Cassandra in a Tower beset by air-cars and 
incendiaries, Allart in a land aflame with forest fire and raging lightnings, 
striking like arrows. Startled, he looked around the quiet room, out at the 
quiet skies and hills beyond. No sound of war, no breath. His damned foresight 
again, no more, in the calm room where Lady Elisa touched the sidebars of the 
harp, and said, “Sing, Dorilys.”
The child’s voice, sweet and mournful, began an old song of the far hills:
“Where are you now?
Where does my love wander?”
Allart thought such a song of hopeless love and longing ill placed on the lips 
of a young maiden, but he was entranced by the loveliness of the voice. Dorilys 
had grown considerably that autumn; she was taller, and her breasts, though 
small, were already well formed under her childish smock, the young body nicely 
rounded. She was still long-legged, awkward—she would be a tall woman. Already 
she was taller than Renata.
Dom Mikhail said as she finished her song, “Indeed, my darling, it seems you 
have inherited your mother’s superb voice. Will you sing me something less 
mournful?”
“Gladly.” Dorilys took the rryl from Lady Elisa. She adjusted the tuning 
slightly, then began to strum it casually and sing a comical ballad from the 
hills. Allart had heard it often at Nevarsin, though not in the monastery; a 
rowdy song about a monk who carried, in his pockets, as a good monk should, all 
the possessions he was allowed to own.
“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!
“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 treachery… 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 persuaded. 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.
As he turned the glider over to Arzi he pondered that. Perhaps, rather than 
bringing her here to a cowardly safety, he should return to Hali and face his 
brother. No, he knew with that cold new inner knowledge; if he should venture 
anywhere within Damon-Rafael’s grasp his life would not be worth the smallest 
coin.
Inside himself he mourned. How have we come to this, my brother and I? Yet he 
put his grief aside, steadying himself to face the tenerezu of the Tower with 
his request.
Ian-Mikhail frowned, and Allart thought he would refuse out of hand. “The power 
is there,” he said, “or can be summoned. Yet I am very reluctant to entangle 
Tramontana in the affairs of the Lowlands. Are you very sure there is danger to 
your wife, Allart?”
Allart found in his mind only the certain knowledge that Damon-Rafael would not 
hesitate to seize her, as he had seized Donal. Donal, close by, reading his 
thoughts, flushed with anger.
“That I had never known until this moment. It is well for Lord Elhalyn that my 
foster-father did not know!”
Ian-Mikhail sighed. “Here we are at peace; we make no weapons and take part in 
no wars. But you are one of us, Allart. We must safeguard your lady from harm. I 
cannot imagine it. I, too, was schooled at Nevarsin, and I would rather lie with 
a corpse or a cralmac than an unwilling woman. But I have heard that your 
brother is a ruthless man, and ambitious beyond measure. Go, Allart. Communicate 
with Cassandra through the relays. I will summon the circle for tonight.”
Allart went to the matrix chamber, calming himself for the work, casting himself 
into the spinning darkness of the relays, riding the web of electrical energies 
as earlier that day he had ridden the air drafts of the winter sky. Then, 
without warning, he felt the intimate touch on his mind. He had not hoped for 
such luck; Cassandra herself was in the relays.
Allart? Is it you, love?
Surprise and wonder, an amazement that was near to tears… You are at Tramontana? 
You know we are all in mourning here for the old king?
Allart had seen, though no one had thought to tell him formally here.
Allart, a moment before you begin whatever business brought you to Tramontana. I 
am—I do not want to trouble you, but I am afraid of your brother. He paid me a 
courtesy call, saying marriage-kin should know one another; and when I spoke my 
sympathy at Cassilde’s death and the death of his young son, he spoke of a time 
gone by when brothers and sisters held all their wives in common, and he looked 
at me so strangely. I asked what he meant and he said a time would come when I 
would understand, but I could not read his thoughts…
Until this moment Allart had hoped it was fantasy born of his fear. Now he knew 
his foresight had been true.
It was for this I came here, beloved. You must leave Hali and come to me in the 
mountains.
Ride there at this season? In the Hellers?
He could feel her fear. Nevarsin-trained, Allart had no fear of the killing 
weather of the Hellers, but he knew her fright was genuine. No. Even now the 
circle is gathering, to bring you here through the screens. You do not fear 
that, do you, love?
No… But the faraway denial did not sound quite sure.
It will not be long. But go and ask the others to come.
Ian-Mikhail came into the matrix chamber, now wearing the crimson robe of a 
Keeper. Behind him Allart could see the girl Rosaura whom he had met here 
before, and half a dozen of the others. The white-robed monitor was working with 
the dampers, adjusting them to compensate for the presence of an outsider, 
setting up the force-lock which made it impossible for any outsider to intrude, 
body or mind, into the space or time where they were working. Then Allart felt 
the familiar body-mind touch and knew he was being monitored for his presence in 
the circle. He felt grateful to them, not knowing how to express it, that they 
were willing to tolerate the presence of someone outside their closed and 
intimate circle. Yet he was not wholly an outsider; he had touched them more 
than once when he worked in the relay-nets. He was known to them, and he felt 
obscurely comforted.
I have lost my brother. Damon-Rafael is my enemy. Yet will I nevermore be wholly 
brotherless, having worked in the relays which touch mind to mind all over this 
world. I have sisters and brothers in Hali and Tramontana, and at Arilinn and 
Dalereuth and all of the Towers…
Damon-Rafael and I were never brothers in that sense.
Ian-Mikhail of Storn was gathering the circle now, motioning each of them to his 
or her place. Allart counted nine in the circle, and he came and sat in the ring 
of joined bodies, not touching anywhere but close enough to feel one another as 
electrical fields. He saw the inner swirlings within force-fields that were the 
others in the circle; saw the field begin to build around Ian-Mikhail as the 
Keeper seized the tremendous energies of the linked matrices and began to twist 
and direct them into a cone of power on the screen before them. Having worked 
only with Coryn as Keeper, whose mental touch was light and almost 
imperceptible, by contrast Allart felt that Ian-Mikhail caught him, wrenched at 
him, almost brutally, placing him within the circle, but there was nothing of 
malice in the strength. It was simply the distinct way he worked; everyone used 
his or her psi powers in a particular way.
Once in the circle, locked into the ring of minds, individual thought faded, 
gave way to a humming awareness of joined, concentrated purpose. Allart could 
sense the force building inside the screen, a vast enormous singing silence. 
Dimly in the distance he touched other familiar minds: Coryn, like a brief 
handclasp; Arielle a riffle of air, wavering, perceptible; Cassandra… They were 
there, they were here—then he went blind and deaf with the searing overload, the 
sting of ozone in his nostrils, the enormous flaring, searing energies like 
lightning crashing on the heights.
Abruptly the pattern broke, and they were separate individuals again, and 
Cassandra, dazed and white, was kneeling on the stones before the circle.
She reeled, about to fall, but Rosaura reached out and steadied her; then Allart 
was there, lifting her in his arms. She looked up at him in exhaustion and 
terror.
Ian-Mikhail said with a faint laugh, “You are as wearied as by the ten days’ 
ride, kinswoman. There has been a certain amount of energy expended, however it 
was done. Come with us, then. We must eat and rebuild our forces. Tell us all 
the news from Hali, if you will.”
Allart was faint with the terrible hunger of the energy-drain. For once, he 
found himself eating the heavily sweetened reserve foods in the matrix chamber 
without nausea or distaste. He was not enough of a technician to understand the 
process which had teleported Cassandra through space across the ten days’ ride 
between the Towers, but she was here, her hand clasped tight in his, and that 
was enough for him.
The white-robed monitor came and insisted on monitoring them both. They didn’t 
protest.
As they ate, Cassandra told the news from Hali. The death and burial of the old 
king; the Council summoned to test Prince Felix—not yet crowned, probably never 
to be crowned; the upheaval in Thendara among the people who supported the 
gentle young prince. There had been a renewed truce with the Ridenow which Hali 
Tower had been forced to use for the stockpiling of clingfire. Cassandra showed 
Allart one of the characteristic burns on her hand.
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 needed 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.
A little way ahead of them, a pathway led up to a clustered formation of rocks, 
close gathered to give almost as much shelter as a building. Allart started to 
direct them up to it, then hesitated, searching with his laran along that line 
of probability. He flinched, in panic; the cluster of rocks was the nest of 
banshee-birds, the evil flightless carnivores who lived above the timberline and 
were drawn by an unfailing tropism to anything with the body-heat of life. They 
must not go that way!
They could not remain here; the wind was strong enough to fling them off the 
ledge, and the snow thick around them. Already Cassandra was shivering, the 
borrowed travel-cloak never intended for a serious storm. Allart and Donal, more 
used to mountain weather, were not cold, but Allart was beginning to be 
frightened. They could not go back to Tramontana. They could not climb up where 
the banshees nested. They could not go ahead on the road to the narrowing path 
over the abyss. And they could not stay here. Was there no alternative to their 
death then? Was it ordained by fate that they should die in this blizzard?
Holy Bearer of Burdens, strengthen me. Help me to see a way, Allart prayed. He 
had almost forgotten how to pray since leaving the monastery, and fear for 
himself would not have done it, but Cassandra, shivering in his arms, spurred 
him to explore every avenue.
They could not return to Tramontana, but a little way back along the path was 
the stone wall. It was long abandoned and falling down, but it would provide 
better shelter than the open path; and behind it—he saw now with both memory and 
laran—a thick set clump of evergreens.
“We must go back to where we ate our midday meal,” he said, pitching his voice 
carefully above the shriek of the wind.
Slowly, holding on to one another, for the snow was wet and slippery underfoot, 
they retraced their steps. It was slow, hard going. Donal, who had spent all his 
life in these mountains, was surefooted as a mountain cat, but Allart had been 
years away from the crags around Nevarsin, and Cassandra was wholly unaccustomed 
to these roads. Once she slipped and fell full length in the snow, her thin 
borrowed dress soaked to the knees, her hands torn on the rocks under their coat 
of snow, and she lay there chilled and sobbing with pain. Allart lifted her to 
her feet, his face set with determination. But she had twisted knee and ankle in 
the fall, and Donal and Allart had almost to carry her the last few hundred 
steps to the rock wall, to lift her over it and help her into the thick 
enclosure of the clumped trees. As they were down into it, Allart’s laran 
screamed at him that this was the place of his death. He saw their three bodies, 
entangled, clutching one another for warmth, frozen and stark. He had to force 
himself down into the enclosure made by the trees.
Gnarled and old, twisted by the violence of mountain storms for half a century 
or more, the trees wove close, and inside their circle the wind was less, though 
they could hear it screaming outside, and there was a patch of ground unmarred 
by the heavy snow. Allart laid Cassandra down on the ground, folding her cloak 
so it kept the worst of the cold from her, and began to examine her injured leg.
“There is nothing broken,” she said shakily, after a moment, and he remembered 
that she was a trained Tower monitor, skilled at penetrating the bodies of 
herself and others for whatever was wrong inside. “The ankle is painful but 
nothing is harmed; only a tendon pulled a little… but the kneecap has been 
twisted out of its place.”
As Allart turned his attention to the knee he saw the kneecap wrenched to the 
side of the leg, the place rapidly swelling and darkening.
She said, drawing a terrified breath, “Donal, you must hold my shoulders, and 
you Allart, you must grasp my knee and ankle like this—” She gestured. “No! 
Lower down, with that hand—and pull hard. Don’t worry about hurting me. If it is 
not returned to its place at once I could be lamed for life.”
Allart steeled himself to follow her instructions. She was braced and tense, but 
despite her courage, a shriek was forced between her teeth as he gripped the 
dislocation and twisted it, hard, back into its place, feeling the grating as 
the kneecap slid back into its socket. She fell back in Donal’s arms and for a 
moment it seemed she had fainted, but she had closed her eyes and was again 
monitoring to see what had happened.
“Not quite. You must turn my foot to one side—I cannot move it myself—so it will 
fall back into place. Yes,” she said, between clenched teeth, as Allart obeyed 
her. “That will do. Now tear my under-petticoat and bandage it tightly,” she 
said. Tears came to her eyes again, not only of pain, but of embarrassment as 
Allart lifted her to remove her under-garment, although Donal modestly turned 
away.
When the hurt knee had been tightly bandaged in strips of cloth, and Cassandra, 
white and shivering, had been wrapped in her cloak, and was resting on the 
ground, Allart soberly took stock of their chances here. Outside, the storm had 
not nearly reached its height, and night, as he imagined, was not far away, 
though already it was dark, a thick, heavy twilight that had nothing to do with 
the actual hour. They had with them only the remnants of their picnic lunch, 
enough for a couple of sparse meals. These storms sometimes lasted for two or 
three days, or more. Under ordinary conditions, any of them could have gone 
without a few meals, but not if the cold should become really severe.
They could probably manage for two or three days. But if the storm should last 
much longer than that, or if the roads should become impassable, their chances 
were not good. Alone, Allart would have wrapped himself tightly in his cloak, 
found the most sheltered spot possible, and let himself sink into the tranced 
sleep he had learned at Nevarsin, slowing his heartbeat, lowering his body 
temperature, all the requirements of his body—food, sleep, warmth—in abeyance. 
But he was responsible for his wife, and for young Donal, and they had not had 
his training. He was the oldest and the most skilled.
“Your cloak is the thinnest, Cassandra, and the least useful to us for warmth. 
Spread it on the ground like this, here, so it will keep the cold of the earth 
from rising,” he directed. “Now, our two cloaks over the three of us. Cassandra 
is the least accustomed to the cold of the mountains, so we will put her between 
us.” When they were all three huddled together, back to front, he could feel 
Cassandra’s shivering subside somewhat.
“Now,” he said gently, “the best thing to do is to sleep if we can: above all, 
not to waste energy in talking.”
Outside the shelter where they lay, the wind howled, snow coming down endlessly 
in streaks white against the black night. Inside, only random flurries blew 
through the tightly laced branches. Allart let himself drift into a light 
trance, holding Cassandra close in his arms so that he would know if she stirred 
or had any need of him. At last he knew that Donal, at least, slept; but 
Cassandra, though she lay quiet in his arms, did not sleep. He was aware of the 
sharp pain in her injured leg, keeping her concentration at bay. At last she 
turned in his arms to face him, and he clasped her tight.
She whispered, “Allart, are we going to die here?”
Reassurance would have been easy—and false. No matter what, there must be truth 
between them, as there had been from the first moment they met. He fumbled in 
the dark for her slender fingers and said, “I don’t know, preciosa. I hope not.”
His laran showed him only darkness ahead. Through the touch of her hands he 
could feel the pain stabbing at her. She tried carefully to shift her weight 
without disturbing Donal, who was curled close against her body. Allart half 
rose, kneeling and lifted her, changing her position. “Is that easier?”
“A little.” But there was not much he could do in their cramped shelter. This 
had been the worst of all mischances; even if there were a break in the weather, 
they could not now seek better shelter, for Cassandra would probably not be able 
to walk for several days. Tended, put at once into a hot bath, given massage and 
treatment by a matrix-trained leronis to halt the swelling and bleeding within 
the joint, it might not have been very serious; but long exposure to cold and 
immobilization did not promise well for swift healing. Even if conditions had 
been right, Allart had but small training in those skills. Rough and ready first 
aid he could give, indeed, but nothing more complicated.
“I should have left you safe at Hali,” he groaned, and she touched his face in 
the darkness.
“There was no safety for me there, my husband. Not with your brother at my 
door.”
“Still, if I have led you to your death—”
“It might equally have been my death to stay there,” she said, and amazingly, 
even in this extremity, he caught a flicker of laughter in her voice. “Had 
Damon-Rafael sought to take me unwilling, he would have found no submissive 
woman in his bed. I have a knife and I know how—and where—to use it.” He heard 
her voice tighten. “I doubt he would have let me live to spread the tale of that 
humiliation.”
“I do not think he would have had to use force,” Allart said bleakly. “More 
like, you would have been drugged into submission, without will to resist”
“Ah, no,” she said, and her voice thrilled with an emotion he could not read. 
“In that case, my husband, I would have known where to turn the knife ere they 
brought me to that.”
Allart felt such a thickening in his throat that he could not force an answer. 
What had he done to deserve this woman? Had he ever believed her timid, 
childlike, fearful? He caught her tightly against him, but aloud he only said, 
“Try to sleep, my love. Rest your weight against me, if it is easier. Are you 
too cold now?”
“No, not really, not close to you this way,” she said, and was still, breathing 
long, calm breaths in and out.
But have I given her freedom or only a choice of deaths?
  
The night crawled by, an eternity. When day broke it was only a little lessening 
of the darkness, and for the three in the hollow, cramped and restless, it was 
torment. Allart cautioned Donal, crawling outside for a call of nature, not to 
go more than a step or two from the thicket, and when he staggered back inside, 
battered and already snow covered, he said that outside the wind was so heavy he 
could hardly stand. Allart had to carry Cassandra in his arms; she could not set 
her foot to the ground. Later he meted out most of the food from the day before. 
The snow showed no sign of abating; as far as Allart could tell, the world 
outside their tree-cluster ended an arm’s length away in a white blur of snowy 
nothingness.
He let his laran range out cautiously ahead. Almost in every instance he saw 
their lives end here, yet there had to be other possibilities. If it were his 
ordained fate to die here, and if bringing Cassandra from Hali would lead 
inevitably to his death and hers in the snow, then why had his laran shown him 
no trace of it, ever, in any line of probability that he had foreseen to this 
time?
“Donal,” he said, and the younger man stirred.
“Cousin…”
“You have more of the weather gift than I. Can you read this storm and discover 
how far it extends, and how long it will take to move past us?”
“I will try.” Donal sank inward in consciousness, and Allart, lightly in 
rapport, saw again the curious extended sense of pressures and forces, like nets 
of energy upon the surface of the ground, and in the thin envelope of air above 
it. Finally, returning to surface consciousness, Donal said soberly, “Too far, I 
fear. And it is moving sluggishly. Would that I had my sister’s gift, to control 
the storms and move them here and there at my will!”
Suddenly Allart knew that was the answer, as he began to see ahead again. His 
laran was real foresight, yes; he could dislocate time and stand outside it, but 
it was limited by his own interpretation of what he saw. For that reason it 
would always be unreliable as a sole guide to his actions. He must never be 
content with an obvious future; there was always the probability, however small, 
that interaction with someone whose actions he could not foresee would alter 
that future beyond recognition. He could rule his laran, but as with his matrix 
jewel, he must never let it rule him instead. Yesterday he had used it to find 
safety here and avoid the most obvious deaths lying in wait; it had worked to 
avert imminent death until he could explore some other probability.
“If we could somehow make contact with Dorilys—”
“She is not a telepath,” Donal said, sounding doubtful. “Never have I been able 
to reach her with my thoughts.” Then he lifted his eyes and said, “Renata… 
Renata is a telepath. If one of you two could manage to reach Renata—”
Yes, for Renata was the key to control of Dorilys’s power.
Allart said, “You try to reach her, Donal.”
“But—I am not so strong a telepath.”
“Nevertheless. Those who have shared love, as you two, can often make such a 
link when no other can. Tell Renata of our plight, and perhaps Dorilys can read 
the storm, or help it to pass more quickly beyond us!”
“I will do what I can,” Donal said. Drawing himself upright, the cloaks still 
hunched around him. he drew out his matrix and began to focus himself within it. 
Allart and Cassandra, clinging together beneath the remaining cloak, could 
almost see the luminous lines of force spreading out, so that Donal seemed no 
more than a solid network of swirling energies, fields of force… Then, abruptly, 
the contact flared and Allart and Cassandra, both telepaths, could not close 
away that amplified rapport
Renata!
Donal! The joy and blaze of that contact spilled over to Cassandra and Allart, 
as if she touched them, too, embraced them.
I was fearful, with this storm! Are you safe? Have you remained at Tramontana, 
then? I feared when it broke that the escort would be forced to turn back; did 
they meet with you, then?
No, my beloved. Quickly, in rapid mental images, Donal sketched their plight. He 
interrupted Renata’s horrified reaction. No, love, don’t waste time and strength 
that way. Here is what you must do.
Of course, Dorilys can help us, and the swift touch, awareness. I will find her 
at once, show her what to do.
The contact was gone. The lines of force faded out and Donal shivered under the 
doubled cloaks.
Allart handed him the last of the food, and said, when he protested, “Your 
energy is drained with the matrix; you need the strength.”
“Still, your lady—” Donal protested, but Cassandra shook her head. In the gray 
snowlight she looked pale, drawn, deathly.
“I am not hungry, Donal. You need it far more than I. I am cold, so cold…”
Quickly Allart knew what she meant and what faced her now. He said, “What is it 
with the leg, then?”
“I will monitor and be sure,” she said, a flicker of a smile touching her face, 
a wry smile indeed. “I have not wanted to know the worst, since there seems 
nothing I could do to mend it, however bad it may be.” But he saw her look go 
abstracted, focused inward. Finally, reluctant, she said, “It is not good. The 
cold, the forced inactivity—and in the lower part of that leg the circulation is 
already impaired, so that it is more susceptible to chilling.”
There was nothing Allart could say but, “Help may soon reach us, my love. 
Meanwhile—” He took off his outer tunic, began to wrap it around the injured 
knee to protect it, and wrapped her in his under-cloak, remaining in his 
undertunic and breeches. At their shocked protest, he said with a smile,
“Ah, you forget; I was a monk at Nevarsin for six years, and I slept naked in 
worse weather than this.” Indeed, the old lessons took over; as the cold struck 
his now unprotected flesh, he began automatically the old breathing, flooding 
his body with inner warmth. He said, “Truly, I am not cold. Feel and see…”
Cassandra reached out her hand, wondering. “It is true! You are warm as a 
furnace.”
“Yes,” he said, taking her chilly fingers in his and laying them under his arm. 
“Here, let me warm your hands.”
Donal said, in astonishment, “I would that you could teach me that trick, 
cousin.”
Feeling enormously genial with the sudden flooding warmth, Allart replied, “It 
needs little teaching. We teach it to the novices in their first season with us, 
so that before a few tendays have passed, they are romping half naked in the 
snow. Children who are crying with the cold in their first few days soon begin 
to run about in the courtyards without even remembering to put on their cowls.”
“Is it a secret of your cristoforo religion?” Donal asked suspiciously.
Allart shook his head. “No, only a trick of the mind; it needs not even a 
matrix. The first thing we tell them is that cold is born of fear; that if they 
needed protection against cold, they would have been born with fur or feathers; 
that the forces of nature protect even the fruits with snow-pods if they need 
them; but man, being born naked, needs no protection against the weather. Once 
they come to believe that, that mankind wears clothes because he wishes to, for 
modesty or for decoration, but not to shelter against the weather, then the 
worst is over and soon they can adjust their bodies to cold or heat as they 
wish.” He laughed, knowing the euphoria of the extra oxygen he was taking into 
his body was beginning to act upon him, to be converted into warmth. “I am less 
cold than I was last night under our shared cloaks and body warmth.”
Cassandra tried to imitate his breathing, but she was in severe pain, and this 
inhibited her concentration, while Donal was wholly untrained.
Outside, the storm raged even more fiercely, and Allart lay down between the 
two, trying to share with them his warmth. He was desperately anxious about 
Cassandra; if she suffered much more pain and chilling, her knee might not heal 
for a long time, perhaps never wholly restore itself. He tried to conceal his 
anxiety from her, but the same closeness which had enabled Donal to reach 
Renata—without a Tower screen, through an open matrix-link alone—meant he and 
Cassandra were similarly linked and, especially at this close range, could not 
conceal a fear so strong from one another.
She reached for his hand and murmured, “Don’t be frightened. The pain is not so 
bad now; truly it is not.”
Well, when they reached Aldaran, Margali and Renata could tend her; for now 
there was nothing to be done. In the dimness he held the slight six-fingered 
hand in his, felt the knotted scar of the clingfire burn. She had endured war 
and fear and pain before this; he had not brought her out of peaceful life into 
danger. If he had simply substituted one danger for another, still, he knew, it 
was the danger which she had freely chosen for another less to her liking, and 
that was all any human being could ask in such days. Comforted a little, he 
dropped off, for a time, to sleep, held in her arms.
When he woke it was to hear a cry from Cassandra.
“Look! The storm has cleared!” He looked up, dazed, at the sky. It had stopped 
snowing entirely, and clouds were tearing across the sky at a wild pace.
“Dorilys,” Donal said. “No storm ever moved across these hills at such a pace.” 
He drew a long, shaking breath. “Her power—the power we have all feared so 
much—has saved all our lives.”
Allart, sending his laran out across the country around, realized that the 
escort had been weathered in on the other side of the ledge he had hesitated to 
face in the storm. Now, as soon as they could bring their riding-animals across 
it—a matter of a few hours, certainly—help would be with them, food and shelter 
and care.
It had not been Dorilys’s laran alone that had saved them, he thought soberly. 
The laran he had considered a curse had now proved its worth—and its 
limitations.
I cannot ignore it. But I must never wholly rely on it, either. I need not hide 
from it in terror, as I did all those years in Nevarsin. But I cannot let it 
whollv rule my actions.
Maybe I am beginning to know its limitations, Allart thought. It suddenly 
occurred to him that he had thought of Donal as very young, childishly young. 
Yet he himself, he realized, was no more than two years Donal’s senior. With a 
completely new humility, free for once in his life of self-pity, he thought, I 
am still very young myself. And I may not be given enough time to learn wisdom. 
But if I live, I may find that some of my problems were only because I was too 
young, and too foolish to know I was only too young.
Cassandra was lying on his cloak, gray with pain and exhausted. He turned to 
her, and was touched that she tried to smile and appear brave. Now he could 
reassure her honestly, without hiding his own fear. Help was on the way and 
would reach them soon; there was only a little more time to wait.



CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
 
Donal Delleray, called Rockhaven, and Dorilys, heir to Aldaran, were formally 
married by the catenas on midwinter night.
It was not a festive occasion. The weather prevented, as often in the Hellers, 
inviting any but the nearest of Aldaran’s neighbors; and of those invited, many 
chose not to come, in which Aldaran saw, rightly or not, a sign that they had 
chosen to align with his brother of Scathfell. So that the marriage was held in 
the presence of the immediate household alone, and even among these there was 
murmuring.
This kind of marriage, half-brother to half-sister, had once been commonplace in 
the early days of the breeding program, especially among the great nobles of the 
Domains— and imitated, like all such customs, by their inferiors. But it had 
fallen now into disuse and was regarded as mildly scandalous.
“They do not like it,” said Allart to Cassandra as they went into the great hall 
where the festive supper, and the ceremony, and afterward the dance for the 
household, were all to be held. She was leaning heavily on his arm; she still 
walked with a dragging limp, memento of their ordeal in the snow, despite the 
best care Margali and Renata could give. It might heal with time, but it was 
still difficult for her to walk without help.
“They do not like it,” he repeated. “Had anyone other than Dom Mikhail given 
orders for such a thing, they would have defied him, I think.”
“What is it they do not like? That Donal shall inherit Aldaran when he is not of 
the blood of Hastur and Cassilda?”
“No,” said Allart. “As far as I can tell from talking to Aldaran’s vassals and 
household knights, that pleases them rather than otherwise; none of them has any 
love for Scathfell, nor any wish to see him rule here. If Dom Mikhail had given 
it out, true or not, that Donal was his nedestro son and would inherit, they 
would have stood by him to the death. Even if they knew it was false, they would 
have treated it as a legal fiction. What they do not like is this marriage of 
brother and sister.”
“But this is a legal fiction, too,” Cassandra protested.
Allart said, “I am not so sure of that. And neither are they. I still feel 
guilty that it was my own careless words which put this mad idea into Dom 
Mikhail’s mind. And those who support Dom Mikhail in this—well, they do it as if 
they were humoring a madman. I am not so sure they are wrong,” he added after a 
moment. “All madmen do not rave and froth at the mouth and chase butterflies in 
midwinter snow. Pride and obsession like Dom Mikhail’s come near to madness, 
even if they are couched in reason and logic.”
Since the bride was a little girl, the guests could not even hope to lighten the 
occasion with the jokes and rough horseplay which usually marked a wedding, 
culminating in the rowdy business of putting the bride and groom to bed 
together. Dorilys was not even full-grown, far less of legal age to be married. 
No one had wanted to rouse in Dorilys any bitter memories of her last 
handfasting, and so there had been no question of presenting her as a grown 
woman. In her childish dress, her copper hair hanging in long curls about her 
shoulders, she looked like a child of the household who had been allowed to stay 
up for the festivities, rather than like the appointed bride. As for the 
bridegroom, though he made an attempt to give decent lip service to the 
occasion, he looked grim and joyless, and before they went into the hall, the 
guests observed that he went toward a group of the bride’s waiting-women and 
called Renata Leynier apart, talking with her vehemently for some minutes. A few 
of the house-folk, and most of the servants, knew the true state of affairs 
between Donal and Renata, and shook their heads at this indiscretion in a man 
about to be wed. Others, looking at the little bride, surrounded by her nurses 
and governesses, compared her mentally with Renata and did not censure him.
“Whatever he says, whatever mummery he may make with the catenas, this is no 
more than a handfasting, and not a legal wedding. In law, even a catenas 
marriage is not legal till it is consummated,” Donal argued. Renata, about to 
tell him that this point was still being argued before the Council and the 
lawgivers of the land, knew that he needed reassurance, not reason.
“It will make no difference to me! Swear it will make no difference to you, 
Renata, or I will defy my foster-father here and now, before all his vassals!”
If you were going to defy him, Renata thought in despair, you should have done 
so from the beginning, certainly before things went this far! It is too late for 
public defiance without destroying both of you! Aloud she said only, “Nothing 
could make any difference to me, Donal; you know that too well to need any 
oaths, and this is neither the time nor the place. I must go back to the women, 
Donal.” But she touched his hand lightly, with a smile that was almost pity.
We were so happy this summer! How could we come to this? I am not blameless; I 
should have married him at once. To do him justice, he wished for that. Renata’s 
thoughts were in turmoil as she walked, with Dorilys’s women, into the hall.
Dom Mikhail was standing by the fireplace, lighted with the midwinter-fires 
kindled that day with sunfire, token of the return of light from the darkest 
day, greeting each of his guests in turn. Dorilys made her father a formal 
curtsy, and he bowed to her, kissed her on either cheek, and set her at his 
right side, at the high table. Then, one by one, he greeted the women.
“Lady Elisa, I would like to express my gratitude for your work in cultivating 
the lovely voice my daughter has inherited from her mother,” he said, bowing. 
“Kinswoman Margali, again at this season I am grateful to you that you have 
taken a mother’s place with my orphaned child. Damisela—” he bowed over Renata’s 
hand —“how can I express my pleasure in what you have done for Dorilys? It is 
the greatest pleasure to welcome you to my—to my festal board,” he said, 
stumbling. Renata, a telepath and keyed to the highest level of sensitivity at 
this moment, knew with a moment of anguish that he had started to say, “to my 
family,” and then had remembered the real state of affairs between herself and 
Donal, and forborne to speak those words.
I always thought he knew, Renata thought, blind with pain. Yet it means more to 
him, to carry out this plan of his! Now she even regretted the scruples that had 
prevented her from again becoming pregnant by Donal at once.
If I had come to midwinter night visibly pregnant with Donal’s child, would he 
have had the insolence to give Donal in marriage to another before my very eyes? 
When he insists that I have been the salvation of Dorilys? Could I have forced 
his hand that way? She walked to her seat, blinded by tears, in a welter of 
regrets and anxieties.
Although Aldaran’s cooks and stewards had done their best, and the feast spread 
before them was notable, it was a joyless occasion. Dorilys seemed nervous, 
twisting her long curls, at once restless and sleepy. At the close of the meal 
Dom Mikhail signaled for attention, and called Donal and Dorilys to him. 
Cassandra and Allart, seated side by side at the far end of the high table, 
watched in tension, Allart braced for some untoward explosion, either from 
Donal, guarded and miserable behind a taut facade of civility, or from one of 
the sullen stewards and household knights at high table or lower hall. But no 
one interrupted. Watching Dom Mikhail’s face, Allart thought no one would have 
dared to cross him now.
“This is indeed a joyous occasion for Aldaran,” said Dom Mikhail.
Allart, briefly meeting Donal’s eyes, shared a thought with him, quickly 
barricaded again. Like Zandru’s hell it is!
“On this day of revelry it is my pleasure to place the guardianship of my house 
and my only heir, still a minor, Dorilys of Aldaran, into the hands of my 
beloved foster-son Donal of Rockraven.”
Donal flinched at the name which proclaimed him bastard, and his lips moved in 
inaudible protest.
“Donal Delleray,” Dom Mikhail corrected himself, reluctantly.
Allart thought, Even now he does not wish to face the fact that Donal is not his 
son.
Aldaran placed the twin bracelets of finely chased copper—engraved and 
filigreed, and lined on the side nearest the skin with gold plating so that the 
precious metal would not irritate the skin—on Donal’s right wrist and Dorilys’s 
left. Allart, looking down at the bracelet on his own wrist, held out his hand 
to Cassandra. All around the hall married couples were doing the same, as 
Aldaran spoke the ritual words.
“As the left hand to the right, may you be forever at one; in caste and clan, in 
home and heritage, at fireside and in council, sharing all things at home and 
abroad, in love and in loyalty, now and for all time to come,” he said, locking 
the bracelets together. Smiling for a moment despite his disquiet, Allart fitted 
the link of his own bracelet into that of his wife and they clasped hands 
tightly. He picked up Cassandra’s thought, If only it were Donal and Renata … 
and felt again a surge of anger at this travesty.
Aldaran unlocked the bracelets, separated them. “Separated in fact, may you be 
joined in heart as in law,” he said. “In token I bid you exchange a kiss.”
All through the hall, married couples leaned toward one another to proclaim 
again their bond, even those, Allart knew, who were not on good terms with one 
another at ordinary times. He kissed Cassandra tenderly, but he turned his eyes 
away as Donal bent forward, just touching Dorilys’s lips with his own.
Aldaran said, “May you be forever one.”
Allart caught Renata’s eye, and thought, Desolate. Donal should not have done 
this to her… He still felt a strong sense of closeness to her, of 
responsibility, and he wished he knew what he could do. It is not even as if 
Donal himself were happy about this. They are both wretched. He damned Dom 
Mikhail for his obsession, and guilt lay heavy on him. This was my doing. I put 
it into his head. He wished heartily that he had never come to Aldaran at all.
Later there was dancing in the hall, Dorilys leading the dance with a group of 
her women. Renata had helped her to devise this dance and danced with her in the 
first measures, hands interlaced with the child’s as they went through the 
ornate measures.
Allart watched her and thought, They are not rivals; they are both victims. He 
saw Donal watching them both, and abruptly turned away, returning to the 
sidelines where Cassandra, still too lame for dancing, sat among a group of the 
old women.
The night wore on, Aldaran’s vassals and guests dutifully trying to put some 
jollity into the occasion. A juggler performed magic tricks for the household, 
bringing coins and small animals from the unlikeliest places, scarves and rings 
out of nowhere; in the end he brought a live songbird from Dorilys’s ear and 
presented it to her, then retired, bowing. There were minstrels to sing old 
ballads, and in the great hall, more dancing. But it was not like a wedding, nor 
like an ordinary midwinter feast. Every now and then someone would start to make 
the kind of rowdy joke suitable for a wedding, then remember the real state of 
affairs and nervously break off in mid-sentence. Dorilys sat beside her father 
in the high seat, Donal at her side for a long time. Someone had found a cage 
for her songbird and she was trying to coax it to sing, but the hour was late 
and the bird drooping on its perch. Dorilys seemed to droop, too. Finally Donal, 
desperate at the silent tension and the joyless gathering, said, “Will you dance 
with me, Dorilys?”
“No,” said Aldaran. “It is not seemly that bride and groom dance together at a 
wedding.”
Donal turned on his foster-father a look of fury and despair. “In the name of 
all the gods, this pretense—” he began, then sighed heavily and dropped it. Not 
at a feast, not before all their assembled house-folk and vassals. He said with 
heavy irony, “God forbid we should do anything out of custom, such as might 
cause scandal among our kin,” and turned, beckoning Allart from his wife’s side. 
“Cousin, take my sister out to dance, if you will.”
As Allart led out Dorilys to the floor, Donal looked once at Renata, in despair, 
but before his father’s eyes he bowed to Margali. “Foster-mother, will you honor 
me with a dance, I beg?” and moved away with the old lady on his arm.
Afterward he danced dutifully with other of Dorilys’s women, Lady Elisa and even 
her aged, waddling nurse. Allart, watching, wondered if this was intended to 
lead up to a situation where it would seem obvious for Donal to dance with 
Renata; but as Donal returned old Kathya to the women, they came face to face 
with Dorilys, who had been dancing with the coridom of the estate.
Dorilys looked up at Donal sweetly, then beckoned to Renata and in a clear, 
audible voice, filled with a false and sugary sweetness, said loudly, “You must 
dance with Donal, Renata. If you dance with a bridegroom at midwinter, you, too, 
will be married within the year, they say. Shall I ask my father to find you a 
husband, cousin Renata?” Her smile was innocent and spiteful, and Donal clenched 
his teeth as he took Renata’s hand and led her onto the dancing floor.
“She should be spanked!”
Renata was almost in tears. “I thought—I thought she understood. I had hoped she 
was fond of me, even that she had come to love me! How could she—”
Donal could only say, “She is overwrought. The hour is late for her, and this is 
a trying occasion. She cannot help but remember, I suppose, what happened at her 
handfasting to Darren of Scathfell…” As if to underline his anger it seemed, 
though he could not be sure whether he really heard it or remembered it, that he 
heard a curious premonitory rumble of thunder.
Renata thought, Dorilys has been on her good behavior of late. She cooperated 
with me on moving the storm which menaced Allan and Cassandra and Donal, and is 
now proud of her talent, proud that it saved lives. But she is only a child, 
spoiled and arrogant.
Allart, across the room and seated at Cassandra’s side, heard the thunder, too, 
and for a moment it seemed like the voice of his laran, warning him of storms to 
break over Aldaran… For a moment it seemed that he stood in the courtyard of 
Aldaran keep, hearing thunders strike and break over the castle; he saw Renata’s 
face pale and distraught with the lightnings… he heard the cries of armed men 
and actually started, wondering if the castle were truly under assault, until he 
recalled that it was midwinter night.
Cassandra clasped his hand. “What did you see?” she whispered.
“A storm,” he said, “and shadows, shadows over Aldaran.” His voice died to a 
whisper, as if he heard the thunders again, though this time it was only in his 
mind.
When Donal returned to the high seat of his foster-father he said firmly, “Sir, 
the hour is late. Since this will not end like a traditional wedding, with a 
bedding as well, I have given orders for the guesting-cup to be brought and the 
minstrels dismissed.”
Aldaran’s face turned dark with sudden flaring anger.
“You take all too much on yourself, Donal! I have given no orders to that 
effect!”
Donal was startled, mystified at the sudden rage. Dom Mikhail had left all such 
things in his hands for the last three midwinter feasts. He said reasonably, “I 
did as you have always bidden me to do, sir. I acted upon my own best judgment.” 
He hoped that by quoting his foster-father’s own words he could calm him.
Instead, Dom Mikhail leaned forward with clenched hands and demanded, “Are you 
so eager to rule all in my place, then, Donal? That you cannot wait for my 
word—”
Donal thought, bewildered, Is he mad? Is his mind going?
Dom Mikhail opened his mouth to say more, but the servants had already entered 
bearing the jeweled cup containing a rich mixture of wine and spices, which 
would go around, shared from hand to hand. It was offered to Dom Mikhail, who 
held it motionless between his two hands for so long that Donal trembled. 
Courtesy finally conquered. Dom Mikhail set the cup to his lips, bowed to Donal, 
and handed him the cup. In his turn Donal barely tasted the mixture, but 
steadied it for Dorilys to taste, and passed it on to Allart and Cassandra.
The abortive scene had put a damper on what little remained of festivity. One by 
one, as they sipped from the cup, the guests bowed to Lord Aldaran and withdrew. 
Dorilys suddenly began to cry, noisy childish crying which suddenly escalated 
into screaming, bawling hysteria.
Dom Mikhail said helplessly, “Why, Dorilys, child,” but she shrieked louder than 
ever when he touched her.
Margali came to enfold the child in her arms. “She is exhausted, and no wonder. 
Come, come, my little love, my baby. Let me take you away to your bed. Come, my 
darling, my bird, don’t cry anymore,” she crooned.
Dorilys, surrounded by Margali and Elisa and old Kathya, was half carried from 
the hall. The few remaining guests, embarrassed, slipped away to their beds.
Donal, crimson and raging, picked up a glass of wine and emptied it at a single 
swallow, then refilled it with angry determination. Allart went toward him to 
speak, then sighed and withdrew. There was nothing he could do for Donal now, 
and if Donal chose to get himself drunk, it was only a fitting end to this 
enormous fiasco of a festival. Allart joined Cassandra at the door, and went 
silently, at her side, down the hallway toward their own rooms.
“I do not blame the child,” Cassandra said, painfully dragging herself upward on 
the stairs, holding to the railing. “It cannot be easy to be displayed as a 
bride before all these folk, and everyone staring and talking scandal about this 
wedding, and then to be put to bed in the nursery as if nothing had happened. 
Some wedding for the child! And some wedding night!”
Allart said gently, taking her by the elbow to steady her lagging step, “As I 
remember, my beloved, you spent your wedding night alone.”
“Yes,” she said, turning her eyes on him and smiling, “but my bridegroom was not 
abed with someone he loved better, either. Do you think Dorilys does not know 
Donal shares Renata’s bed? She is jealous.”
Allart scoffed. “Even if she does know—at her age, would it mean anything to 
her? She may be jealous because Donal cares more for Renata than he does for 
her, but he is only her big brother; surely it does not mean to her what it 
would have meant to you!”
“I am not so sure,” Cassandra said. “She is not so young as most people think. 
In years—yes, I grant you, she is a child. But no one with her gift, no one with 
two deaths behind her, no one with the training she has had from Renata, is 
really a child, whatever the years may indicate. Merciful gods,” she whispered, 
“what a tangle this is! I cannot imagine what will come of it!”
Allart, who could, was wishing that he could not
  
Very late that night, Renata, in her solitary room, was wakened by a sound at 
her door. Instantly knowing who was there, she opened it to see Donal, 
disheveled, swaying on his feet, very drunk.
“On this night—is it wise, Donal?” she asked, but she knew he was beyond caring 
for that. She could feel the despair like physical pain in him.
“If you turn me away now,” he raged, “I shall throw myself from the heights of 
this castle before the dawn!”
Her arms went out to hold him against her, compassionately; to draw him inside, 
to shut the door after him.
“They may marry me to Dorilys,” he said, with drunken earnestness, “but she will 
never be my wife. No woman living shall be my wife but you!”
Merciful Avarra, what will become of us? she thought. Renata was a monitor; 
there could have been no worse time for him to come to her like this, and yet 
she knew, sharing with him all the rage and despair of the humiliating night 
past, that she could deny him nothing, nothing that could ease even a little the 
pain of what had happened. She knew, too, with a despairing foresight, that she 
would come from this night bearing his son.



CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
 
Late in the winter, Allart met Cassandra on the stairway which led into the 
south wing of Castle Aldaran, where the women spent much of their time at this 
season in the conservatory rooms which caught the winter sun.
“It is a bright day,” he said. “Why not come and walk with me in the courtyard? 
I see so little of you these days!” Then, laughing, he checked himself. “But no, 
you cannot—this afternoon is your festival in the women’s quarters for Dorilys; 
is it not?”
Everyone at Castle Aldaran knew that in the last tenday Dorilys had first shown 
the signs of maturity—an official occasion for rejoicing. During the last three 
days she had been distributing her toys and playthings, her dolls and her 
favorite childish garments, among the children in the castle. The afternoon 
would be the private quasi-religious celebration among the women which marked 
leaving the company of the children and entering the society of the women.
“I know her father has sent her a special gift of some sort,” Allart said.
Cassandra nodded. “And I am embroidering her some bands for a new shift,” she 
said.
“What goes on at these women’s affairs, anyhow?” Allart asked.
Cassandra laughed gaily. “Ah, you must not ask me that, my husband,” she said, 
and then, with mock seriousness, “There are some things it is not good for men 
to know.”
Allart chuckled. “Now there is a byword I have not heard since I left the 
company of the cristoforos. And I suppose we will not have your company at 
dinner either!”
“No. Tonight the women will dine together for her festival,” Cassandra said.
He stooped to kiss her hand. “Well, then, bear Dorilys my congratulations,” he 
said, and went out, while Cassandra, holding carefully to the railing—her lame 
knee had bettered somewhat, but was still troublesome on the stairs—went up 
toward the conservatory.
During the winter the women spent much of their time here, for these rooms alone 
caught the winter sun. They were bright with plants blooming in the light of the 
solar reflectors, and in the last tenday, in preparation for this celebration, 
branches of fruit-blossom had been brought inside and forced in the sunlight to 
adorn the gathering. Margali, as household leronis and also as Dorilys’s 
foster-mother, was in charge of the ceremonies. Most of the women of the castle 
were present, the wives of the stewards and household knights and other 
functionaries, Dorilys’s own waiting-women, a few of her favorites among the 
servant-women, and her own nurses, governesses, and teachers.
First she was taken to the chapel, and a lock of her hair was cut and laid upon 
the altar of Evanda, with fruit and flowers. After this Margali and Renata 
bathed her—Cassandra, as the highest in rank of the lady guests, had been 
invited to assist at this ritual—and dressed her from the skin out in new 
clothes, doing up her hair in a woman’s coiffure. Margali, looking at her 
nursling, remembered how different she looked from when, less than a year ago, 
she had been masquerading in woman’s garments at her handfasting.
Part of the purpose of this party, in earlier days, had been to make, for the 
new member of the woman’s community, such things as she would need in her adult 
life; a remnant of a harsher time in the mountains. It was still, by tradition, 
a party at which all women brought their sewing, and everyone took at least a 
few stitches in items intended for the guest of honor. As they sewed, the harp 
went from hand to hand, each of the women being expected to sing a song, or tell 
a story, to amuse the others. Elisa had had the tall harp brought from the 
schoolroom and sang mountain ballads. A variety of dainties had been provided 
for refreshments, including some of Dorilys’s favorite sweets, but Renata 
noticed that she only nibbled at them listlessly. “What is the matter, chiya?”
Dorilys passed her hand over her eyes. “I am tired and my eyes hurt a little. I 
don’t feel like eating.”
“Come now, it is too late for that,” one of them teased. “Two or three days ago 
was your time for headaches and vapors of that sort, if you must! You should be 
perfectly well again by now!” She examined the length of linen in Dorilys’s lap.
“What are you making, Dori?”
Dorilys said with dignity, “I am embroidering a holiday shirt for my husband,” 
and moved her wrist to display the catenas bracelet on it. Renata, watching her, 
suddenly did not know whether to laugh or cry. Such a traditional bridelike 
occupation, and the child had been given into a marriage which would never be 
more than a mockery! Well, she was still very young, and it would not hurt her 
to embroider a shirt for the big brother she loved and who was, in the eyes of 
the law, her husband.
Elisa finished her ballad, and turned to Cassandra.
“It is your turn. Will you favor us with a song, Lady Hastur?” she asked 
deferentially.
Cassandra hesitated, feeling shy, then realized that if she refused it might be 
taken as an indication that she considered herself above this gathering.
“With pleasure,” she said, “but I cannot play on the tall harp, Elisa. If 
someone will lend me a rryl—”
When the smaller instrument was fetched and tuned, she sang for them, in a sweet 
husky voice, two or three of the songs of the Valeron plains, far away. These 
were new to the mountain women, and they asked for more, but Cassandra shook her 
head.
“Another time, perhaps. It is Dorilys’s turn to sing for us, and I am sure she 
is eager to try out her new lute,” she said. The lute, an elaborate gilded and 
painted one, adorned with ribbons, was Lord Aldaran’s gift to his daughter on 
this occasion, replacing the old one of her mother’s on which she had learned to 
play. “And I am sure she would welcome a rest from sewing!”
Dorilys looked up languidly from the mass of linen on her knees. “I don’t feel 
like singing,” she said. “Will you excuse me, kinswoman?” She drew her hand 
across her eyes, then began to rub them. “My head aches. Do I have to do any 
more sewing?”
“Not unless you wish, love, but we are all sewing here.”
Margali said. In her mind was a gently amused picture, which Cassandra and 
Renata could both read clearly, that Dorilys was all too ready to develop 
headaches when it came to doing the hated sewing.
“How dare you say that about me,” Dorilys cried out, flinging the shirt in a 
wadded muddle to the floor. “I am really sick, I am not pretending! I don’t even 
want to sing, and I always want to sing—” And suddenly she began to cry.
Margali looked at her in dismay and consternation. But I didn’t open my mouth! 
Gods above, is the child a telepath, too?
Renata said gently, “Come here, Dorilys, and sit by me. Your foster-mother did 
not speak; you read her thoughts, that is all. There is no need to be troubled.”
But Margali was not accustomed to barricading her thoughts from Dorilys. She had 
come to believe that her charge had no trace of telepathic power, and she could 
not prevent the swift thought that flashed through her mind.
Merciful Avarra! This, too? Lord Aldaran’s older children so died when they were 
come to adolescence, and now it is beginning with her, too!
Dismayed, Renata reached out to try to barricade the thoughts, but it was too 
late; Dorilys had read them already. Her sobbing died and she stared at Renata 
in frozen terror.
Cousin! Am I going to die?
Renata said firmly, aloud, “No, of course not. Why do you think we have been 
training and teaching you, if not to strengthen you for this? I had not expected 
it quite so soon, that is all. Now don’t try to read anymore; you haven’t the 
strength. We will teach you to shut it out and control it.”
But Dorilys was not hearing her. She was staring at them in a nightmare of panic 
and dread, their thoughts mirrored back at them in the first frightening moment 
of overload. She stared around her like some small trapped animal, her mouth 
open, her eyes so wide with terror that the whites showed all around the 
shrunken pupils.
Margali got up and went to her foster-child, trying to take her into a 
comforting embrace. Dorilys stood rigid, unmoving, unaware of the touch, unable 
to perceive anything but the massive onslaught of internal sensation. When 
Margali would have lifted her into her arms, she struck out unknowing, striking 
Margali with a painful shock that crumpled the old woman against the wall. Elisa 
hurried to her aid, lifting Margali, and the woman sat there staring in shock 
and consternation.
To turn on me this way … on me?
Renata said, “She doesn’t know what she is doing, Margali; she doesn’t know 
anything. I can hold her,” she added, reaching out to hold the girl motionless 
as she had done when Dorilys first defied her, “but this is serious; she must 
have some kirian.”
Margali went for the drug, and Elisa, at a word from Renata, asked the guests to 
leave. Too many minds nearby would confuse Dorilys more frighteningly. She 
should be in the presence of only a few she trusted. When Margali returned with 
the kirian, only Renata, Cassandra, and Margali herself remained.
Renata went to Dorilys, trying to make contact with the terrified girl, isolated 
behind her panicked barricade of fear. After a time Dorilys began to breathe 
more easily, her eyes unlocked from their rigid, rolled-up unseeing position. 
When Margali held the vial of kirian to her lips she swallowed it without 
protest. They laid her on a couch and tucked a blanket around her, but when 
Renata knelt at her side to monitor her, she cried out again in panic and sudden 
terror.
“No, no, don’t touch me, don’t!” Thunder suddenly crashed around the heights of 
the castle, a rattling roar.
“Chiya. I won’t hurt you, really. I only want to see—”
“Don’t touch me, Renata!” Dorilys shrieked. “You want me to die, and then you 
can have Donal!”
Shocked, Renata recoiled. Such a thought had never crossed her mind, but had 
Dorilys probed to a level of which even Renata herself was unaware? Fiercely 
dismissing the guilt, she held out her arms to the girl.
“No, darling, no. Look—you can read my thoughts if you will and see what 
nonsense that is. I want nothing more than to have you well again.”
But, Dorilys’s teeth were chattering, and they knew she was in no state to 
listen to reason. Cassandra came and took her place; she could not kneel because 
of her lame knee, but she sat on the edge of the couch beside Dorilys.
“Renata would never hurt you, chiya, but we do not want you to upset yourself 
either. I am a monitor, too. I will monitor you. You are not afraid of me, are 
you?” She added to Renata, “When she is calmer, she will know the truth.”
Renata moved away, still so horrified by Dorilys’s sudden attack that she was 
almost incapable of rational thought. Has she lost her senses? Does threshold 
sickness presage madness also? She had been prepared for Dorilys to show 
ordinary sisterly jealousy because Donal was no longer specially hers; she had 
not been prepared for the intense emotion of this.
Damn that mad old man, if he has encouraged her to believe this will be anything 
but a legal fiction! Although Renata had hoped very soon to reveal to Donal that 
she was bearing his son—for now she was certain, and she had monitored the 
unborn, germ-deep, to be certain it bore no lethals—she realized that it must be 
kept secret for a while longer. If Dorilys were sick and unstable, this would 
only hurt her more.
Cassandra went through the monitoring process; then, as the kirian began to take 
effect, lowering Dorilys’s terrified defenses against the new sense which had 
frightened her so, Dorilys quieted, her breathing growing more steady.
“It’s stopped,” she said at last, and her face was calm, her heart no longer 
racing with panic. Only the memory of fear remained. “Will it—will it start 
again?”
“Probably,” Cassandra said, but stilled Dorilys’s look of swift panic with, “It 
will grow less troubling as you grow used to it. Each time it will be easier, 
and when you are fully mature, you will be able to use it as you do your sight, 
to look selectively as you wish, near and far, and to shut out everything you do 
not want.”
“I’m afraid,” Dorilys whispered. “Don’t leave me alone.”
“No, my lamb,” Margali said. “I will sleep in your room as long as you need me.”
Renata said, “I know Margali has been like a mother to you, and you want her 
near you, but truly, Dorilys, I am more skilled in this and I could help you 
more if you needed it for the next few nights.”
Dorilys held out her arms, and Renata came into them. The girl hid her face 
against Renata’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Renata. I didn’t mean it. Forgive me, 
cousin… you know I love you. Please, stay with me.”
“Of course, darling,” Renata said, holding her in a reassuring hug. “I know, I 
know. I have had threshold sickness, too. You were scared, and all kinds of wild 
ideas were flooding into your mind at once. It is hard to control when it comes 
on you so suddenly like that. From now on we must work a little every day with 
your matrix, to help you control it; because when it comes on your again you 
must be prepared.”
I wish that we had her in a Tower. She would be safer there, and so would all of 
us, she thought. She felt Cassandra echo the wish as the thunder rolled again 
and crackled in the air outside the castle.
  
In the great hall Allart heard the thunder, and so did Donal. Donal never heard 
thunder, no matter how or where, without thinking of Dorilys; and Dom Mikhail 
evidently followed his thoughts.
“Now that your bride is become a woman, you can go about the business of 
fathering an heir. If we know there is to be a son with Aldaran blood, then we 
will indeed be ready to defy Scathfell when he comes on us—and spring is not 
far,” Aldaran said with a fierce smile. But Donal’s face was taut with 
rejection, and Dom Mikhail looked at him and scowled.
“Zandru’s hells, lad! I do not expect that a child so young should attract you 
too much as a lover! But when you have done your duty to your clan, you can have 
as many other women as you will. No one will gainsay that! The important thing 
now is to give the Domain a legitimate, catenas heir, fathered in lawful 
marriage!”
Donal made a gesture of rejection. Are all old people always so cynical? At the 
same moment he felt his foster-father’s thoughts crossing and reinforcing his, 
with a kind of rueful affection.
Are all young people always so foolishly idealistic? Mikhail of Aldaran reached 
out to clasp his foster-son’s hand.
“My dear boy, think of it this way. This time next year there will be an heir to 
Aldaran, and you will be his regent lawfully,” he said.
As he spoke Allart almost gasped aloud, for his laran clearly showed it. In this 
great hall where they now sat, he could see it as clearly as if it were at this 
moment present to his eyes: Dom Mikhail, looking older, stooped and aged, held 
up a blanketed child—newborn, only a small red oval of baby face between the 
folds of the fleecy shawl—proclaiming Aldaran’s heir. The cries of acclamation 
were so loud that for a moment Allart could not believe the other; could not 
hear them… The images were gone, had yet to be. But he was deeply shaken.
Would Donal, then, actually father a child on his little sister? Would this be 
the heir to Aldaran? His foresight seemed so clear and unequivocal! Donal picked 
it up from his mind and sat staring at him, helplessly, but some hint of it 
spilled over to the old man and he grinned in fierce triumph, seeing in Allart’s 
mind the heir with whom he was obsessed.
At that moment Margali and Cassandra entered the hall, and Aldaran looked at 
them with a benevolent smile.
“I had not thought your merrymaking would end so quickly, ladies. When the 
hall-steward’s daughter came of age, there was dancing and singing in the 
women’s rooms until midnight was past—” He broke off abruptly. “Margali, 
kinswoman, what is wrong?”
But he read the truth quickly in her face.
“Threshold sickness! Merciful Avarra!”
Suddenly, from ambition and paranoia, he was only a concerned father again. His 
voice shook when he said, “I had hoped she would be spared this. Aliciane’s 
laran came on her early, and she had no crisis at puberty, but there is a curse 
on my seed… my older sons and daughter so died.” He bowed his head. “I have not 
thought of them in years.”
Allart saw them in his mind, reinforced by the memories of the old leronis: a 
dark, laughing boy; a smaller, more solid boy with a mop of riotous curls and a 
triangular scar on his chin; a delicate, dreamy dark girl who somehow, in the 
lift of her small head, had something of a look of Dorilys, too… Allart felt in 
himself the anguish of the father who had seen them sicken and die, one after 
another, all their promise and beauty wiped out. He saw in the older man’s mind 
a terrible picture, never to be effaced or forgotten: the girl lying arched, 
convulsed, her long hair matted, her lips bitten through so that her face was 
smeared with blood, the dreamy eyes those of an agonized maddened animal…
“You must not despair, cousin,” Margali said. “Renata has trained her well, to 
endure this. Often the first attack of threshold sickness is the most severe so 
that if she survives that, the worst is over.”
“It is often so,” Dom Mikhail said, his voice brooding inward on horror. “It was 
so with Rafaella, one day laughing and dancing and playing her harp; and the 
next day, the very next, a screaming, tormented thing going into convulsion 
after convulsion in my arms. She never opened her eyes again to know me. When at 
last she ceased to struggle, I did not know whether to be more grieved, or more 
glad that she had come to the end of her agony… But Dorilys has survived.”
“Yes,” Cassandra said compassionately, “and she did not even go into crisis, Dom 
Mikhail. There is no reason to think she will die.”
Donal’s voice was fierce, angry. “Now do you see, Father, what was on my mind? 
Before we speak of getting her with child, can we at least be sure she will live 
to womanhood?”
Aldaran flinched, as with a crushing blow. In the dying thunder past the 
windows, there was suddenly a crash and a rumble, and rain smote them, sluicing 
down and rattling, pounding, like the tramp of Scathfell’s armies on the march 
toward them.
For now the spring thaw was upon the Hellers, and the war was upon them.



CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
 
For the first moon of spring it rained incessantly, and Allart, welcoming the 
rain because he knew it would keep Scathfell’s armies from the road, still 
fretted with indecision. Damon-Rafael had sent a message expressing kindly 
concern, which to Allart’s perception read false in every line of it, and ended 
by ordering his brother home at the earliest moment when the roads were open and 
he was able to travel.
If I return home now, Damon-Rafael will kill me. It is as simple as that… 
Treason. I am forsworn. I gave my oath that I would support his rule, and now I 
know I will not. My life is forfeit to him, for I have broken my oath, in 
thought if not in deed… yet. So indecision made him linger at Aldaran, glad of 
the spring rains which kept him there.
Damon-Rafael is not sure, not yet. But if the roads are open and still I do not 
come—then I am a traitor, my life forfeit. And he wondered what Damon-Rafael 
would do when there was no longer any room for doubt.
Meanwhile, Dorilys had had a few repeated attacks of threshold sickness, but 
they had not been very severe, and at no time had Renata considered her life to 
be in danger. Renata had stayed with her tirelessly—though on one occasion she 
said to Cassandra, with the wry lift of a smile, “I do not know if she truly 
wishes to keep me at her side—or whether she feels that when I am with her, at 
least I am not with Donal.” Both women knew there was another thing, unspoken.
Soon or late, she must know that I am bearing Donal’s child. I do not want to 
hurt her or cause her any more grief.
Donal, whenever he saw Dorilys—which was seldom, for he was organizing the 
defenses of Aldaran against the attack which they knew would come with the 
spring—was kindly and attentive, the loving elder brother he had always been. 
But whenever Dorilys spoke the words “my husband,” he never answered with 
anything except an indulgent laugh, as if this were indeed a childish game they 
were playing, and he humoring her in it.
During these days when Dorilys was subject to recurring attacks of 
disorientation and upheaval—her telepathic sense, not yet under control, 
plunging her into a nightmare of terror and overload—she and Cassandra had 
become very close. Their shared love of music cemented this bond. Dorilys was 
already a talented player on the lute; Cassandra taught her to play a rryl as 
well, and she learned from the older woman some of the songs of Cassandra’s 
faraway homeland at Valeron.
“I cannot see how you can endure to live in the Lowlands,” Dorilys said. “I 
could not live without the mountain peaks surrounding me. It must be so dismal 
there, and so dull.”
Cassandra smiled. “No, sweetheart, it is very beautiful. Sometimes here I feel 
the mountains are closing around me so that I can hardly breathe, as if the 
peaks were the bars of a cage.”
“Really? How strange! Cassandra, I cannot play that chord as you do at the end 
of the ballad.”
Cassandra took the rryl from her hand and demonstrated. “But you cannot finger 
it as I do. You will have to ask Elisa to show you the fingering,” Cassandra 
said, and spread out her hand before Dorilys. The girl stared, wide-eyed.
“Oh, you have six fingers on your hand! No wonder I cannot play it as you do! I 
have heard that is a sign of chieri blood, but you are not emmasca as the chieri 
are; are you, cousin?”
“No,” Cassandra said, smiling.
“I have heard—Father told me that the king in the Lowlands is emmasca, so they 
will take the throne from him this summer. How terrible for him, poor king. Have 
you ever seen him? What is he like?”
“He was only the young prince when I saw him last,” said Cassandra. “He is 
quiet, and sad faced, and I think he would have made a good king, if they had 
been willing to let him reign.”
Dorilys bent over the instrument, experimentally fingering the chord she could 
not play again and again. Finally she gave up the attempt. “I wish I had six 
fingers,” she said. “There is no way I can play it properly! I wonder if my 
children will inherit my musical talents, or only my laran.”
“Surely you are too young to be thinking yet about children,” Cassandra said, 
smiling.
“In a few more moons, I will be capable of bearing. You know there is a great 
need for a son of Aldaran blood.” She spoke so seriously that Cassandra felt a 
great wrench of pity.
This they do to all the women of our caste! Dorilys has hardly put away her 
dolls, and already she can think of nothing but her duty to her clan! After a 
long silence, hesitating, she said, “Perhaps—Dorilys, perhaps you should not 
have children, with this curse of laran you bear.”
“As a son of our house must risk death in war, so a daughter of a great house 
must risk everything to give children to her caste.” She repeated it simply and 
positively, and Cassandra sighed.
“I know, chiya. Since I was a child younger than you, I, too, heard that day in 
and day out, as a religion it was impious to doubt, and I believed it as you do 
now. But I feel you should be old enough to decide.”
“I am old enough to decide,” said Dorilys. “You do not have that kind of 
problem, cousin. Your husband is not heir to a Domain.”
“You did not know?” Cassandra said. “Allart’s elder brother will be king, if the 
emmasca of Hali is dethroned. This brother has no legitimate sons.”
Dorilys stared at her. She said, “You could be queen,” and her face held awe. 
Evidently she had had no idea of Allart’s caste; he was only her brother’s 
friend. “Then Dom Allart, too, stands desperately in need of an heir, and you 
are not yet bearing him one.” Her eyes held a hint of reproach.
Hesitant, Cassandra explained the choice they had made. “Now, perhaps, with what 
I know, it might be safe, but we will wait till we are sure. Till we are very 
sure…”
“Renata said I should bear no daughters,” Dorilys said, “or I might die as my 
mother died in giving me birth. But I am not sure I trust Renata anymore. She 
loves Donal, and she does not want me bearing his children.”
“If that is true,” Cassandra said very gently, “then it is only that she fears 
for you, chiya.”
“Well, in any case, I should have a son first,” Dorilys said, “and then I will 
decide. Perhaps, when I give him a son, Donal will forget Renata, because I will 
be the mother of his heir.” Her young arrogance was so great that Cassandra felt 
troubled, and again assailed by doubts.
Could she cement her bond with Allart best by giving him the son he must have, 
if they were not to deny him the throne like Prince Felix? They had not spoken 
of this seriously for some time.
I would give anything, to be so sure of myself as Dorilys! But she changed the 
subject firmly, taking the rryl on her lap again, and placing Dorilys’s fingers 
on the strings.
“Look. I think perhaps if you hold it this way, you can play that chord, even 
with only five fingers,” she said.
  
Again and again, as the days passed, Allart wakened to the awareness of Aldaran 
under siege, then knew that the reality was not yet with them, that it was only 
his foresight which spread the inevitable visibly before him. That it was 
inevitable he knew perfectly well.
“At this season,” Donal said one morning, “the spring storms would have subsided 
in the Lowlands, but I do not know how the weather goes at Scathfell or Sain 
Scarp, or whether their armies can move. I shall go up to the watch-tower, which 
commands all the country around, and see if there is any suspicious movement on 
the roads.”
“Take Dorilys with you to the watchtower,” Allart advised. “She can read the 
weather even better than you.”
Donal hesitated and said, “I am reluctant, always, to meet with Dorilys now. 
Especially now that she can read my thoughts a little, as well. I am not happy 
that she has become a telepath.”
“Still, if Dorilys feels she can be of use to you somehow, that you are not 
altogether avoiding her…” Allart suggested.
Donal sighed. “You are right, cousin. Besides, I cannot avoid her entirely.” He 
dispatched a servant to his sister’s rooms, thinking, Would it be altogether 
bad, then, to give Dorilys what my father wishes of me? Perhaps, if she has what 
she wants of me, she will not grudge me Renata, and we need not struggle so hard 
to keep it from her…
Dorilys looked like the springtime itself, in a tunic embroidered with spring 
leaves, her shining hair braided low on her neck and caught with a woman’s 
butterfly-clasp. Allart could see the dissonance in Donal’s mind between his 
memories of the child, and the tall, graceful young woman she had become. He 
bowed over her hand, courteously.
“Now I see that I must call you my lady, Dorilys,” he said lightly, trying to 
make it a joke. “It seems that my little girl is gone forever. I have need of 
your talents, carya,” he added, and explained what he wanted of her.
At the very topmost spire of Castle Aldaran, the watch-tower shot up for the 
height of another floor or two, an astonishing feat of engineering, and one 
which Allart could not figure out. It would have had to be done by matrix, 
working with a large circle. This great height commanded all of the country 
around to a great distance. While they climbed to the Tower, the window-slits 
showed them it was wrapped in fog, and cloud, but by the time they emerged into 
the high chamber, the clouds were already thinning and moving away. Donal looked 
at Dorilys in delighted surprise, and she smiled, almost a smug smile.
“To dispel fogs of that sort—even as a baby I think I could do that,” she said. 
“And now it is nothing. It takes only the lightest thought, without effort, and 
if you wish to see clearly—I remember when I was little you brought me up here, 
Donal, and let me look through Father’s collection of big spyglasses.”
Allart could see the roads below them aswarm with movement. He blinked, knowing 
they were not there, not yet; then shook his head, trying to clarify present 
from future. It was true! Armies moved on the road, though not yet at the gates 
of Aldaran.
“We need not fear,” Donal said, trying to reassure Dorilys. “Aldaran has never 
been captured by force of arms. We could hold this citadel forever, had we food 
enough; but they will be at our gates within a tenday. I will put on a 
glider-harness and go out to spy where they go, and bring back news of how many 
men move against us.”
“No,” Allart said. “If you will let me presume to advise you, cousin, you will 
not go yourself. Now that you are to command, your place is here where any one 
of your vassals who needs to consult with you can find you at once. You must not 
risk yourself on a task which any one of your lads could do for you.” Donal made 
a gesture of repugnance. “It goes against me—to order any man into a danger I 
will not face myself,” he said, but Allart shook his head.
“You will face your own dangers,” he said, “but there are dangers for the 
leaders and dangers for the followers, and they are not interchangeable. From 
now on, cousin, your flying must be a recreation for times of peace.”
Dorilys touched Donal’s arm very lightly. She said, “Now that I am a woman—can I 
still fly, Donal?”
Donal said, “I do not see why you should not, when there is peace again, but you 
must ask our father about that, chiya, and Margali.”
“But I am your wife,” she said, “and it is for you to give me commands.”
Caught between exasperation and tenderness, Donal sighed. He said, “Then, chiya, 
I command you to seek Margali’s advice in this, and Renata’s. I cannot advise 
you.” Her face had clouded ominously at the mention of Renata, and Donal 
thought, Someday I must tell her, very clearly, how it stands with me and 
Renata. He said aloud, an arm gently about her shoulders, “Chiya, when I was 
fourteen and my laran was coming on me, as it is upon you now, I was forbidden 
to fly for more than half a year, since I was never sure when an attack of 
disorientation and giddiness would come upon me. For that reason, it would 
please me better if you did not seek to fly until you are sure you can master 
it.”
“I will do exactly as you say, my husband,” she said, looking up at him with a 
look of such adoration that he quailed.
When she had gone away, Donal looked at Allart in despair. “She seems not like a 
child! I cannot think of her as a child,” he said, “and that is my only defense 
now, to say she is a child and too young.”
Allart was painfully reminded of his own emotional conflict over the riyachiyas, 
with this difference—that they were sterile and not altogether human and 
whatever he did with them could affect only his own self-esteem and not the 
riyachiyas themselves. But Donal had been placed in the position of playing a 
god with the life of a real woman. How could he advise Donal? He had consummated 
his own marriage, against his own better judgment, and for much the same 
reasons—because the girl wished for it.
He said soberly, “Perhaps it would be better not to think of Dorilys as a child, 
cousin. No girl given the training she has had can be altogether a child. 
Perhaps you must begin to think of her as a woman. Try to come to agreement with 
her in that way, as a woman old enough to make her own decisions; at least when 
the threshold sickness has left her free of impulse and sudden brainstorms.”
“I am sure you are right.” Almost gratefully, Donal recalled himself to duty. 
“But come—my father must be told that there is movement on the roads, and 
someone must be sent to spy out where they are!”
Aldaran greeted the news with a fierce smile.
“So it has come!” he said, and Allart thought again of the old hawk, mantling, 
spreading his wings, eager for a last flight.
  
As armed men crossed the Kadarin and moved northward into the Hellers, Allart, 
seeing them with his laran, knew with a sinking heart that some of these men 
moved northward against him; for among the armed men there were some with the 
fir-tree badge of the Hasturs of Elhalyn, with the crown that distinguished it 
from the Hasturs of Carcosa and Castle Hastur.
Day after day, he and Donal returned to the watchtower, awaiting the first sign 
of the armies’ imminent approach at the castle.
But is this real, or does my laran show me what might never come to pass?
“It is real, for I see it, too,‘” Donal said, reading his thoughts. “My father 
must be told of this.”
“He wished to keep from entanglement in Lowland wars,” Allart said. “Now, by 
sheltering me and my wife, he has made an enemy, and Damon-Rafael has made 
common cause with Scathfell against him.” As they turned to go down into the 
castle, he thought, Now, truly, I am brotherless…
Donal laid a hand on his arm. “I, too, cousin,” he said.
On an impulse, neither moving first, but simultaneously, they drew their 
daggers. Allart smiled, laid the hilt of his to the blade of Donal’s; then slid 
Donal’s into his own sheath. It was a very old pledge; it meant that neither 
would ever draw steel against the other in any cause whatever. Donal sheathed 
Allart’s dagger. They embraced briefly, then, arms linked, went down to Dom 
Mikhail.
Allart, comforted by the gesture, felt a moment’s hesitation.
Perhaps I was wrong. I must be careful what alliances I make, do nothing it 
would embarrass me to retract should I one day sit on the throne. … He broke off 
the thought impatiently.
Already, he thought with a flare of self-hatred, I am thinking in terms of what 
is expedient, like a politician—like my brother!
As they came into the courtyard and began to cross it, one of the servants 
suddenly pointed upward.
“There—there! What is that?”
“It is only a bird,” someone said, but the man cried out, “No, that is no bird!”
Shading his eyes, Allart looking up into the sun, seeing something there, 
wheeling, slowly spiraling down, a slow and ominous descent. Fear and agony 
clutched at him. This is some work of Damon-Rafael’s, an arrow launched by 
Damon-Rafael at my heart, he thought, almost paralyzed. In a spasm of dread he 
realized, Damon-Rafael has the pattern of my matrix, of my soul. He could aim 
one of Coryn’s fearful weapons at me, without fear it will kill any other.
In that moment he felt Cassandra’s thoughts entangled in his own; then there was 
a blaze of lightning in the clear sky, a cry of pain and triumph, and the broken 
thing that was not a bird fell, like a stone, arrested in midair, splattering 
fire from which the servants edged back in terror. A woman’s dress had been 
caught in the terrible stuff. One of the stablemen grabbed her and shoved her 
bodily into one of the washing-tubs that stood at the end of the court. She 
screamed with pain and outrage, but the fire sizzled and went out. Allart looked 
at the fire and the broken bird still squirming with dreadful pseudo-life as he 
came near.
“Bring water, and douse it wholly,” he ordered.
When the contents of two or three laundry-tubs had been flung on it and the fire 
was wholly out, he looked at the faintly squirming thing with terrible 
repugnance. The woman who had been pushed into the first laundry-tub had hauled 
herself out, dripping.
“You were fortunate,” Donal said before she could protest. “A drop of clingfire 
splattered on you, my good woman. It would have burned up your dress and burned 
through your flesh to your bones and gone on burning until the burned flesh was 
cut away.”
Allart stamped on the broken thing of metal coils and wheels and pseudo-flesh, 
again and again, until it lay in shattered fragments which were still, faintly, 
moving. “Take this,” he directed one of the stablemen. “Pick it up on your 
shovels. Do not touch it with your bare hands, and bury it deep in the earth.”
One of the guardsmen came and looked, shaking his head.
“Gods above! Is that what we must face in this war? What devilry sent that 
against us?”
“The lord Elhalyn, who would be king over this land,” said Donal, his face like 
stone. “If it were not for my sister’s command of the lightning, my friend and 
my brother would now lie here burning!” He turned, sensing Dorilys running down 
the inner stairs, Cassandra following more slowly, with all the haste her lamed 
leg would allow. Dorilys ran to Donal and caught him close in her arms.
“I felt it! I felt it hovering over us. I have struck it down,” she cried. “It 
did not strike at you or Allart! I saved you, I saved you both!”
“Indeed you did,” Donal said, holding the girl in his arms. “We are grateful to 
you, my child, we are grateful! Truly you are what Kyril called you that day at 
the fire station—queen of storms!”
The girl clung to him, her face lighted with such joy that Allart felt sudden 
fear. It seemed to him that lightnings played all over Castle Aldaran, though 
the sky was wholly clear again, and that the air was heavy with fire.
Was this what lay ahead in this war? Cassandra came to him, holding him, and he 
felt her fear like his own, and remembered that she had known the pain of a 
clingfire burn.
“Don’t cry, my love. Dorilys saved me,” he said. “She struck down Damon-Rafael’s 
evil contrivance before it reached me. I suppose he would not believe I could 
escape this one, so it is not likely he will send another such thing against 
me.”
But even as he comforted her, he was still afraid. This war would not be 
ordinary mountain warfare, but something quite new and terrible.



CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
 
If there had ever been room for doubt in Allart’s mind about the coming war, 
there was none now. On every road leading to the peak of Aldaran, armies were 
gathering. Donal, massing the defenses, had stationed armed men ringing the 
lower slopes, so that for the first time in Donal’s memory Castle Aldaran was 
actually the armed fortress it had been built to be.
A messenger had come into the castle under truce-flag. Allart stood in Aldaran’s 
presence-chamber, looking at Mikhail of Aldaran on his high seat, calm, 
impassive, menacing. Dorilys sat beside him, with Donal standing at her side. 
Even Allart knew that Dorilys’s presence was no more than the excuse for 
Donal’s.
“My lord,” the messenger said, and bowed, “hear the words of Rakhal of 
Scathfell, demanding certain observances and concessions from Mikhail of 
Aldaran.”
Aldaran’s voice was surprisingly mild. “I am not accustomed to receive demands. 
My brother of Scathfell may legitimately require of me whatever is customary 
from overlord to vassal. Say therefore to Lord Scathfell that I am dismayed that 
he should demand of me anything which he has only to request on the proper 
terms.”
“It shall be so spoken,” said the messenger. Allart, knowing that the messenger 
was a Voice, or trained speaker who would be able to relay up to two or three 
hours of such speech and counter-speech without the slightest variation in 
phrasing or emphasis, was certain the message wold be relayed to Scathfell in 
Aldaran’s very intonation.
“With that reservation, my lord Aldaran; hear the words of Rakhal of Scathfell 
to his brother of Aldaran.” The stance and the very vocal timbre of the 
messenger altered slightly, and although he was a small man, and his voice light 
in texture, the illusion was eerie; it was as if Scathfell himself stood in the 
hall. Donal could almost hear the good-humored bullying voice of Lord Rakhal of 
Scathfell as the messenger spoke.
“Since you, brother, have made of late certain unlawful and scandalous 
dispositions regarding the heritage of Aldaran, therefore I, Rakhal of 
Scathfell, warden and lawful heir to the Domain of Aldaran, and pledged to 
support and uphold the Domain should your illness, infirmity, or old age make 
you unfit to do so, declare you senile, infirm, and unfit to make any further 
decisions regarding the Domain. Therefore I, Rakhal of Scathfell, am prepared to 
assume wardenship of the Domain in your name. Therefore I demand”— Lord 
Aldaran’s fists clenched at his side at that repeated word, demand—“that you 
deliver up to me at once possession of Castle Aldaran, and the person of your 
nedestro daughter Dorilys of Rockraven, in order that I may suitably bestow her 
in marriage for the ultimate good of the realm. As for the traitor Donal of 
Rockraven, called Delleray, who has unlawfully influenced your sick mind to do 
malice and scandal to this realm, I, warden of Aldaran, am disposed to offer 
amnesty, provided that he leaves Castle Aldaran before sunrise and goes where he 
will, never to return or to step within the borders of the realm of Aldaran, or 
his life shall be forfeit and he shall be slain like an animal by any man’s 
hand.”
Donal stiffened, but his mouth took on a hard, determined line.
He wants Aldaran, Allart thought. Perhaps at first he was willing to step aside 
for Aldaran’s kinsmen. But now it was obvious that Donal had become accustomed 
to thinking of himself as his foster-father’s lawful successor and heir.
The Voice went on, and his voice altered faintly, his very posture changing 
somewhat. Although Allart had seen the technique before, it was now as if a 
quite different man stood before him, even the lines of his face changing. But 
what they had in common was arrogance.
“Furthermore, I, Damon-Rafael of Elhalyn, rightful king of the Domains, demand 
of Mikhail of Aldaran that he shall at once deliver to me the person of the 
traitor Allart Hastur of Elhalyn and his wife Cassandra Aillard, that they may 
be duly charged with plotting against the crown; and that you, Mikhail of 
Aldaran, present yourself before me to discuss what tribute shall be paid from 
Aldaran to Thendara that you may continue during my realm to enjoy your Domain 
in peace.”
Still again the messenger’s voice and bearing altered, and again it was as if 
Rakhal of Scathfell stood before them.
“And should you, my brother of Aldaran, refuse any of these demands, I shall 
feel empowered to enforce them upon your stronghold and yourself by force of 
arms if I must.”
The messenger bowed a fourth time and remained silent.
“An insolent message,” Aldaran said at last, “and if justice were done, he who 
spoke it should be hanged from the highest battlement of this castle, since in 
serving my brother you are also pledged to serve his overlord, and I am he. Why, 
then should I not treat you as a traitor, fellow?”
The messenger paled, but his face betrayed no twitch of personal reaction, as he 
said, “The words are not mine, Lord, but those of your brother of Scathfell and 
His Highness Elhalyn. If the words offend you, sir, I beg of you to punish their 
originators, not the messenger who repeats them upon command.”
“Why, you are right,” Aldaran said mildly. “Why beat the puppy when the old dog 
annoys me with barking? Bear this message, then, to my brother of Scathfell. Say 
to him that I, Mikhail of Aldaran, am in full enjoyment of my wits, and that I 
am his overlord by oath and custom. Say to him that if justice were done, I 
should dispossess him of Scathfell, which he holds by my favor, and proclaim him 
outlaw in this realm as he has presumed to do with the chosen husband of my 
daughter. Say further to my brother that as for my daughter Dorilys, she is 
already wedded by the catenas, and he need not trouble himself to find a husband 
for her elsewhere. As for the lord Damon-Rafael of Elhalyn, say to him that I 
neither know nor care who reigns within the Lowlands across the Kadarin, since 
within this realm I acknowledge no reign save my own, but that if he who would 
be king in Thendara should invite me as his equal to witness his crowning, we 
will then discuss the exchange of diplomatic courtesies. As for my kinsman and 
guest Allart Hastur, he is welcome at my household and he may make to Lord 
Elhalyn such answer as he chooses, or none at all.”
Allart wet his lips, too late realizing that even this gesture would be 
faithfully reproduced by the messenger standing before him, and wished he had 
not betrayed that small weakness. At last he said, “Say to my brother 
Damon-Rafael that I came here to Aldaran as his obedient subject and that I have 
faithfully performed all that he asked of me. My mission completed, I claim the 
right to domicile myself where I choose without consulting him.” A poor answer, 
he thought, and cast about for the best way to continue. “Say further that the 
climate of Hali did not agree with my wife’s health and that I removed her from 
Hali Tower for her health and safety.” Let Damon-Rafael chew on that!
“Say at last,” he added, “that, far from plotting against the crown, I am a 
faithful subject of Felix, son of the late king, Regis. If Felix, lawful king of 
Thendara, bids me at any time to come and defend his crown against any who would 
conspire to seize it, I am at his command. Meanwhile I remain here at Aldaran 
lest the lawful king Felix accuse me of conspiring to seize his rightful 
throne.”
Now, he thought, it is done and irrevocable. I could have sent a message of 
submission to my brother, and pleaded that as Aldaran’s guest I could raise no 
hand against him. Instead, I have declared myself his foe.
Allart resisted the temptation to look ahead and see, with his laran, what might 
befall when Damon-Rafael and Lord Scathfell received that message. He might 
foresee a hundred things, but only one could come to pass, and there was no 
sense in troubling his mind with the other ninety and nine.
There was silence in the presence-chamber while the trained Voice digested the 
message. Then he said, “My lords, those who dispatched me foresaw some answer 
such as this and bade me say thus: ”To Donal of Rockraven, called Delleray, that 
he is declared outlaw in this realm and that any man who slays him shall do so 
from this day forth without penalty. To Allart Hastur, traitor, we offer nothing 
save the mercy of his brother should he come and make submission to him before 
sundown of this day. And to Mikhail of Aldaran, that he shall surrender Castle 
Aldaran, and all those within it, to the last woman and child, forthwith, or we 
shall come and take it.”
There was another of those long silences. At last Aldaran said, “I do not plan 
to visit my Domain in the near future. If my brother of Scathfell has nothing 
better to do with his seed-time and harvest than sit like a dog outside my 
gates, he may stay there as long as it pleases him. However, should he injure 
man or woman, child or animal lawfully under my protection, or should he step 
beyond the line of my armed men so much as the width of my smallest finger, then 
I shall hold that as reason to annihilate him and his armies, and declare his 
holding of Scathfell forfeit. As for him, if I take him here I shall certainly 
hang him.”
Silence. When it was obvious that he had no more to say, the messenger bowed.
“My lord, the message shall be delivered faithfully as spoken,” he said. Then, 
the truce-flag before him, he withdrew from the room. Even before he had reached 
the door, Allart knew that there was no mistaking what the future would be.
It was war.
But then, he had never been in any doubt of that.
  
It was not long in coming. Within an hour of the departure of the Voice, a 
flight of fire-arrows winged up from below. Most of them fell harmlessly on 
stone, but a few landed on wooden roofs or on bales of fodder stacked within the 
courtyard for the animals, and the laundry-tubs of water were again put into 
play for extinguishing them before the fire could spread.
After the fires had been put out, silence again. This time it was an ominous 
silence, the difference, Donal thought, between warfare impending and warfare 
begun. Donal ordered all the remaining fodder doused down heavily with water 
from the inside wells. But the fire-arrows had only been the formal answer to 
the challenge, “… should he step beyond the line of my armed men so much as the 
width of my smallest finger…”
Inside the courtyard, all were ready to repel a siege. Armed men were stationed 
at the head of every small path leading upward, in case anyone should break 
through the outer ring of men around the entire mountain. Food and fodder had 
been stockpiled long since, and there were several wells within the enclosure of 
the castle, living springs in the rock of the mountain. There was nothing to do 
but wait…
The waiting continued for three days. Guards stationed in the watchtower, and 
those in the line around the lower peaks, reported no activity in the camp 
below. Then, one morning, Donal heard cries of consternation in the courtyard 
and hurried out to see what had happened.
The guardsmen were cooking their breakfast around fires kindled within 
hearthstones laid at the far end, but the cooks, and those who were carrying 
water to the animals, stared in fear at the water flowing from the pipes: thick, 
red, and sluggish, with the color, the consistency, and even the smell of 
freshly spilled blood. Allart, coming to see, looked at the frightened faces of 
the guardsmen and soldiers, and knew that this was serious. The success in 
outlasting a siege depended almost entirely on the water supply. If Scathfell 
had somehow managed to contaminate the springs which watered the castle, they 
could not hold out more than a day or two. Before sunset some of the animals 
would begin to die; then the children. There was nothing but surrender before 
them.
He looked at the stuff flowing from the pipes. “Is it only this spring? Or is 
the other one, which runs into the castle, contaminated also?” he asked.
One of the men spoke up. “I went into the kitchens, Dom Allart, and it’s just 
like this.”
Dom Mikhail, hastily summoned, bent over the stuff, let it run into his hand, 
grimacing at the thick texture and the smell; then experimentally lifted his 
hand to his mouth to taste. After a moment he shrugged, spit it out.
“How did they get at the wells, I wonder? The answer to that is that they could 
not; and therefore they did not.” He touched the matrix about his neck. He took 
another mouthful and when he spit it out the water ran clear from his lips.
“Illusion,” he said. “A remarkably realistic and disgusting illusion, but 
illusion nevertheless. The water is clean and wholesome; they have only set a 
spell on it so that it looks, and tastes, and worst of all smells like blood.”
Allart bent to sip the stuff, feeling the surge of nausea because to all 
appearances he was drinking a stream of fresh blood… but it was water to the 
texture and feel, despite the sickening smell and taste.
“Is this to be witch-war, then?” the guard demanded, shaking his head in 
consternation. “Nobody can drink that stuff.”
“I tell you, it’s water, and perfectly good water,” Aldaran said impatiently. 
“They’ve just made it look like blood.”
“Aye, Lord, and smell and taste,” said the cook. “I tell you—none will drink of 
it.”
“You’ll drink of it or go dry,” Donal said impatiently. “It’s all in your mind, 
man; your throat will feel it as water, whatever the look of it.”
“But the beasts will not drink of it, either,” said one of the men, and indeed 
they could hear the noises of restless animals from inside the barns and 
stables, some of them kicking and rearing.
Allart thought, Yes, this is serious. All beasts fear the blood-smell. 
Furthermore, the men here are afraid, so we must show them quickly that they 
need not fear such things.
Aldaran said, sighing, “Well, well, I had hoped we could simply ignore it, let 
them think their spell had no effect.” But while they might at last coax or 
persuade the men to ignore the look and taste of the water, the effort of this 
would sap their morale. And the animals could not be persuaded by reason to 
ignore it. To them, smell and taste were the reality of the water, and they 
might easily die of thirst within reach of all the water they could drink, 
rather than violate their instincts by drinking what their senses told them was 
freshly spilled blood.
“Allart, I have no right to ask you to aid in the defense of my stronghold.”
“My brother has seized the crown and makes common cause with yours, kinsman. My 
life is forfeit if I am taken here.”
“Then see if we can find what in Zandru’s seven hells they are doing down 
there!”
“There is at least one laranzu bearing a matrix,” Allart said, “and perhaps 
more. But this is a simple spell. I will see what I can do.”
“I need Donal here for the defense of the outwalls,” Aldaran said.
Allart nodded. “So be it.” He turned to one of the servants, who stood staring 
at the water that still flowed, like fresh blood, in a crimson stream from the 
pipe, and said, “Go to my lady, the lady Renata, and Margali, and ask that they 
join me in the watchtower as soon as they may.”
He added, turning to Dom Mikhail, “By your leave, kinsman, it is isolated enough 
that we can work in peace.”
“Give what orders you will, kinsman,” Aldaran said.
Within the watchtower, when the women joined him, he said, “You know?”
Renata made a wry face, saying, “I know. My maid came shrieking in when she went 
to draw my bath, screaming that blood flowed from the taps. I suspected even 
then that it was illusion, but I could not convince my servingwomen of that!”
“I, too,” Margali said. “Though I knew it illusion, I felt I would rather go 
dirty than bathe in the stuff, or thirsty than drink of it. Dorilys was 
terrified. Poor child, she has had another attack of threshold sickness. I had 
hoped she was past it, but with all this emotional upheaval—”
“Well, first we must see how it is done,” Allart said. “Cassandra, you are a 
monitor, but you, Renata, have had the most training. Do you wish to work 
central to what we are doing?”
“No, Allart. I—I dare not,” she said reluctantly.
Immediately Cassandra picked up her meaning. She put her arm around her 
kinswoman. “I had not known… you are pregnant, Renata!” Cassandra said, in 
astonishment and dismay. After all Renata had said to them… but it was done, and 
nothing to argue now. “Very well. You can monitor outside the circle, if you 
wish, though I do not think it is needed for this… Margali?”
A blue light began to glimmer from the three matrixes as they focused upon them; 
after a moment Cassandra nodded. It had been, indeed, the simplest of spells.
“There is no need for anything,” she said, “except to reinforce nature. That 
water shall be what it is, and nothing more.”
Joined, they sank into the surrounding energy patterns, repeating the simplest 
of the awarenesses, the old elemental pattern: Earth and air and water and fire, 
soil and rock and wind and sky and rain and snow and lightning. … As the rhythm 
of nature moved within them and over them, Allart felt even Renata drop into the 
simple spell… for this, in tune with nature instead of wrenching it to their 
patterns, could do nothing but good even to her unborn child. It repeated simply 
that he must be what nature had made him. As they searched out the fabric of the 
vibration that had set the illusion on the springs below the castle, they knew 
that every spring and every tap and pipe now flowed clear spring water from the 
rock. Remaining for a moment in the smooth resting rhythm of nature, they felt 
Dorilys, too, and Donal and Lord Aldaran—everyone within the castle who bore a 
matrix and could use laran—reinforced and strengthened by it. Even those who had 
not this awareness sensed the smooth rhythm, to the lowliest beasts in the 
courtyards and stables.
The sun, too, seemed for a moment to shine with a more brilliant crimson light.
All of nature is one, and all that one is harmony. … To Cassandra, the musician, 
it was like a great chord, massive and peaceful, lingering and dying away into 
silence, but still heard, somewhere…
Dorilys came softly into the watchtower room. After a moment the rapport fell 
quietly apart, without any tactile break, and Margali smiled and stretched her 
hand to her foster-daughter.
“You look well again, sweetheart.”
“Yes,” Dorilys said, smiling. “I was lying on my bed, and suddenly I felt—oh, I 
don’t know how to tell you—good, and I knew you were working here, and I wanted 
to come and be with you all.” She leaned against her foster-mother, with a sweet 
and confiding smile. “Oh, Kathya said I must tell you that the water flows clean 
again in bath and pipes, and you can break fast when you will.”
The healing-spell was made, Allart knew. It would be that much harder for 
Scathfell’s hordes to use the powers of sorcery or matrix science against them, 
when these did any violence to nature. The best thing was that they had done 
this without even harming the laranzu who had set the spell; for his attempted 
evil he had been returned good.
Holy Bearer of Burdens, grant it stops at this, Allart thought. But despite the 
flow of happiness and well-being in every nerve, he knew it could not stop here. 
Having barred their attack by illusion, the forces commanded by Scathfell and 
Damon-Rafael must turn, at least for now, to more conventional warfare.
He said as much to Dom Mikhail, later that day, but Lord Aldaran looked 
pessimistic.
“Castle Aldaran can stand through any ordinary siege, and my brother of 
Scathfell knows it. He will not be content with that.”
“Yet I foresee,” Allart said, hesitating, “that if we use ordinary warfare only, 
it will go hard with both sides. It is not even sure that we shall win. But if 
they manage to lure us into a battle by matrix technology, then nothing can come 
but catastrophe. Lord Aldaran, I have pledged that I will do what I can to aid 
you. Yet I beg you, Dom Mikhail. Try to keep this warfare to ordinary methods, 
even if the victory comes harder in this way. You have said yourself that this 
castle can withstand any ordinary siege. I beg you not to let them force us into 
doing their kind of battle.”
Lord Aldaran noted that Allart’s face was pale, and that he was trembling. Part 
of him understood and took in fully all that Allart was saying: the part of him 
that had been repelled when Allart spoke of clingfire used in the Lowlands. Yet 
a part of him, the skilled old soldier, veteran of many forays and campaigns in 
the mountains, looked at Allart and saw only the man of peace, afraid of the 
desolation of war. His sympathy was not unmixed with contempt, the contempt of 
the natural warrior for the man of peace, the soldier for the monk. He said, “I 
wish it might be kept, indeed, to lawful weapons of war. Yet already your 
brother has sent evil birds and clingfire against us. I fear he will not be 
content to throw catapults against us and storm our walls with scaling ladders 
and armed men. I will pledge you this; that if he does not use his dreadful 
weapons against us, I will not be the first to use laran against him. But I have 
no Tower circle at my command to stockpile ever more frightful weapons against 
my enemies. If Damon-Rafael has brought Tower-created weapons to place at the 
command of my brother of Scathfell, I cannot hold him off forever with men armed 
only with arrows and dart-guns and swords.”
That was only reasonable, Allart thought in despair. Would he allow Cassandra to 
fall into the hands of Damon-Rafael, simply because he was reluctant to use 
clingfire? Would he see Donal hanged from the castle wall, Dorilys carried off 
to a stranger’s bed? Yet he knew, beyond all shadow of a doubt, that if laran 
were used, beyond this simple spell which reaffirmed that nature was one and 
nothing out of harmony with it could long exist, then…
Allart’s ears were full of cries of future lamentation… Dom Mikhail stood before 
him bowed with weeping, aged beyond recognition in a single night, crying out, 
“I am accursed! Would that I had died with neither daughter nor son.” Renata’s 
face swam before him, convulsed, anguished, dying. The terrible flare of 
lightning stunned his senses, and Dorilys’s face showed livid in the storm’s 
glare… He could not endure the possible futures; neither could he shut them out. 
The weight of them cut off speech, cut off everything but dread…
Shaking his head despairingly at Lord Aldaran, he went away.
But for a time indeed, it seemed that the attackers had been frustrated and must 
fall back on ordinary weapons. All that day, and all through the night, 
catapults thudded against the castle walls, some varied with flights of 
fire-arrows. Donal kept men with tubs of water continually on the alert, and 
even some of the women were pressed into service watching for fires and hauling 
tubs of water where they could be used at once to extinguish fires in the wooden 
outbuildings. Just before dawn, while most of the castle’s guard were busy 
scurrying here and there putting out a dozen small fires, an alarm was suddenly 
sounded calling every able-bodied man to the walls to repel a party on scaling 
ladders. Most of them were cut down and thrown from the heights, but a few 
managed to break inside, and Donal, with half a dozen picked men, had to face 
them in the first hand-to-hand battle of the inner courtyard. Allart, fighting 
at Donal’s side, took a slight slash in one arm, and Donal sent him to have it 
tended.
Allart found Cassandra and Renata working alongside the healer-women.
  
“All the gods be thanked it is no worse,” said Cassandra, very pale.
“Is Donal hurt?” Renata demanded.
“Nothing to worry about,” Allart said, grimacing as the healer-woman began to 
stitch his arm. “He cut down the man who gave me this. Dom Mikhail did never 
better for himself or Aldaran than when he had Donal trained in warfare. Young 
as he is, he has everything under complete control.”
“It is quiet,” Cassandra said, with a sudden deep shudder. “What devilry are 
those folk down there contemplating now?”
“Quiet, you say?” Allart looked at her in astonishment; then realized that it 
was indeed quiet, a deep ominous quiet both inside and out. The screaming sound 
of the shells and missiles breaking against the castle wall had ended. The 
sounds he heard so clearly were all inside his own head, were the possibles and 
might-never-be’s of his laran. For the moment it was quiet indeed, but the 
sounds he could almost hear told him this was only a lull.
“My beloved, I wish that you were safe at Hali, or in Tramontana.”
She said, “I would rather be with you.”
The healer-woman finished bandaging his arm and strapped it in a sling. She 
handed him some reddish sticky fluid in a small cup. “Drink this; it will keep 
your wound from fevering,” she said. “Rest your arm if you can; there are others 
who can bear a sword into the fight.” She drew back in dismay as the cup fell 
from Allart’s suddenly lax hand, the red fluid running like blood on the stone 
floor.
“In Avarra’s name, my lord!”
But even as she stooped to mop up the mess the outcry Allart had already heard 
through his laran broke out in the courtyard; unceremoniously Allart rose and 
ran down the inner stairs, hearing the commotion. There was a crowd in the inner 
court, edging back from a burst container which lay on the stone, oozing a 
strange-looking yellow slime. As the slime spread, the very stone of the 
courtyard smoked and burned and fell away into great gaping holes, eaten away 
like cold butter.
“Zandru’s hells!” burst out one of the guardsmen. “What is that? More wizard 
hellcraft?”
“I know not,” Dom Mikhail said, sobered. “I have never seen anything like it 
before.”
One of the courageous soldiers came forward, to try to heave some fragments of 
the container aside. He fell back, howling in agony, his hand seared and 
blackened with the stuff.
“Do you know what this is, Allart?” Donal asked.
Allart pressed his lips tight. “No sorcery, but a weapon devised by the 
Towers—an acid that will melt stone.”
“Is there nothing we can do about it?” Lord Aldaran asked. “If they throw many 
of those against our outwalls, they will melt the very castle about our ears! 
Donal, send men to check the boundaries.”
Donal pointed to a guardsman. “You, and you, and you, take your paxmen and go. 
Take straw shields; it will not harm the straw—See where it has splashed on the 
fodder— but if it touches metal you will be stifled by the acid fumes.”
Allart said, “If it is acid, take the ash-water you use for mopping in the dairy 
and stables, and perhaps it will stop the acid from eating through the stone.” 
Although the strong alkali did indeed neutralize the acid and keep it from 
spreading, several of the men were splashed by the strong lye. Where the 
courtyard had been eaten by the acid, even where treated afterward with the 
lye-water, holes were eaten in boots and whole areas had to be fenced off so 
that the men would not be injured by trespassing on them. There had been a few 
direct hits on the stone of the outwalls, and the stone was eaten away and 
crumbling; worse, the supply of lye-water was soon exhausted. They tried to use 
substitutes, such as soap and animal urine, but they were not strong enough.
“This is dreadful,” Dom Mikhail said. “They will have our walls down at this 
rate. Surely this is Lord Elhalyn’s doing, kinsman. My brother of Scathfell has 
no such weapons at his command! What can we do, kinsman? Have you any 
suggestions?”
“Two,” Allart said, hesitating. “We can put a binding-spell on the stone, so 
that it cannot be eaten away by any unnatural substance, but only by those 
things intended to destroy stone. It would not stand against earthquake or time 
or flood, but I think it may stand against these unnatural weapons.”
So once again the Tower-trained personnel took their place in the matrix 
chamber. Dorilys joined them, pleading to take a hand.
“I can monitor,” she begged, “and Renata would be free to join you in the 
circle.”
“No,” Renata said quickly, thanking all the gods that Dorilys’s telepathy was 
still untrained and erratic. “I think, if you will, you can take a place in the 
circle, and I will monitor from outside.”
As monitor for the circle Dorilys would know at once why Renata could not join 
it now.
It goes against me to deceive her this way. But a time will soon come when she 
is strong and well, and then Donal and I will tell her, Renata thought.
Fortunately, Dorilys was sufficiently excited at being allowed to take a place 
inside the circle, her first formal use of a matrix except to levitate her own 
glider, that she did not question Renata. Cassandra held out her hand and the 
girl took her place beside Cassandra. Again, the circle formed, and once again 
they sent out the spell that was only a strengthening of nature’s own forces.
The rock is one with the planet on which it is formed, and man has so shaped it 
as it was determined. Nothing shall change it or alter. The rock is one… one… 
one…
The binding-spell was set. Allart, individual consciousness lost behind the 
joined consciousness of his circle, was aware of the shaped rocks of the castle, 
of their hard integrity; of the fact that the impact of explosive shells and the 
chemical slime was harmlessly bouncing away, repelled, the yellow slime rolling 
down the outside, leaving long, evil-looking streaks, but not crumbling stone or 
melting it.
The rock is one… one… one…
From outside the circle, a careful thought reached them.
Allart?
Is it you, brédu?
It is Donal. I have stationed men on the outwalls to pick off their cannoneers 
with arrows, but they are out of range. Can you make a darkness about them so 
that they cannot see where to shoot?
Allart hesitated. It was one thing to affirm the integrity of nature’s creation 
by forcing water to remain, untampered, as water, and stone to remain impervious 
to things nature had never intended to destroy stone. But to tamper with nature 
by creating darkness during the hours of light…
Dorilys’s thoughts wove into the circle. It would be in tune with the forces of 
nature if a thick fog should come up. It often happens at this season, so that 
no man on the hillside can see beyond the reach of his own arms!
Allart, searching a little way ahead with his laran, saw indeed that there was a 
strong probability of thick fog arising. Focusing on the joined matrixes again, 
the workers concentrated upon the moisture in the air, the nearing clouds, to 
wrap the whole of the mountainside in a thick curtain, rising from the river 
below, until all of Castle Aldaran and the nearby peaks lay shrouded in 
darkening fog.
“They will not lift this night,” said Dorilys with satisfaction.
Allart dissolved the circle, admonishing his group to go and rest. They might be 
needed again soon. The sound of shelling had stopped, and Donal’s men below had 
a chance to clean up the residue of acids and lye. Renata, running the body-mind 
monitor’s touch over Dorilys, was struck with something new in her.
Was it only the healing-spell earlier? She seemed calmer, more womanly; no 
longer even a little like a child. Renata, recalling how she herself had grown 
swiftly into adulthood in her first season in the Tower, knew that Dorilys had 
made some such enormous leap into womanhood, and inwardly gave thanks to all her 
gods.
If she has stabilized, if we need no longer fear her childish explosions, if she 
is beginning to have judgment and skill to match her power—perhaps then, soon, 
soon, it will be over and Donal and I will be free…
With a surge of the old love for Dorilys, she drew the girl close and kissed 
her. “I am proud of you, carya mea,” she said. “You have acquitted yourself as 
would a woman in the circle. Now go and rest, and eat well, so that you will not 
lose your strength when we need you again.”
Dorilys was glowing.
“So I am doing my part, like Donal, in the defense of my home,” she exclaimed, 
and Renata shared her innocent pride.
So much strength, she thought, and so much potential. Will she win through after 
all?
  
The thick fog continued to shroud the castle hour upon hour, enclosing in 
mystery what the attacking armies were doing down below. Perhaps, Allart 
thought, they were simply waiting—waiting, as were those in the besieged castle, 
for the fog to lift so that they could resume the attack. For Allart’s part, he 
was wholly content to wait.
This breathing spell, after the hectic opening days of the siege, was 
appreciated by them all. At nightfall, since even the watch on the castle walls 
could do little, Allart went to dine alone with Cassandra in their rooms. By 
common consent they avoided speaking of the war; there was nothing they could do 
about it. Cassandra called for her rryl, and sang to him.
“I said upon the day of our wedding,” she said, looking up from the instrument, 
“that I hoped we might live in peace and make songs, not war. Alas for that 
hope! But even in the shadow of war, my dearest, there can still be songs for 
us.”
He took the thin fingers in his hands and kissed them.
“So far, at least, the gods have been good to us,” he said.
“It is so still, Allart! They might have all gone away in the night, it is so 
quiet below!”
“I would that I knew what Damon-Rafael was doing,” Allart said, roused to new 
unquiet. “I do not think he will be content to sit there at the bottom of the 
hill, without throwing some new weapon into the gap.”
“It would be easy for you to find out,” she hazarded, but Allart shook his head.
“I will not use laran in this war unless I am forced to do so. Only to defend us 
from certain catastrophe. Damon-Rafael shall not make of me the excuse to bring 
his frightful kind of war to this country.”
  
About midnight the sky suddenly began to clear, the fog first thinning, then 
blowing away in little wisps and ragged shreds. Overhead three of the four moons 
floated, brilliant and serene. Violet Liriel was near the zenith, full and 
brilliant. Blue Kyrrdis and green Idriel hung near the western edge of the 
mountains. Cassandra was sleeping, had been sleeping for hours, but Allart, 
seized by strange unease, slid quietly from bed and into his clothes. Hurrying 
down the hallway, he saw Dorilys in her long white chamber-robe, her hair 
hanging loose down her back. She was barefoot, her snub-nosed face a pale oval 
in the dimness.
“Dorilys? What is Margali thinking of to let you wander like this in your 
night-garb at this hour?”
“I could not sleep, Dom Allart, and I was uneasy,” the girl said. “I am going 
down to join Donal near the outwall. I suddenly woke and felt that he was in 
danger.”
“If he is truly in danger, chiya, the last place he would want you is beside 
him.”
“He is my husband,” the child said adamantly, raising her face to Allart. “My 
place is at his side, sir.”
Paralyzed by the strength of her obsession, Allart could do nothing. After all, 
this was the only thing she could share with Donal. Since Allart himself had 
been reunited with Cassandra, he had been highly sensitized to loneliness. It 
struck him at that moment that Dorilys was almost wholly alone. She had left the 
society of children irrevocably. Yet among the adults she was still treated as a 
child. He did not protest, but began to move toward the outer stairs, hearing 
her behind him. After a moment he felt her small dry hand, a child’s hand and 
warm like a little animal’s paw, slide into his. He clasped it, and they hurried 
together across the courtyard to Donal’s post at the outwalls.
Outside, the night had grown bright and cloudless, with only a single low bank 
of cloud hanging at the horizon. The moons floated high and clear, in a sky so 
brilliantly lighted that no single star was visible anywhere in the sky. Donal 
was standing, arms folded, atop the outwall, but as Allart hurried toward him, 
someone spoke in a low, reproachful voice.
“Master Donal, I beg you to come off the wall. You are all too good a target 
standing there,” and Donal slid down off the wall.
Not too soon; an arrow came whistling out of the darkness, harmlessly flying 
past where Donal had just been standing. Dorilys ran and caught him around the 
waist.
“You must not stand there like that, Donal. Promise me you will never do so 
again!”
He laughed noiselessly, bending to kiss her, a light brotherly peck, on the 
forehead. “Oh, I am in no danger. I wanted to see if anyone was still down there 
and awake, after all, or if they had all gone away; as in that quiet and fog it 
seemed they might well have done.”
It had been Allan’s own thought—that they were too quiet, that some devilry was 
afoot. He asked Donal, “Did the fog lift of itself?”
“I am not sure. They have more than one laranzu down there, and it lifted, 
indeed, all too quickly,” Donal said, wrinkling up his forehead. “But at this 
season the fog does blow away sometimes, exactly like that. I cannot tell.”
Suddenly, to Allart, the air was filled with cries and exploding fire. “Donal! 
Call the watch!” he cried. Almost before the words escaped his lips, an air-car 
flashed by overhead, and several small shapes fell slowly toward the ground, 
almost lazily, like snowflakes, falling open as they moved and pouring liquid 
streaks of fire toward the castle roofs and the court.
“Clingfire!” Donal leaped for an alarm bell, but already several of the wooden 
roofs were blazing up and fire was lighting the whole courtyard. Men poured into 
the court, only to be stopped, screaming, by the streams of unquenchable fire. 
One or two went up like human torches, shrieking all the time, until the howls 
died away and they lay, their corpses still smoking and flaming, lifeless on the 
stone. Donal leaped to push Dorilys under an overhanging stone cave, but drops 
of the liquid fire rolled off and caught her chamber-robe, which blazed up 
wildly. She screamed in terror and pain, as Donal dragged her toward a tub of 
water and literally flung her into it. Her dress sizzled and went out, but a 
drop of the stuff had fallen on her skin and was burning, burning inward. She 
kept shrieking, a wild, almost inhuman sound, maddened with the pain.
“Keep back! Keep in the lee of the building,” Donal yelled. “There are more of 
them overhead!”
Dorilys was screaming and struggling between his hands, maddened with agony. 
Overhead, thunder suddenly crackled and flared, lightnings seared and struck 
here, there… Abruptly one of the air-cars overhead went up in a great burst of 
fire and fell, a flaming ruin, into the valley. Another great bolt struck a 
second air-car in midair, exploding it into showers of fire. Rain sliced down 
hard, drenching Allart to the skin. Donal had fallen back from Dorilys in 
terror. Screaming, maddened, the child was shaking her fist at the sky, striking 
with great sizzling bolts here, there, everywhere. A final air-car split with a 
huge explosion and fell apart over the attacking camp below, sending forth 
shrieks and howls of pain as the clingfire fell back on its launchers. Then 
silence, except for the heavy, continuing rumble of the rain, and Dorilys’s 
stabbing screams of pain as the clingfire continued to eat inward on her wrist, 
penetrating to the bone.
“Let me take her,” Renata said, running up barefoot in her nightgown. The girl 
sobbed and cried out and tried vainly to push her away. “No, darling, no. Don’t 
struggle! This must be done or it will burn your arm away. Hold her, Donal.”
Dorilys screamed again with pain as Renata scraped away the last remnants of the 
clingfire from the burned flesh, then collapsed against Donal. All around the 
courtyard men were gathering, silent, awed. Renata tore Dorilys’s charred 
chamber-robe to bandage her arm. Donal held her against him, soothingly, rocking 
her.
“You saved us all,” he whispered. “Had you not struck at them, so much clingfire 
could have burned Aldaran over all our heads!”
Indeed, Allart thought. Damon-Rafael and Scathfell had thought to take Aldaran 
unawares, unprepared for this kind of attack. Had the contents of three air-cars 
all carrying clingfire struck them, all of Castle Aldaran would have been burned 
to the ground. Had they exhausted their arsenal, then, hoping to win at one 
stroke? Had Dorilys decisively defeated them, then, in this one stroke? He 
looked at the child, weeping now in Renata’s arms with the pain of her burns.
She had saved them all, as she had saved him, before, from Damon-Rafael’s evil 
bird-weapon.
But he did not think this would be the end.



CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
 
There were still fires to be put out, where the clingfire had set buildings 
alight. Five men were dead, and a sixth died as Renata knelt to look at him. 
Four more had clingfire burns deep enough that even Allart knew they would not 
live out the day, and a dozen more had minor burns which must be treated and 
every scrap of the terrible stuff scraped away, disregarding screams and pleas 
for mercy. Cassandra came and took Dorilys away to be put to bed, her bandages 
soaked in oil. But when all had been done, Donal and Allart stood on the 
outwall, looking down at the camp of the besiegers where fires still raged and 
flared.
The rain had subsided as soon as Dorilys was calm, and in any case it would take 
long, heavy soaking rain to put out clingfire blazes. Now Donal had no fear of 
arrows out of darkness. He said, stepping down from the wall, “Scathfell and his 
folks will have more than enough to do this night in their own camp. I will 
leave a small watch, but no more. Unless I am gravely mistaken, they will have 
no leisure to mount another attack for a day or so!”
He set a few picked men as guards, and went to see how Dorilys fared. He found 
her abed, restless, her eyes bright and feverish, her arm freshly bandaged. She 
reached with her free arm for his hand and pulled him down at her side.
“So, you have come to see me. Renata was not being cruel to me, Donal. I know it 
now; she was scraping away the fire so that it would not burn my arm to the 
bone. It nearly did, you know,” she said. “Cassandra showed me. She has a scar 
almost exactly like mine will be, and from clingfire, too.”
“So you, too, will bear an honorable scar of warfare from the defense of our 
home,” Donal said. “You saved us all.”
“I know.” Her eyes flickered, and he could see the pain in them. Far away he 
could hear a distant rumble of thunder. He sat beside her, holding the small 
hand that stuck out below the heavy bandage.
“Donal,” she said, “now that I am a woman, when shall I be really your wife?”
Donal turned his eyes away, grateful that Dorilys was still a very erratic 
telepath. “This is no time to speak of that, chiya, when we are all fighting for 
survival. And you are still very young.”
“I am not so young as all that,” she insisted. “I am old enough to work in a 
matrix circle as I did with Allart and the others, and old enough to fight 
against those who are attacking us.”
“But, my child—”
“Don’t call me that! I am not a child!” she said with a small, imperious flare 
of anger; then laid her head against his arm, with a sigh that was not, indeed, 
childlike. “Now that we are entangled in this war, Donal, there should be an 
heir to Aldaran. My father is old, old, and this war ages him day by day. And 
today—” Suddenly her voice began to shake uncontrollably. “I don’t think I had 
ever thought of this before, but suddenly I knew you could die—or I could die, 
Donal, young as I am. If I should die before you, never having borne you a 
child, you could be driven forth from Aldaran, since you are not blood-kin. Or 
if—if you should die, and I had never had your child, I could be flung into some 
stranger’s bed for the dower of Aldaran. Donal, I am afraid of that.”
Donal held her small hand in his. All this was true, he thought. Dorilys might 
be the only way he could hold this castle which had been his only home from 
childhood. It was not even as if she were unwilling. He, too, after the long 
days of battle and siege, was all too aware of the vulnerability of his own 
body. He had seen men blaze up like living flames, seen them die fast and slow, 
but die nonetheless. And Dorilys was his, legally given in marriage with the 
consent of her father. She was young, but she was moving quickly, quickly, into 
womanhood… His hand tightened on hers.
“We shall see, Dorilys,” he said, drawing her close for a minute. “When 
Cassandra tells me that you are old enough to bear a child without danger, then, 
if you still wish for it, Dorilys, it shall be as you desire.”
He bent down and would have kissed her on the forehead, but she clung to him 
with surprising strength, pulling him down so that their lips met, with passion 
that was not at all childlike. When at last she released him Donal was dizzy. He 
straightened up and left the room quickly, but not before Dorilys, with her 
erratic telepathic sense, still unreliable, had picked up his thought, No, 
Dorilys is a child no more.
  
Quiet. Quiet. All was silent in Castle Aldaran… all was silent in the camp of 
the besiegers below. All day the dreadful silence hung over the land. Allart, 
high in the watchtower, setting again a binding-spell on the castle walls, 
wondered what new devilry this quiet presaged. So sensitized had he become by 
this prolonged warfare by matrix that he could almost feel them plotting—or was 
it an illusion?—and his laran continued to present pictures of the castle 
falling in ruins, the very world trembling. Toward midday, all over the castle, 
all at once, men began shrieking and crying out, with nothing visible the matter 
with them. Allart, in the tower room with Renata, Cassandra, and the old 
sorceress Margali—Dorilys had kept her bed, for her arm still throbbed with 
pain, and Margali had given her a strong sleeping draft—had his first warning 
when Margali raised her hands to her head and began to weep aloud.
“Oh, my baby, my little one, my poor lamb,” she cried. “I must go to her!” She 
ran out of the room, and almost at the same moment Renata caught her hands 
against her breast, as if struck by an arrow there, and cried out, “Ah! He is 
dead!” While Allart stared at her in amazement, at the slammed door still 
quivering behind Margali, he heard Cassandra screaming. All at once it seemed to 
him that she was gone, that the world grew dark, that somewhere behind a locked 
door she fought a deathly battle with his brother, that he must go to her and 
protect her. He had actually risen and taken a step to the door on a mad dash to 
rescue Cassandra from the ravisher, when he saw her across the room, kneeling, 
swaying in anguish and tearing at herself, keening as if she knelt above a 
corpse.
A tiny shred of rationality struggled for what felt like hours inside Allart. 
Cassandra is in no need of rescue, if yonder she sits wailing as if the one she 
loved best lay dead before her… . Yet within his mind it still seemed that he 
heard screams of terror and anguish, that she was calling to him, crying out.
Allart! Allart! Why do you not come to me? Allart, come come quickly… and a 
long, terrified shriek of desperate anguish.
Renata had risen, and was making her way on faltering feet to the door. Allart 
caught her around the waist.
“No,” he said. “No, kinswoman, you must not go. This is bewitchment. We must 
fight it; we must set the binding-spell.”
She fought and struggled in his arms like a mad thing, kicking, scratching at 
his face with her nails as if he were not Allart at all but some enemy bent on 
murder or rape, her eyes rolled inward in some wholly interior terror, and 
Allart knew she neither saw nor heard him.
“No, no, let me go! It’s the baby! They’re murdering our baby! Can’t you see 
where they have him there, ready to fling him from the wall? Ah, merciful 
Avarra… let me go, you murdering devils! Take me first!”
Icy chills chased themselves up and down Allart’s spine as he realized that 
Renata, too, fought against some wholly internal fear, that she saw Donal, or 
the child who was not yet even born, in deadly danger…
Even while he held her he struggled against the conviction that, somewhere, 
Cassandra was screaming his name, weeping, pleading, begging him to come to her… 
Allart knew that if he did not quickly still this he would succumb also and run 
wildly down the stairs seeking her in every room of the castle, even though his 
mind told him she knelt there across the room, wholly caught up into some such 
internal ritual of terror as held Renata.
He snatched out his matrix, focused into it.
Truth, truth, let me see truth… earth and air and water and fire… let Nature 
prevail free of illusion… earth and air and water and fire… He had no strength 
for anything but this, the most basic of spells, the first of prayers. He strove 
to drive out the nonexistent, dying sound of Cassandra’s screams for mercy in 
his ears, the terrible guilt that he lingered here while she struggled somewhere 
with a ravisher…
Quiet spread through his mind, the silence of the healing-spell, the silence of 
the chapel at Nevarsin. He entered into the silence and, for a timeless moment, 
was healed. Now he saw only what was there in the room, the two women in the 
grip of terrifying illusion. He focused first on Renata, willing her to quiet 
with the pulse of the healing-spell. Slowly, slowly, he felt it enter her mind, 
calm her, so that she stopped struggling, stared around her with a great 
amazement.
“But none of it was true,” she said in a whisper. “Donal— Donal is not dead. Our 
child—our child is not even born. Yet I saw Allart, I saw where they held them 
and I could not reach them.”
“A spell of terror,” Allart said. “I think everyone saw what he or she most 
feared. Come quickly—help me to break it!”
Shaken, but strong again, Renata took her matrix, and at once they focused on 
Cassandra. After a moment her smothered cries of terror stopped, and she looked 
at them, dazed with dread, then blinked, realizing what had happened. Now with 
three minds and three matrixes focused, they sent the healing-spell beating out 
through all the castle, and from cellar to attic and everywhere in the crowded 
courtyard, servants and soldiers and guardsmen and stableboys came out of the 
dazed trance wherein each had heard the cries of whoever he loved best and 
fought blindly to rescue that one from the hands of a nameless enemy.
At last all the castle lay under the rhythm of the healing-spell, but now Allart 
was shaking in dread. Not, this time, the dread of nameless persecution, but 
something all too real and frightful.
If they have begun to fight us this way, how can we hold them at bay? Here 
within the castle Allart had only the two women, old Margali, the still older 
Dom Mikhail, and Donal, if he could dare to take him from the defense of the 
castle against attackers who were all too tangible. In fact, Allart feared that 
this was just the tactic they would use—to distract the fighting men while they 
attacked, under cover of the great fear they could project. He hurried in search 
of Dom Mikhail, for a council of war.
“You know what we have had to fight,” he said. The old lord nodded, his face 
grim, his eyes hawk-bright, menacing.
“I thought I stood and watched my best-loved die again,” he said. “In my ears 
was the curse of a sorceress I hanged from these walls thirteen years gone by, 
jeering at me that a day would come when I would cry out to the gods in grief 
that I had not died childless.” Then he seemed to start awake and shake himself 
like a mantling hawk on the block. “Well, she is dead and her malice with her.”
He pondered for a time.
“We must attack,” he said. “They can wear us down quickly, if we must be alert 
night and day for that kind of attack, and we cannot be ever on the defense. 
Somehow we must send them howling. We have only one weapon strong enough to rout 
them.”
“I did not know that we had any such weapon,” Allart said. “Of what do you 
speak, my lord?”
Dom Mikhail said, “I speak of Dorilys. She commands the lightning. She must 
strike them with storm, and utterly destroy their camp.”
Allart looked at him in consternation.
“My lord Aldaran, you must be mad!”
“Kinsman,” Aldaran said, his eyes flaring displeasure, “I think you forget 
yourself!”
“If I have angered you, sir, I beg your pardon. Let my love for your 
foster-son—yes, and for your daughter, too—be my excuse. Dorilys is only a 
child, and the lady Renata—yes— and my wife also have done their utmost to teach 
her to master and control her gift, never to use it unworthily. If you ask her 
now to direct it in rage and destruction on the armies below us, can you not 
see, my lord, you wipe out all we have done? As a young child, twice, she 
killed, striking with a child’s uncontrolled anger. Can you not see, if you use 
her this way—” Allart stopped, trembling with apprehension.
Dom Mikhail said, “We must use such weapons as we have to hand, Allart.” He 
raised his head and said, “You did not complain when she struck down the evil 
bird your brother sent against you! Nor did you hesitate to ask her to use her 
gift to move the storm which had you trapped in the snow! And she struck down 
the air-cars which would have spread enough clingfire here to burn Castle 
Aldaran into a smoking ruin!”
“All this is true,” Allart said, shaking with earnestness, “but in all this she 
was defending herself or others against the violence of another. Can you not see 
the difference between defense and attack, sir?”
“No,” Aldaran said, “for it seems to me that in this case attack is the only 
defense, or we may be struck down at any moment by some weapon even more 
frightful than those they have loosed on us already.”
Sighing, Allart made his last plea.
“Lord Aldaran, she has not yet even recovered from her threshold sickness. I 
saw, when we were at the fire station, how over use of her laran left her sick 
and weak, and then she was not yet come to the threshold of maturity this way. I 
am really afraid of what may happen if you put further strain on her powers just 
now. Will you wait, at least, until we truly have no other choice? A few days, 
even a few hours—”
The father’s face contracted with fear, and Allart knew that for the moment, at 
least, he had won his victory.
“Cassandra and I will go again to the watchtower and keep vigil so they will not 
take us unaware again. No matter how many leroni they have down there, they must 
have exhausted themselves with that spell of terror. I think they must rest 
before they try anything more like that, or worse.”
Allart’s prediction proved true, for all during that day and night, only a few 
flights of arrows flew against the walls of the castle. But at dawn the next 
morning, Allart, who had snatched a few hours of sleep, leaving Cassandra on 
watch in the tower room, was wakened by ominous rumbling far away. Confused, 
trying to flood away sleep by splashing cold water on his face, he tried to 
identify the sound. Cannon? Thunder? Was Dorilys angered or frightened again? 
Had Aldaran broken his pledge not to use her except in extremity? Or was it 
something else?
He hurried up the stairs to the watchtower, but as he went, the stairs seemed to 
sway under his feet and he had to clutch at the handrail, his laran suddenly 
envisioning the cracks spreading in the tower walls, the tower splitting and 
crumbling, falling.
He burst into the tower room, his face white, and Cassandra, seated before the 
matrix, looked up at him in sudden terror, picking up his dread.
“Come down,” he said quickly. “Come out of here, at once, my wife.” As she 
hurried down the stairs he saw again the great cracks widening in the staircase, 
the rumbling… They fled down the stairs, hand in hand, Cassandra stumbling on 
her lame knee, and at last Allart turned back, caught her up in his arms and 
carried her down the last few steps, not stopping even to breathe, hurrying 
along the hall. Out of breath, he set her on her feet and stood clinging to a 
doorframe in the corridor, her arms around him. Then the floor beneath their 
feet swayed and rumbled, there was a great sound like the splitting asunder of 
the world, and the floor of the tower they had just left heaved and buckled 
upward. The stairs broke away from the wall, stones fell outward, crumbling, and 
then the whole tower split and fell, crashing in heavy thunder down upon the 
roofs of the keep, stones cascading into the courtyards, falling into the valley 
below, touching off rockfalls and landslides. … Cassandra buried her face in 
Allart’s chest and clung to him, shaking with dread. Allart felt his knees 
buckling and they slid together to the floor, as it swayed and shook under them. 
Finally the noise died away, leaving only silence and strange, ominous grumbles 
and crunching sounds from the ground under them.
Slowly they clambered to their feet. Cassandra had injured her lame knee freshly 
in their fall; she had to cling to Allart to stand. They stared up at the great 
gap and thick foggy dawn where once a tall tower had risen, by a near-miracle of 
matrix engineering, three flights of stairs toward the sun. Now there was 
nothing but a great pile of stone and rubble and plaster fallen inward, and a 
huge gap through which the morning rain was drizzling in.
“What, in the name of all the gods was that?” Cassandra finally inquired, 
stunned. “An earthquake?”
“Worse, I fear,” Allart said. “I do not know what kind of leroni they have down 
there, or what they are using against us, but I am afraid it is something worse 
than even Coryn would invent.”
Cassandra scoffed, “No matrix known could do that!”
“No single matrix, no,” Allart said, “and no technician. But if they have one of 
the great matrix screens, they could explode this planet to its core, if they 
dared.” His mind clamored, Would even Damon-Rafael risk laying waste this land 
he seeks to rule? But his mind provided him with a grim answer.
Damon-Rafael would not be at all averse to showing his power over a part of the 
world for which he had no immediate need and which he considered expendable. And 
after this, no one would dare to challenge him.
Scathfell might be malicious and eager to rule in his brother’s shoes, but 
Damon-Rafael was the culprit this time. Scathfell wished to rule in Castle 
Aldaran, not to destroy it.
Now they became aware, through the gap in the castle walls, of cries and 
commotion below, and Allart recalled himself to duty.
“I must go and see if anyone has been hurt by falling stones, and how it fares 
with Donal, my sworn brother,” he said, and hurried away. But even as he went he 
felt the castle trembling again beneath him, and wondered what new devilry was 
afoot. Well, Cassandra could warn the women without his help. He hurried down 
into the courtyard, where he found chaos unbelievable. One of the outbuildings 
had been buried entirely beneath the falling stones of the tower, and a dozen 
men and four times as many animals were dead in the ruins; others had been 
crushed by falling debris.
Dom Mikhail was there, leaning heavily on Donal’s arm. He was still in his 
furred bed-gown, his face gray and fallen in; Allart thought he looked twenty 
years older in a single night. He clung to his foster-son as he moved carefully 
among the ruin in his courtyard. As he saw Allart his thin mouth stretched in a 
travesty of a smile.
“Cousin, the gods be thanked, I feared that you and your lady had fallen with 
the tower and been killed. Is the lady Cassandra safe? What, in the name of all 
Zandru’s demons, have they done to us now? It will take us half a year to clear 
away this chaos! Half the dairy animals have been killed; the children will go 
wanting milk this winter…”
“I am not certain,” Allart said soberly, “but I must have every man or woman in 
this stronghold who is able to use a matrix, and organize our defenses against 
it. We are but ill prepared, I fear, for this kind of warfare.”
“Are you sure of that, my brother?” Donal asked. “Surely earthquakes have been 
known in the mountains before this!”
“It was no earthquake! I am as sure of that as if Damon-Rafael stood before me 
laughing at what he had done!”
Dom Mikhail knelt beside the body of a fallen man, only crushed legs protruding 
from a block of fallen stone larger than a man. “Poor fellow,” he said. “At 
least his death must have been swift. I fear that those buried in the stables 
had a death more fearful. Donal, leave the guardsmen to bury the dead: Allart 
has more need of you now. I will send everyone with laran to you, so that you 
can see what has been sent us.”
“We cannot meet in the tower now,” Allart said grimly. “We must have a room 
somewhat isolated from the grief and fright of those who are clearing away the 
ruin, Lord Aldaran.”
“Take the women’s conservatory; perhaps the peace of the flowering plants there 
will create an atmosphere you can use.”
As Donal and Allart entered the castle once again, Allart could feel, through 
the soles of his feet, a renewed faint tremor. Again he wondered what happened. 
He felt a spasm of dread, remembering how near Cassandra had come to being 
trapped in the falling tower.
Donal said, “I wish that our friends in Tramontana were here. They would know 
how to deal with this!”
“I am glad that they are not,” Allart replied. “I would not have the Towers 
drawn into the wars in this land!”
The sun was just coming through the clouds as they entered the conservatory, and 
the calm brilliance of the sun light, the solar collectors spreading light, the 
faint, pleasant damp smell of herbs and flowering leaves, felt strangely at odds 
with the dread and fear Allart could feel from the men and women who were 
joining him there. Not only Cassandra, Renata, Margali, and Dorilys, but two or 
three of the women he had not seen before, and half a dozen of the men. Each one 
bore a matrix, though Allart sensed that more than half of these had only 
minimal talent and could do little more than open a matrix-lock or operate some 
such toy as the gliders. After a time Dom Mikhail, too, came in.
Allart glanced at Cassandra. She had been in a Tower longer than he, she was, 
perhaps, better trained, and he was willing to allow her to conduct this search, 
but she shook her head.
“You are Nevarsin-taught; you are less subject to fear and confusion than I.”
Allart was not so sure, but he accepted her decision and looked around the 
circle of men and women.
“I have no time to test you one by one and assess the level of your training; I 
must trust you,” he said. “Renata, you were four years a monitor. You must set a 
guard around us, for we expose ourselves to those who are trying to destroy this 
castle and all those in it, and we are vulnerable. I must find what they are 
using against us, and if there is any defense against it. You must lend us your 
strength, and our lives are in all of your hands.”
He looked around the room, at the men and women who shared with him a spark of 
this gift of the great families. Did they all have some trace of the far-off kin 
to the gods; were they all somehow descended via the breeding program from the 
blood of Hastur and Cassilda? Or did all men, in truth, have some trace, more or 
less, of these powers? Always before he had depended on his equals, his kinsmen; 
now he was in the hands of commoners, and it sobered him, and humbled him, too. 
He was afraid to trust them, but he had no choice.
He linked his mind first with Cassandra, then with Donal; then, one by one, with 
the others in the circle, picking up traces of their emotion as he did so… fear, 
anger at what was being sent against them, disquiet at this unusual operation, 
strangeness… He felt Dorilys drop into the linkage, sensing her fury at the 
attackers who had dared to do this to her home… One by one, he picked up every 
man and woman in the circle, and sank into the joined consciousness, moved 
outward and outward, searching sifting…
It seemed a very long time before he felt the link fall apart and Allart raised 
his head, looking sobered.
“It is no natural matrix they are using against us,” he said, “but one 
constructed artificially within the Towers by a technician. With it, they are 
seeking to alter the natural vibration of the very rock of the mountain beneath 
us.” As he spoke, he put out a hand and he could feel jthrough the walls the 
very faint trembling of the walls which reflected the deeper trembling within 
the foundations and the veined metal and layers of old rock beneath.
Dom Mikhail had not shaved; beneath the untidy stubble of grayish beard his face 
was deathly pale. “They will bring down the castle about our heads! Is there no 
defense, Allart?”
“I do not know,” Allart said. “All of us together could hardly stand against a 
matrix that size.” Was there indeed any hope, or should Aldaran capitulate and 
surrender before his entire castle collapsed in ruin around bun? “We could try 
to put a binding-spell upon the rock of the mountain,” he said, hesitating. “I 
do not know if it would hold. Even with all of us, I am not sure it would hold. 
But it seems our only hope.”
Dorilys sprang to her feet. She had come to the conservatory, with her matrix, 
not bothering to dress; she sat in her long-sleeved childish nightgown, her hair 
unbraided and falling about her shoulders like a cascade of new copper.
“But I have a better idea,” she cried. “I can break their concentration; can I 
not, Father? Donal, come with me.”
Allart watched, in consternation, as she hurried from the room. In a whisper, 
from the men and women, commoners, around the room, he heard again the name they 
had given her.
“Stormqueen. Our little lady, our little sorceress, she can raise a storm and 
give those folk down there something else to think about, indeed!”
Allart appealed to Dom Mikhail.
“My lord—”
Slowly, the old lord of Aldaran shook his head. “I see no other choice, cousin. 
It is that, or surrender at once.”
Allart lowered his eyes, knowing that Dom Mikhail spoke no more than truth.
Already, as he followed toward the high battlement where Dorilys stood with 
Donal, he could see the clouds thickening and gathering. Then he shrank from the 
open window as Dorilys raised her arms, crying out wordlessly. Power seemed to 
burst from her, so that she was no longer only a young woman in a nightgown, her 
hair falling about her shoulders; above their heads the storm burst like one of 
the explosive shells, with a great thunderbolt and a flare of lightning that 
seemed to split the sky asunder. Torrential rains poured down, wiping out 
eyesight below, but through the welter of noise, the crash upon crash of thunder 
and the glare that hurt his eyes and split the heavens apart, Allart sensed what 
was happening below.
Floodwaters washing down on the camp at the foot of the mountain. Thunder, 
deafening and stampeding their riding-animals, spreading panic in human and 
nonhuman alike. Lightning ripping through the tent where the matrix workers sat 
over their great unnatural stone, searing them blind and deafened, some of them 
burned out or dead. Rain, pouring soaking rain, pounding and drumming, beating 
their camp into the ground, driving around every rock or tree where they might 
take shelter, reducing everything that had life in that camp to naked, soaked 
animal humiliation. Lightning again kindling fires to roar through their tents, 
searing, raging, beating everything to the ground.
Never had Allart known such a storm. Cassandra clung to him, as it raged on and 
on over their heads, burying her head and sobbing in fear. Allart held himself 
tensed against the noise and devastation, as if it raged through his whole body. 
But Dom Mikhail’s face held a fierce exultation as he stood there, hour after 
hour, watching the storm wreak desolation and ruin in the camp of Scathfell and 
Damon-Rafael below them.
At last, at long last, it began to subside. Small rollings and rumblings of 
thunder remained, dying away in shudders of sound on the distant hills, and the 
rain began to grow weaker. As the sky cleared to whitish shreds of cloud, Allart 
looked down into the valley. The valley lay stunned, quiet, a few fires still 
roaring out of control in the camp, side by side with flooding streams which had 
left their beds and raged over the countryside. There seemed no sign of life 
below.
Dorilys swayed, her face very white, and fell against Donal in a faint. He 
picked her up tenderly and carried her inside.
She has saved us, Allart thought, at least for now. But at what cost?



CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
 
It was high noon before there was any sign of life from the camp of Lord 
Scathfell below. There were still more rumbles and noise of ominous thunder high 
above them, crashing around the peaks, and Allart wondered if Dorilys, in her 
exhausted sleep, still dreamed of the dreadful battle, if these thunders 
reflected her nightmares.
Renata said that Dorilys taps the magnetic potential of the planet, he 
reflected. I can well believe it! But with all that power flowing through her 
poor little body and brain, can she survive it undamaged?
He wondered if Aldaran, in the long run, would not have done better to 
surrender. What kind of father love would expose a beloved child to that?
But near midday the thunders died away, and Cassandra, who had been summoned to 
monitor Dorilys and care for her, reported that she had wakened and eaten and 
fallen into normal sleep. Still, Allart felt a dreadful unease, and it seemed to 
him that unending lightnings still played around the castle. Donal, too, looked 
deeply troubled, and although he had gone to supervise the men who were burying 
the dead and clearing rubble from the fallen tower, he kept returning, stealing 
up to the door of her room and standing there to listen to her breathing. Renata 
came to look at him, in dread and pleading, but he avoided her eyes.
The woman wondered, in dread, Has he been seduced at the thought of all this 
power? What has happened to Donal? And she, too, was afraid for Dorilys, 
wondering what the use of that blasting force had done to the girl she loved.
An hour or two past noon, a messenger appeared on the road leading up to the 
castle, still washed-out and tunneled with water flooding from the heights, 
partially blocked with stones that had fallen when the tower collapsed. The 
message was relayed to Donal, who took it to Dom Mikhail at once.
“Father, your brother of Scathfell has sent a messenger asking if he may come to 
negotiate terms with you.”
Aldaran’s eyes glinted, fierce and bright, but he said calmly, “Tell my brother 
of Scathfell I will hear what he has to say.”
After a time, the leader of the opposing army came up the path, afoot, followed 
by his paxman and two guards. As he crossed the line of siege he said to the 
single man stationed there, “Wait till I return.” Donal, who had come to escort 
him into Aldaran’s presence, received the most contemptuous glare, but Scathfell 
looked beaten nevertheless, and they all knew he had come to surrender. There 
was too little left of his army, and nothing of Damon-Rafael’s weaponry. He had 
come, Donal knew, to try to save what little he could out of defeat.
Lord Aldaran had made ready to receive his brother in his presence-chamber, and 
he entered the room with Dorilys on his arm. Donal thought of the last time they 
had all been together in this room. Scathfell looked older, grimmer, aged by the 
crushing weight of defeat. He glared at Donal, and at Dorilys in her blue gown, 
and looked with grim appraisal at Allart when he was named. Even though Allart 
had been styled traitor and rebel, Scathfell still looked on him with the 
habitual respect, amounting to awe, of a younger son and minor noble before a 
Hastur lord.
“Well, my brother,” Aldaran said at last. “Much has passed between us since last 
you came into this hall. I had never thought to see you here again. Tell me—why 
have you asked for my presence? Have you come to surrender yourself and beg my 
pardon for your rebellion against my lawful demands?”
Scathfell swallowed heavily before he could speak. At last he said with great 
bitterness, “What other choice have I now? Your witch-daughter there has routed 
my armies and killed my men as she struck down my son and heir. No man living 
can stand against such sorcery. I have come to ask for compromise.”
“Why should I compromise with you, Rakhal? Why should I not strip you of your 
lands and honors, which you hold at my pleasure, and send you forth naked and 
yelping like a beaten hound, or hang you from my battlements to show all men how 
I shall deal henceforth with all rebels and traitors?”
“I do not stand alone,” Rakhal of Scathfell said. “I have an ally who is, 
perhaps, even more powerful than you and your witch-brat together. I am bidden 
to say that if I do not return before sunset, Damon-Rafael will gather his 
forces and shake apart this mountain beneath you, and Aldaran will fall over 
your head. You had a taste of that power this morning at sunrise, I think. Men 
and armies can be scattered and beaten, but if you wish this land to be rent in 
a dozen parts by sorcery, it will be your doing and not mine. However, he has no 
desire to destroy you now that you know his power. He asks only that he shall be 
allowed to speak with his brother, both unarmed, in the space between our 
armies, before sunset.”
“Allart Hastur is my guest,” Aldaran said. “Should I deliver him over to his 
brother’s sure treachery?”
“Treachery? Between brethren and Hasturs both?” asked Scathfell, and his face 
showed honest outrage. “He would make peace with his brother as I, Mikhail, 
would make peace with mine.” Clumsily, unaccustomed, he bowed to one knee.
“You have beaten me, Mikhail,” he said. “I will withdraw my armies. And, believe 
me, it was none of my doing that broke your tower. Truly, I spoke against it, 
but the lord Damon-Rafael wished to display his power before the north-lands.”
“I believe you.” Aldaran looked at his brother with a great sadness. “Go home, 
Rakhal,” he said. “Go in peace. I ask only that you take oath to honor the 
husband of my daughter as next heir after me, and never to raise hand or sword 
against him, openly or by stealth. If you will take this oath in the light of 
truthspell, you may enjoy Scathfell forevermore, without harassment from me or 
mine.”
Scathfell raised his head, rage and contempt vying on his face.
Donal, watching him, thought, My father should not have pressed this now! Did he 
think I could not hold Aldaran after him? Yet it seemed that Scathfell would 
capitulate.
“Call your leronis and set the truthspell,” he said, his face set and unsmiling. 
“Never did I think I would come to this at your hands, my brother, or that you 
would exact such humiliation from me.” He stood restless, as Margali was 
summoned, shifting from foot to foot. As the leronis came, he made as if to go 
to his knees before Donal and Dorilys. Then suddenly he cried, “No!” and bounded 
to his feet.
“Take oath never to contest the bastard of Rockraven, and that hell-brat of 
yours? Zandru take me first! Rather will I strike and rid the earth of their 
sorcery,” he cried, and suddenly there was a dagger in his hand. Donal cried out 
and flung himself in front of his sister, but there was a shrill shriek from 
Dorilys, an exploding blue flare of lightning in the room, searing the air 
white, and Scathfell fell, convulsing briefly into an agonized arch, then lay 
still, half his face blackened and burned away.
There was silence in the room, the silence of shock and sheer horror. Dorilys 
cried out, “He would have killed Donal! He would have killed us both! You saw 
the dagger,” and she covered her face with her hands. Donal, struggling to 
control his nausea, unfastened the cloak around his throat and cast it 
mercifully over the blackened body of Scathfell.
Mikhail of Aldaran said hoarsely, “It is no dishonor to kill a man forsworn, who 
seeks to do murder on the very ground of surrender. There is no shame to you, 
daughter.” But he left his high seat and came down into the room, kneeling by 
his brother’s body, pulling back the cloak from his face.
“Oh, my brother, my brother,” he mourned, and his eyes were blazing and 
tearless. “How did we come to this?” He bent, kissing the blackened brow; then 
gently drew the cloak over Scathfell’s face again.
“Bear him down to his men,” he said to Scathfell’s paxman. “You are witness that 
there was no treachery save his own, I will take no revenge; his son may hold 
Scathfell after him. Though it would be only fair if I gifted Donal with 
Scathfell for amends, and gave them only the farm at High Crags in its stead.”
The paxman, knowing that what Aldaran said was true, bowed silently.
“It shall be as you say, Lord. His eldest son Loran is turned seventeen and 
shall assume rule over Scathfell. But what am I to say to the lord Hastur?” He 
amended quickly, “To His Highness, Damon-Rafael, king over this land?”
Allart suddenly left his place. He said, “My brother’s quarrel is with me, Lord 
Aldaran. I will go down and meet him, unarmed, as he has asked.”
Cassandra cried out, “Allart, no! He means treachery!” 
“Still, I must face him,” Allart said. It was his doing which had entangled the 
house of Aldaran in this Lowland war, when they had enough trouble of their own. 
Now, unless Allart went to him, Damon-Rafael would destroy Aldaran around their 
heads. “He said that he wished to compromise with his brother as Lord Scathfell 
wished to come to terms with you; and I think, at that moment, Scathfell spoke 
only truth. I do not think he moved against Donal by foresight but upon impulse, 
and he has paid for it. It may be that my brother wishes only to persuade me 
that he is indeed rightfully king over this land, and ask my support. It is true 
that before I knew what I did, I pledged to support him in this. He is right to 
call me traitor, perhaps. I must go down and speak with him.”
Cassandra came and clutched at him, holding him motionless.
“I will not let you go! I will not! He will kill you, and you know it!”
“He will not kill me, my wife,” said Allart, putting her away with more force 
than he had ever before used against her. “But I know what I must do, and I 
forbid you to hinder me.”
“You forbid me?” She stood away from him, angry now. “Do what you feel you must, 
my husband,” she said, her teeth set, “but say to Damon-Rafael that if he harms 
you, I shall raise every man, every woman, and every matrix in the Hellers 
against him!”
Yet as he went slowly down the mountainside, Cassandra's face seemed to go with 
him, and his laran spread pictures of disaster before him.
Damon-Rafael will almost certainly try to kill me. Yet I must kill him first, as 
I would kill a maddened beast, raging and ready to bite. If he becomes king over 
this land, then there will be ruin and disaster such as the Domains have never 
known.
I never wanted to rule. I never wanted power; I have no ambitions of that kind. 
I would have been content to dwell within the walls of Nevarsin, or within the 
Tower at Hali or Tramontana. Yet now that my laran has shown me what must come 
to pass if Damon-Rafael comes to the throne, I must somehow stop that from 
happening. Even if I must kill him!
The hand he had thrust into the fires of Hali throbbed, as if reminding him of 
the oath he had sworn and was now breaking.
I am forsworn. But I am a Hastur, descendant of the Hastur who was said to be 
son to a god; and I am responsible for the well-being of this land and its 
people. I will not loose Damon-Rafael upon them!
It was not long to the camp, but it seemed the distance to the world’s end, and 
his laran spread dissolving pictures before him, of things which might be, which 
would be, which could be if he did not take care, which would never be. In all 
too many of these futures he lay lifeless among the stones fallen from the 
tower, with Damon-Rafael’s knife in his throat, and Damon-Rafael went on to 
level the walls of Aldaran, to possess northlands and Domains, to reign in 
tyranny and power for many years, riding roughshod over all the remaining 
freedoms of men, razing their defenses with weapons ever more powerful, and at 
last invading even their very minds with his leroni, making them all obedient 
slaves to his will, their own wishes and enterprises burned away.
His heart cried out, as Mikhail of Aldaran had cried out a little while ago, Ah, 
my brother, my brother, how did we come to this?
Damon-Rafael was not an evil man. But he had pride, and a will to power, and he 
felt honestly that he knew what was best for all men.
He is not unlike Dom Mikhail… . But Allart shuddered away from that thought. He 
was lost again in terrifying vision, blotting out the present, of this land 
under the rule of the tyrant Damon-Rafael.
Yet my brother is not evil. Does he even know this?
At last he came to a stop, and he saw that he stood on a leveled place in the 
road, with fallen debris of the tower all around him. At the far end of the 
leveled space, his brother Damon-Rafael was standing and watching him.
Allart bowed, without speaking.
His laran was screaming, This is the place, then, of my death. But Damon-Rafael 
was alone, and seemed unarmed. Allart spread his hands to display that he was 
unweaponed, too, and the brothers advanced, step by step, toward one another.
Damon-Rafael said, “You have a loyal and a loving wife, Allart. It will grieve 
me to take her from you. Yet you were reluctant to wed her, and even more 
reluctant to bed her, so I suppose it will not trouble you much to give her up 
to me. The world and the kingdom are full of women, and I shall make sure you 
are wed to one you will like just as well. But Cassandra I must have; I need the 
support of the Aillards. And I have discovered that her genes were modified 
before puberty, so that she can bear me a son with the Hastur gift controlled by 
the Aillard.”
Allan cleared his throat and said, “Cassandra is my wife, Damon-Rafael. If you 
loved her, or if she were ambitious to be queen, I would step aside for you 
both. But I love her, and she loves me, and you care nothing for her, save as a 
pawn of political power. Therefore I will not yield her up to you. I will die 
first.”
Damon-Rafael shook his head. “I cannot afford to take her over your dead body. I 
would greatly prefer not to come to the throne over a brother’s death.”
Allart smiled fiercely. He said, “Then I can inconvenience you somewhat in 
coming to the throne, if only by my death!”
“I do not understand this,” Damon-Rafael said. “You asked me to spare you this 
marriage to the Aillard woman, and now you speak romantically of love. You swore 
to support me for the throne, and now you refuse your support and strive to 
hinder me! What has happened, Allart? Is that what love for a woman can do to a 
man? If so, I am glad I have never known such love!”
“When I pledged my support to you,” Allart said, “I did not know what would 
befall if you were to be king. Now I have pledged myself to support Prince 
Felix.”
“An emmasca cannot be king,” Damon-Rafael said. “That is one of our oldest 
laws.”
“If you were fit to be king,” Allart retorted, “you would not be on the road 
with an army, trying to extend your reign to the northlands! You would wait 
until the Council offered you the throne, and seek their advice.”
“How could I better serve my kingdom, than by extending its might and power 
across the Hellers as well?” Damon-Rafael said. “Come, Allart, there is no 
reason we should quarrel… Cassandra has a nedestro sister, as like to Cassandra 
as twin to twin. You shall have her for your wife, and be my chief councillor. I 
shall need someone with your foresight and strength. Bare is back without 
brother… that is what they say, and believe me, it is true. Let us amend our 
differences, embrace and be friends.”
Then it is hopeless, Allart thought. Even as Damon-Rafael held out his arms for 
the offered embrace, Allart was aware of the dagger concealed by stealth in his 
brother’s hand.
So he would not even face me openly, but would embrace me and stab me to the 
heart even while I went to his arms, he mourned. Oh, my brother. … As he moved 
into Damon-Rafael’s embrace, he reached out with his laran, trained and honed to 
skill in the Tower and at Nevarsin, and held Damon-Rafael motionless, the dagger 
revealed now in his hand.
Damon-Rafael struggled, held motionless, but Allart shook his head sadly.
“So you seek to embrace and stab at once, brother? Is this the kind of 
statecraft you think will make you king? No, Damon-Rafael,” he said sorrowfully, 
and reaching out into Damon-Rafael’s mind, made contact. “See what kind of king 
you would make, my brother who has renounced the tie of brotherhood.”
He felt his laran flooding the future through Damon-Rafael’s mind; conquest, 
blood and rapine, the relentless rise to power, laying waste the Domains to 
wilderness and a stunned conquest they called peace by default… men’s minds 
burned into blind obedience, the land shattered and torn with war waged with 
greater and greater weapons, all men bowing down before a king who had become 
not the just ruler and protector of his people, but their tyrant, despot, hated 
as no man had ever been hated within the realm…
“No, no,” Damon-Rafael whispered, struggling with the dagger in his hand. “Show 
me no more. I would not be like that.”
“No, my brother? You have the Hastur laran which sees all choices; see for 
yourself what manner of king you would be,” Allart said, releasing his hold on 
his brother’s mind but holding him motionless. “Face no man’s judgment but your 
own. Look within.”
He watched Damon-Rafael, saw the look of dread and horror spreading over his 
face, slow dawning of awareness, conviction. Then, with a maddened effort, 
Damon-Rafael freed himself from Allart’s hold and raised the dagger. Allart 
stood his ground, knowing that within a moment he might lie at his brother’s 
feet—or had Damon-Rafael seen himself clearly enough to take warning?
“I will not be such a king,” Damon-Rafael whispered, just loud enough for Allart 
to hear. “I tell you I will not,” and with one swift movement he raised the 
dagger and plunged it deep into his own breast.
He crumpled to the ground, whispered, “Even your foresight cannot see all ends, 
little brother,” and coughed out a stream of bright red blood. Allart felt his 
brother's dying mind fade into silence.



CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
 
The armies in the valley below had departed, but thunder still rolled and 
crunched around the heights, and stray bolts of lightning ripped across the 
mountains. As she went into the lower hall of Castle Aldaran, Cassandra gave 
Allart a quick, frightened look.
“It has not stopped thundering—not once, not for a moment—since she struck 
Scathfell down. And you know she will not let Renata near her.”
Donal sat with Dorilys’s head in his lap; the girl looked ill and feverish. She 
held Donal’s hand tightly clasped in hers and would not release it. The blue 
eyes were closed, but she opened them, painfully, as Cassandra came to her side.
“The thunder hurts my head so,” she whispered. “I can’t make it stop. Can’t you 
help me turn off the lightning, Cassandra?”
Cassandra bent over her. “I will try. But I think it is only that you are 
overwearied, chiya.” She took the lax fingers in hers, fell back with a cry of 
pain, and Dorilys burst into violent crying.
“I didn’t mean to do that, I didn’t! It keeps happening and I cannot stop it! I 
hurt Margali; I did it to Kathya while she was dressing me. Oh, Cassandra, make 
it stop, make it stop! Can’t anybody make the thundering go away?”
Dom Mikhail came and bent over her. His face was drawn and troubled. “Hush, 
hush, my precious, no one is blaming you!” He turned a look of agony on 
Cassandra. “Can you help her? Donal, you have that kind of laran, too; can you 
do nothing for her?”
“I wish indeed that there was something I could do,” Donal said, cradling the 
girl in his arms. She relaxed against him, and Cassandra, steadying herself, 
braced and took the girl's hand in her own again. This time nothing happened, 
but she felt frightened, even while she tried to relax herself into the calm 
detachment of a monitor. She looked once at Renata, over Dorilys’s head, and 
Renata picked up her thought: I wish she would let you do this; you have so much 
more experience than I.
“I will give you something to make you sleep,” she said at last. “Perhaps all 
you need is rest, chiya.”
When Renata brought the sleeping draft, Donal held the vial to her lips. Dorilys 
swallowed it obediently, but her voice was plaintive when she said, “I am so 
afraid to sleep now. My dreams are so dreadful, and I hear the tower falling, 
and the thunder is inside me. The storms are all inside my head now…”
Donal stood up, Dorilys in his arms. “Let me carry you to your bed, sister,” he 
said, but she clung to him.
“No, no! Oh, please, please, I’m afraid to be alone. I’m so afraid. Please stay 
with me, Donal! Don’t leave me!”
“I will stay with you until you are asleep,” Donal promised, sighing, and 
signaled to Cassandra to come with them.
She followed as he carried Dorilys along the hall and up the long staircase. At 
the end of the hallway the roofing had been roughly repaired, but a great pile 
of stone and fallen plaster and debris still blocked the hall. Cassandra 
thought, It is no great wonder she hears it in her nightmares!
Donal carried Dorilys into her room, laying her on the bed and summoning her 
women to loosen her clothing, remove her shoes. But even when she was tucked 
under her quilts she would not release his hand. She murmured something 
Cassandra did not hear. Donal stroked her forehead gently, with his free hand.
“This is no time to speak of that, chiya. You are ill. When you are well and 
strong again, and wholly free of threshold sickness—then, yes, if you wish it. I 
have promised you.” He bent to kiss her lightly on the forehead, but she pulled 
at his head with both hands so that their lips met, and the kiss she gave him 
was not a child’s kiss or a sister’s. Donal drew away, looking troubled and 
embarrassed.
“Sleep, child, sleep. You are wearied; you must be strong and well tonight for 
the victory feast in the Great Hall.”
She lay back on her pillow, smiling.
“Yes,” she said drowsily. “For the first time I shall sit in the high seat as 
Lady of Aldaran… and you beside me… my husband…”
The drowsiness of the strong sleeping medicine was already taking her. She let 
her eyes fall shut, but she did not loosen her grip on Donal’s hand, and even 
when she slept it was some time before her fingers relaxed enough so that he 
could draw his hand free. Cassandra, watching, was embarrassed at having 
witnessed this, even though she knew perfectly well that this was one reason 
Donal had wanted her there.
She is not herself. We should not blame her for what happens when she is under 
such stress, poor child. But inside herself Cassandra knew that Dorilys was 
perfectly well aware what she was doing, and why.
She is too old for her years…
When they returned to the hall, Renata raised questioning eyes to them, and 
Donal said, “Yes, she sleeps. But in the name of all the gods, cousin, what did 
you give her to work so quickly?”
Renata told him, and he stared at her in consternation.
“That? To a child?”
Dom Mikhail said, “That would be a dose overlarge for a grown man dying of the 
black rot! Was that not dangerous?”
“I dared give her nothing less,” Renata said. “Listen.” She held up a hand for 
silence and overhead they could hear the crackle and crumble of thunder in the 
cloudless sky. “Even now she dreams.”
“Blessed Cassilda, have mercy!” Dom Mikhail said. “What ails her?”
Renata said soberly, “Her laran is out of control. You should never have allowed 
her to use it in the war, my lord. Her control was broken down when she loosed 
it against the armies. I first saw it in the fire station, when she played with 
the storms, and became overexcited and dizzy. You remember, Donal! But she had 
not then come to her full strength or womanhood. Now—all the control I taught 
her has faded from her mind. I do not know what we can do for her.” She turned, 
made a deep reverence to Aldaran.
“My lord, I asked you this once before, and you refused. Now, I think, there is 
no choice. I implore you. Let me burn out her psi centers. Perhaps now, while 
she sleeps, it could still be done.”
Aldaran looked at Renata in horror.
“When her laran has saved us all? What would that do to her?”
“I think—I hope,” Renata said, “that it would do no more than take away the 
lightnings that torment her so. She would be without laran, but she wishes for 
that now. You heard her beg Cassandra to take away the thundering. She would 
perhaps be no more, and no less, than an ordinary woman of her caste, ungifted 
with laran, yes, but having her beauty, still, and her talents, and her superb 
voice. She could still—” She hesitated, choked over the words, and went on, 
looking straight at Donal, “She could still give an heir of Aldaran blood to 
your clan, gifted with the laran in her genes. She should never bear a daughter, 
but she could give Aldaran a son, if need be.”
Donal had told her of the promise he had made to Dorilys, during the siege of 
Castle Aldaran.
“It is no more than fair,” Renata had said then. If Dorilys must be bound all 
her life by the catenas in a marriage forced on her before she is old enough to 
know anything of marriage or of love, where she will have the name and dignity 
of a wife but never a husband’s love, it is only fair that she should have 
something of her very own, something to love and cherish. I do not grudge her a 
child for Aldaran. It would be better if she would choose some other than Donal 
for the fathering, but as her life must be ordered, it is not likely she will 
come to know any man well enough for such a purpose. And it is Lord Aldaran’s 
will that Donal’s son should reign here when he is gone. I do not begrudge 
Dorilys a child of Donal’s. It is I who am his wife, and we all know it, or will 
know it, in time to come.
Now Renata looked at Lord Aldaran, pleading, and Allart remembered the moment 
when he had seen with his laran, in this very hall, the vassals of Aldaran 
acclaiming a child whom he held up before them, proclaiming the new heir of 
Aldaran blood. Why, Allart wondered, should his foresight show him only this one 
moment? It seemed that all else was blurred into nightmare and thundercloud. But 
they saw it in Allart’s mind, all the telepaths there assembled, and Aldaran 
said “I told you so!” with that fierce, hawklike glance.
Donal lowered his head and would not meet Renata’s eyes.
“It seems terrible to do that to her, when she has saved us all. Are you sure it 
would do no worse to her than this—to destroy the psi centers and leave the rest 
undamaged?” Lord Aldaran said.
Renata said reluctantly, “My lord, no leronis living could make such a pledge. I 
love Dorilys as if she were my own, and I would give her the uttermost of my 
skill and strength. But I do not know how much of her brain has been invaded by 
the laran, or damaged by these storms. You know that electrical discharges 
within the brain reflect themselves as convulsive seizures in the body. 
Dorilys’s laran somehow translates the electrical discharges in the brain to 
thunder and lightnings in the electrical field of the planet. Now that is out of 
control. She said the thunders were inside her now. I do not know how much 
damage has been done. It might be that I would have to destroy some part of her 
memory, or of her intelligence.”
Donal was white with dread. “No!” he said, and it was a prayer. “Would she be an 
idiot, then?”
Renata would not look at him. She said, very low, “I cannot swear that the 
possibility is beyond belief. I would do my best for her. But it could indeed be 
so.”
“No! All gods help us—no, kinswoman!” Aldaran said, the old hawk roused. “If 
there is the slightest chance—no, I cannot risk it. Even if all should go for 
the best, cousin, a woman who is heir to Aldaran cannot live as a commoner, 
without laran. She would be better dead!”
Renata bowed, a submissive gesture. “Let us hope it does not come to that, my 
lord.”
Lord Aldaran looked around at them all. “I shall see you tonight at the victory 
feast within this hall,” he said. “I must go and give orders that all is done as 
I command.” He went from the hall, his head erect and arrogant.
Renata, watching him go, thought, It is his moment of triumph. He has Aldaran 
now, unchallenged, despite the ruin of the war. Dorilys is a part of that 
triumph. He wants her at his side, a threat, a weapon for the future. Suddenly 
she shuddered, hearing the thunders, soft and dying overhead.
Dorilys slept, her terror and rage diminished by the drug.
But she would wake. And what then?
  
The thunders were still silent late that evening, as the sun set. Allart and 
Cassandra stood on the balcony above their suite, looking down into the valley.
“I can hardly believe the war is over,” Cassandra said.
Allart nodded. “And most likely the war with the Ridenow as well; it was my 
father and Damon-Rafael who wished to conquer them and drive them back to the 
Dry-towns. I do not think anyone else cares if they remain at Serrais; certainly 
the women of Serrais, who wedded them and welcomed them there, do not.”
“What is going to happen in Thendara now, Allart?”
“How should I know?” Her husband’s smile was bleak. “We have had proofs enough 
of the inadequacy of my foresight. Most likely Prince Felix will reign until the 
Council declares his heir. And you know, and I know, whom they are likely to 
choose.”
She said, with a little shiver, “I do not want to be queen.”
“Nor I to be king, beloved. But we both knew, when we became entangled in the 
great events of our time, that there would be no help for it.” He sighed. “My 
first act, if it is so, will be to choose Felix Hastur as my principal 
Councillor. He was born to the throne, and reared to the knowledge of ruling; 
also, he is emmasca and long-lived, as with those of chi-eri blood, and he may 
live through two or three reigns. Since he can raise up no son to supplant me, 
he will be the most useful and disinterested of advisers. Between the two of us, 
he and I may together make something like a king.”
He put his arm around Cassandra, drew her close. Damon-Rafael had reminded him; 
with Cassandra’s modified genes, the blend of Hastur and Aillard might, after 
all, be viable in a child of theirs. Cassandra, following his thoughts, said 
aloud, “With what I have learned in the Tower I can make certain I will conceive 
no child who will kill me in the bearing, or carry lethal genes which will 
destroy him at puberty. There will be some risk, always…” She raised her eyes to 
his and smiled. “But after what we have survived together, I think we can risk 
that much.”
“There will be time for that,” he said, “but if there should be no such good 
fortune, Damon-Rafael has half a dozen nedestro sons. One of them, at least, 
should have the stuff to make a king. I think I have had lesson enough in the 
pride that drives a man to seek a crown for his own sons.” He could see, shadowy 
and blurred in the future, the face of a lad who would follow him to the throne, 
and that it was a child of Hastur blood. But whether it was a son of his own, or 
the son of his brother, he did not know, or care.
He was weary, and more grieved than he wanted to let himself know, at his 
brother’s death. He thought, Even though I had resolved to kill him if I must, 
even though it was I who held up the mirror of his own heart and thus forced him 
to turn the knife on himself, I am grieved. He knew he would never be wholly 
free of grief and guilt for the decision which had been, whether anyone else 
ever knew it or not, the first conscious act of his reign. And he knew he would 
never cease to mourn—not for the power-hungry potential tyrant he had driven to 
suicide, but for the big brother he loved, who had wept with him at their 
father’s grave.
But that Damon-Rafael had died long ago, long ago—if he had ever lived outside 
Allart’s own imagination!
Faint thunder rumbled in the sky, and Cassandra started, then, looking at the 
rain falling, a dark streak, across the valley on the peaks, she said, “I think 
it is only a summer storm. Yet I can never hear lightning now—” She broke off. 
“Allart! Do you think Renata was right? Should you have persuaded Dom Mikhail to 
let Renata destroy her laran as she slept?”
“I do not know,” Allart said, troubled. “After what has befallen, I am not eager 
to trust my own foresight now. But I, too, found my laran a curse, when I was a 
boy on the threshold of manhood. Had any offered me such a release then, I think 
I would have taken it with gladness. And yet—and yet—” He reached out for her, 
drew her to him, remembering those agonized days when he had cowered, paralyzed, 
under the laran which had become such a dreadful curse. It had stabilized when 
he came to manhood; he knew now that he would never have been more than half 
alive without it. “When she comes to maturity, Dorilys, too, may find stability 
and strength, and be the stronger for these trials.” As I have been. And you, my 
beloved. “I should go to her,” Cassandra said uneasily, and Allart laughed.
“Ah, that is like you, love—you who are to be queen, to rush off to the bedside 
of a sick maiden, and one who is not even to be one of your subjects!”
Cassandra raised her small head proudly. “I was monitor, and healer, before ever 
I thought of being a queen. And I hope I shall never refuse my skill to anyone 
who stands in need of it!”
Allart raised her fingertips to his lips and kissed them.
“The gods grant, beloved, that I shall be as good a king as that!”
  
Within the castle, Renata heard the thunder, and thought of Dorilys as she 
readied herself for the victory feast.
“If you have any influence with her at all, Donal,” she said, “you will try to 
persuade her that I mean her well. Then, perhaps, I can work with her, to 
rebuild the control I had begun to teach her. It would be easier to retrace what 
she and I had done than to begin again with a stranger.”
“I will do that,” Donal said. “I do not fear for her; never once has she turned 
on me, nor on her father, and if she has control enough for that, I have no 
doubt she can learn control in other things. She is weary now, and frightened, 
and in the grip of threshold sickness. But when she is well again, she will 
recapture her control. I am sure of it.”
“God grant you are right,” she said, smiling, trying to hide her fears.
Abruptly, he said, “At the victory feast, beloved—I want to tell my father, and 
Dorilys, how it stands with us.”
Renata shook her head vehemently. “I do not think it is the right time, Donal. I 
do not think she can bear it yet.”
“Yet,” Donal said, frowning, “I am reluctant to lie to her. I wish it had been 
you, rather than Cassandra, who saw how she clung to me, when I carried her to 
her bed. I want her to know that I will always cherish her and protect her, but 
I do not want her to misunderstand, either, or to have a false impression of how 
things are to be between us. At this feast— when she sits at my side as my 
wife—” He stopped, troubled, thinking of the kiss Dorilys had given him, which 
was not a sister’s kiss at all.
Renata sighed. At least a part of Dorilys’s trouble was threshold sickness, the 
emotional and physical upheaval which often disturbed a developing telepath in 
adolescence. Aldaran had lost three nearly grown children that way. Renata, a 
monitor, and Tower-trained, knew that part of the danger in threshold sickness 
was the enormous upsurge, at the same time, of telepathic forces, mingled with 
the stresses of developing, not yet controlled, sexuality. Dorilys had come 
young to that, too. Like a plant in a forcing-house, the use of her laran powers 
had created all the other upheavals and upsurges, too. Was it any wonder, filled 
with all this new power and awareness, that she turned to the older boy who had 
been her special champion, her idol since she was a baby, her protector—and now, 
by this cruel farce she was too young to understand, her husband as well?
“It is true that she survived her first attack of threshold sickness, and the 
first attack is often the worst. Perhaps, if she wakes well and coherent—but at 
this victory feast, Donal? When first she sits at your side, acknowledged your 
wife? Would you spoil her pleasure in that, then?”
“What better time?” Donal asked, smiling. “But even before Dorilys, I want you 
to tell my father how it is to be with us. He should know that you bear my 
nedestro child. It is not the heir he wants for Aldaran. But he should know that 
this child will be shield-arm and paxman to Aldaran house as I have been since 
my mother brought me here as a child. Truly, my dear love, we cannot keep it 
secret much longer. Pregnancy, like blood-feud, grows never less with secrecy. I 
would not have it thought that I am cowardly, or ashamed of what I have done. 
Once known and acknowledged, beloved, your status is protected. Even Dorilys, by 
civilized custom, knows it is a wife’s duty to see to the well-being of any 
child her husband may father. At this point in her life, I think, any duty 
properly belonging to a wife will please Dorilys. She was so pleased when Father 
said she should sit as heir at the victory feast, beside her consort.”
“Perhaps you are right,” Renata said, remembering Dorilys, who hated sewing, 
proudly embroidering a holiday shirt for Donal—a traditional bride’s task. Donal 
was right; his marriage to Dorilys was a legal fiction, but custom should be 
observed, and it was his duty to tell Dorilys that another woman bore his child.
Donal remembered that he had been present—a boy just turned ten years old—when 
Dom Mikhail had informed Lady Deonara that Aliciane of Rockraven was pregnant 
with his child. Deonara had risen, embraced Aliciane before all the house-folk, 
and led her from the women’s table to the high seat, formally sharing a drink of 
wine from the same cup, in token that she would accept the coming child. Renata 
laughed uneasily at the thought of this ritual with Dorilys.
“Yet you have loved her tenderly,” Donal urged, “and I think she will remember 
that. Also there is this to consider. Dorilys is impulsive and given to fierce 
tempers, but she is also very conscious of her dignity before the house-folk, as 
Lady of Aldaran. Once she has been forced to be polite to you at a formal 
occasion, like this, she will remember how kind you have been to her. Nothing 
would please me more than to see you reconciled. She will know that I love her, 
I honor her, I will always care for her. I will even, if it is really her will, 
give her a child. But she will know what she can expect from me, and what she 
cannot.”
Renata sighed and took his hands.
“As you will, then, beloved,” she said. “I can refuse you nothing.”
There was a time, not a year past, when I was proud to say to Cassandra Aillard 
that I did not know what it was to love a man, to suspend my own better judgment 
to do his will. Do all women come to this, soon or late? And I dared to judge 
her for that!
  
Later that evening, when Donal met her at the door of the feasting hall, and 
himself conducted her to her seat at the women’s table, Renata thought that she 
might as well have shouted it aloud before all the assembled house-folk of 
Castle Aldaran. She did not care. If all had gone rightly, she and Donal would 
have been married at midwinter night, and worn the catenas. Aldaran had forced 
another marriage on Donal, but she was neither the first woman nor the last to 
cling to a lover forced into an expedient marriage with someone else.
She watched Donal as he took his seat at the high table. He had looked handsome 
to her even in the old rubbed-leather riding-breeches and faded jerkin he had 
worn during the siege, but now he had put on his finest garments. Firestones 
hung gleaming at his throat and a jeweled sword at his side. His hair was curled 
and there were rings on his fingers; he looked handsome and princely. Old Dom 
Mikhail, in his long furred robe of dark green, with wide sleeves and a jeweled 
belt, looked proud, but benevolent, too. Dorilys’s chair was empty, and Renata 
wondered if she were still in her drugged sleep. No doubt sleep would do her 
more good than feasting. Beside Donal and Lord Aldaran at the high table were 
only Allart and Cassandra, as honored guests of highest rank, and the leronis 
Margali, who was a noblewoman and Dorilys’s foster-mother. Under ordinary 
conditions, Renata sat there herself, as Dorilys’s companion and teacher, and so 
did the coridom or estate steward, the chief of the hall-stewards, the 
castellan, and three or four other functionaries of Castle Aldaran. But at such 
a solemn feast, only the immediate family and any guests of rank equal to 
Aldaran’s own, or higher, were seated beside the lord Aldaran. The nobles and 
functionaries were seated either at the women’s table where Renata sat, with 
Lady Elisa and the other women of the estate, or at the men’s table with the 
household knights and important men of the castle.
The lower hall was crowded with those of lower rank, soldiers, guardsmen, 
servants, everyone down to the stablemen and dairy-women.
“Why are you looking like that at Dorilys’s empty chair?” Cassandra asked.
“I thought for a moment that she was there,” Allart murmured, disquieted. He had 
seen for a moment a strange flare of lightning, and thought, I am weary. I still 
start at shadows. Perhaps it is only the aftermath of the siege!
Dom Mikhail leaned toward Margali, asking what had delayed Dorilys. After a 
moment he nodded, rose from his chair, and addressed the folk assembled in the 
Great Hall.
“Let us give thanks to the gods that the armies which surrounded us are 
vanquished and gone to their own place. What they have destroyed will be 
rebuilded; what they have broken shall be mended.” He raised his cup. “First let 
us drink to honor those who have given their lives in this warfare.”
Allart rose with the others, drinking silently from his cup in honor to the 
dead.
“Now I shall speak of the living,” Lord Aldaran said. “I hereby state that any 
child of any man who died in the siege of this castle shall be fostered in my 
house, or the household of one of my vassals, according to his father’s rightful 
station, commoner or noble.”
There was an outcry of thanks for the lord Aldaran’s generosity; then he spoke 
again.
“Furthermore, if their widows wish to marry again, my stewards shall see to 
finding them suitable husbands, and if not, they shall be helped to respectable 
livelihoods.”
When the outcry had died down this time, he said, “Now let us eat and drink, but 
drink first in honor of him who best defended the castle—my foster-son Donal of 
Rockraven and husband of my daughter, Dorilys, Lady of Aldaran.”
Under the cover of the cries of acclamation, Cassandra said, “Would that Dorilys 
were here, to know herself so honored.”
“I do not know,” Allart said slowly. “I think perhaps she has already too much 
pride in her own power and station.”
Dom Mikhail glanced to where Allart sat with Cassandra. “I would that you might 
remain to help me set my Domain in order, cousin. Yet I have no doubt that 
before very long they will summon you to Thendara. With your brother dead, you 
are heir to the Domain of Elhalyn.” He looked at Allart, suddenly cautious. Dom 
Mikhail had become aware that he was no longer dealing with a kinsman, a friend, 
a fellow noble, but with a future ruler with whom he must one day soon have 
careful, tactical diplomatic dealings. A Hastur lord, one who might before 
midsummer day sit on the throne of Thendara.
It seemed to Allart that every word Dom Mikhail spoke was fenced about with 
sudden caution.
“I hope we will always be friends, cousin.”
Allart said, heartfelt, “I hope, indeed, that there will always be friendship 
between Thendara and Elhalyn.” But he wondered, Can I never again know any real 
friendships, any simple personal relationships? The thought depressed him.
Dom Mikhail said, “It will take us half a year to clear away the rubble of the 
fallen tower; perhaps twice that to rebuild, if we do it by ordinary means. What 
do you think, Donal—shall we send for a matrix crew, perhaps from Tramontana, 
perhaps from the Lowlands, to come and clear away this rubble?”
Donal nodded. “We must think of the folk who have had to be away from their 
homes because of the armies; already the spring planting is delayed, and if it 
must wait much longer, we will have hunger in these hills at harvest.”
Dom Mikhail said, “Yes, and they can design the tower anew, and raise it again 
by matrix. It would be costly and long, but it would give pride to Castle 
Aldaran, and when your children and Dorilys’s rule here someday, you will wish 
for a point of vantage to command the country around. Though, indeed, I think it 
will be long, very long, before anyone sends armed might against the stronghold 
of Aldaran!”
“May that day be far,” Donal said. “I hope you will sit in this high seat for 
many years to come, my father.” He rose and bowed. “By your leave, sir,” he 
said, and left his seat, going to the women’s table where Renata sat
“Come with me, love, and speak with my father. Then, when Dorilys comes later to 
join us, he will know the truth, and there will be honesty among us all.”
Renata smiled and took his offered hand. Part of her felt naked and exposed by 
the way in which he had sought her out, but she realized that this was a part of 
the price she paid for her love. She could have chosen to go away, to return to 
her family, when Donal was married to another. A conventional woman would have 
done so. She had chosen to remain here as Donal’s barragana, and she was not 
ashamed of it. Why should she hesitate to cross the little space between the 
women’s table and the high seat, to sit at Donal’s side?
Allart watched with apprehension, wondering what would happen when Renata and 
Dorilys came face to face. No… Dorilys was not here; she had not come into the 
hall. Yet his laran showed him weird out-of-focus pictures of Dorilys’s face, of 
Renata, distraught. He started to rise from his seat, then realized in despair 
that there was nothing he could do, nothing to focus on, nothing had happened 
yet; but the noise and confusion in the ball, pictured by his laran, paralyzed 
him. He stared around, bewildered by the pandemonium of his laran, and the 
actual present Great Hall, with only the cheerful noises of many people loudly 
eating and drinking at a holiday feast.
Renata said, “I love Dorilys well. I would not for worlds step on the hem of her 
garment. I still feel we should not tell her this until we are sure that she is 
free of threshold sickness.”
“But if she finds it out of herself, she will be very angry, and rightly so,” 
Donal argued, leading Renata toward the high seat. “We should tell my father, 
even if there is no need to tell Dorilys at once.”
“What is it that you will say to my father and not to me, my husband?”
The light, childish voice dropped into the silence, shattering it like breaking 
glass. Dorilys, in her holiday gown of blue, her hair coiled low on her neck, 
and somehow looking more childish than ever in her woman’s garments, came 
walking across the floor, dazed, almost as if she were sleepwalking. Allart and 
Margali rose, and Dom Mikhail held out his hand to Dorilys, saying, “My dear 
child, I am glad you are well enough to join us,” but she paid no attention, her 
eyes fixed on Donal and Renata, hand in hand before her.
She cried out suddenly, “How dare you speak like that about me, Renata!”
Renata could not conceal a start of surprise and guilt. But she looked at 
Dorilys and smiled.
“Dear child,” she said, “I have said nothing about you except what shows my love 
and concern, as always. If there is anything we have not told you, it has been 
only to save you distress while you were overwearied and ill with threshold 
sickness.” But her heart sank as she saw the look in Dorilys’s eyes, dark, 
strained, clutching sanity about her with painful concentration, and she 
realized that Dorilys, as she had done on the day of her festival, was reading 
thoughts again; not clearly like a skilled telepath, but erratically, with 
crazy, patchy imcompleteness. Then Dorilys cried out in rage and sudden 
comprehension, turning on Donal.
“You!” she cried, in a frenzy. “You have given to her what you denied to me! Now 
you think—you scheme that she will bear the new heir to Aldaran!”
“Dorilys, no,” Renata protested, but Dorilys, beside herself, would not hear.
“Do you think I cannot see it? Do you think I do not know that my father has 
always schemed that your child should be heir? He would let you father a child 
on some outsider to supersede mine.”
Donal reached for her hands, but she wrenched them away.
“You promised, Donal,” she cried shrilly. “You promised, and tried to soothe me 
with lies, as if I were a child to be petted and told fairy tales, and while you 
lied to me, all that time you planned that she should bear your first son. But 
she shall not, I swear it! I will strike her first!”
Lightning flared in the hall, a crash of thunder, loud and almost deafening. In 
the shocked silence as it died away, Cassandra rose, taking a frantic step 
toward Dorilys.
“Dorilys, dear child, come to me.”
“Don’t touch me, Cassandra!” Dorilys shrieked. “You have lied to me, too. You 
are her friend, not mine! You schemed with her, knowing what she planned behind 
my back. I am alone here; there is none to love me.”
“Dorilys, there is none here does not love you,” Donal said.
But Dom Mikhail had risen, somber and angry. He raised a hand and said, using 
command-voice, “Dorilys! I say, be still!”
The girl stood motionless, shocked into silence.
“This is an outrage!” Lord Aldaran said, towering over the child. “How dare you 
create such an unseemly uproar at a festival? How dare you speak so to our 
kinswoman? Come and sit here in your proper place by me, and be silent!”
Dorilys took a step toward the high table, and Renata thought, her heart 
churning with relief, After all, even with her power, she is a child; she is 
accustomed to obey her elders. She is still young enough to obey her father 
without question.
Dorilys took another step under the command-voice; then she broke free.
“No!” she cried out, whirling, stamping her foot in the willful fury Renata had 
seen so often in her first days at the castle. “I will not! I will not be 
humiliated this way! And you, Renata, you who have dared to step on my garment 
this way, in pride of what you have had from my husband when I have had only 
empty words and promises and a child’s kiss on the forehead, you shall not 
flaunt your belly at me. You shall not!” She whirled, her face ablaze with the 
lightning flare.
And Allart saw what once he had foreseen in this hall, a child’s face all ablaze 
with lightning…
Renata took a panicked step backward, tripping over a piece of furniture. Donal 
cried out, “Dorilys, no! No! Not at her!” and flung himself between Renata and 
Dorilys, shielding Renata with his body. “If you are angry, speak your anger to 
me alone—” Then he broke off, with an inarticulate sound, and staggered and his 
body twitched, caught in the lightning flare. He jerked violently, convulsed, 
fell, his body crisped and blackened like a blasted tree, twitched again, 
already lifeless, and lay without moving on the stone pavement.
It had all happened so swiftly that there were many in the lower hall who had 
heard nothing except cries and accusations. Margali still sat with her mouth 
open, staring stupidly at her charge, not believing what she saw. Cassandra 
still stood with her arms extended toward Dorilys, but Allart caught her and 
held her motionless.
Dom Mikhail took one step toward Dorilys, and staggered. He stopped, swaying, 
holding himself upright with both hands on the edge of the table. His face was 
congested and dark with blood, and he could hardly speak. His voice held a 
terrible bitterness.
“It is the curse,” he said. “A sorceress foretold this day, that I should cry 
out to the gods above and below, would to all of the gods that I had died 
childless.” Moving slowly, an old, broken-winged hawk, he came slowly to where 
Donal lay, fell to his knees beside him.
“Oh, my son,” he whispered. “My son, my son…” and raised his face, set and rigid 
as if carved in stone, to Dorilys. “Strike me down, too, girl. Why do you wait?” 
Dorilys had not moved; she stood as if turned to stone, as if the lightning 
which had struck Donal down had struck her, too, turning her motionless. Her 
face was a terrible, tragic mask, her eyes blank and unmoving. Her mouth was 
open, as if in a soundless scream, but she did not move.
Allart breaking the frozen stasis, began to move to Dom Mikhail’s side, but a 
wild flare of lightning suddenly blazed in the hall, and Dorilys disappeared in 
its flare. Allart fell back dazed by the shock. Another and another lightning 
bolt crackled in the room, and they could see Dorilys now, her eyes mad and 
blazing. Another lightning bolt and another seared at random around the room, 
and in the lower hall a man leaped up, twitched, and fell dead. One by one, 
everyone edged back, step by step, from where Dorilys stood, surrounded by the 
crazed flare of lightning, deafened by thunder; back, and back from where she 
stood like a statue of some terrible goddess etched in lightning. Her face was 
not a child’s face. It was not even human anymore.
Only Renata dared the lightning. Perhaps, Allart thought in some horrified 
corner of his mind where he could still think, perhaps Renata simply had no more 
to lose. She took a step toward Dorilys; another. Another. Dorilys moved for the 
first time since she had struck Donal down, a menacing gesture, but Renata did 
not pause or flinch, advancing step by step toward the core of those terrible 
lightnings where Dorilys blazed like some figure of legendary hells.
Dom Mikhail said brokenly, “No, Lady Renata. No, no— stand back from her. Not 
you, too, Renata—not you, too.”
Allart heard in his mind a clamor, a confusing babble, a wild interplay of 
confused possibilities there—gone, retreating, surging up again—as Renata moved, 
slowly and steadily, toward Dorilys, where she stood over Donal’s dead body. He 
saw Renata fall blasted, saw her strike Dorilys with her own laran and hold her 
motionless, as she had done when Dorilys was a willful child; he heard her 
cursing Dorilys, pleading with her, defying her, all at once in the wild surge 
of futures from this moment that would be, might be, would never be…
Renata spread her arms wide. Her voice was anguished but steady, clearly 
audible.
“Dorilys,” she said in a whisper. “Dorilys, my little girl, my darling—”
She rose from where she had fallen and took a step and another, and Dorilys came 
into her arms, was folded close to her breast. The lightnings died. Suddenly 
Dorilys was only a little girl again, clasped in Renata’s arms, sobbing 
tempestuously.
Renata held her, soothing her, stroking her, murmuring soft love words, tears 
raining down her own face. Dorilys looked around her, dazed.
“I feel so sick, Renata,” she whispered. “What has happened? I thought this was 
a festival. Is Donal very angry with me?” Then she shrieked, a long, terrible 
cry of horror and realization, and crumpled, a limp, lifeless-looking 
unconscious heap in Renata’s arms.
Overhead the thunder muttered and died and was still.



CHAPTER THIRTY

It is too late,” Renata repeated. “I do not know if it will ever be safe to let 
her wake again.”
Overhead the thunder rattled at random, striking sudden searing bolts around the 
towers of Aldaran, and Allart wondered, with a shudder, what dreams disturbed 
Dorilys’s sleep. Dreadful ones, no doubt.
In the stunned moment following Dorilys’s realization of what she had done, 
Renata had managed to get her to swallow a dose of the same strong drug she had 
given her before. Almost as soon as she had swallowed it, the moment of sanity 
had faded from her eyes and the terrible core of lightning had begun to build up 
around her again. But the drug had taken over with merciful quickness before 
more than a few random bolts had struck, and she had sunk into her present 
unquiet stupor, the storms raging overhead but not striking near.
“We cannot give her that drug again,” Renata repeated. “Even if I could get her 
to take it again—and I am not sure of that—it would almost certainly kill her.”
Aldaran said, with terrible bitterness, “Better that, than that she should 
destroy us all as she destroyed my boy.” His voice broke and the terrible glazed 
brightness of his eyes was worse than weeping. “Is there no hope, Renata? None?”
“I am afraid that even when I asked you, before,” Renata said, “it was too late. 
Too much of her mind, too much of the brain itself has been destroyed and 
invaded by the lightnings. It is too late for Dorilys, my lord. I fear you must 
accept that; our only concern now is to make sure she does not destroy too much 
outside herself, in her own death.”
The father shuddered. Finally he said, “How can we make sure of that?”
“I do not know, my lord. Probably no one with this lethal gift has ever survived 
so near maturity, and so we have only the faintest notion of its potential. I 
must consult with those in Tramontana Tower, or perhaps at Hali, to be certain 
what we can do, and how we can best make her harmless during”— Renata swallowed, 
struggling to control herself—“during what little time remains to her. She can 
tap the whole electrical potential of the planet, my lord. I beg you not to 
underestimate the damage she can still do, if we frighten her.”
“I am cursed,” said Aldaran, softly and bitterly. “I was cursed the day she was 
born, and I did not know it. You tried to warn me, and I did not hear. It is I 
who deserve death, and it took only my children, my innocent children.”
“Let me go and consult my colleagues in the Towers, Lord Aldaran.”
“And spread far and wide the news of the shame of Aldaran? No, Lady Renata. It 
was I who brought this awful curse to our world; without malice, and in love, 
but still it was I. Now I shall destroy it.”
He drew his dagger, raised it above Dorilys, and brought it suddenly striking 
down. But from the prostrate form there came a blue flash and Aldaran fell back, 
knocked half across the room, the breath gone from his body. When Allart picked 
him up he struggled for breath and for a moment Allart feared he was dying.
Renata shook her head sadly.
“Had you forgotten, my lord? She is a telepath, too. Even in her sleep, she can 
sense your intent. Although I do not think she would want to live if she knew, 
there is something in that brain that will protect itself. I do not think we can 
kill her. I must go to Hali or to Tramontana, my lord.”
Lord Aldaran bowed his head.
“As you will, kinswoman. Will you make ready to ride?”
“There is no time for that—and no need. I will go through the overworld.”
Drawing out her matrix, Renata composed herself for the journey. With one part 
of herself she was grateful for this disturbance, this desperate need; it 
deferred the moment when she must face the unendurable fact of Donal’s death. 
Unasked, Cassandra came to keep watch beside Renata’s body while she made the 
journey through the intangible realms of the mind.
It was like stepping out of a garment suddenly grown unimaginably too large. For 
an instant, in the grayness of the shadow-world overlaying the solid and 
tangible world, Renata could see her body, looking as lifeless as Dorilys’s, 
wearing the elaborate gown she had put on for the victory feast which had turned 
to defeat, and Cassandra motionless beside her. Then, moving with the swiftness 
of thought, she stood on the high peak of Tramontana Tower, wondering why she 
had been drawn here… then, in the crimson garment of a Keeper, she saw 
Ian-Mikhail of Tramontana.
He said gently, “So Donal is dead, suddenly and by violence? I was his friend, 
and his teacher. I must seek him out in the Realms Beyond, Renata. If he died 
suddenly, and by violence, he may not know he is dead; his mind may be trapped 
near to his body and he may be helplessly trying to reenter it again. I was 
uneasy about him; yet I did not know what had befallen him until I saw you, 
cousin.”
In the intangible spaces of the overworld, where a physical touch could register 
only as an idea, he gently touched her hand.
“We share your grief, Renata. We all loved him; he should have been one of us in 
Tramontana. I must go to him.” She saw the small premonitory stirring of the 
gray spaces which presaged Ian-Mikhail’s withdrawing of his thoughts and 
presence from her, and caught at his presence with a despairing thought that 
disturbed the overworld like a cry.
“What of Dorilys, kinsman? What shall we do for her?”
“Alas, I do not know, Renata. Her father would not entrust her to us, and we do 
not know her. It is a pity; we might have found a way to help her control her 
laran. But the records of the breeding programs are at Hali and Arilinn. Perhaps 
they have had some experience, or some advice. Delay me no more, sister; I must 
go to Donal.”
Renata watched his image in the overworld recede, grow distant. He was going to 
seek out Donal, dead so suddenly by violence, make certain he did not linger, 
trapped, near his useless body. Dully Renata envied him. She knew that contact 
between the dead and the living was perilous for both, and thus forbidden. The 
dead must not be encouraged to remain too near the grief of the bereaved; the 
living must not be drawn into realms where, as yet, they had no business. 
Ian-Mikhail, trained from adolescence to the detachment of a Keeper’s vows, 
could safely perform this office for his friend without being drawn into 
overmuch concern. Even so, Renata knew, had Donal been a member of his immediate 
family, Ian-Mikhail would have ceded this task to another, less personally 
concerned.
Weary, uncertain, remembering only Donal and her loss, Renata turned her 
thoughts toward Hali. She struggled for calm, knowing that too much emotion 
would force her off this plane altogether, but it threatened to overcome her. 
She knew that if she did not banish the tormenting memories she would break 
altogether, retreat in to the dream-stuff of the overworld, and never return.
But the grayness of the overworld seemed unending, and while she could see the 
dimness of the Tower of Hali in the distance, it seemed that although she tried 
to move toward the Tower, her limbs would not obey her, nor her unruly thoughts. 
She moved forever in gray uninhabited mental wastelands…
Then, very far away, in the distance, it seemed that she saw a familiar figure, 
young, laughing, very far away, too far to reach… Donal! Donal, so very far from 
her! In this realm where thoughts were pliable, something survived… She began to 
hurry after the retreating figure, sending out a cry of joy.
Donal! Donal, I am here! Wait for me, beloved….
But he was very far away. He did not turn or look at her. She thought, with a 
last moment of rationality, No; it is forbidden. He has gone into a realm still 
denied, still inaccessible. This could draw me after him… too far…
I will not go too far. But I must see him again. I must see him only this once, 
say the good-byes of which we were so cruelly cheated … only this once, and then 
nevermore…
She hurried after the retreating figure, her thoughts seeming to bear her along 
swiftly through the grayness of the overworld. When she looked around all the 
familiar landmarks, the last sight of Hali Tower, had vanished, and she was 
wholly alone in grayness, with nothing but the small, retreating figure of Donal 
just at the horizon, drawing her on…
No. This is madness! It is forbidden. I must return before it is too late. She 
had known this from her first years in the Tower, that there could not be, must 
not be, any intrusion by the living into whatever realms belonged to the dead, 
and she knew why. But caution was almost gone in her now. In the despair of 
grief, she thought, I must see him once more, only once, must kiss him, must say 
good-bye… I must or I cannot live! Surely it cannot be forbidden, only to say 
goodbye. I am a trained matrix worker. I know what I am doing, and it will give 
me the strength to go on living without him…
A final touch of intruding sanity made her wonder if it were truly Donal there 
on the horizon, leading her away. Or was it an illusion, born of grief and 
longing, unwillingness to accept the irrevocability of death? Here in the realms 
of thought, her mind could build an illusion of Donal and follow it till she 
joined him in those realms.
I do not care! I do not care! It seemed that she was running, running after the 
retreating form, then more slowly, more despairing, her pace slackening. Unable 
to move, she sent out a final despairing cry: Donal! Wait—
Suddenly the grayness lightened, thinned, a shadowy form barred her way, and a 
voice spoke her name; a familiar, gentle voice.
“Renata. Kinswoman, cousin—Renata, no.”
She saw Dorilys standing before her, not the terrifying inhuman lightning flare, 
not the queen of storms, but the old Dorilys, the little Dorilys of that summer 
of her love. In this fluid world where all things were as the mind pictured 
them, Dorilys was the little girl she had been, her hair in a long plait, one of 
her old childish dresses barely reaching her ankles.
“No, Renata, love, it is not Donal. It is an illusion born of your longing, an 
illusion you would follow forever. Go back, dear. They need you, there—”
Suddenly Renata saw the hall in Castle Aldaran, where her lifeless body lay, 
watched by Cassandra.
Renata stopped, looking at Dorilys before her.
She had killed. Killed Donal…
“Not I, but my gift,” Dorilys said, and the childish face was tragic. “I will 
kill no more, Renata. In my pride and willfulness I would not listen, and now it 
is too late. You must go back and tell them; I must never wake again.”
Renata bowed her head, knowing the child spoke truth.
“They need you, Renata. Go back. Donal is not here,” Dorilys said. “I, too, 
could have followed him forever over that horizon. Only, perhaps, now, when 
there is no pride or desire to blind me, I can see clearly. All my life, I never 
saw more of Donal than that, an illusion, my own willful belief that he would be 
what I wanted him to be. I—” Renata saw her face flicker and move and she saw 
the child Dorilys might have been, the woman she was becoming, would now never 
be. “I knew he was given to you; I was too selfish to accept it. Now I have not 
even what he would have given me, willingly. I wanted what he could give only to 
you.”
She gestured. “Go back, Renata. It is too late for me.”
“But what will become of you, child?”
“You must use your matrix,” Dorilys said, “to isolate me behind a force-field 
like the ones at Hali… you told me of them, shielding things too dangerous to 
use. You cannot even kill me, Renata. The gift in my brain works independent now 
of the real me—I do not understand it, either—but it will strike to protect my 
body if I am attacked. Even though I no longer desire to live. Renata, cousin, 
promise me you will not let me destroy any more of those I love!”
It could be done, Renata thought. Dorilys could not be killed. But she could be 
isolated, her life-forces suspended, behind a force-field.
“Let me sleep so, safe, until it is safe for me to wake,” Dorilys said, and 
Renata trembled. This would isolate Dorilys in the overworld, alone, behind the 
force-field which would barricade even her mind.
“Darling, what of you, then?”
Her smile was childish and wise.
“Why, with such a long time—although time, I know, does not exist out here—I 
shall perhaps learn wisdom, at last, if I continue to live. And if I do not”—a 
curious, distant smile— “there are others who have gone before me. I do not 
believe wisdom is ever wasted. Go back, Renata. Do not let me destroy anyone 
else. Donal is gone beyond my reach, or yours. But you must go back, and you 
must live, because of his child. He deserves some chance at life.”
With those words Renata found herself lying in the chair in the Great Hall at 
Castle Aldaran, with the storms breaking above the castle heights…
“It can be done,” Allart said at last quietly. “Among the three of us, it can be 
done. Her life-forces can be lowered to where she is no danger. Perhaps she will 
die; perhaps, only, they will be in abeyance and someday she may wake in safety, 
in control. But more likely she will sink and sink, and finally, perhaps many 
years or centuries from now, she will die. In either case she is free, and we 
are safe…”
So it was done, and she lay as Allart had foreseen with his laran, motionless on 
the bier in the great vaulted room which was the chapel of Castle Aldaran.
“We shall bear her to Hali,” Allart said, “and there lay her within the chapel, 
forever.”
Lord Aldaran took Renata’s hand. “I have no heir; I am alone and old. It is my 
will that Donal’s son shall reign here when I am gone. It will not be long. 
Kinswoman,” he added, looking into her eyes, “will you wed me by the catenas? I 
have nothing to offer you save this: that if I acknowledge your child my son and 
heir, there is none alive who can gainsay me.”
Renata bowed her head. “For the sake of Donal’s son. Let it be as you will, 
kinsman,” and Aldaran held out his arms and folded her in them. He kissed her, 
tenderly and without passion, on the forehead; and with that the floodgates 
broke, and for the first time since Donal had been stricken down before her, 
Renata began to weep, crying and crying as if she would never cease.
Allart knew at last that this death would not strike down Renata also. She would 
live, and someday she would even recover. A day would come when Aldaran would 
proclaim Donal’s son heir to Aldaran in this very room, as Allart’s laran had 
foreseen…
They rode forth the next morning at daybreak, Dorilys’s body sealed in her 
force-field within its casket, to bear her to Hali, there to lie forever. Allart 
and Cassandra rode beside her. Above them, on the highest balcony of Aldaran, 
Renata and old Dom Mikhail watched them go, silent, motionless, bowed with 
mourning.
Allart thought, as they rode down the pathway, that he could never cease to 
mourn—for Donal, struck low in the midst of victory; for Dorilys, in her beauty 
and willfulness and pride; for the proud old man who stood above them, broken; 
and for Renata at his side, broken by grief.
I, too, am broken. I will be a king, and I do not want to reign. Yet I alone can 
save this realm from disaster, and I have no choice. He rode, head bowed, hardly 
seeing Cassandra at his side, until at last she reached to him and closed her 
slender six-fingered hand over his as they rode.
“A time will come, my dear love,” she said, “when at last we may make songs, not 
war. My laran is not as yours. But I foresee it.”
Allart thought, I am not alone… and for her sake I must not grieve. He raised 
his head, setting his face firmly against the future, and threw up a hand in 
final farewell to Castle Aldaran, which he would never see again, and in parting 
from Renata, from whom, he knew, he parted only for a little while.
As he rode down the path from Aldaran, following the cortege that bore the 
stormqueen to her last resting place, he prepared himself to meet on the road 
the men who were, even now, riding toward him to offer him the unwanted crown. 
Overhead the sky was gray and still, and it seemed that no thunder had ever 
troubled those quiet spaces.
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[27 August, 2003—v1 html proofed and formatted by Agent99 for the 3S group]