Stormqueen! (23 page)

“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.