Stormqueen! (34 page)

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.