Stormqueen! (39 page)

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?”