Stormqueen! (9 page)

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.