Stormqueen! (38 page)

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.