Stormqueen! (45 page)

Allart whistled in dismay. Hali was bound, by law and custom, to use its powers for the Elhalyn overlord. They could strafe Tramontana with psychic lightnings, till the workers in the Tower were dead or mindless. Had he brought ruin on the friends here who had brought Cassandra to him? How could he have entangled them in his own family troubles? Well, it was too late now to regret.

Coryn said,
We refused, of course, and he gave us a day and a night to reconsider our answer. By the time he comes again we must be able to tell him, in a way that will satisfy his own
leronis
that neither of you is in Tramontana and that such strafing would be useless
.

Be very sure, we shall be gone from Tramontana before daylight
, Allart assured him, and allowed the contact to break.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

They set forth at the break of day, afoot, Tramontana kept no mounts and, in any case, their escort, with travel gear, had set forth yesterday at the same hour as Donal and Allart in their gliders. There was only one road, and sometime today they would meet the party from Aldaran on it.

The important thing was to be gone from Tramontana so that Hali could justly refuse to strafe the other Tower.
We cannot bring disaster upon our brothers and sisters of Tramontana, not when they have made themselves vulnerable for our sake
.

Cassandra looked up at him as they walked down the steep path side by side, and it seemed to Allart that the look she gave him was one of awful vulnerability. Once again, in life and death, he was responsible for this woman. He did not speak, but moved close to her.

“All the gods be thanked for the fine weather,” Donal said. “We are but ill equipped to travel more than a day in these hills. But the party from Aldaran has tents and shelter, blankets and food; once we meet them, we could, if need struck us, camp for a few days should a storm come up.” His trained eyes scanned the sky. “But it seems to me unlikely that there will be such a storm. If we meet with them on the road a little after midday, as we most probably will, we can reach Aldaran sometime tomorrow in the afternoon.”

As he spoke a small thrill of dread struck inward at Allart. For a moment it seemed that he walked through whirling snow, a raging wind, and Cassandra was gone from his side… No! It was gone. No doubt Donal’s words had roused fear of one of those remotely possible futures which would probably never come to pass. As the sun rose above its mantle of crimson cloud on the distant peaks, he put back the cowl of his traveling-cloak - borrowed from Ian-Mikhail, for he had not been able to wear heavy garments in the glider, and all of his cold-weather gear was with the escort party from Aldaran; they had, of course, expected to wait in comfort at Tramontana until the escort came for them. Donal was similarly burdened with a borrowed cloak - for, although the weather seemed incredibly fine for the season, no one ventured forth in winter in the Hellers without clothing against a sudden storm, no matter how unlikely. Cassandra was dressed in clothing somewhat too short for her, borrowed from Rosaura. The colors, designed for the tawny-russet Rosaura, made her delicate dark beauty look quenched and colorless, and the short skirt displayed her ankles a little more than was strictly seemly, but she made a joke of it,

“All the better for walking on these steep paths!” She bundled up Rosaura’s bright green travel-cloak and wadded it carelessly under her arm. “It is all too warm for this; I would as soon not be burdened with carrying it,” she said, laughing.

“You do not know our mountains, Lady,” Donal said soberly. “If even a little wind springs up, you will be glad of it.”

But as the sun climbed the sky, Allart’s confidence grew. After more than an hour of walking, Tramontana was lost to sight behind a shoulder of the mountain, and Allart felt relieved. Now indeed they were gone from Tramontana, and when Damon-Rafael came to Hali and demanded that they should be yielded up to him, Tramontana could honestly say they were out of reach.

Would he vent his wrath upon the Hali circle, anyway? Most probably he would not. He needed their goodwill for the war he was waging against the Ridenow, needed them to make the weapons which gave him tactical and military advantage - and Coryn was an inspired deviser of weapons.
All too inspired
, Allart thought.
If the Domain were in my hands I should make peace at once with the Ridenow, and truce lasting enough that we could settle our differences in a meaningful way. Aldaran is right; we have no cause to war with the Ridenow at Serrais. We should welcome them among us, and be grateful if the
laran
of Serrais is kept alive in the women they have wed
.

After several hours of walking, as the sun heightened to noon, Donal and Allart, too, had taken off their heavy cloaks and even their outer tunics. The people at Tramontana had given them ample food for a meal or two by the way - “In case,” they said, “your escort should be somewhat delayed by the road; riding-animals can go lame or rockfalls obstruct the roads for a little” - and they sat on rocks beside the road, eating hard flat cakes of journey-bread and dried fruit and cheese.

“Merciful Avarra,” Cassandra said, gathering up the remnants, “it seems they have given us enough for a tenday! Surely there is no sense to carrying all this!”

Allart shrugged, stuffing the packets in one of the pockets of his outer tunic. Something in the gesture made him think of mornings at Nevarsin, stowing the few things he was allowed to possess in the pockets of his robe.

Donal, taking the remaining packages of food, seemed to share a part of the joke. “I feel like Fro’ Domenick, with his pockets bulging,” he said, and whistled a snatch of Dorilys’s song.

Little more than a year ago
, Allart thought,
I was resigned to living the rest of my life within the walls of a monastery
. He looked at Cassandra, who had tucked up her skirts almost to her knees and climbed a little stone wall to come at a stream that trickled down, clear and cool, from the heights. She bent to cup the water in her hands for a drink.
I thought I could spend all my life as a monk, that no woman could ever mean anything to me, yet it would rend me asunder now to be parted from her
. He climbed across the wall, and bent beside her to drink, and as their hands touched, he wished suddenly that Donal was not with them; then he almost laughed at himself. Surely there had been times in the summer past when Renata and Donal had suffered
his
presence as unwillingly as he now tolerated Donal’s company.

They sat for a while beside the road, resting, feeling the warmth of the sun on their heads, and Cassandra told him about her training as a monitor, and of the work as a mechanic. He touched the bone-deep
clingfire
scar on her hand with a twinge of horror, glad suddenly that she was out of the reach of war. In return he told her a little of Dorilys’s strange gift, touching lightly on the horror of the deaths following her handfastings, and talking of how they had flown among the storms.

“You shall try it, too, kinswoman,” Donal said, “when the spring comes.”

“I wish I might, but I do not know if I would care to wear breeches, even for that.”

“Renata does,” Donal said.

Cassandra laughed gaily. “She has always had more daring than I!”

Donal said, suddenly subdued, “Allart is my dear cousin and friend and I have no secrets from his wife. Renata and I were to be married at midwinter. But now my father has other wishes.” Slowly, he told her of Aldaran’s plan, that he and Dorilys should marry, so he might legally inherit Aldaran. She looked at him in kindly sympathy.

“I was fortunate. My kinfolk gave me to Allart when I had never seen him, but I found him such a one as I could love,” she said. “Yet I know it is not always so, nor even very often, and I know what it is to be parted from a loved one.”

“I will
not
be parted from Renata,” Donal said, low and fierce. “This mockery of marriage with Dorilys will be no more than a fiction, to endure no longer than my father lives. Then, if Dorilys will have it so, we will find her a husband and go forth, Renata and I. Or if she has no will to marry, I will remain as warden in her time. If it is her wish to adopt one of my
nedestro
sons as her heir, well and good; and if not, well and good also. I will not defy my father, but I will not obey him, either. Not in this; not if he wishes me to take my half-sister to bed and father a son upon her!”

“I should think that should be as Dorilys wills it, kinsman. The lady of Aldaran, if she is lawfully wed to another, cannot create scandal by taking guardsmen or mercenaries to her bed… and she may not have any wish to live loveless and childless.”

Donal looked away from her. “She may do as she wills, but if she has sons they will not be of my fathering. Allart has told me enough of what the breeding program and its inbreeding has already done among our people. My mother reaped that bitter fruit, and I will sow no more of it.”

Before the fierceness of that, Cassandra recoiled. Allart, sensing her unease, picked up her cloak and said, “I suppose we should go on. The escort can travel faster than we can, but still, even an hour’s walking to meet them will lessen the time we must spend on the road tomorrow.”

The path was less steep now, but the sunshine was patched with shadows as long feathery traces of gray cloud moved across the sky. Donal shivered and looked nervously toward the heights, darkening with thick gray masses, but he said nothing, only fastening the neck of his cloak.

Allart, picking up his apprehension, thought,
It would be well if we met with the escort as soon as might be
.

A little more walking, then, and the sky was hidden entirely with cloud, and Allart felt a snowflake strike his face. They were drifting slowly down, spiraling as they fell. Cassandra caught the snowflakes in her hand, marveling, childlike, at their size. But Allart had lived at Nevarsin and he knew something of the storms in the Hellers.

So Damon-Rafael may have had his way after all. By driving us forth in winter from the safety of Tramontana Tower, when storms are rather more likely than not, he may have rid himself without effort of a dangerous rival… And if I die in this storm, then there is no one to stand against my brother’s will to power
. Allart’s
laran
began to overpower him again, bringing him obsessive pictures of ruin and terror, wars raging, lands ravaged and burned, a true age of chaos all over Darkover from Dalereuth to the Hellers.

Scathfell, too, might fall upon Aldaran, and with Donal gone, there will be no one to stand against him. Between them, Scathfell and my brother will tear all this land asunder!

“Allart,” Cassandra said, picking up from his mind some of the images of ruin and chaos, “what is wrong?”

And I have Cassandra to protect, not only against my brother, but against all the rage of the elements!

“Will it be a blizzard?” she asked, suddenly frightened, and he looked at the thickening snowfall.

“I am not sure,” he said, watching Donal thrust up a wetted finger into the wind and turn it slowly around, trying to sense where the wind came from. “But there is some danger, though not immediate. We may meet the escort on the way before it gets any worse. They have food and clothing and gear for shelter, and then there will be nothing to fear.”

But even as he spoke, he met Donal’s eyes and knew that it was worse than he thought. The storm was coming
from
the direction of Aldaran; therefore it had probably already forced the escort to stop and make camp on the way. They would not be able to see the road ahead and the animals would not be able to find their footing in the heavy snow. There was no blame to the escort party; they would have believed Allart and Donal and Allart’s lady safe and among friends in Tramontana Tower.

How could they be expected to guess at Damon-Rafael’s malice?

Cassandra looked terrified.
If she is reading my mind, no wonder
, Allart thought, and applied himself to the task of calming her fears. He had too much respect for her to offer her a pacifying lie, but things were not as bad as she feared, either.

“One of the first things I learned at Nevarsin, was the art of finding shelter in unlikely places, and how to come through these sudden storms without disaster. Donal,” he said, “is there any man among the escort with a scrap of
laran
, so that you and I could reach him and tell the escort of our plight?”