Orion Shall Rise (2 page)

Donal smiled in his austere fashion and took her hand. ‘Be not afraid of me,’ he murmured. ‘You must know I am simply a man, a friend of your father’s, your guest for what will be all too short a while.’

Her youth surged up in her and she blurted: ‘Is that true, sir? I mean, of course you wouldn’t lie, but, aren’t the saints reborn, again and again, in … your race –?’

Josse drew a sharp, scandalized breath. Donal calmed her by answering, ‘Well, the anims of ancestors do live in us, but this is true of everybody. Or so many people believe. Your father has told me that he – and you – carry blood of Ileduciel. And I, all my kind, we have countless forebears who were not of the first Thirty. Let us be friends, Catan.’

Between the parents passed a look, knowing and eager.

After a few days, Donal got a small radio transceiver from his gear and sent word that he would arrive late. Skyholm relayed it line-of-sight back to Kemper, where he had ordered an airplane for a certain date, and down to the Ministry of Coordination in Tournev. There nobody questioned his decision. They knew him for an able
and conscientious man, who gave more of himself to the Domain than he did to Clan and family affairs. Shortly afterward, Skyholm passed another communication on, in a private cipher, to his wife. She had left Kemper ahead of him, to oversee their estate in Dordoyn.

A month went by. The last snow melted, warmth and sunlight breathed a mist of green across the country, blossoming exploded, verdancy strengthened, the migratory birds began returning, plowman and plowhorse labored, rains blew gentle out of the west, larks jubilated while lambs and calves and winter-born infants lurched forth into amazement.

It was a time of hard work on the farms, but Mael could always arrange companionship for his highborn guest, hunting or fishing or sightseeing. Sometimes there were festivals in a village not too far off, otherwise there were the evenings at home, by lamplight in front of a tile stove.

Generation by generation, as the need for defense grew less urgent while the soil regained its fertility and trade reached ever farther, landholders here had made their houses more spacious and gracious. Between heavy-beamed ceiling and heavy-carpeted floor, the plaster of the main-room walls was well-nigh hidden by draperies, pictures, bookshelves, finely carved chests and seats, olden relics. Folk sat together drinking wine or beer – on special occasions, the coffee, tea, and chocolate that were lately coming from abroad. Some smoked tobacco. Mostly they talked or played games, but one among them might well read aloud or they might join in song while bagpipe and drum and a wooden flute or two rollicked around their voices.

Shyness before Donal Ferlay soon vanished. Aloof by nature, he therefore got more deference than any law required. Yet he was amiable in his way, willing both to listen and to tell about the outside world, the territories elsewhere in the Domain that strangeness made magical for the pysans.

Mael himself found it hard to grasp the vastness of that realm which Skyholm viewed and therefore commanded. The circle swept out the whole of Franceterr, Flandre, the Rhin, the Pryny range, the mountains of Jura, most of Angleylann, a corner of Eria (though the Aerogens had no wish to gain suzerainty over the patchwork countries on those islands), and westward across the entire Gulf of Gascoyn, to the Ocean. It held a score of states, each with its own
geography, industries, government, history, laws, customs, dialect or even language. Men muttered earthy words of surprise, women gasped, children shrilled when Donal described what he had seen. And Ileduciel itself – but that was beyond any comprehension, and folk were obscurely afraid to talk very much about it.

Just the same, they grew to like the Clansman. Whatever the powers that laired within him, whatever knowledge he bore that was forbidden to ordinary folk, what he showed them was his human side; and as a human being he was good, if perhaps a little too earnest. Before everything else, he was
giving
Mael and Josse great honor, an honor that should bring luck to everybody in the neighborhood.

For he sought out Catan daily, and soon they two were walking hand in hand amidst the young blossoms, and soon after that she spent her nights in his room.

Such joinings were common in regions where usage allowed. It certainly did in Brezh. No family would take a wife for a son until she had proved she was not barren, and many weddings waited until the child was born and seen to be healthy. A union with a saint could never lead to that, for the Clans married only among themselves, but it might endure for long years. Whether it did or not, it conferred glory on the woman’s kin, and often valuable connections to the Aerogens. If it ended, it had made her a supremely desirable bride for any unwed man of her own community, and he would welcome into his house the offspring of her earlier mate.

Mael owed much of his well-being to the fact that a grandfather of his had been Vosmaer Pir Quellwind – and the latter had simply chanced by while looking over this newly acquired land, and had never returned. The daughter who came of it married the heir of the upland farm, though the daughters of far wealthier households would gladly have done so. Liaisons like that were still rare in Brezh.

And … it seemed as though Talence Donal Ferlay was not merely amusing himself, nor was Catan merely hero-struck or scheming. Women who saw those two together would sigh, chuckle, shake their heads a bit, and gossip about it.

– Yet the twilight came when he and she stood alone beneath an apple tree whose flowers glimmered wan in cool blue dimness, with an odor of oncoming summer, and he laid his hands about her waist, looked into the reflections of the first star in her eyes, and said: ‘Tomorrow, at last, I go.’

Her head drooped. ‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘But why did you set just that date?’

‘Because I must set a date, and abide by it, or I would never leave.’

Her palm shivered upward and across his cheek. ‘Why must you, ever?’

He stiffened his back. ‘I have my duty.’ After a moment: Too few of the younger among us understand that. They think the Domain has become almighty, and nothing is left for them but pleasure. It isn’t true. Espayn, Italya, the barbarians beyond the Rhin – the Gaeans, the Maurai, and who knows what else, dissolving every old certainty that was ours – No, I cannot stay idle. My honor would rust away.’

‘Then why can’t I go with you?’ she pleaded.

‘I have explained that. My duty is also to my wife. And to you. You would be lost, bewildered, sick with longing for this your home.’ Again he paused, until he could wrench the words forth. ‘Besides, I am not a young man. I should not stand in the way of the life you have before you.’

‘Oh, beloved! You
are
my life.’ She cast herself against him and wept.

He held her close and said into the fragrance of her hair, ‘Well, I’ll come back. As often as may be. As long as may be.’

2

At midwinter, Catan brought forth a son. She gave him the name his father had chosen, Iern.

Many were the suitors for her hand, but she refused them and Mael would not force her. Instead she remained on the estate, taking her share of work, raising her child as best she could, and living for the times when Donal returned.

To Iern as he began growing, his father was a figure of might and enigma, who brought him gifts and asked how he did but who really arrived in order to claim his mother’s heed. He did not resent this, for her joy spilled over onto him. Besides, his grandfather and his uncles were men enough to steer his world.

They taught him what a boy should learn and then, because of his heritage, did more. They took him on journeys through all Ar-Mor, its stern sea-cliffs and nestling villages and port of Kemper where
ships came from halfway around the globe. This was a land haunted by ancientness. Strongholds from the bad old days scowled on guard, but some of them incorporated remnants of works built before the Judgment – sometimes long before, a medieval city wall, a Stone Age tomb. The menhirs, cromlechs, dolmens, and passage graves of peoples who had died even earlier stood gaunt in sight of hovering Skyholm. Upon a few of them, blurred by weather and lichen, remained
signs
chiseled by those who lived afterward: a Celtic face, a Roman figure, a cross for believers in Zhesu-Crett. Iern was too small for real understanding, but he got into him a sense of time as an endless storm-wind, on which men and nations and gods were blown like autumn leaves, forever.

Otherwise he was a bright, merry, and well-liked lad.

Grateful for this and much else, Donal saw to it that Mael’s household got every chance to prosper further, as the Domain knitted Brezh more closely into itself –

– until after seven years he came back to claim his son.

3

Darkness keened. Rain dashed against walls and shutters. The single lamp in a private chamber left its corners full of shadows, and its air was chill. Donal stood gazing into Catan’s tears. She was still fresh and fair, but his skin was furrowed and his hair mostly white. ‘I’m sorrier that I have words to say,’ he told her.

‘But you’ll take him anyhow!’ she cried.

He nodded. ‘I must. Didn’t you hear me? No doubt is left. Rosenn – my wife will never bear a child that lives. She cannot.’

Then why did you marry her?’

‘We didn’t know.’ Half a smile twisted his mouth. ‘Besides, our ways are not yours, my dear. It was a good arrangement for the Talence Ferlays and the Kroneberg Laniers to make. Not that we aren’t fond of each other, Rosenn and I – one reason why I can’t deny her a child to call ours.’

He laid fingers along Catan’s jaw and made her look at him. ‘You can have more children, beloved,’ he said. That’s no longer as ill-advised for you as we thought it might be. She – well, it’s always been so, that certain Clanswomen have trouble with childbirth. Too fine-boned … too inbred, in spite of adopting groundlings … too high a mutation rate, from stays in the stratosphere … but I
don’t suppose you know what that last means.’ The breath gusted out of him. ‘Never mind. What you surely will see, and not begrudge me, is my need for an heir.’

‘You have the right in law to take him away,’ she said forlornly. ‘Could you take me with him?’

He shook his head. ‘No. It would uproot you, and you would wither. It could destroy Rosenn. She isn’t jealous, but only imagine having you there … Be at ease, Catan. She will be as kind to him as I myself. He’ll grow up to be a man of the Aerogens, with everything that that means. And he’ll come see you when he can. His first call won’t be soon. He’s already past the usual age for enrolling as a Cadet, and the training is rigorous. But later –’ He started to draw her close. ‘Meanwhile, I’ll bring you news of him.’

She stiffened and pulled free. His clasp fell from her. ‘No,’ she said. Pride rang through the grief in her voice. ‘Not ever again.’

He clenched fists, though his face showed scant surprise. ‘I was afraid you would hate me.’

‘Not that.’ She stamped despair beneath her heel. ‘I love you yet, Donal. I suppose I always shall. But it’s time I became my own woman.’

4

The Clansman had arrived in a light aircraft, landing on a pasture. Next morning he flew off with the boy, east toward Skyholm. He never came back.

He did send letters and opportunities and, when possible, Iern on a holiday.

Catan married Riwal the Stout, a widowed proprietor of several ships and fishing boats in Carnac. They lived calmly, and received Iern well on his visits.

Folk recalled a night shortly after his birth, when a wander-woman who claimed second sight had stopped for a while under Mael’s roof. Staring at the infant by the light of a candle she had made in the form of a dagger, she mumbled, ‘Watch him well. He will bring their doom upon the gods.’ But this may be only a tale of the sort that arises long after the thing has happened.

Somewhere in the western Ocean, a storm came into being. No man ever knew the place. Once moonlets on sentry-go around the planet would have seen and warned, but most of them had come down as shooting stars, centuries past, and the rest gone silent. The Domain could not keep a global watch; metals for aircraft were too scarce, fuel too costly in the manufacture. Unseen by any, save maybe a few sailors, whom it would have drowned, the storm gathered strength as it lumbered eastward. By the time that vessels off the Uropan coasts were radioing news of it, observers in Skyholm had seen the earliest sinister changes in cloud patterns far below them, and called for the Weather Corps.

Iern got word only upon his return to Beynac. He had been riding circuit through the Ferlay lands in Dordoyn, as was his seasonal task – hearing tenants, freeholders, villagers, herders, timber-cutters, their complaints, ideas, hopes, prides, dreads, gossips; easing grievances, arbitrating disputes, negotiating arrangements as best he was able; presiding over various festivals and ceremonies as tradition demanded; rewarding good deeds or faithful service; letting himself be entertained, and in return being a pleasant, accessible guest, from whom there flowed tales of scenes beyond these horizons; in general, reweaving the bonds between his family and the people it led.

Now he and his attendants rode home along the river road. Autumn flamed in hillside forests, but air was mild and sweet. Sunlight slanted from the west, cliffs shone, the stream glistened down the steep length of its valley. From afar, a woodsman’s horn sounded lonesome, and found answer in echoes. The cloaks of the men lent vividness, while dust thumped upward by hooves caught light and swirled against shadows like firelit smoke.

Ans Debyron, secretary to Iern, made his horse trot until he rode
alongside the master. ‘A very successful trip, I’d say, sir,’ he ventured. A native of these parts, lately graduated from the Consvatoire of Sarlat, he was inclined to be pompous, though otherwise he was a competent and agreeable fellow. The soft Occitan enunciation of his Francey redeemed his choice of words.

‘Well, things seemed to go fairly smoothly,’ Iern replied. ‘I’m too new at this to be sure.’