Stormqueen! (58 page)

The woman wondered, in dread,
Has he been seduced at the thought of all this power? What has happened to Donal
? And she, too, was afraid for Dorilys, wondering what the use of that blasting force had done to the girl she loved.

An hour or two past noon, a messenger appeared on the road leading up to the castle, still washed-out and tunneled with water flooding from the heights, partially blocked with stones that had fallen when the tower collapsed. The message was relayed to Donal, who took it to Dom Mikhail at once.

“Father, your brother of Scathfell has sent a messenger asking if he may come to negotiate terms with you.”

Aldaran’s eyes glinted, fierce and bright, but he said calmly, “Tell my brother of Scathfell I will hear what he has to say.”

After a time, the leader of the opposing army came up the path, afoot, followed by his paxman and two guards. As he crossed the line of siege he said to the single man stationed there, “Wait till I return.” Donal, who had come to escort him into Aldaran’s presence, received the most contemptuous glare, but Scathfell looked beaten nevertheless, and they all knew he had come to surrender. There was too little left of his army, and nothing of Damon-Rafael’s weaponry. He had come, Donal knew, to try to save what little he could out of defeat.

Lord Aldaran had made ready to receive his brother in his presence-chamber, and he entered the room with Dorilys on his arm. Donal thought of the last time they had all been together in this room. Scathfell looked older, grimmer, aged by the crushing weight of defeat. He glared at Donal, and at Dorilys in her blue gown, and looked with grim appraisal at Allart when he was named. Even though Allart had been styled traitor and rebel, Scathfell still looked on him with the habitual respect, amounting to awe, of a younger son and minor noble before a Hastur lord.

“Well, my brother,” Aldaran said at last. “Much has passed between us since last you came into this hall. I had never thought to see you here again. Tell me - why have you asked for my presence? Have you come to surrender yourself and beg my pardon for your rebellion against my lawful demands?”

Scathfell swallowed heavily before he could speak. At last he said with great bitterness, “What other choice have I now? Your witch-daughter there has routed my armies and killed my men as she struck down my son and heir. No man living can stand against such sorcery. I have come to ask for compromise.”

“Why should I compromise with you, Rakhal? Why should I not strip you of your lands and honors, which you hold at my pleasure, and send you forth naked and yelping like a beaten hound, or hang you from my battlements to show all men how I shall deal henceforth with all rebels and traitors?”

“I do not stand alone,” Rakhal of Scathfell said. “I have an ally who is, perhaps, even more powerful than you and your witch-brat together. I am bidden to say that if I do not return before sunset, Damon-Rafael will gather his forces and shake apart this mountain beneath you, and Aldaran will fall over your head. You had a taste of that power this morning at sunrise, I think. Men and armies can be scattered and beaten, but if you wish this land to be rent in a dozen parts by sorcery, it will be your doing and not mine. However, he has no desire to destroy you now that you know his power. He asks only that he shall be allowed to speak with his brother, both unarmed, in the space between our armies, before sunset.”

“Allart Hastur is my guest,” Aldaran said. “Should I deliver him over to his brother’s sure treachery?”

“Treachery? Between brethren and Hasturs both?” asked Scathfell, and his face showed honest outrage. “He would make peace with his brother as I, Mikhail, would make peace with mine.” Clumsily, unaccustomed, he bowed to one knee.

“You have beaten me, Mikhail,” he said. “I will withdraw my armies. And, believe me, it was none of my doing that broke your tower. Truly, I spoke against it, but the lord Damon-Rafael wished to display his power before the north-lands.”

“I believe you.” Aldaran looked at his brother with a great sadness. “Go home, Rakhal,” he said. “Go in peace. I ask only that you take oath to honor the husband of my daughter as next heir after me, and never to raise hand or sword against him, openly or by stealth. If you will take this oath in the light of truthspell, you may enjoy Scathfell forevermore, without harassment from me or mine.”

Scathfell raised his head, rage and contempt vying on his face.

Donal, watching him, thought,
My father should not have pressed this now! Did he think I could not hold Aldaran after him
? Yet it seemed that Scathfell would capitulate.

“Call your
leronis
and set the truthspell,” he said, his face set and unsmiling. “Never did I think I would come to this at your hands, my brother, or that you would exact such humiliation from me.” He stood restless, as Margali was summoned, shifting from foot to foot. As the
leronis
came, he made as if to go to his knees before Donal and Dorilys. Then suddenly he cried, “No!” and bounded to his feet.

“Take oath never to contest the bastard of Rockraven, and that hell-brat of yours? Zandru take me first! Rather will I strike and rid the earth of their sorcery,” he cried, and suddenly there was a dagger in his hand. Donal cried out and flung himself in front of his sister, but there was a shrill shriek from Dorilys, an exploding blue flare of lightning in the room, searing the air white, and Scathfell fell, convulsing briefly into an agonized arch, then lay still, half his face blackened and burned away.

There was silence in the room, the silence of shock and sheer horror. Dorilys cried out, “He would have killed Donal! He would have killed us both! You saw the dagger,” and she covered her face with her hands. Donal, struggling to control his nausea, unfastened the cloak around his throat and cast it mercifully over the blackened body of Scathfell.

Mikhail of Aldaran said hoarsely, “It is no dishonor to kill a man forsworn, who seeks to do murder on the very ground of surrender. There is no shame to you, daughter.” But he left his high seat and came down into the room, kneeling by his brother’s body, pulling back the cloak from his face.

“Oh, my brother, my brother,” he mourned, and his eyes were blazing and tearless. “How did we come to this?” He bent, kissing the blackened brow; then gently drew the cloak over Scathfell’s face again.

“Bear him down to his men,” he said to Scathfell’s paxman. “You are witness that there was no treachery save his own, I will take no revenge; his son may hold Scathfell after him. Though it would be only fair if I gifted Donal with Scathfell for amends, and gave them only the farm at High Crags in its stead.”

The paxman, knowing that what Aldaran said was true, bowed silently.

“It shall be as you say, Lord. His eldest son Loran is turned seventeen and shall assume rule over Scathfell. But what am I to say to the lord Hastur?” He amended quickly, “To His Highness, Damon-Rafael, king over this land?”

Allart suddenly left his place. He said, “My brother’s quarrel is with me, Lord Aldaran. I will go down and meet him, unarmed, as he has asked.”

Cassandra cried out, “Allart, no! He means treachery!”

“Still, I must face him,” Allart said. It was his doing which had entangled the house of Aldaran in this Lowland war, when they had enough trouble of their own. Now, unless Allart went to him, Damon-Rafael would destroy Aldaran around their heads. “He said that he wished to compromise with his brother as Lord Scathfell wished to come to terms with you; and I think, at that moment, Scathfell spoke only truth. I do not think he moved against Donal by foresight but upon impulse, and he has paid for it. It may be that my brother wishes only to persuade me that he is indeed rightfully king over this land, and ask my support. It is true that before I knew what I did, I pledged to support him in this. He is right to call me traitor, perhaps. I must go down and speak with him.”

Cassandra came and clutched at him, holding him motionless.

“I will not let you go! I will not! He will kill you, and you know it!”

“He will not kill me, my wife,” said Allart, putting her away with more force than he had ever before used against her. “But I know what I must do, and I forbid you to hinder me.”

“You forbid me?” She stood away from him, angry now. “Do what you feel you must, my husband,” she said, her teeth set, “but say to Damon-Rafael that if he harms you, I shall raise every man, every woman, and every matrix in the Hellers against him!”

Yet as he went slowly down the mountainside, Cassandra’s face seemed to go with him, and his
laran
spread pictures of disaster before him.

Damon-Rafael will almost certainly try to kill me. Yet I must kill him first, as I would kill a maddened beast, raging and ready to bite. If he becomes king over this land, then there will be ruin and disaster such as the Domains have never known
.

I never wanted to rule. I never wanted power; I have no ambitions of that kind. I would have been content to dwell within the walls of Nevarsin, or within the Tower at Hali or Tramontana. Yet now that my laran has shown me what must come to pass if Damon-Rafael comes to the throne, I must somehow stop that from happening. Even if I must kill him
!

The hand he had thrust into the fires of Hali throbbed, as if reminding him of the oath he had sworn and was now breaking.

I am forsworn. But I am a Hastur, descendant of the Hastur who was said to be son to a god; and I am responsible for the well-being of this land and its people. I will not loose Damon-Rafael upon them
!

It was not long to the camp, but it seemed the distance to the world’s end, and his
laran
spread dissolving pictures before him, of things which might be, which would be, which could be if he did not take care, which would never be. In all too many of these futures he lay lifeless among the stones fallen from the tower, with Damon-Rafael’s knife in his throat, and Damon-Rafael went on to level the walls of Aldaran, to possess northlands and Domains, to reign in tyranny and power for many years, riding roughshod over all the remaining freedoms of men, razing their defenses with weapons ever more powerful, and at last invading even their very minds with his
leroni
, making them all obedient slaves to his will, their own wishes and enterprises burned away.

His heart cried out, as Mikhail of Aldaran had cried out a little while ago,
Ah, my brother, my brother, how did we come to this
?

Damon-Rafael was not an evil man. But he had pride, and a will to power, and he felt honestly that he knew what was best for all men.

He is not unlike Dom Mikhail
… . But Allart shuddered away from that thought. He was lost again in terrifying vision, blotting out the present, of this land under the rule of the tyrant Damon-Rafael.

Yet my brother is not evil. Does he even know this?

At last he came to a stop, and he saw that he stood on a leveled place in the road, with fallen debris of the tower all around him. At the far end of the leveled space, his brother Damon-Rafael was standing and watching him.

Allart bowed, without speaking.

His
laran
was screaming,
This is the place, then, of my death
. But Damon-Rafael was alone, and seemed unarmed. Allart spread his hands to display that he was unweaponed, too, and the brothers advanced, step by step, toward one another.

Damon-Rafael said, “You have a loyal and a loving wife, Allart. It will grieve me to take her from you. Yet you were reluctant to wed her, and even more reluctant to bed her, so I suppose it will not trouble you much to give her up to me. The world and the kingdom are full of women, and I shall make sure you are wed to one you will like just as well. But Cassandra I must have; I need the support of the Aillards. And I have discovered that her genes were modified before puberty, so that she can bear me a son with the Hastur gift controlled by the Aillard.”

Allan cleared his throat and said, “Cassandra is my wife, Damon-Rafael. If you loved her, or if she were ambitious to be queen, I would step aside for you both. But I love her, and she loves me, and you care nothing for her, save as a pawn of political power. Therefore I will not yield her up to you. I will die first.”

Damon-Rafael shook his head. “I cannot afford to take her over your dead body. I would greatly prefer not to come to the throne over a brother’s death.”