Stormqueen! (35 page)

“Is she giving you headaches again?”

Margali said faintly, “She knows no better.”

“Then she shall learn better,” Renata said, her voice icy. “Whatever it is that you are doing, Dorilys, you will release your foster-mother at once, and you will kneel and beg her pardon, and then
perhaps
I shall continue to teach you.”

“Beg
her
pardon?” Dorilys said incredulously. “I won’t!”

Something in the tilt of the small chin, though Dorilys was said to resemble her dead mother, suddenly made Renata think of Lord Aldaran himself.
She has her father’s pride
, she thought,
but she has not yet learned to mask it in courtesy and expedient compromise and charm. She is still young and we can see this willfulness in all its naked ugliness. Already she does not care who she hurts, as long as she gets her own way. And to her, Margali is not much better than a servant. Nor am I; she obeys me because it pleases her
.

She said, “I am waiting, Dorilys. Beg Margali’s pardon at once, and never do so again!”

“I will, if she will promise not to order me around anymore,” Dorilys said sullenly.

Renata set her lips. So it was really a showdown, then.
If I back down, if I allow her to set her own terms, she will never obey me again. And this teaching may save her life. I do not want power over her, but if I am to teach her, she must learn obedience; to rely on my judgment until she can trust her own and control it
.

“I did not ask you on what terms you would beg her pardon,” Renata said. “I simply told you to do it I am waiting.”

“Renata,” Margali began.

But Renata said quietly, “No, Margali. Keep out of this. You know as well as I what the first thing is she must learn.” To Dorilys she said, her voice a whiplash, using the trained command-voice, “Kneel down at once and beg pardon of your foster-mother!”

Dorilys dropped automatically to her knees; then, springing up, she cried out shrilly, “I have told you never to use command-voice on me! I will not allow it, and neither will my father!
He
would not see me humiliated by begging
her
pardon!”

Dorilys
, Renata thought,
should have been thoroughly spanked before she was old enough, or strong enough, to get such exaggerated ideas of her own importance. But everyone has been afraid of her, and would not cross her. I do not blame them. I am afraid of her, too
.

She knew she faced an angry child whose anger had killed.
Yet I still have the upper hand. She is a child and she knows she is in the wrong, and I am a trained Tower technician and monitor. I must teach her, now, that I am stronger than she is. Because a day will come, when she is full-grown, when no one will be strong enough to control her; and before that time has come, she must be capable of controlling herself
.

Her voice was a whiplash. “Dorilys, your father gave me charge of you in all things. He told me that if you disobeyed, I had his leave to beat you. You are a big girl, and I would not like to humiliate you
that
way, but I tell you - unless you obey me at once, and beg pardon of your foster-mother, I shall do exactly that, as if you were a baby too small to listen to the voice of reason. Do as I tell you, and at once!”

“I will not,” cried Dorilys, “and you cannot make me!” As if to echo her words, there was a harsh mutter of thunder outside the windows. Dorilys was too angry to hear it, but she sensed it, and flinched.

Renata thought,
Good. She is still a little afraid of her own power. She does not want to kill again
…

Then Renata felt across her own forehead the searing pain, like a tightening band… was she picking this up from Margali, with her own empath power? No; a quick look at the angry child showed her that Dorilys was taut, frowning, tense, concentrated with gritted anger. Dorilys was doing to her what she had done to Margali.

The little devil
! Renata thought, torn between anger and unwilling admiration of the child’s power and spirit.
If only all that strength and defiance can be turned to some useful purpose, what a woman she will make
! Focusing on her matrix - which she had never done before in Dorilys’s presence, except to monitor her - Renata began to fight back, reflecting the energy at Dorilys. Slowly her own pain diminished and she saw the girl’s face go white with strain. She kept her voice calm with an effort.

“See? You cannot serve me so, Dorilys. I am stronger than you. I do not want to hurt you, and you know it. Now obey me, and we will have our lesson.”

She felt Dorilys strike out, angrily. Summoning all her own strength, she caught and held the child as if she had wrapped her physically in her arms, restraining body and mind, voice and
laran
. Dorilys tried to cry out, “Let me go,” and discovered, in terror, that her voice would not obey, that she could not make a single move… Renata, sensitive, empath, felt Dorilys’s terror as if it were in her own body, and ached with pity for her.

But she must know that I am strong enough to protect her from her own impulses, that she cannot strike me down without thinking, as she did with Darren. She must know that she is safe with me, that I will not let her hurt herself, or anyone else.

Now Dorilys was really afraid. For a moment, watching her bulging eyes, the frantic small trapped movements of her muscles, Renata felt such pity that she could not endure it.
I do not want to hurt her, or to break her spirit, only to teach her … to protect her from her own terrible power! Someday she will know it, but now she is so frightened, poor little love
…

She saw the small muscles in Dorilys’s throat moving, struggling to speak, and released the hold on the child’s voice; saw the tears starting from Dorilys’s eyes.

“Let me go, let me go!”

Margali turned entreating eyes on her; she, too, was suffering, seeing her beloved nursling so helpless.

The old
leronis
whispered, “Release her, Lady Renata. She will be good; won’t you, my baby?”

Renata said, very gently, “You see, Dorilys, I am still stronger than you. I will not allow you to hurt anyone, not even yourself. I know you do not really want to hurt or kill anyone for a moment’s anger because you cannot have your own way in all things.”

Dorilys began to sob, still held rigidly motionless in the grip of Renata’s
laran
.

“Let me go, cousin, I beg you. I will be good. I will, I promise. I am sorry.”

“It is not to me you must apologize, child, but to your foster-mother,” Renata reminded her gently, releasing her hold on the little girl.

Dorilys dropped to her knees and managed to sob out, “I am sorry, Margali. I did not mean to hurt you; I was only angry,” before she collapsed into incoherent crying.

Margali’s thin fingers, gnarled now with age, gently stroked Dorilys’s soft cheek. “I know that, dear heart. You would never hurt anyone; it is only that you do not think.”

Dorilys turned to Renata and whispered, her eyes wide with horror, “I could have - could have done to you what I did to Darren - and I love you, cousin, I love you.” She flung her arms around Renata, and Renata, still shaking, wrapped her arms around the thin, shaking child.

“Don’t cry anymore, sweetheart. I won’t let you hurt anyone. I promise,” she said, holding her tight. “I won’t ever let you hurt anyone.” She took her kerchief, dried Dorilys’s eyes. “Now put away your sewing properly, and we will have our lesson.”

She knows, now, what she is capable of doing, and she is beginning to be wise enough to be afraid of it. If I can only manage to control her until she is wise enough to control herself!

Outside the window the storm had died to a distant rumble, and then to nothing, silence.

But, hours later, Renata faced Allart, shaking with long-suppressed tension and fear.

“I was stronger than she - but not enough,” she whispered. “I was so frightened, kinsman!”

He said soberly, “Tell me about it. What are we to do with her?”

They were sitting in the drawing room of the small and luxurious suite of rooms which Lord Aldaran had ordered placed at Renata’s disposal.

“Allart, I hated to frighten her that way! There should be a better way to teach her than fear!”

“I do not see what choice you had,” Allart said soberly. “She must learn to fear her own impulses. There is more than one kind of fear.” This discussion intensified many of his own old anxieties, roused by contact with Cassandra, by the long flight with Donal, the surroundings of the Tower at Tramontana. “My own battle was fought with fear, the kind of fear that paralyzed me and kept me from action. I find little that is good in that kind of fear. Until I mastered it, I could do nothing. But it seems to me that she knows too little of caution, and fear may have to serve her until she learns rational caution.”

Renata repeated what she had thought during the battle of wills. “If there were only some way to harness all that strength, what a woman she could be!”

“Well,” said Allart, “that is, after all, why you are here. Don’t be discouraged, Renata. She is very young and you have time.”

“But not enough time,” Renata said. “I fear puberty will come on her before the winter’s end, and I do not know if that is enough time to teach her what she must learn, before that dreadful stress is placed on her.”

“You can do no more than your best,” Allart said, wondering if the images in his mind - a child’s face circled by lightning, Renata’s weeping in the vaulted room, her body swollen in pregnancy - were true images or fear alone. How could he distinguish between what would happen, what must happen, what might never happen?

Time is my enemy … For everyone else it runs one way only, but for me it straggles and bends upon itself and wanders into a land where never is as real as now
…

But he banished self-pity and preoccupation again, looking into Renata’s troubled eyes. She seemed so young to him, no more than a girl herself, and burdened with such dreadful responsibility! Searching for something to lighten her dread, he told her, “I spoke through the relays to Hali; I bear greetings and love for you from Arielle.”

“Dear Arielle,” Renata said. “I miss her, too. What news from Hali, cousin?”

“My brother has a son, born to his wife and therefore legitimate,” Allart said. “And our king lies gravely ill and Prince Felix has summoned the Council. I know little more than that. Hali was attacked by incendiaries.”

Renata shivered. “Was anyone hurt?”

“No, I think not. Cassandra would surely have told me if there had been any serious injuries. But they are all overwearied, working night and day,” Allart said. Then he came out with what had been on his mind since he had spoken with his wife in the relays. “It weighs on me that I am here in safety when she must face such dangers! I should care for her and protect her, and I cannot.”

“You face your own dangers,” Renata said gravely. “Do not grudge her the strength to face her own. So she is full monitor now? I knew she had the talent, if she could endure the training.”

“Still, she is a woman, and I am better fitted to endure danger and hardship.”

“What troubles you, kinsman? Do you fear that if she is no longer dependent on you, she will not turn to you with love?”

Is it only that? Am I truly as selfish as that, that I want her weak and childlike, so that she will turn to me for strength and protection
? He had picked up many things from Cassandra’s mind in their long, intense rapport that she had not consciously told him, and which he was only now beginning to bring into awareness. The timid childlike girl, swayed by impulse, wholly dependent on his love and care, had become a strong Tower-trained monitor, a woman, a skilled
leronis
. She still loved him, deeply, passionately - their communion had left him no doubt of that - but he was no longer the only thing in her world. Love had taken its place among many forces now motivating her, and was not the only one she would act upon.