Two to Conquer (2 page)

The man shook his head, and again Paul had the eerie sense that he was watching himself.

“The sun is the sun,” he said, “and we are in what they call the Hundred Kingdoms; this is the

Kingdom of Asturias. As for what world this is, it is called Darkover, and it is the only world I know.

When I was a boy they told me some fable about the other stars being suns like our own, with a million million other worlds circling them like ours, and perhaps men like ours on them, but I always thought that was a story to frighten babes and girl children! But I have seen stranger things, and heard stranger things than that, in the last night. My father’s sorcery brought you here, and if you wish to know why, you must ask him. But we mean you no harm.”

Paul hardly heard the explanation. He was staring at the man with his face, his body, his own hands, and trying to understand what he felt about the man.

His brother. Himself, He’d understand me
. Those thoughts flickered through his mind. And at the same time, crowding them, a sudden raging anger:
How does he dare to go around wearing my face
? And then, in total confusion,
if he’s me, who in hell am I
?

And the other man spoke his question aloud. “If you are me,” he said, and his fists clenched, “then who am I?”

Paul said, with a harsh half-laugh, “Maybe you’re the devil after all. What’s your name?”

“Bard,” said the man, “but they call me
Wolf
. Bard di Asturien, the Kilghard Wolf. And you?”

“My name is Paul Harrell,” he said, and swayed. Was this all a bizarre dream of the stasis box? Had he died and wound up in Valhalla? None of it made sense to him. None at all.

Seven Years Earlier…

BOOK ONE

The Foster Brothers

Chapter One

Light blazed from every window and embrasure of Castle Asturias; on this night King Ardrin of

Asturias held high festival, for he was handfasting his daughter Carlina to his foster son and nephew, Bard di Asturien, son of his brother, Dom Rafael of High Fens. Most of the nobles of Asturias, and a few from the neighboring kingdoms, had come to do honor to the handfasting and to the king’s

daughter, and the courtyard was ablaze with brilliance; strange horses and riding beasts to be stabled, nobles richly dressed, commoners crowding in to spy what they could from outside the gates and

accept the dole of food and wine and sweets given out from the kitchens to all comers, servants running here or there on real or invented errands.

High in the secluded chambers of the women, Carlina di Asturien looked with distaste on the

embroidered veils and the blue velvet over-gown, set with pearls from Temora, that she would wear for the handfasting ceremony. She was fourteen years old; a slender, pale, young woman, with long dark braids looped below her ears, and wide gray eyes which were the only good feature in a face too thin and thoughtful for beauty. Her face was reddened around the eyelids; she had been crying for a long time.

“Come, now, come, now,” her nurse, Ysabet, urged. “You mustn’t cry like this,
chiya
. Look at the pretty gown, you will never have one so fine again. And Bard is so handsome and brave; just think, your father made him banner bearer on the field for bravery in the battle of Snow Glen. And, after all, dear child, it is not as if you would be marrying a stranger; Bard is your foster brother, reared here in the king’s house since he was ten years old. Why, when you were children, you were always playing together, I thought you loved him well!”

“And so I do—as a brother,” Carlina said in a whisper.

“But to marry Bard—no, Nurse, I don’t want to. I don’t want to marry at all—”

“Now that is folly,” said the older woman, clucking, and she held up the pearl-broidered overdress to help her nursling into it. Carlina submitted like a doll being dressed, knowing that resistance would do her no good.

“Why don’t you want to marry Bard, then? He is handsome, and brave—how many young men have

distinguished themselves before reaching their sixteenth year?” Ysabet demanded. “One day, I have no doubt, he will be general of all your father’s armies! You are not holding it against him that he is
nedestro
, are you? The poor lad did not choose to be born to one of his father’s fancy-women instead of to his lawful wife!”

Carlina smiled faintly at the thought of anyone calling Bard “poor lad.”

Her nurse pinched her cheek. She said, “Now, that is the right way to go to your handfasting, with a smile! Let me do up these laces properly.” She tugged at the lacings, then tucked in the ribbons. “Sit here, my pretty, while I do up your sandals. Look how dainty, your mother had them made to match the gown, blue leather with pearls! How pretty you are, Carlie, like a blue flower! Let me fasten the ribbons here in your hair. I do not think there is a prettier bride anywhere in nine kingdoms this night!

And Bard handsome enough, surely, to be worthy of you, so fair where you are so dark…”

“What a pity,” Carlina said dryly, “that he cannot marry you, Nurse, since you like him so much.”

“Oh, come now, he wouldn’t want me, old and withered as I am,” said Ysabet, bridling. “A handsome young warrior like Bard must have a young and beautiful bride, and so your father has ordained it… I cannot imagine why the wedding is not on this night as well, and the bedding too!”

“Because,” Carlina said, “I begged my mother, and she spoke for me to my father and my lord; and he consented that I should not be married until I had completed my fifteenth year. The wedding will be a year from tonight, at Midsummer Festival.”

“How can you bear to wait so long? Evanda bless you, child, if I had a handsome young lover like Bard, I could not wait so long…” She saw Carlina flinch and spoke more gently. “Are you afraid of the marriage bed, child? No woman ever died of it, and I have no doubt you will find it pleasurable; but it will be less frightening to you at first, since your husband is playfellow and foster brother as well.”

Carlina shook her head. “No, it is not
that
, Nurse, though, as I told you, I have no mind to marriage; I would rather spend my life in chastity and good works among the priestesses of Avarra.”

“Heavens protect us!” The woman made a shocked gesture. “Your father would never allow it!”

“I know that, Nurse. The Goddess knows, I besought him to spare me this marriage and let me go, but he reminded me that I was a princess and that it was my duty to marry, to bring strong powerful

alliances to his throne. As my sister Amalie has already been sent to wed with King Lorill of Seathfell.

Beyond the Kadarin, poor girl, alone in those northern mountains, and my sister Marilla married south to Dalereuth…”

“Are you angry that they were wedded to princes and kings, and you, only, to your father’s brother’s bastard son?”

Carlina shook her head. “No, no,” she said impatiently. “I know what is in father’s mind; he wishes to bind Bard to him with a strong tie, so that one day Bard will be his strongest champion and protector.

There was no thought for me, or for Bard; it is only one of my father’s maneuvers to protect the throne and the kingdom!”

“Well,” said the nurse, “most marriages are made for reasons less worthy than that.”

“But it is not necessary,” Carlina said, impatiently. “Bard would be content with any woman, and my father could have found some woman of noble rank who would satisfy Bard’s ambition! Why should I be forced to spend my life with a man who does not care whether it is me, Carlina, or another, provided she is high-born enough to satisfy his ambition, and has a pretty face and a willing body! Avarra have mercy, do you think I do not know that every servant girl in the castle has shared his bed? They brag of it after!”

“As for that,” said Ysabet, “he is no better and no worse than any of your brothers or foster brothers.

You cannot blame a young man for wenching, and at least you know from their bragging that he is

neither maimed nor a lover of men! When he is wedded to you, you must simply give him enough to do in your bed to keep him out of others!”

Carlina gestured displeasure at the vulgarity. “They are welcome to Bard and to his bed,” she said, “and I will not dispute their place there. But I have heard worse, that he will not hear a refusal; that if a girl answers him
no
, or if he has reason to think she might give him a
no
, his pride is so great that he will put a compulsion on her, a glamour, so that she cannot refuse, but will go to his bed will-less, without the power to help herself—”

“I have heard of men who have that
laran
,” Ysabet grinned. “It is a useful thing, even if a young man is handsome and hearty; but I never put much stock in such tales of spellbinding. What young woman

needs to be spelled to go to a young man’s bed? No doubt they use that old tale to excuse themselves if they are found big-bellied out of season—”

“No, Nurse,” Carlina said. “At least once, I know, it is true, for my own maid Lisarda, she is a good girl, and she told me that she could not help herself—”

Ysabet said with a coarse laugh, “Any slut says afterward that she could not help herself!”

“But no,” Carlina interrupted angrily, “Lisarda is scarce twelve years old; she is motherless and hardly knew what he wanted of her, only that she could not choose but to do as he would. Poor child, she was hardly come into womanhood, and she cried, after, in my arms, and I was hard put to it to explain why a man could want a woman
that
way—”

Ysabet frowned. She said, “I wondered what had happened to Lisarda—”

“I find it hard to forgive Bard, that he could do that to a young girl who had never harmed him!”

Carlina said, still angry-

“Well, well,” said the nurse, sighing, “men do such things now and again, and women are expected to accept them.”

“I don’t see why!”

“It is the way of the world,” Ysabet said, then started, and looked at the timepiece on the wall. “Come, Carlina, my pet, you must not be late to your own handfasting!”

Carlina rose, sighing with resignation, as her mother, Queen Ariel, came into her chamber,

“Are you ready, my daughter?” The queen surveyed the young woman from head to foot, from the

braids looped under her ears to the delicate blue slippers embroidered with pearls. “There will be no prettier bride, at least, in the Hundred Kingdoms. You have done well, Ysabet.”

The old woman bent in a curtsy, acknowledging the compliment.

“You need just a touch of powder on your face, Carlie, your eyes are red,” said the lady. “Bring the puff, Ysabet. Carlina, have you been crying?”

Carlina lowered her head and did not answer.

Her mother said firmly, “It is unseemly for a bride to shed tears, and this is only your handfasting.”

With her own hands she dabbed with the powder puff at her daughter’s eyelids. “There. Now a touch of the crayon there, at the brow—” she said, pointing for Ysabet to repair the makeup. “Lovely. Come, my dear, my women are waiting…”

There was a small chorus of cooing noises and admiration as Carlina in her bridal finery joined the women. Ariel, Queen of Asturias, attended by her ladies, held out her hand to Carlina.

“Tonight you will sit among my ladies, and when your father calls for you, you will go forward and join Bard before the throne,” she began.

Carlina looked at her mother’s serene face and contemplated a final appeal. She knew that her mother did not like Bard—although for the wrong reasons; she simply objected to his bastard status. She had never liked it, that he should be foster brother to Carlina and Beltran. However, it was not her mother who had made this marriage, but her father. And she knew that King Ardrin was not accustomed to

listening overmuch to what his womenfolk wanted. Her mother had won this one concession, that she should not be married until she was full fifteen years old.

When they call me forth to be handfasted I will scream and refuse to speak, I will cry out. No when they
ask me to consent, I will run out of the room
… But in her heart Carlina knew that she would not do any of these disgraceful things, but would go through the ceremony with the decorum befitting a princess of Asturias.

Bard is a soldier, she thought despairing, perhaps he will die in battle before the wedding; and then she felt guilty, for there had been a time when she had loved her playmate and foster brother. Quickly she amended her thoughts: perhaps he will find some other woman he wishes to wed, perhaps my father

will change his mind…

Avarra, merciful Goddess, Great Mother, pity me, spare me this marriage somehow…

Angry, despairing, she blinked back the tears that threatened to flood her eyes again. Her mother would be angry if she disgraced them all this way.

In a lower room in the castle, Bard di Asturien, foster son to the king, and his banner bearer, was being dressed for his handfasting by his two comrades and foster brothers: Beltran, the king’s son, and Geremy Hastur, who, like Bard, had been reared in the king’s house, but was a younger son of the Lord of Carcosa.

The three youths were very different. Bard was tall and heavily built, already a man’s height, with thick blond hair twisted into the warrior’s braid at the back of his head, and the strong arms and heavy thews of a swordsman and rider; he towered like a young giant over the others. Prince Beltran was tall, too, although not quite as tall as Bard; but he was still thin and coltish, bony with a boy’s roundness, and his cheeks still fuzzed with a boy’s first traces of beard. His hair was cropped short and tightly curled, but as blond as Bard’s own.

Geremy Hastur was smaller than either, red-haired and thin-faced, with sharp gray eyes and the

quickness of a hawk or ferret. He wore dark, plain clothing, the dress of a scholar rather than a warrior, and his manner was quiet and unassuming.

Now he looked up at Bard, laughing, and said, “You will have to sit down, foster brother; neither Beltran nor I can reach your head to tie the red cord about your braid! And you cannot go to a