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From the Dry Towns, the needlework theme leads us to the Ridenow Domain in its formative years. The earliest Ridenow had intermarried with Dry Towners, which is why so many of them were fair-haired, and then with the noble family of Serrais. The Ridenow Gift was empathy, particularly with animals.
Shariann Lewitt writes that reading Marion Zimmer Bradley’s work when she was a girl was part of what inspired to her become a science fiction writer. Today she has published seventeen books and over forty short stories under five different names. When not writing she teaches at MIT, studies flamenco dance, and is accounted reasonably accomplished at embroidery.
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Mhari had known Jhokan since they had discovered a rabbit-horn warren with a litter of babies just a tenday old, tiny and soft. She had found them and calmed their mother so she could hold the soft newborns that fit into her eight-year-old hands when the silver-haired nomad boy came up behind her. He was going to scare them and then the mother rabbit-horn wouldn’t let her hold the babies anymore! Only he had been as intent on petting the babies as she, and as good at communicating his harmless intent to the small parents.
“Can all of you speak to them?” she had asked him, for his tribe were famous for their horses and their horse training.
“No, but a few of us can. Can you?”
She shrugged. But she and Jhokan, from utterly different worlds, established their own private understanding. He, after all, was Ridenow, of that nomad tribe that roamed the waste between the Dry Towns. She was Lady Mhari Serrais, eldest daughter of Dom Felix Serrais, and if no brother were born the heiress of all Serrais. Well, her husband would of course rule and she would be the greatest matrimonial prize among all the Comyn, or so her parents had repeatedly told her, and she informed Jhokan of that fact proudly.
“And if you have a brother, what then? I have a sister, Tsena, and she is still a baby,” he said.
Mhari had shrugged. Her fate, so far as she knew, would not change. The leron’yn at Hali would consult the genetic records and decide on her husband, and everyone would hope that she would escape the Serrais curse and bear sons with laran.
Jhokan’s people came every year in late spring to trade horses. Sometimes they brought other goods from the Dry Towns as well, spider silks or strange spices and sometimes the fine needles and narrow scissors she used in her embroidery work as well. Mostly, though, they were the people of the horse, nomads who roamed the great desert between the Dry Towns and sometimes wandered into the more fertile regions of Serrais and Armida to vary the breeding stock of their herd. Much as the leron’yn of Hali were custodians of the great Comyn breeding books, the Ridenow kept track of the bloodlines of their herds going back a hundred generations.
Dom Felix Serrais and his daughters looked forward to the Ridenow encampments, the brightly striped tents blossoming in the winter pasture, the music, and of course they always raced horses. When she was eleven, Mhari found herself thinking of the Ridenow boy who had a magical gift with animals and looking forward especially to seeing him. Together they rode horses and sought out the nests of birds and warrens of small animals.
One day a large fledging hawk perched on a branch nearby, a spider spine stuck in its foot. Clearly the bird was in pain and Mhari reached out with her mind to calm it as she approached. But she felt Jhokan, already surrounding the hawk in a blanket of goodwill and caring that was very unlike her own. He was not using telepathy to touch those not human, but something in his emotions reached them. The hawk permitted him to pull out the spine and then flew off.
~o0o~
When she was twelve, her mother died from milk fever after Eloni’s birth in the middle of a winter storm. Mhari became the Lady of Serrais with three younger sisters, one an infant and Rafaela only a toddler. She had cried constantly and been afraid and felt terribly alone, for although her father tried to comfort her, he was wrapped deep in his own grief. And besides, her father knew nothing of consulting with the cook on the menu for the day and ordering the rotation of the laundry so that there were always clean linens and shirts. She had been trained to be a good girl, raised to be a proper comynara, to care for her estate and her people as well as show proper deference and obey those above her.
With grim determination she tackled preserving and drying food, making soap, ordering the cellars, keeping the medicinal herbs, and tending the barn fowl and the kitchen garden. At night she cried into her pillow until she fell asleep from exhaustion. Her one pleasure was embroidery, the beauty she could create with glorious color and her own skill. She had art in her fingers, and as fantastical flower gardens grew on the necklines and hems of her gowns, on her father’s cuffs, on ribbons for her sisters, she could hear her mother’s voice praising her fine stitches and exquisite shading.
That spring when the Ridenow arrived, Jhokan came to her with a special gift. Somehow he had known of her despair, or perhaps it was simply something from his heart, but he had trained a horse for her. The gelding, Dewdrop, had a mane nearly as silver as Jhokan’s long wild hair, and a gentle personality. He seemed to choose Mhari immediately, followed her, wrapped his head around her body and pressed her close to him. She reached out and knew his feelings, and felt wrapped in warmth and care.
“When you are sad, crying into the mane of a horse who loves you is good medicine,” Jhokan said as he handed over Dewdrop’s bridle. “But it is best to ride.”
“Shall I ride upon you, Dewdrop?” Mhari asked carefully. The gelding did not answer in words, but the snort and stomp that came in reply made Mhari giggle all the same. Silly human, how else are we to go? You cannot carry me! Then Dewdrop pawed the ground, impatient. Clearly he had answered the stupid question and still she stood there while he was ready to be off.
Jhokan boosted Mhari onto the gelding’s back. He had no proper saddle, only a heavy blanket across his back and the bridle, but Mhari had ridden since she could walk and was as comfortable bareback as barefoot. Dewdrop knew the precise moment she had her balance and he took off.
They needed no signals of leg muscle and posture to communicate between them. They had one mind, one body, one sense between them. Together they flew across the pasture, down the old trail, over the fence. Dewdrop knew the land intimately from Mhari’s mind, knew where every rock and unsound hollow lay. For the first time since her mother’s death Mhari felt truly alive and whole again. Dewdrop felt like a missing piece of her soul restored.
When finally they returned to the encampment with the striped tents it was late in the day. The great Bloody Sun was low in the sky and the Ridenow camp smelled of roasting meat and jaco and the flat fry bread the women baked on hot stones.
“He is too wonderful,” she had said to Jhokan. “I cannot afford to pay you, not even a fraction of his worth.”
Jhokan had frowned then and turned away. “You insult me. I said he was a gift. There is no talk of payment between us. He is yours, and it seems of his own desire as well. If you ever speak of payment between us, I will never speak to you again.”
~o0o~
When she was thirteen her laran came upon her with her womanhood. She could hear the thoughts of the rabbit-horns and barn-fowl and even Dewdrop so clearly that sometimes it overwhelmed her. Often she was dizzy and and her head hurt. Domna Carla, the house leronis, tested her and said that she needed to go to Arilinn. Then she gave her some drops of unpleasant tasting medicine and the headache stopped and she was fine, and her father and six men and Dewdrop took her to Arilinn Tower where she trained for a season.
She loved Arilinn. She loved the fact that she did not have to worry about the menu, the sheets wearing out, or whether the leg of beef in the cold house had truly gone bad and had to be sacrificed or if some part of it could be salvaged. No one called her from the middle of a task that took serious concentration to calm down the nursery maid who was angry at the laundress for some perceived disparity in a serving of cake or an afternoon at the market. Here was quiet and discipline. Here she was valued not for her name or her face or the fact she was eldest, but for the laran she possessed and effort she put forth to train it.
Here her dark red hair was only hair, darker than many in the Tower but remarkable only because it was so very straight and thick and down to her hips. Here she was remarkable because of how quickly she mastered what her Keeper insisted was a great Gift. Within four tendays she had completed the most basic training, for she absorbed the lessons like the desert soaked in the rain. Within eight, she had mastered the rudiments for monitor training and had begun to study as if she wished to qualify as a full monitor.
“You know you cannot stay, Mhari,” Valentine Aillard, Third Under-Keeper of Arilinn, told her. “Your genes and your heritage are too important and since your father has not sired any sons and has no brothers, you will have to marry. We have strict instructions from Hali.”
Mhari had nodded. She had always known her duty to her caste, to her clan, to her land. Arilinn was just a short respite in a life that she knew was bound to be full of small children, servants’ squabbles, and storage closets.
“I still wish to learn. To monitor is to learn some healing, and that shall be useful in my position.”
The Under-Keeper smiled. “You are wise as well as talented. I am truly sorry that this is not a different conversation. I should like to be trying to convince you to stay.”
That, at least, had made her smile. But there was no need to answer, no need to think what her answer might have been. When she returned to Serrais, Mhari found that she had missed it far more than she had realized. Every tree was dear to her. She had to inspect the berry brambles she had planted to see if they had been stunted in the winter frost and check the apples in the cellar and the nut-flour barrels and ride among the herds. Dewdrop had to inspect the creek and the place where the fence had fallen and the very large patch of clover hidden behind the greenhouse. Much as her time at Arilinn had been a respite, Mhari was truly glad to be home.
Late in the spring before her fifteenth birthday, during the time the Ridenow were camped in the winter pasture, an aircar with the silver fir tree on blue of the Hasturs arrived. Mhari had seen aircars before, of course, at least three or four times at Arilinn and maybe as many times before when her mother had been alive. Her mother had been a Hastur and her family had used one to come to visit, and had sent one down to bring her to visit them. Mhari even remembered riding in one and looking down below at a herd of chervines running on the plains.
Her uncle, Lewis-Gabriel Hastur, got out of the teardrop-shaped car and, in his fine court velvet tunic, came up on the porch where Mhari stood with her father and made a courtier’s bow. Behind him came a laranzu in a loose gray robe (who was not the laranzu who piloted the aircar. That laranzu went around the back to the kitchen entrance as if he were a servant and not a highly trained laran worker in his own right, which bothered Mhari.)
She said, “Welcome to Serrais, vai dom, you lend us grace,” to the man who looked far too old to be her mother’s eldest brother. Indeed, she thought, with his white hair and the deep craggy lines on his face he could well be her grandfather. It seemed strange to her that he came to visit now when he had never come when her mother had been alive. Still, Mhari curtsied and went to the kitchen to fetch refreshment for such a distinguished guest, and to change the dinner menu at the last minute, which would create havoc in the household, but could not be helped.
She was delayed by the fuss as Neri, the cook, tried to work out a meal that would be fancy enough for a Hastur from Hali. Finally Mhari had had enough. “We will have plain beef and boiled vegetables as we planned. There is plenty. For dessert we can have stewed apples. I don’t care what is fancy enough for Hali, he’s my mother’s brother so he’s family and he can eat Serrais fare.”
Thinking she had ended things well enough, she stomped back into the Great Hall only to see her father white-faced and her uncle leaving, trailing both laranzu’in behind him.
“They’re not staying to dinner?” was all she could think to ask.
Dom Felix was still as stone and said nothing until the aircar lifted from the front yard. “No. I doubt we shall ever see them again. Mhari, you know that the genetics program at Hali commands Comyn marriages. None of us choose freely. Family and politics play a role, but in the end Hali has the final word. We all serve the genetic requirements of our caste, and whatever we must do to insure stronger, better, more stable laran for the next generation we will do. I have never questioned this. It is what makes us Comyn. But.” He raised his fist, and then sank down into a chair. “Child, your uncle and that laranzu on a leash of his suggested that he be your husband.”
Mhari felt sick and cold and like the world was about to end. She felt the way she had when the midwife had come in and explained that her mother had milk fever and was dying and Mhari had tried to make bargains with the goddesses, first with gentle Evanda and then with dark Avarra, knowing full well that there was no hope.
“I told him no. I told him that was impossible. He is older than I am and this is his sister’s daughter. He told me that closer relatives had been mated before and we all know that is true. But damn that man to Zandru’s coldest hell, he wants Serrais to add to his own holdings. He’s buried two wives and six children and I don’t care what they say at Hali Tower, they’re in his pocket anyway.”
Mhari had, for the first time since her mother’s death, held on close to her father. Telepath-empaths together, she could feel his rage and astonishment along with his deep understanding of Lewis-Gabriel’s pathology. She felt safe knowing that her father had refused this very powerful, important man. She had never imagined that anyone would ever think of giving her to someone so old and so closely related. The notion was vile.
“At least Nira won’t have to worry about stewed fruit being a good enough dessert for a Hastur,” she said.
~o0o~
That had been over a year ago.
In that fall, Jhokan and the eight survivors of a poisoning in Shainsa had come to Serrais. The Ridenow had been declared outlaw in the Dry Towns and had been hunted down. Finally Jhokan had come begging to Dom Felix, asking for work for the few who survived. Even stranger, Jhokan asked if he could tell his story under a truthspell.
“I know you to be honorable, Jhokan, and your father was always before you and your tribe as far back as any of my family can remember,” Dom Felix said. “If you say a thing is true, I will believe it.”
Jhokan shook his head and Mhari noticed that his long hair was matted and not so shining silver. He still wore the silly vest she had embroidered for him, but he look haggard and grim and far older than the years she knew him to have lived.
“My tale is strange and the Ridenow have been declared outlaw in Shainsa by the high lords. I accuse them of murder and stealth to steal our horses, and I wish to prove to you that what I say is truth, so far as I know.”
Dom Felix nodded and summoned Domna Carla, who cast the truthspell. Mhari had seen it cast only a very few times before. The household leronis held up her starstone and it lit with a steady pale blue light. “Only truth will be spoken here while this light shines,” she said, and the light spread to each of their faces, illuminating the room beyond the few candles. Jhokan knelt formally before them and spoke, and the blue light never wavered from his face.
“We came to Shainsa, where one of their great lords agreed to buy twenty of our best horses. We had agreed on a price, and when we arrived some of us, those of us who were not of the highest status, were told to stay with the horses and mind them while the rest of the tribe feasted and celebrated the great races that were to be held in a month’s time. We did not trust these city lords, and my father said that they might slip something into the horses’ feed so they appeared unwell tomorrow and insist on a lower price. It is not unknown in Shainsa. So some of us stayed out at the camp, and we did not eat the foods that they sent because we had our own and the food they sent smelled strange.
“Tsena, my sister, tried some spiced meat. Later she complained of a stomachache. I tried to feel my parents. You know I can feel people’s feelings and sometimes hear their thoughts if they are dear to me, but this time I felt nothing at all, and I was afraid and said to pack up the camp and saddle the horses and prepare to ride.
“A slave came among us, a nomad by his speech but not Ridenow, and he said that all our tribe had been poisoned and they would come to take our horses and goods soon and we must leave. I touched his mind and he spoke only truth, so I offered him a place among us, but he was afraid and did not join us.
“We mounted and rode. We rode through the heat of the day, through the dry places until we found water. We nearly died, and then we learned at the oasis that we were outlaw and the men fought us away from the well. The lord of Shainsa said that we cheated him, but you see before you, you know, Dom Felix, we have never cheated. We asked a fair price for fine horses, trained without whip or spur or harsh words, horses who know only they wish to run and bring joy to those who ride them. The Shainsa lord did not wish to pay the worth of the horses, and Tsena died.”
“You are the finest horse trainers I have ever known,” the Lord of Serrais finally said. “I would be proud to have you work with our stock. We will need you to assist moving the cattle now, though. If you can bring them down from the summer pasture into winter quarters, we can leave some of the men who usually ride to work on repairs to the trail house and the cattle sheds before the storms come.”
Jhokan and the remaining Ridenow lived in the hayloft over the stables and took their meals in the kitchen. Mhari found ways to spend as much time with Jhokan as she could, and he with her. They rode together in the soft winter snowdrifts under the ghostly pale light of Momallor and watched violet Liriel rise. She taught Jhokan the dances of her people so that he would enjoy the Midwinter Festival with them, and embroidered bands of golden flowers in green leaves, the Serrais colors, for cuffs and a matching collar for a Festival shirt. Jhokan taught her songs of the nomads, which she learned well, and to crack a whip, which resulted in broken crockery and much laughter.
Their relationship deepened as their rapport became easy and natural. They shared the healing knowledge of their people, what Mhari had learned as a monitor at Arilinn and from the healer at Serrais. Jhokan taught her what he had learned of the craft of his people, for with his own gifts he had apprenticed as a healer himself before the murders in Shainsa. She learned from him of different herbs that came only from high in the Hellers or from the Dry Towns, and of healing horses and cattle, for to the nomads their animals were part of their families.
At Midwinter Festival, after Dom Felix and the other older people left the dancing so the younger people could enjoy themselves, Jhokan took Mhari’s hand and led her to a dark corner between her father’s office and the kitchen and they kissed, not at all for the first time. Then Mhari led Jhokan up to her chamber, for it was Midwinter and the knowledge of what had grown between them shimmered more brilliantly than all four moons. The knowledge that it was hopeless, too, wove through their love, but it was just the start of winter and the deep snows. Soon everyone would be snowed in until spring, and anything could happen. They would have, at least, until then.
Still, Jhokan and Mhari were careful and discreet during the depths of winter. Both of them knew that come the spring she would be treated as a prize mare of the very finest bloodline.
~o0o~
“A messenger has arrived from the road. Your bridegroom will arrive presently for the betrothal and for us to set and plan the wedding.”
Mhari Serrais looked at her father and put down her embroidery. Dom Felix Serrais looked pained, aged, as if he had to admit something he wished he could spare her. They both knew this day had to come, but something about his expression made her stomach knot although he was smiling. They bred good horses and better cattle at Serrais, and she wondered if the mares and cows felt like she did, bartered flesh bred for her genetics and the possibilities of her progeny. Probably not. Mares had more authority in the herd than a comynara in her own household.
“Do you know who it is?” she asked finally.
“Donal Castimar-MacNair.”
Mhari’s perfect oval face, already pale, went dead white. “A nedestro? They would give me, the first born heiress of Serrais, to a bastard?”
“The leronis at Hali who wrote to me said there were special indications,” Dom Felix said. “She said he carries the full Alton Gift, and that moderating it with the Serrais empathy was necessary in future generations. In the end she said she was under orders and so were we.”
Mhari looked away from her father, blinking back her tears. The Great Hall was washed with crimson sunlight that warmed the stone under foot, and in this spring weather there was no need for a fire. Fine tapestries adorned the walls, softening the stone, and a thick Ardcarran carpet lay across the table. Copper and gold plate and goblets sat in the sideboard, silver candlesticks with expensive wax candles in the middle of the table waiting for dark to be lit. Anyone with half an eye could see the wealth here, the richly-carved blackwood chairs, the six generations of swords bracketed the great fireplace, which was so large that even her mother’s grandfather, Damon Hastur, called “the Tall” because he stood over six and a half feet without his boots, could stand inside without ducking his head. All this to go a nedestro with nothing of his own, not even a name to bring her.
Dom Felix smacked his hand onto the wood of the table so quickly that two men at arms and one serving girl appeared at the doorways. “This is Lewis-Gabriel’s doing. This is his revenge, Alton Gift be damned to Zandru’s coldest hell.”
Mhari lowered her eyes to her embroidery and she began to ply the pale green thread through the pattern of the leaf on the gray band that grew into a bower under her skilled hands. She said nothing, but set stitches quickly, a series of tight chain stitches to make a stem and then a series of knots to depict pollen. She neatly cut each of the knots at the base with a pair of elegant silver-washed iron scissors that hung from her belt along with the other tools she needed close to hand. Immensely valuable, as were her needles, they showed not only her wealth but her mastery of needlework, for Mhari was acclaimed one of the finest needlewomen in the region and in any gathering of women. The scissors had been a gift from Jhokan, costly metal brought from the Dry Towns, and she caressed them as she thought about her coming marriage to the hateful Castimar cast-off. Though what should she expect, when her father had refused her uncle’s offer?
She had always done the right thing and played by the rules. She would stay and lower her eyes, dress prettily and consult with Nira the cook on appropriate dishes for each meal while her undeserving bridegroom was here. She would embroider more flowers on bands of fabric to edge the neck and cuffs of a new gown for herself or perhaps a tunic for her new husband. She would embroider cushions to replace those that had become worn on the seats of the Great Hall in Serrais, the once brilliant green and gold now faded and indistinct. She would embroider forever, so that her hands should be busy so that she would never have to look up from her work. That way no one would see the resentment in her face.
“Mhari, I will not give you unwilling. If he is anything but a decent man, to be a good husband to you, I will refuse. That is within my rights as your father and as Lord of Serrais. If that means war with Hastur, so be it.”
“Do not worry so, Father. Perhaps he is not so bad. Perhaps you will be able to teach him and it will all be much better in the end than we expect. Please, Father, go spend the time you had planned with Domna Carla. We don’t know when they will arrive, and you will feel better for her tending.” She smiled at him softly, for she understood how things stood between them. And truly, for the last few years since he had taken a bad fall from a horse, Domna Carla had spent many of their hours together easing her father’s aching shoulder as well as his aching heart.
She touched the back of her father’s wrist and took her embroidery out to the porch as she often did that time of day, the better to catch the light before dinner. She knew that Dom Felix could read her despair as easily as she could sense his anger, but there was nothing to be said. Perhaps this MacNair was not as bad as she could imagine, perhaps the fact that he was nedestro and an insult was enough to assuage her uncle’s pride.
The whole system made her sick. She jerked her long needle into the tightly woven fabric and the delicately colored finely spun floss snarled. She breathed deeply and cut the tangled threads, then pulled them through the back and knotted off the end before threading another color. Perhaps she would be happier with the yellow.
The very pale yellow that made her think of the bright yellow Jhokan had wanted embroidered on the vest she had made him before she left for Arilinn. How she had laughed. Bright yellow and orange and pink on the brilliant blue fabric. It had hurt her eyes, but she had done it, in thick yarn so the figures went quickly. Still, he had been impressed and had strutted around like a barnfowl with new plumage.
She cast out in search of Dewdrop and Jhokan, and the small minds she had always known flying overhead and scurrying through the pastures. As she searched for Jhokan she sensed another consciousness, one that drifted through the bright warmth of her living world like a faintly bad odor. Men. Not the men she wanted. She brushed their minds as she reached for Dewdrop and recoiled from greed and arrogance, conquest and laran. The shock brought her out of rapport and back into her own body, sitting on the porch with her embroidery in her lap like any proper damisela. On the road ahead she saw the dust cloud of riders and shivered. Her promised husband and his entourage must have been the minds she had touched.
The party came through the gate and Mhari rose. That must be Donal in the lead, and in truth he was good to look upon. His light red hair curled around his neck and shoulders, his bright blue eyes showed intelligence, he appeared well formed in body and rode beautifully. Perhaps he would love her and her father and all would truly be well.
She curtsied.
He dismounted and threw his gloves at her. “Go, girl, and bring your mistress and master. Tell them that Donal Castimar has arrived to wed.”
Mhari froze in sheer incredulity. She had never been treated with such arrogant disregard, nor would she nor her father treat any person, servant or commoner though they might be, with such discourtesy. It was one thing that he had no family. But no manners?
“Are you deaf, girl? Best get going before I have you whipped for disobedience.”
Jhokan, she screamed out, searching for him telepathically through the rapport they shared. Jhokan, where are you? She touched his mind, saw that he was repairing fences from winter damage out in the low pasture far from the house. He’d turned out the horses who’d wandered in search of clover.
She reached, searched desperately. Clover. Dewdrop. And then she touched Dewdrop, not so very far from Jhokan if he ran his fastest...
I am very fast, Dewdrop assured her.
Bring Jhokan to me! Danger! She had to break the rapport before MacNair realized what was going on.
“Let the girl gape for a minute, Donal,” one of his attendants said. “She hasn’t seen a man under her father’s age. They don’t breed any at Serrais, hear to tell. So you go get your mistress now, girl and there’ll be plenty of young men come around the likes of you.”
“I am Mhari Serrais. I will call for the stable boys to take your mounts.” With that, she turned and went inside without inviting them in, without any of the proper polite welcomes and courtesies that she had recited all of her life. They were a pack of ruffians, barely better than cattle thieves, and she wondered how she was going to be rid of them.
Not that they needed any welcome. They tramped right in, lounged on the chairs, including her father’s favorite, and called for food and drink to be brought before she could properly go to the kitchen and call for a boy to run out to the stables to see to the horses and instruct Nira to send only serving men with food, as she would risk none of the maids around these hooligans. When she returned with a tray of sliced nut-bread, cheese, a bowl of apples and a jug of water, she saw the men fondling the copperware and eyeing the swords.
“Well, my promised wife has finally returned,” Donal announced. Then he glanced at the tray. “That’s all you have for us after our ride? Water? Bah, bring us wine, woman, and ale, and meat.”
“Our cook is preparing a proper repast, but you have taken our kitchen unaware,” Mhari replied.
Donal scowled. “When I am master here, you will have to do better. I will require decent food and drink available when I arrive. And no on has removed my boots.”
“I will get the boot boy, though the boot jack is just inside the front door and my father the Lord of Serrias and I myself find it more convenient than calling a servant away from more pressing duties.”
He smiled with nothing of warmth or kindness and reached out to her shoulder and pressed down. “No, girl, you. I want you to remove my boots.”
“I am comynara and Lady of Serrais. I am no man’s boot boy,” Mhari replied.
He did not know how to treat a lady, a comynara, or a Tower-trained telepath. Only marginally trained as a telepath himself, he was more interested in forcing others to his will than listening to them. He pressed down on her shoulder and, resist as she would, she felt her knees buckle beneath her. “That is how it should be and how it will be when this is all mine,” he said.
And much sooner than you think. His thought filled her head so clearly she wondered if he had spoken aloud, but the threat in them lay embedded in emotion that she knew was purely projected and not voiced.
“Now remove my boots.”
As she did so, Mhari felt his pleasure in exerting his dominance, his anger at the Comyn and especially his father for treating his mother as the incidental pleasure with a kitchen maid she had been to him. She had felt he had done well enough by them with casual gifts of money and a nice cottage, along with some education for the boy, and Donal hated and resented her for that as well. It was hard to say which of them he had hated more. Her well-developed empath’s sense teased apart the various strands of resentment and jealousy and realized that she represented his opportunity to avenge himself on his parents, on all the Comyn, and to become wealthy in the process.
He gave away too much too easily. Something changed inside of Mhari, and instead of being afraid she felt calm and in control. She had to do her duty and her duty was clear. She had not only been raised to be a proper comynara and a good girl, she had chosen to follow this path, to serve her caste and her family.
Jhokan, Mhari thought, would have grabbed one of the swords from the wall and removed his head. Mhari knelt and removed his boots.
Above all, she must not ask her father to save her from this monster. Much as she knew he would go into battle for her without thought, she was certain that underneath Donal’s cruelty he was baiting her, both of them, to just that end.
He has the full Alton Gift. Which meant he could force rapport, but there was another, darker side to that family’s particular power. When angered they could kill with laran. He didn’t want to wait to inherit. Donal didn’t want to spend years learning to manage the estate, to be son-in-law and second to Lord Serrais when he could be Lord Castamir-Serrais himself. He planned to provoke Dom Felix, she was certain, and unleash the Alton Gift on him, the sooner the better. Uncle Lewis-Gabriel had laid his trap well.
And who was she, little Mhari, who curtsied prettily, ran a neat household for her father, and was known above all for her exceptional embroidery? Which, among noblewomen of Darkover, was no mean accomplishment, but no one thought of Mhari Serrais as anything more than her father’s prize breeding stock. Even her powerful laran was useful only to be combined with another strain and passed to a son.
Jhokan would have to come. Meanwhile, she would have to keep her promised husband from infuriating her father. Which would be nearly impossible.
She was going to have to do something, Mhari thought, but she had never been trained to fight. Still, her laran was strong and she was trained. Donal, she thought coldly, had two disadvantages. He not only did not have her training, but he did not take her as anything more than a kitchen maid and rather less than his horse.
She had placed Donal’s boots aside and came to rise, but Donal pushed her down and rested his foot on her shoulder. “Stay there and get used to it,” he said, smirking. Mhari stared at the rushes and prayed that her father did not come downstairs until she could rise.
She kept her eyes on Donal’s feet. His big toe had worn a hole through his stocking and it was dirty. These stockings would never see the wash. She could feel him gathering power to him, feeding his anger as he eyed the things that were her father’s, that would be hers, that belonged to Serrais. He wanted to hate as he built his resentment against a man he had never seen.
Wait, she sent the thought above to her father, but she could already sense him moving downstairs. Not yet, she begged him, but he would not be stayed.
I will protect my own daughter or be damned to all of Zandru’s nine hells.
She knew that her father could feel what the nedestro wanted. He was trying to build his own emotional energy to unleash that full Alton Gift, not to force rapport but to kill. To kill her father, to take Serrais even though it would be his by right of marriage in the course of time.
Where were Dewdrop and Jhokan? Hurry, she pushed the thought hard at them, and she could feel them riding, flying towards the house as fast as any horse had ever run. She linked lightly to Jhokan and the two entered rapport as if he had been trained in Arilinn as well and they had been working together in a Tower for years. Jhokan understood Donal’s power and his intent, and the anger rising in him. Through Mhari, he could sense Dom Felix pulling on his boots, buckling on his sword.
And Mhari felt a burst of impossible speed as Jhokan approached the door and flew up the front steps, two other Ridenow riders in the dust behind him.
Donal removed his foot from her shoulder and leaned forward. She could feel the satisfaction in him as he sensed Dom Felix descending the stairs. Though he had no training as a telepath and little interest in anyone else, Mhari recognized that Donal was a warrior and used his laran when it benefitted his goals. Fortunately he had not yet acquired the subtlety to understand why he might want to develop more abilities. She could read the excitement growing in him along with the anger he stoked as he concentrated on trying to read Dom Felix.
Without proper training, Donal Castimar-MacNair could not pay attention to two telepaths at the same time, Mhari realized. All his concentration was on Dom Felix. He had no sense of Jhokan’s approach, of Mhari’s rapport with him or with Dewdrop. Blind and crippled, Mhari thought, and she quivered with a taste of hope.
If only her father moved more slowly. She wanted to scream at him telepathically, but MacNair would hear and besides, her father would never listen. Each step echoed as her father moved down toward the Great Hall and the death she knew MacNair had planned.
He had done this before—and enjoyed it. She could see it shimmering in his mind as he gathered up the emotional energy to unleash at her father, the memory of previous kills. More than one, she realized, and the names tumbled out of his mind. He didn’t even realize that she knew, that she saw the images he broadcast so clearly that any telepath would have to shield strongly to block them out. Kiril Ardais. Damon Storn. Camilla Leynier and her infant son.
Mhari saw their faces as their names floated at the edge of Donal’s consciousness. Felix Serrais was destined to join them and he could taste the victory, seeing that strong face added to the rest in death. She could see another face too, shadowed in the background, and a soft voice that promised more. Money, power, violence, and above all revenge, all the things that Donal MacNair wanted, and from a Comyn so high MacNair believed him. A Hastur.
Lewis-Gabriel Hastur.
Her father descended three more steps. Both she and MacNair were riveted to his approach.
Donal pushed her roughly so she had little choice but to move under his hand. “No, stay on your knees, girl. I want your father to see you on your knees at my side.”
With that push Mhari quivered between the strands of emotion that held her taut. She could see it all as if she had stepped outside of herself and sat upon the thick beams high above the Great Hall. Time appeared frozen and she had intense insight into the emotions fueling events that were to come. She saw that Donal MacNair grinned and fed his fury as her father came down the stairs. She knew without question that as soon as her father reached the large landing three steps above the main floor Donal would unleash the full power of his killing laran. Lewis-Gabriel Hastur had known what he was and had planned this instant.
No, this was not simply an insult, she realized in that perfect crystal of frozen time. This had been intended as an assassination from the beginning. She would be married to MacNair, but there were other Serrais daughters with laran as great as her own that her uncle could claim with their new guardian’s blessing.
Outside she could feel Jhokan approach as her father came down the stairs. Donal MacNair gathered his power, concentrating on his hatred of his father, of the Comyn, of all his grievances building to the blinding killing fury he needed. He hadn’t quite touched the central core of that anger yet when Jhokan burst through the front door.
Lightly in rapport with him, Mhari understood suddenly that Jhokan planned to divert MacNair’s killing rage to himself. He could not marry her but he could save her father.
For a split second MacNair hesitated, caught unaware by the shock of this huge, raging silver-haired barbarian before he realigned his killing fury, but that moment was all Mhari needed.
Mhari could see her father’s boots on the stairs, feel Donal’s laran coil, see Jhokan running across the Great Room with his curved blade before him. Before any of the men could move more than a step Mhari raised her arm with the long sharp embroidery scissors in her hand and, before he could release the killer bolt of power, she hammered them deep in Donal MacNair’s ear.
Mhari heard his thoughts as clearly as if he had shouted them in those last moments. This could not be happening. When Lewis-Gabriel had planned this with him, he had tasted his own destiny. He had been born to become Lord of Serrais. So this was not, could not be happening. There was no man in the room who could touch him. She knew that his last emotion was sheer incredulity, and then his consciousness faded and went dark.
She withdrew from all but the most cursory rapport, as a monitor observing as blood flooded his brain. His breathing grew weak and finally she felt his heartbeat first slow, and then cease altogether. She almost saw him slip out of his body and into the Overworld, and then she knew she had best return entirely to her own body and to the chaos in the Great Hall.
She felt as if she had been wrapped in Donal’s death for an eternity, but only a second, or at most two, had passed. When she was fully anchored in her own flesh again, the time returned to normal and events speeded around her.
Donal MacNair fell dead.
The men who had accompanied him stared at his body, lying in a heap in front of the carved blackwood chair. Mhari sensed their bewilderment as they tried to understand what had happened. She willed herself to invisibility, crouching behind the mass of chair.
In that moment when the men were frozen in their confusion, Dom Felix and Jhokan fell upon the troop who had accompanied MacNair and made short work of them. Several of the men did rouse themselves in time to put up some fight, but being head-blind they were taken unaware. Two of the other Ridenow riders had followed closely behind Jhokan, and with four armed men ready and angry the few who did survive the Great Hall ran.
Jhokan went to give chase but Dom Felix called him off. “Let them go. They will spread the story and it will grow, and it will become quite strange and outsized.”
Mhari still stared at her scissors stuck deep in Donal’s head.
“You are one good girl, Mhari Serrais. One fine, brave, dutiful comynara,” her father said, holding her fiercely.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
Her father, his leather gauntlet covered in blood, took her hand and pressed it into Jhokan’s. “When Hali Tower gave you as a pawn to Lewis-Gabriel’s plot to assassinate me, they cancelled any duty I had to them. Our duty is here, to our own. Jhokan has more than proven himself, and anyone should know better than to part two telepaths who have already pledged themselves. We shall ready the Great Hall for a wedding this tenday.”
“But it cannot be,” Jhokan said softly.
“It must be the will of the gods,” Neri said soundly, as if that answered everything.
“But what will happen when they find out what we have done? What I have done? People will ask questions when Donal MacNair disappears.” Mhari asked.
Her father shrugged. “Nobody will ever think that you have killed a man and so we will tell the truth. We say that no one was here except his men and Mhari, and that we think he died of a brain hemorrhage. Domna Carla can even confirm that this is true, since it is. No one can question how he happened to get that brain hemorrhage since only his own men and Mhari were present. Then we let the Comyn make up their own stories. They will anyway. We are the only ones who know what really happened here today, and who would believe that a good girl like Mhari could do anything to a man like Donal MacNair? Lewis-Gabriel Hastur isn’t about to stand up in the Comyn Council and announce that his plan to assassinate me and claim Serrais went wrong, and that this delicate flower of a lady was able to thwart an experienced murderer with the full Alton Gift. And if he does...” Here Dom Felix beamed at his eldest daughter. “I will present them with Mhari, my excellent, obedient daughter. Everyone on the Council knows she is a paragon of housewifely arts, and is one of the finest needlewomen on Darkover. And I will say under truthspell that MacNair died while he was alone with his own men and my gentle, dutiful daughter. Come, we must start preparations for the wedding.”
“This is true, then? Mhari shall be my wife?” Jhokan asked. Even the headblind could feel the hope and fear mixed from him and Mhari both.
Dom Felix took his hand, still dirty and bloody from battle, and Mhari’s, stained with MacNair’s blood as well, and joined them together. “Jhokan, you shall be my son and my daughter’s husband, and Lord of Serrais after me. And if the gods will, you and Mhari shall have sons, and all the Lords of Serrais after you shall carry the name Ridenow, and that shall be the name of our family forever. Serrais and Ridenow are now one and the same and can never be separated.”
The joy that Mhari and Jhokan felt spread through the Great Hall and glowed so brilliantly that even those who had not the least spark of laran could see the nimbus of power and emotion emanate from them.
Then Mhari looked around the Great Hall and grimaced.
“Are you not happy?” Jhokan asked.
“Oh yes I am! But now we will have to wash all the floors.”
