“Something that came from the sea,” she said fretfully. “I think it had a head and a torso and four limbs, so it may have been manlike. Oh, Aufors, I really don’t know!”
“Or maybe . . .” he swallowed deeply, “it was froglike.”
“Frog, toad, monkey, I don’t know.” She looked so hag-ridden, so weary, that he turned away to the rumpled bed where they had come together like two comets, driven throughout all the ages of the universe to a fiery, impetuous meeting that should have lit up the skies with its heat. There they had lain until a few moments before, delaying any thought of reality. Now there was too much reality to suit him. He could not bear the thought of her held captive, the thought of her at the bidding of strange forces. He could not bear the thought of the man in the cavern, the manlike thing on the lagoon, both of whom had had her at their mercies. Or lack thereof.
Now he pled, “Marry me, Genevieve.”
She shook her head sadly and said no.
“I must go with Delganor,” she said, several times.
“Have youseen anything to do with Delganor?” He cried, hopelessly.
Genevieve shook her head again. “No. I have seen a city built of mud under a blazing sky. I have seen—or more properly heard—a huge voice crying or singing. I have seen blood on my hands and felt terror. Lyndafal has seen herself lying in the dust while her child is passed from hand to hand.” Though Lyndafal possessed the seeing, sometimes, vaguely, she had not learned from Alicia any of the things that Genevieve had learned from her mother. There had been no cellar-singing in Lyndafal’s life, nor any of … the other things. Somewhere in that lineage, the lore-line had been broken.
Genevieve ran her hands over her face, surprised to find that she still felt like the same person. She had expected to be changed, utterly changed. She gritted her teeth and went on, “The fish, if it was a fish, said our lineage was designed for this.”
“Ourlineage?”
“Well, according to Alicia, Lyndafal and I are both descended from Stephanie. She was Queen of Haven, once, though that title is only a courtesy one. Lords Paramount rule and Queens sit still while they do it. The idea that a lineage can be designed for anything makes me rather angry. Who, here, knows how to design a lineage save in the sense that livestock is selected to be more thrifty or hardy?”
“Wouldn’t the . . . trait selected for be dissipated in each generation?”
“Perhaps it is not entirely in the genetic material,” Genevieve mused. “Perhaps it is merely a thing, an idea, a belief or a skill that is implanted in every member of that line. There are descents tied to the female line, you know. This nose has afflicted generations of my foremothers.”
“Are there only the two of you?”
“I would think not.” Genevieve furrowed her brow in thought. “I had a little book, in Havenor, written, supposedly, by Stephanie herself. Someone had drawn a genealogy in the back of it, Stephanie’s line. One of Alicia’s foremothers, Mercia, had ten daughters, and each of them had three or more. One of them, Lydia, had five daughters, and they all had daughters. And my mother had sisters who had daughters. So did Lyndafal’s. The family runs to girls. There are probably . . . oh, dozens, maybe even hundreds of us.”
“But Alicia doesn’t have your . . . ‘talent.’ “
“That may be a separate thing. All of us might have the pattern, but only some of us might be able to use it. If that’s what it is. Like a dress pattern.” Genevieve smiled, thinking of Veswees. “We all have the pattern inside us, but only some of us can turn it into a dress.” She stood up, bent, stretched, then came into his arms, settling on his lap, nestling there.
“I love you, Aufors. I have no doubt of that at all. But I cannot marry you. I must go back. I have no doubt of that, either.”
“But he gave me permission to marry you! I told you.”