Two to Conquer by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Author:Marion Zimmer Bradley [Bradley, Marion Zimmer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Epic, American, Usernet, C429, Kat, Extratorrents
ISBN: 0879975407
Publisher: DAW
Published: 1980-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

“But where will you go?” Dom Rafael of Asturias asked his son. “What are your plans, Bard? You are over-young to set forth outside the realms of your own kingdom, alone and outlawed!” Bard’s father all but wrung his hands. “Lord of Light, what folly and what misfortune!”

Bard shook his head impatiently. “What’s done is done, Father,” he said, “and bewailing will not better it. 1 was ill-done-by; the king your brother showed me small justice and no mercy, for a quarrel I never wanted. All I can do is to set my back to the court of Asturias and seek better fortune elsewhere.”

They were standing in the room that had been Bard’s own since his father had brought him to his own house, to rear with his own legitimate son; out of kindness or sentiment, Dom Rafael had kept the room ready for Bard, though he had not set foot in it since he was twelve years old. It was a boy’s room, not a man’s, and there was not much in it that Bard cared to take with him into exile.

“Come, Father,” be said, almost affectionately, laying his hand on the older man’s shoulder, “it’s not worth grieving. Even if the king had showed me leniency, and had only sent me from court for that damnable midwinter folly, I could hardly have stayed here; Lady Jerana loves me as little as ever. And now she can hardly conceal her rejoicing that I am well out of her way, for good and all.” His grin was fierce. “I wonder if she thinks I would try to seize Alaric’s heritage, as the king came to think I coveted Beltran’s? After all, in days past, the elder son was often shown preference over the legitimate son. Come, Father, has it never crossed your mind, that perhaps I would not be content to see Alaric preferred before me, and try to take what is lawfully his?”

Dom Rafael di Asturien looked up at his tall son seriously. He was a man a little past the prime of age, broad-shouldered, with the look of a muscular and active man who has let himself go soft in retirement. He said, “Would you so, Bard?”

Bard said, “No,” and turned over in his fingers a hawk hood he had made when he was eight years old. “No, Father, do you think me wholly without honor, because of this quarrel I have had with my foster brothers? That was folly, drunken folly and something akin to madness, and if I could mend it—but not even the Lord of Light can turn back time, or undo what has been done. And as for Alaric and his heritage—Father, there are many bastard sons who grow up as outcasts, with no name but the name of a dishonored mother, and no man’s hand to guide them, and no more fortune than they can wrest from the world by the toil of their hands, or by banditry. But you reared me

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