A Flame in Hali

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  With a visible effort, Aillard mastered his temper and, bowing, made another attempt.

  “What you say is true, and would be my own shame, were it not for the testimony given under oath—under truthspell. The traitor admitted his reverence for Varzil the Good. That cannot be explained away as mere jealousy.”

  For a moment, Julianna looked thoughtful. “The Keeper of Neskaya Tower may be many things, but a fool he is not, and only a simpleton would use such a weak instrument as your physician seems to be. No, I think you had best look to more ordinary causes for the unrest in your household.”

  When it looked like Aillard would rouse himself to one more effort, she said, “We will hear no more of this, kinsman.”

  As Aillard murmured apologies, Eduin pulled Saravio back to their places at the lower table. It was going to be even more difficult than he’d thought to influence Julianna.

  The Midsummer festivities continued long into the night. The windows of the great hall had been thrown open, and the multihued pastel light of three of Darkover’s four moons flooded in, to blend with the glow of torches and the cold blue light of a few costly laran-charged glows. Professional dancers, minstrels, and jugglers performed, most more enthusiastic than talented. Every woman present received the traditional basket of fruit and flowers, in remembrance of the gifts that Hastur, son of Aldones Lord of Light, presented to his beloved Cassilda. A pile of baskets, many of them elaborately gilded and beribboned, overflowed the foot of Julianna’s throne. Romilla received a number from her father, General Marzan’s son, and several male admirers.

  It had been long since Eduin had any woman to whom to present a Midsummer gift. He had no sisters and had never known his mother. The only basket he had prepared with any delight was for Dyannis, and she was better forgotten. He could have, following the older custom, left a small token for Romilla or Callina to discover outside their doors, but he had lost the habit of thinking of such things. It had been too long since he had felt any such bonds of love.

  Eduin and Saravio crept away while the dancing, begun sedately with the older couples leading the promenas, turned wilder and more licentious. Lord Brynon, after dancing an obligatory round or two with Queen Julianna and his daughter, had retreated to a corner where he proceeded to get thoroughly drunk. The smell of the wine, combined with the heady blossoms and swath of moonlight, felt both intoxicating and nauseating to Eduin. There was too much temptation, too much danger in the swirls of tartan and gown, the bright cheeks of the ladies, the clash of goblets and voices raised in raucous song.

  What was the old proverb, that nothing that happened under the four moons need be regretted? Or was it the opposite, that much of what came about in the wild celebration of such times lingered for a lifetime?

  There were not four moons in the sky on this Midsummer Festival. The gods had held back that final benediction; whatever happened now became entirely the responsibility of men.

  There was no one from whom to beg leave to depart, certainly not Lord Brynon. Romilla was dancing with General Marzan’s hatchet-jawed son. Exercise and wine flushed her cheeks and she giggled as he held her closer than was seemly for someone not her promised husband. The sight disgusted Eduin. He took Saravio by the arm and guided him back to their quarters.

  As Eduin led Saravio back to their room, he fumed inwardly. He could not rely on Lord Brynon or anyone else to convince the Queen of Valeron to search out and destroy his enemies. Julianna was too crafty and strong-willed to be subject to any man’s influence. She would never start a war with Carolin, but she might be persuaded to eliminate Varzil if she believed he was the real threat. Now, more than ever, Eduin needed Saravio.

  Saravio lay down on one of the narrow beds. His eyes were open and he lay as if in a trance. This present lassitude boded ill. What if Saravio were to fall into a coma, as he had upon their arrival at Kirella? Or, worse yet, suffer a seizure where he might be seen?

  “The storm is nearer now,” Saravio whispered. “Can you not feel it?”

  Eduin lowered his mental shields to search Saravio’s thoughts. He caught the fleeting image of fire rising against the sky, and the sweep of a shadowy cloak.

  Good, he decided. That feeling of dread, of impending doom, was one he could use.

  He went to the cot and sat beside Saravio. By tightening his throat, he made his voice hoarse and rasping. “I have terrible news.”

  Eyes widening, Saravio lifted his head.

  “I have discovered that our enemy, Varzil Ridenow, is on the move. The Tower at Cedestri—” Eduin paused minutely, caught the flicker of recognition, for it was at this Tower Saravio had first trained, and plunged on, “—sent a vicious attack against our friends here. You remember, we heard as much at Robardin’s Fort. In retaliation, Cedestri was destroyed—”

  “As it deserved!”

  “Indeed,” Eduin went on. “But what we did not know was that Varzil himself went to rebuild the Tower.”

  “Varzil? Rebuild Cedestri?” Shaking his head, Saravio sat up. “Why would he do that? They were not worth saving after they turned away from Naotalba.”

  “Why, indeed?” Eduin said. “What profit might Varzil reap for his trouble, except to make alliance with the new Tower? Can you not see? This way, the malefactors will join forces with Varzil against Naotalba’s loyal servants. You know that Varzil seeks to put an end to anyone who follows her. He is creeping up on us, extending his power over one land after another.” Eduin waited for the impact of his argument to sink in.

  “Varzil—he brings the fire?” Saravio asked.

  “Yes! He brings the fire!” Eduin repeated, and felt the answering leap of anguish in Saravio. He jabbed at Saravio’s mind, intensifying the fear and hatred.

  “He must not—” Saravio stumbled over his words, almost babbling in terror. “Must not—”

  “Naotalba will not forsake her faithful,” Eduin shifted to a reassuring voice. “We must do our part. We must stand against Varzil and the agents of Cedestri, who turned against Naotalba and cast you, her chosen, out. Here in Valeron, there is the strength to do so, if only there is the will.”

  “We must persuade them!” Saravio cried. “But how? What must we do?”

  Eduin bowed his head in a gesture of reverence and held it for a long moment. “We must pray for her guidance. Perhaps she will speak to us in dreams or visions, as she has so many times before. Rest now, that you may receive her word.”

  “Receive her word,” Saravio echoed. “Rest.”

  Eduin lowered the other man to the bed and helped him into a comfortable position. He brushed his fingers over Saravio’s eyelids, closing them. Saravio’s brief spurt of energy faded, leaving him in an even deeper state of lassitude.

  “Sleep,” Eduin whispered, reinforcing the command with his mind. “Sleep.”

  Within a short time, Saravio fell into a deep slumber. Eduin felt the change as Saravio’s breathing shifted, deeper now and slow. Saravio’s mind lay open and vulnerable. He would not resist. He would surrender willingly.

  Eduin got up and began pacing, using the movement to harden his resolve. Bile stung his throat at the thought of what he must do. In desperation, he asked himself if there were any other way, if he could not just let events take their natural course. Sooner or later, Queen Julianna or some other powerful ruler would tire of Varzil’s interference, or perhaps some bandit or outlaw would seize upon him as easy prey.

  Why go to the risk and trouble to force matters to a crisis? He could return to Kirella and live quite comfortably there, except for the whisper at the back of his mind.

  Why not crawl back into the bottle? Or live a slave to Saravio’s singing? It was either that, or fulfill his father’s command.

  Eduin had come to the end of the room, facing away from Saravio. His hands curled into fists, so hard and tight that the muscles in his forearms threatened to cramp. His body trembled.

  Words rose to his mind, thoughts from another desperate moment but now, i
t seemed, the very touchstone of his existence. He had not realized how true they were.

  I will live life on my own terms or I will end it.

  The trembling stopped, replaced by determination. He bit down hard, clamping his jaw shut, and turned around.

  Saravio lay as if arranged on his own bier, his legs outstretched and hands folded upon his breast. His head had fallen to one side, exposing his throat.

  Eduin crossed the room in a few long strides. Barely pausing, he lowered himself to the bed, settling his body as he had learned to do at Arilinn. Breathing deeply, he found a position he could maintain while his mind ranged free. He closed his eyes, and all awareness of his physical body receded. Distantly, he felt the energy fields arising from the other man’s energon channels.

  Eduin’s first action was to scan his surroundings. Callina or one of the laranzu’in who tended the aircars below might sense what he was doing. There was no hint of a trained mind, not even the presence of the Keeper of the Tower.

  He sensed nothing beyond the babble of commonplace minds. They brushed his thoughts like the faint rush of a stream over rocks, and he shut them from his awareness as easily.

  Eduin gathered himself, shaping his thoughts into a spear point. It was his favorite image, the tip piercing to the core of the problem, with but a single objective, never wavering or turning aside. Then he hurled himself into the swirl of Saravio’s sleeping mind.

  The last time Eduin had forced such a rapport, he had found a place both darkly bizarre and familiar, sky and rock and storm-wracked sky. Now he saw a landscape of tattered ruins, part Overworld, part pallid chaos, a twisting of light and form. Saravio’s mind had disintegrated almost past recognition. No wonder he spent so much time in a trancelike state, barely conscious of his surroundings.

  Naotalba! Eduin called silently. He used the name as a focal point. If anything could bring order to this twisted disorder, it would be that figure, central to Saravio’s delusional passion.

  NA—O—TAL—BA ... Unseen winds tore the word to syllables and sent them whirling, scattering in the shifting currents of light.

  Eduin sensed a distant stirring of recognition. There must be an imprint of Naotalba’s image somewhere, one he could evoke and use.

  Glancing around, Eduin was struck by the resemblance of this mental place to the Overworld. It was as if Saravio had taken a bit of that strange dimension inside himself, or perhaps this was the residue of his madness.

  In his years of Tower training, Eduin had learned to use the primordial thought-stuff that composed the Overworld. A man Gifted with laran and disciplined in its use, as he was, could impose shape and form in an imitation of physical reality.

  In the Overworld, Eduin had seen Towers raised, reflections of their true shapes, had encountered other leronyn as solid and vivid as they were in life. He shuddered inwardly, remembering those times he had encountered men who existed only in this unearthly plane. For a sickening moment, he caught the evanescent form of his father as he had seen him in the Overworld, a ghostly mirror of his living shape.

  The vaporous mouth opened once more, exhaling a breath that gave no life but chilled the blood within Eduin’s veins. Lips curved, shaping words.

  “You swore . . . You swore . . .”

  For the space of a single beat of his heart, Eduin froze. The icy tendrils of his father’s command curled around his heart. His temples throbbed with urgency. He knew what had been done to him, and why. He had never had a life of his own, had never been anything beyond an instrument of his father’s obsession for revenge. When he tried to resist, from love for Carolin, from compassion, from decency, his own will had been wrested from him.

  Just as he now stood poised to do to this helpless man before him.

  What choice did he have? He could not even seek the oblivion of his own death. If he tried, his father’s shade would haunt him for eternity.

  Forgive me, he whispered in the confines of his own innermost thoughts, and knew there could be no mercy for what he was about to do.

  Eduin set to work. He bent to scoop up handfuls of thought-stuff, sculpting it like soft clay. He was not much of an artist, but he did not need to be. Once the basic shape was established, he had only to imagine her features.

  He was doomed either way, to torment and despair if he failed to fulfill his oath, or else to the certain consequences of his actions—the violation of the most basic moral principles of laran work. He had sworn never to enter unasked into another man’s mind, and this promise had been given with full adult awareness and consent, not with a child’s unquestioning obedience. How many times had he already broken it?

  I would rather be damned for what I do than what I fail to do.

  Either way, he would be forsworn, beyond redemption.

  As Eduin worked, he thought not of who Naotalba might have been, a living woman caught up in the stuff of legend, or a figure embodying some deep primordial emotion, but only of what she represented to him.

  Into her emerging form, he poured all his own desperate malice, his years of resentment against Varzil and those who stood with him. From the very first Keepers at Arilinn who refused to train him as a Keeper, to Carolin Hastur with his dreams of peace and brotherhood, to the still-raw wound of his separation from Dyannis, to the years of wretched drunkenness, he took each moment of pain, of hatred, of vindictiveness, and shaped it into Naotalba’s lineaments.

  As Eduin did so, he became aware of an even darker power flowing through him, a bitterness that shivered through his bones, so cold it seared whatever it touched. It was not only his own personal hatred for Varzil, his determination to be free through the destruction of the man who had stood so many times in his way, but his father’s enduring vengeance. That which had shaped him, twisted his own life and made him what he was, now coursed through him and into the statue of Naotalba.

  When at last Eduin was finished, he stood back to gaze at his work. She was again the woman he had first glimpsed—human, desolate, achingly beautiful. Or did she break his heart because of her sorrow? He watched as she turned toward him with those luminous gray eyes, blind and all-seeing at once.

  Naotalba! he called, and watched as she inclined her head in acknowledgment.

  A voice shivered through the fiber of his being. I am here. What do you seek of me?

  A shudder ripped through the firmament that was Saravio’s slumbering mind. Awe, recognition . . . terror.

  Eduin faced the goddess he had created, and answered her. Freedom.

  Colorless lips curved in a smile that held no trace of warmth. Eyes glinted like frozen steel. Her cloak rippled as if it were alive, stretching out its shadowed folds. Instinctively, he drew back from it. In its penumbral darkness, unspeakable desires curled like smoke.

  Freedom? Naotalba asked. I see in your heart all that must happen for you to be at last free. You wish a death.

  I do.

  A death, you say, but it will require many deaths to make the world right again. Do you still wish this thing?

  The wrong was done before I was conceived in my mother’s womb! The cry burst, unbidden, from the deepest recesses of his mind. I have no choice but to go on! There is no other way. This quest, terrible as it is, was chosen for me, and none of my own making.

  Once you have set your foot upon this path, you cannot turn back. Naotalba’s voice rang out, resonant as the tolling of a death knell.

  Though he trembled as if he stood upon the brink of an abyss, Eduin bent his head in assent. I wish it, no matter what the cost.

  Very well, you shall have your death.

  As long as it rids me of Varzil the Accursed, I am content.

  36

  Darkness seized him. For a time he knew nothing, felt nothing. Gradually, like the seeping of brightness from the east on a foggy morning, he returned to himself.

  Eduin floated in a place that was neither the Overworld nor the physical realm, nor that strange convolution of consciousness that was Saravio’
s sleeping mind. Around him, within him, lay a world without vision, without hearing, without taste or movement. Strewn across an invisible field before him, he spied nodes of thought-energy and knew that each was the innermost consciousness of a living person. Saravio lay the closest, with Romilla and the household leronis a little farther off. There were others he did not recognize or else dismissed as of little use. Lord Brynon’s presence was so dim as to be barely reachable. Queen Julianna was not present at all.

  Eduin sensed another presence, this time behind him, as if someone were watching over his shoulder. He could almost feel the stirring of breath along the back of his neck, the heat of another body a hair’s breadth from his own, the pulse of another’s heart.

  This is how it is done, a silent voice whispered in his mind. It echoed, leaving ripples of familiar pain. You reach out thus, and twist thus, and leave, indelible, the mark of your own will.

  So it had been done to him. So he would do in his own turn. Naotalba, the figure he had created from his own hatred, stood on one side, and the shade of his father on the other. Implacable determination and malevolence surged through him, and it seemed these feelings were not his alone. He gave himself over to them, surrendering to them, abdicating all vestiges of generosity or kindness or compassion. No one had ever offered these to him; certainly, his enemies and the tools he must use to reach them deserved none.

  This way . . . The whisper was doubled now, as if two voices spoke with a single thought.

  Eduin reached out with his mind to Saravio’s. This time, his thoughts were not shaped like the point of a spear, but a grappling iron with barbed, talonlike hooks. He set it deep within Saravio’s mind.

  Whenever Naotalba is mentioned, in word or thought, there will be joy, he commanded. But whenever the name of Varzil Ridenow of Neskaya, he who is called Varzil the Good, rises to men’s minds or lips, there will be pain. Pain and fear and bitter hatred.