The Fall of Neskaya

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Liane drew her horse even with Coryn’s, her ladyhawk hooded on her wrist. The years had straightened her nose and faded her freckles, leaving her handsome but not pretty. Yet when Coryn glanced at her, he saw the spirit behind her green eyes, the courage she brought to everything she did. She’d become a skilled monitor and, as Kieran had predicted, had guarded Coryn’s well-being on more than one occasion in the matrix circles.

  “It isn’t fair!” she said, following the black horse with her eyes. “I can follow the course of a single blood cell through a man’s body, but try as I might, I can’t go with him like this.” She meant Aran’s oneness with horse and hawk. Although she could monitor and manipulate energon flows in a human body, she was far less talented in empathy, the ability to sense another’s emotions, and she had only the minimal telepathy to work in a circle.

  “Ah, well,” she sighed. In the closeness of the Tower, it was impossible to keep her feelings for Aran secret, or the fact that he had only brotherly affection for her. They had been lovers for one brief night, at Year’s End when all normal barriers in the Tower community lifted. What for Liane had been an ecstatic awakening was to Aran only part of the shared sacramental rite of the festival.

  Coryn, sensitized by his rapport with Aran, felt the pang of Liane’s longing. If she had been Kristlin, he would have felt duty bound to speak to Aran. But he knew that if he took any action, Liane would be furious and humiliated. She was a trained monitor, a leronis. As she had so emphatically informed Coryn on more than one occasion, he was not the guardian of her conscience. Furthermore, her own Keeper had determined that as long as she kept the channels which carried her sexual energy cleared, the situation was no danger to either her or to Aran. If she could not be trusted to take such basic care of her own body, then how could she be responsible for the life and health of her fellow workers?

  It was a good thing, Coryn mused, that such independence in women was fostered only in the Towers, or the men of Darkover might well find their orders questioned at every turn.

  Coryn’s horse pulled at the bit, eager to return to stable and oats. “All right, then,” he said aloud, letting the beast ease into a jog. He tilted his head back to scan the skies for his hawk, called to it. There it was, jesses trailing from its feet, lazily enjoying the afternoon thermals. Coryn called again, signaling the hawk to return.

  With a shriek to curdle a banshee’s blood, the bird folded its wings and plummeted toward the earth.

  Coryn’s heart leaped to his throat. Open your wings! he thought desperately. Now, before it’s too late! The body of the bird filled his vision, falling even faster now, looming larger and larger.

  NO!

  “Coryn, what is it?” Liane cried out, piercing his terror. “What’s wrong?”

  “The hawk—” He blinked, and the sky was suddenly empty, the hawk beating its wings as it settled on his outstretched arm. Talons gripped his glove. Bright hooded eyes regarded him calmly.

  “The hawk is fine,” Liane said pointedly. “What’s happened? What do you sense?”

  “I don’t—I don’t know.” Even Kieran could not probe Coryn’s formless, murky nightmares, often no more than a sense of dread and the compulsion that he must not talk of them.

  “If you don’t know, we must find out,” Liane said with her usual practicality, as she turned her horse’s head back toward the Tower. “If it’s that brother of mine, I’ll flay him alive! I swear he has no more sense than a cow drunk on fermented apples!”

  Her oldest brother, having come to his majority, had produced not one but two daughters. It was a shame, Coryn had commented, that his own father would not hear of marrying Eddard’s son to one of them. An alliance by marriage would put an end to the long bickering. However, with Kristlin handfasted to Belisar Deslucido, there was no reason for Lord Leynier to look elsewhere for alliances.

  They pushed the horses as quickly as was safe down the hillside, through the narrow wooded pass and then across the gentle slopes leading to Tramontana Tower. Gray stone walls glimmered in the noon sun, for they had been out hawking all morning, dallying to enjoy the day. They halted in the stable area.

  Aran stood talking with the falconer. He broke off, face taut with concern. Before he could speak, Coryn turned to the falconer, who was already taking charge of the birds, settling Liane’s ladyhawk on an outside perch.

  “Is—has there been any news?” Coryn asked.

  “All’s quiet here.” The man dipped his head and disappeared into the darkness of the mews with the hawk Coryn had flown.

  Coryn fumbled with the laces of his hawking glove. His fingers trembled, knotting the ties until Aran reached over and deftly sorted the tangle.

  “Bredu.” Aran stepped closer, his dark-lashed eyes troubled, and touched his fingertips to the back of Coryn’s free hand. “What is it?”

  After the joyous melding earlier that morning, Coryn was still lightly in rapport with his friend. “I saw . . . I felt something terrible had happened. I haven’t felt this way since . . . well, since before I came here.”

  I saw the hawk falling, just like I saw the fire.

  He closed his eyes, willing himself not to see the pale blue flames racing from his hands, up his arms, toward his heart. A gasp told him that Aran, joined by that feather-weight physical contact, had caught that older vision. Without thinking, Coryn jerked his hand away, then wished he hadn’t. This was his friend, his sworn brother, not some stranger.

  Anticipation of the upcoming festivities hung in the air like incense. Laughter rang out from the novice’s teaching chamber and song from the kitchen. Two of Liane’s closest friends, also monitors but working in different circles, urged her to join them in decorating the central hall. She looked to Coryn, her brow faintly furrowed.

  “No, go on,” he said, forcing a smile. “And thank you for your concern.”

  “Oh, you!” Very much like his youngest sister, Liane stuck her lower lip out at him and flounced off with her friends.

  “Come, then,” Coryn said to Aran in a lighter tone. “Let us gladden the cook’s heart with these grouse and then gladden the hearts of our sisters with Midsummer gifts.”

  With the training of Tower discipline, Aran turned away. He might not believe Coryn’s easy words, but he had the sense to keep his own thoughts silent, and for this, Coryn was grateful.

  Midsummer morning dawned clear and unusually warm. For once, there had been no rain. Coryn yawned as he came down from his chamber. The turning of the seasons marked the end of his rotation on the relays, always more active at night when nontelepaths were sleeping, and he’d been looking forward to the extra sleep. He’d crawled out of bed early enough to leave flower baskets for Liane and Bettina, and also one for Bronwyn, but the rest of the night had been restless, his dreams uneasy.

  His spirits lifted as he entered the central hall. The younger women had bedecked the central hall with garlands. He noticed Liane’s fanciful touch with the new-made candles and thought of Margarida decorating the hall at Verdanta. As the early sun slanted in through the clear glass windows, the warming beeswax released a faint, honeyed scent.

  Already the breakfast feasting had begun and would go on for some time, being breakfast and midday meal in one. Baskets of honey cakes, spicebread, braided egg bread, and iced buns jammed the table surface, crowded by platters of cold beef sliced wafer-thin and laced with mustard sauce, cheeses blended with herbs, dried fruit paste molded into rings like mountain peaks and then dusted with ground nut “snow,” mounds of pale butter, bowls of clotted cream. The ale, heated with spicebark curls or chilled and flavored with brambleberries, flowed freely, for no one was expected to do any work today.

  At the head table, Kieran sat with the other two Keepers, Bronwyn, and the senior technicians. They were keeping discreetly to themselves and would retire early that evening to allow the younger folk freedom to enjoy the festivities.

  Coryn slipped into his usual place between Aran and Marcos, a solid
but uninspired older matrix mechanic, whose striated facial scars and lowland accent betrayed a troubled past. He was always scolding the younger men for one thing or another—gossiping, playing practical jokes, lack of seriousness. Aran teased him about having no sense of humor until Marcos left him alone.

  Liane, at another of the tables with her friends, gestured merrily as she told a story of Durraman’s fabled donkey. In this version, the beast had wandered in a snowstorm and been taken inside a travel shelter by a short-sighted monk who, drunk on Midwinter wine, mistook it for St. Valentine. The antics of the aged beast, bedecked with holiday clothing and plied with nut cakes, sent up flurries of girlish laughter.

  One of the novices joked that this weather was likely to produce a Ghost Wind, and someone else said that on Midsummer, they needed no help in enjoying themselves.

  “Aran, have you heard?” Cathal, another of the mechanics, a lanky young man distantly related to the Aldarans and with the fiery red hair to prove it, called from the table behind. “The latest scandal at Neskaya?”

  “Gossip serves no one.” Scowling, Marcos shook his head. “Especially gossip heard on the relays at Midsummer—”

  “Don’t be such a stuffy-pockets!” Aran said, shoving the ale pitcher at the older man. “Tell us, Cathal!”

  Coryn raised one eyebrow at his friend’s frank impudence. The ale had been flowing freely, true, and Aran had never had much head for it.

  “One of their senior laranzu’in, bastard brother to the King of Ambervale, you know the one?”

  Rumail! Coryn’s spine tightened.

  “Yes, wasn’t there a big stink when they passed him over for Keeper training two years back?” Aran said.

  “They caught him with a trap-matrix, an unmonitored one.” Even slurred by the ale, Cathal’s voice betrayed his disgust.

  Coryn shook his head, wishing he hadn’t had even those few mouthfuls of ale. He’d been drilled in illegal matrices like every other student at Tramontana, how to recognize them and handle them safely until a circle working under strict controls could destroy them. A trap-matrix could also have legitimate uses, such as the Veil at Hali, which permitted only those of true Comyn blood to pass within.

  “What they said . . .” Cathal lowered his voice dramatically, “was that he’d made one designed to key into a specific person, one which would freeze all movement . . . even the beating of a man’s heart.”

  “Oh, come on,” Aran scoffed. “Something that focused can’t be kept hidden for long. One of the big Towers—Hali or Arilinn—would surely pick it up on their screens. What kind of idiot would try to get away with it?”

  “Well, maybe he didn’t plan on keeping it at the Tower. Maybe he made it for his brother. It’s said that King Damian has ambitions beyond his own borders.”

  By now, the novices at the adjacent table had stopped their own conversation and listened intently. Liane paused, her words trailing off.

  “That’s right,” one of Cathal’s young friends said. “Why go to all the trouble of making clingfire when you could just slip one of those—those things—into your enemy’s castle? In the confusion, you could just march in—”

  Outcry rippled around the table.

  “What’s he saying?”

  “An Aldaran assassin?”

  “Neskaya’s making assassin weapons?”

  “That’s ridiculous!”

  Cathal held up his hands. “I’m just saying what I heard—”

  “And what you heard is too much wagging of thoughtless tongues,” Marcos snapped. “Do you see how easily a man’s reputation can be damaged with just a few words? While we have been sitting here, from one heartbeat to the next, this laranzu, whoever he is, has gone from a blameless stranger to a demon intent on using his laran skills to murder some innocent.”

  “We don’t even know there was a trap-matrix,” one of the younger men pointed out.

  “And even if it were,” Marcos continued doggedly, “what if it were not even this man who made it, but some other?”

  “What, are you defending him?” Cathal said.

  Coryn drew in his breath at the audacity of the remark. True, Marcos had not progressed very high in his skills, but he was the eldest seated at the table. Coryn could excuse Aran’s earlier taunt, delivered in playful good humor, but Cathal had been deliberately provocative.

  “Cathal—” he began.

  “I do not know this nedestro Deslucido,” Marcos interrupted, “nor have I formed any opinion regarding his guilt or innocence. But I do not base my judgments on the idle chatter of children drunk on holiday ale.”

  One of the girls at Liane’s table gasped.

  “How dare you say that about me?” Cathal, flushing deeply, pushed his bench back from the table. The legs scraped on the stone floor. His hands clenched into fists.

  “Stop, both of you!” Coryn cried. “Listen to yourselves! Look at what this is doing to us!”

  Across the room, Kieran rose to his feet with hardly a whisper of his long Keeper’s robes. Within moments, the entire room fell silent.

  Kieran’s clear voice, quiet though it was, rang like a bell through the hall. “Enough of rumors! Rumail, nedestro brother to Damian Deslucido, has indeed been dismissed from Neskaya Tower.”

  Coryn’s heart skipped a beat. Kieran was always very particular about his terms. Dismissed, he’d said, and not asked to leave.

  “But—” Cathal’s young friend blurted out, “but what happened? Is the story about the trap-matrix true?”

  “It is not seemly to dwell upon another’s misfortune,” Kieran said, as sternly as Coryn had ever heard him. “Rumail has been judged by his own Keeper, and appropriate remedies taken. Which of you claims to have knowledge into this matter that Neskaya does not? Which of you now proposes to take over as the Keeper of his conscience?”

  Cathal, who was still standing, hung his head. Coryn caught a gleam of wetness on the other boy’s shadowed face. “The rumors are my responsibility, Kieran. I was the one who heard the story over the relays last night. Instead of keeping it to myself or bringing it privately to you, I—” He flushed an even deeper red, struggling to continue.

  “There is no need to say more,” Kieran said. “There will simply be no further discussion of this.”

  Cathal sank to his bench. After an awkward moment, Aran reached over from his seat at the adjoining table and tapped him lightly on the back. The psychic atmosphere softened under the gesture of spontaneous generosity. One of the girls at Liane’s table started another story of Durraman’s donkey.

  A heady sense of relief rose within Coryn. Rumail was gone from Neskaya, gone from the Towers! Under such a circumstance—being dismissed outright—no other Tower would accept him. Coryn need never worry that one or the other of them might be transferred to the same Tower. He felt as giddy as if he’d drunk an entire pitcher of spiced ale. The Tower was truly his home and he was free at last.

  9

  As summer wore on, the routine of work and study asserted itself. The flurry over Rumail of Neskaya died down, to be replaced by talk of Bettina’s upcoming departure and marriage. An escort from her father’s estate arrived on the first frosty morning of the autumn. Bundled in a cloak of shimmering white lambswool trimmed with gold-thread lace, her hair dressed with moonstones and garnets, she sat on her white pony like an overdressed doll instead of a skilled leronis.

  “Next time, I suppose it will be me,” Liane sighed, tucking her feet under her and cupping her hands around a mug of steaming jaco. She and Coryn had settled in a cushioned window seat overlooking the road to the Tower. They’d been working all night, he on the relays and she charging laran batteries, and had sat up to watch the dawn. At Coryn’s shocked expression, she added, “You didn’t think I could stay here forever, did you?”

  “Actually, that’s exactly what I thought.”

  She sank back, just out of reach. “And I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. Dom Kieran . . . and Lady Bronwyn . . . and
Aran, and you—”

  “Don’t get sentimental on me now!”

  Liane stuck her lower lip out at him, reminding him once more of Kristlin. She was, after all, a gently reared young woman of good family and marriageable age, capable of bringing her family a powerful alliance. Even as Kristlin was.

  Liane’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I wish there were some magic to capture this morning forever.” Her gaze went again to the road, where the last dust from Bettina’s cortege hung like a gossamer veil. The little muscles around her eyes tensed, as if she could peer into her own future.

  Back at Verdanta, it would someday be Kristlin’s time to leave home, encrusted with jewels that were gifts from her bridegroom and his family, perhaps accompanied by her nurse Ruella, if the old woman could still ride that far. It would be good to have someone from her childhood, someone who loved her for herself only, and also someone whom she’d still listen to once she was Queen.

  Queen! Coryn shook his head. He hadn’t been home in two years, but she’d still been a child in pigtails and boy’s breeches then. She’d be thirteen now. . . .

  He suddenly became aware of Liane’s intent gaze. Aran or Lady Bronwyn or even Cathal could have followed his thoughts, but Liane’s talents ran elsewhere. “Yes?” she said, tilting her head quizzically. “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said for the past five minutes!”

  “I—I was thinking of my youngest sister. Kristlin, the one you remind me of.”

  “The one who’s promised to Prince Belisar Deslucido, you mean,” she pointed out.

  “Are you—are you promised to someone?” he asked awkwardly, for such things were rarely spoken of.

  “Why, would you ask for my hand to spare me a stranger’s bed?” The slightest edge of bitterness touched her voice. More than once in their years together, he had reached out to her and she’d gladly responded, but it had been no more than comfort and a night’s pleasure shared between friends. Connected by their laran sensitivity, they were easy and honest with one another, with no pretense of ever having been in love.