The Fall of Neskaya

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “You know what my brother would say to that,” she went on, “you being the landless third son of a neighbor he cannot say anything good about. No, my dear brother-of-the-heart, your place in life is here, as is your true talent. And mine—”

  “Yours is here also. You are a talented monitor, or do you think Kieran was flattering you?” Only this last winter, Kieran had granted Liane the responsibilities of a fully qualified monitor in his circle. She was one of the youngest within recent memory to qualify.

  “Please.” Liane blinked back tears and turned away, chin lifted.

  Coryn instantly regretted his thoughtlessness. She wanted to stay, to do the work she loved. He was free to follow his vocation here, to make his own life on his own terms within the Tower, an unexpected benefit of being an extra son unlikely to inherit anything but his father’s name. But Liane, no matter how many older sisters she might have, could still bring her family a powerful son-in-law.

  Closing his eyes, he felt her pain as a shivering of tiny knives over his skin. He reached out to her with his laran. Whereas Bronwyn had always seemed to him to be a chiming of silvery bells and Kieran a rocky tor brushed with snow, Liane appeared as thick, sun-warmed silk. She was a natural monitor, for no matter how absorbed he was in the work in relay or matrix circle, no matter how far from his chilled, stiff body he had gone, she could steady his heart or warm his belly without the slightest hint of intrusion. And all this glorious talent, her quick mind, her independent spirit, all this would be thrown away to breed sons for some fat lord who’d probably already buried three wives.

  Coryn pushed away the thought and focused instead on the image of spider silk blown by a breeze. He saw the fabric pulled one way, wrung into wrinkles in another. His hand stroked the silk, smoothing the creases.

  With a barely audible sigh, Liane welcomed his mental touch. Under his caress, the crinkles gradually eased into unbroken billows, gently swelling in the warm, rain-scented air. The color shifted from dull gray to blue, darkening to violet along the edges.

  Encouraged, Coryn went deeper. Through the outlines of her body, he saw streams of light, channels which carried her laran energies. Most were gold-white with health, but there, near the region of her heart, strands crossed and darkened to orange, almost red. To his relief, these were not the centers which carried sexual energy, for as a monitor she knew too well the dangers of letting those stagnate. Whatever her feelings for Aran, she had accepted that they would never be returned. Aran loved her according to his nature, no more. Now she was simply heartsick at the idea of leaving Tramontana.

  As gently as he’d smoothed the silk, he untangled the orange-red energy streams, teasing one after the other free until each shone with a pale-yellow glow. After he finished, he rested before withdrawing to his own body. In this place, linked by a laran bond far more intimate than any sexual union, they knew and trusted one another without hesitation.

  He opened his eyes to see Liane looking at him with a curious expression. “Thank you,” she said. “That was well done.” She got up, covering a yawn with one hand. “You could be a Keeper, you know.” She headed off toward her quarters, leaving him too startled to reply.

  Night lay like a shawl of ebony velvet over Tramontana Tower and the surrounding peaks. The last light of pearly Mormallor had long since faded, leaving only the faint milky band of stars to break the blackness, for this was one of the few seasons when none of Darkover’s four moons shone. At the center of the largest laboratory, huge matrix screens glowed, touching the face of each worker with an eerie blue radiance like that of truthspell. Before them, stoppered glass vessels held powders and simmering fluids, the raw materials for the night’s work, and empty containers awaited the final product.

  Coryn felt the energy pulsing from the screens, dozens of individual starstones held in a crystalline lattice and linked in such a way to guide and amplify the laran of the circle. He closed his eyes to better focus on the task at hand. From time to time, he felt Kieran’s sure cool direction or the touch of Gareth, who was monitor this night, Liane being temporarily unable to work because of her woman’s cycles.

  Power surged from his depths and into the circle, to be blended with that of the other workers, shaped and focused by the Keeper. It was early yet in the evening, and Coryn’s energy was high. He felt fit and rested, almost exhilarated.

  Their task tonight was one he could give himself over to without reservation—the refining of fire-fighting chemicals. During the last few months, the circle had mined some of the elements from deep within the earth, carried mote by mote through laran to the surface, a tedious and exhausting job. Other elements came by conventional transport from the caves not far from Tramontana. Now, with the raw materials at hand, the most difficult part of the work began. It was not as dangerous as making clingfire, where the particles must be refined by distilling under intense heat and the glass vessels could explode, scattering bits of the corrosive material, but accidents could still happen.

  Under Kieran’s command, the circle worked to refine each bit of material to its purest state. The separation process was demanding and more so, the need to keep each type of particle separate and shielded from air and moisture. The glass vessels were not enough; the process required a continuous stream of laran power for the protective layers. The materials must be held apart until ready for the delicate process that combined them.

  Coryn floated in the unity of the circle, reveling in the swirls and ripples of the mental energy which joined them. Sometimes he felt it as a spiral whirlpool, lifting them ever higher, other times a ring dance or even a choir with each voice blending to a glorious harmony. On one side sat Kieran, deftly weaving them together, on the other, Aran. Across the circle, Bronwyn sang like silvery bells. He had rarely felt so open, so safe, not since his boyhood.

  Coryn, bring the fields closer. Kieran spoke within his mind. Carefully . . .

  This was Keeper’s work, and Coryn knew it. He also knew that Kieran would not have given him this responsibility if he were not ready for it. He had come to accept that sometimes Kieran knew him better than he knew himself, and within the circle, his trust in his Keeper was absolute.

  With his mind, he reached for the spheres containing the refined materials, two pulsing, hugely swollen orbs and two smaller ones.

  Carefully . . .

  The larger spheres were easier to handle, but the danger came from the volatile matter in the smaller ones. Coryn concentrated harder. He dimly felt Bronwyn’s flicker of approval, Aran’s surge of pride. Gareth eased a tight muscle in his upper back and the next breath came more freely.

  Now take one particle from here . . . and here . . . and join them thus. As if placing his physical hands over Coryn’s, Kieran guided him through the next step. Together they formed a miniature separation field around each mote. Drawing on the laran of the circle, Coryn mentally moved the particles into an empty glass vessel.

  Yes! The particles, drawn by their complementary affinity, leaped toward one another as soon as Coryn released the protective fields. Dark red and orange, white and muddy brown flared into a ball of yellow-white, then cooled to tiny wrinkled seeds the gray of ashes.

  Elation surged through Coryn. For an instant, he pictured this very kernel which he had created dusting the air above a blazing forest. Perhaps even one on Verdanta lands. The familiar mountain slopes appeared in his memory, smoke and leaping embers, Eddard’s soot-grimed face and his father’s, little Kristlin in boy’s breeches—

  Coryn. Kieran’s mental voice broke through the reverie. Coryn gathered his concentration to return to the task at hand—

  And between one heartbeat and the next, he was drowning, suffocating, fighting for breath. His chest heaved, laboring to draw air into sodden lungs. The wheeze and rattle of congested breathing passages filled his ears. Fire raced through his veins.

  Dimly he felt hands clutching at sweat-soaked sheets, a cool cloth laid upon his forehead, voices shouting a name he co
uld not understand.

  “. . . the girl . . . fever too high . . . old man taken sick . . .”

  Kristlin! Father!

  He struggled to sit up. Images smeared into a blur of delirium, then faded to gray. He was falling, falling . . .

  CORYN!

  His own name reverberated through his mind, Kieran’s stony thunder echoed by Aran’s cry of alarm and the jangle of silvery bells from Bronwyn. About him, the circle was breaking up, their unity shattered.

  Coryn’s physical eyes lit upon the stoppered vessels containing the separated particles for the fire retardant chemicals. They glowed with the backlash of psychic energy. His had been the responsibility to hold the elements separate and inert within their laran generated fields. Now one rocked as if on the brink of explosion. He leaped from his bench and lunged for it.

  Coryn’s fingers curled around a smooth-sided inferno. He smelled singed flesh and for a nightmare moment, saw blue flames leaping from his hands up his arms. Reflexively, he dropped the vessel. It smashed on the stone floor. His body arched and spasmed, half in physical agony, half in mental. Someone caught him under the armpits and gently lowered him to the ground. He blinked, looking up into Aran’s eyes, dark with concern.

  “Aldones!” Gareth cried. “What happened?” Swiftly, he ran his hands scant inches over Coryn’s body, monitoring him.

  Lungrot . . . Gareth’s thoughts ran in Coryn’s mind. How can that be? Only a moment ago, he was healthy and strong . . .

  “It was not him.” Kieran rose from where he and Bronwyn had knelt together over the spilled chemicals, stabilizing them until they could be contained once more.

  He bent over Coryn in silent question.

  “Something—I don’t know,” Coryn stammered. Yet he did know.

  Shivers began deep within his body, rippling outward. His teeth chattered, and he could not control his hands. He held them aloft, gazing at the reddened flesh as if it were not his.

  Long after the others had gone to their beds and the sky lightened in the east, Kieran sat with Coryn. Gareth had salved and bandaged Coryn’s hands, saying he thought the burns would heal without scarring. Fortunately, no one else was injured, although two of the workers needed additional rest.

  Coryn picked at the wrappings on his hands. “I was criminally careless,” he said, miserable with guilt and fear. “I let my concentration lapse while I thought of nothing but my own glory. You entrusted me with a crucial task, and I failed you. I failed the entire circle. Someone else could have been badly hurt—”

  Kieran silenced him with a gesture. “You are not the first to indulge in a little self-congratulation and then suffer the consequences. If we could all do everything perfectly the first time, there would be no need for training. But you will learn from this accident, far better than if I warned you with mere words.”

  For a long while, Coryn dared not speak of his vision. Something terrible had happened at home, of that he was sure. When he had been open to the circle, his natural barriers had lowered. In that wash of exultation, his thoughts had gone to his family, to his childhood dreams. Kristlin, with her undisciplined laran, had swept through his mind like a firestorm. For a moment, he had been his dearest sister, delirious with fever, struggling for each breath.

  I was thinking of home, of Father and Kristlin, of bringing the fire-fighting chemicals to them as I’d dreamed I once would. And suddenly—I was in another place, another body . . . a dying body. Kristlin’s body.

  “My sister—my father—Dark Avarra, have mercy on us all!”

  At Kieran’s suggestion, Coryn now took out his starstone and focused on it, striving to mind-touch Kristlin once more, or his father, or even his other siblings. Sweat beaded his forehead and his fingers cramped, but he could not sense Kristlin’s life force. Petro, Margarida, even Tessa, he knew they still lived. Eddard, he was not sure, for the answering surge of sadness and terror when he thought of his eldest brother was too strong to penetrate. As for his father, he felt only an emptiness.

  Kieran, too, was unable to contact anyone at Verdanta. No one there was trained in the use of their starstones. “Even I cannot reach so far with my mind,” he said, “for though I have ties of blood to your family, I do not know these people. You have a far deeper bond, especially with your sister.”

  But Rumail reached Neskaya when he sent for help during the fire.

  “Rumail is a powerful telepath,” Kieran answered aloud. “And he had trained many years together with the folk at Neskaya. This is no failure on your part.”

  Though Kieran’s words brought little comfort, his presence did. Coryn had always envisioned Kieran’s energy signature as a rocky tor. Now as the hours passed until dawn, the old Keeper’s inner stillness seeped into Coryn, steadying him.

  “We will send word through the relays,” Kieran said as he prepared to leave Coryn’s chamber for his own. “Perhaps someone at Neskaya has word of your family.”

  “I must go home. I must be sure,” Coryn said, struggling to sit up. The room blurred sickeningly. As he coughed, racking pain lanced through his chest.

  Kieran brushed his fingertips against Coryn’s face. To Coryn, the touch burned like frozen fire. He shivered.

  You are in no condition to go anywhere. Your energy body was in resonance with your sister’s and it has affected your physical lungs. This is a very dangerous state. Gareth, and Liane when she is able, will monitor you until your channels are clear.

  Coryn heard a faroff wailing, like a banshee on the heights, like the wind through a deserted castle, a blizzard across the barren heights, and recognized it as his own grief.

  The hawk fell from the sky, he thought numbly. Was it an omen?

  A tenday later, Coryn woke from sleep, ravenously hungry. Gareth counted this a good sign, for his body needed food to repair and rebalance the disruption to his energy channels. The outward injuries, the burns on his hands, had healed to the slightest tinge of red, quickly fading.

  He went down to the kitchen, where Gareth and Marisela, the housemistress, sat over bowls of stewed rabbit-horn. Steam, fragrant with the aroma of wild mushrooms and rosemary, arose from the huge pot, and five loaves of seed-encrusted bread sat cooling on racks. The last few slices from the sixth loaf, along with some soft chervine cheese, sat on a platter. Coryn helped himself and sat down with them, glad for their easy company. He remembered sitting around the chopping table back in Verdanta, munching on nut crullers or leftover meat pies with Petro and Margarida.

  No, it was dangerous to think of home. Of home and what might—what had—happened there. The urge to go running home had returned along with his health, but Kieran had forbidden it outright.

  Not until we know for certain what has happened.

  So Coryn reined in his thoughts, calmed his breathing, and tried to concentrate on the present moment. He waited for the news which must come.

  The kitchen at Tramontana was set out from the body of the Tower itself, to vent the huge ovens and let in natural light through the banks of windows along the far wall. One of the early Keepers, a gourmand, had bribed the best cook in the kingdom to join the Tower staff by building it just for her. Whatever the truth of the tale, the sunlit room stayed cheerful on all but the gloomiest winter days. It occupied one full corner of the ground floor, with its own doors leading outside to the courtyard and down into the cellars filled with casks of wine, huge waxed wheels of cheese, barrels of nuts, apples and cabbages, enormous bins of flour and smaller ones of seeds and dried salted fish.

  Because of the location of the kitchen, Coryn heard hoofbeats approaching on the road.

  One-eyed Rafe.

  Coryn stiffened, and the composure he had fought for vanished. His hands unconsciously gripped the edge of the table so hard one knuckle popped.

  “A rider this late?” Marisela said. “He will want his dinner.”

  “He’s ridden that poor horse pretty hard, by the sound of it,” Gareth said. He took his bowl to the huge scou
red-stone sink where a panful of dishes already sat soaking, and ducked out the side door.

  Coryn downed the last of his jaco as Marisela bustled about, preparing a hot meal for the poor traveler. It was all he could do to regain a tattered semblance of calm. Following the exercises he’d been drilled in since his first year at Tramontana, he breathed deeply, slowly, smoothing the tension in his muscles and focusing his thoughts.

  Aran stood waiting in the kitchen doorway. With his empathic sensitivity, Aran knew something more had happened. His silent presence spoke more than any words. Coryn touched the back of Aran’s wrist with his fingertips.

  Bredu, I am glad you’re here. I—

  One of the novices rushed up. The lad’s hair stood out about his flushed face.

  “There’s news from Verdanta! A rider! Kieran wants you—”

  Although Coryn had waited long days for those very words, icy fingers now froze his spine, reaching for his heart. So, it has come.

  You are not alone, my brother. For an instant, Aran enveloped him in soothing warmth.

  Moments later, Coryn, with Aran and the novice only a step behind, knocked at the door to Kieran’s private quarters. At a word from within, he lifted the latch and entered. The scene reminded him for an instant of that very first interview: the stark simplicity of the room, the chill which he now understood was not from any forced austerity but from indifference to temperature. Kieran sat in that very same chair, gesturing him forward. The Keeper seemed not to have aged at all since that day, except for a trace more thinness in the shoulders.

  “I am sorry to see you, Coryn, under such circumstances,” Kieran said formally, “but pleased that you have a friend to stand beside you. Huy,” to the boy, “you may leave us now, but do not say a word of this. Remember what we agreed, that this is Coryn’s business and not yours.”