The Fall of Neskaya

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “I will swear by anything you wish,” said Taniquel, lifting her head. “Under truthspell.” Though the idea sent shivers of terror through her, she looked to Caitlin. “Or a direct examination of my mind.”

  “Child, you do not know what you are offering.”

  “I do. We must be sure.” Taniquel met her uncle’s eyes. “You must be sure.”

  Because he knows that if I am right, he cannot compromise. He must destroy Deslucido and any trace of what he has done, even if it means standing alone against the Council.

  Rafael nodded to Caitlin.

  “There is a risk—” the leronis said.

  “There is always a risk,” Taniquel cried. “But there is far greater danger if we do not act.”

  “Very well.” Caitlin gave a little sigh as she reached for the starstone which she wore in a silk-lined locket around her neck. “Come into the sleeping chamber with me.”

  Afterward, Taniquel remembered very little of what had passed. She was never sure if her mind suppressed the memories or if Caitlin had gently softened them so as to spare her lingering pain.

  She had lain on the bed, focusing on her breathing at Caitlin’s direction. Pressure built in her head, reminding her of the morning of the Acosta invasion, only deeper and unrelenting, shaped and aimed at the very center of her thoughts. She found herself once more in Padrik’s quarters, only she now saw the once-familiar contours of the sitting room through a gauzy veil that muted some colors and intensified others. As before, Deslucido sat at the table, hands moving over the food laid out there. Blue-and-crimson lights played over his face and his eyes, when they flickered in her direction, burned like yellow fire.

  “You promised . . .” Taniquel heard her own voice, muffled and distant. “. . . went to see . . . in the chapel . . . confined to my rooms.”

  “. . . minor miscommunication.” Damian’s voice, too, shivered with that ghostly resonance. With each phrase, his words gained in strength and clarity, as if coming nearer. “. . . regret any inconvenience . . .”

  “Why was I not allowed to leave my rooms?”

  “It would not be seemly—or safe . . . For your own safety . . . it is to no one’s benefit to turn his burial into a rallying point for malcontents.”

  “Am I not to be permitted to see him, then?” Taniquel’s voice wailed, a mourner’s cry.

  “A lady . . . must be protected against such sights. Be guided by us in this, rest content . . .

  “Rest content . . . Content . . .” The final word echoed through her as the images shredded. The sense of pressure intensified into outright pain.

  Truth? Truth? pounded relentlessly through her temples. A spear point of fire probed deeper. At one point, she might have screamed, she could not be sure. Later, she slept.

  In her best gown and with her hair dressed by Caitlin as befitted a Queen, Taniquel appeared once again before the Comyn Council. There was no need for her to speak, only to stand by her uncle’s side.

  Never before had he looked so grim, as if he were granite made flesh. His expression had shifted from the tightness of facing an unpleasant task to a stony determination. Below that, she sensed anger and something more.

  Fear.

  Not of the Council, although his disappointment in all that he had hoped for ran through him like a vein of poison. Fear—of Deslucido and his ability to defy truthspell, fear of shattering the fragile bonds of trust which stood between the many lands of Darkover and true chaos.

  Fear that he had already delayed until too late.

  He held himself with a dignity and power she had only glimpsed in him before. He was Comyn, subordinate to no man, and he was Hastur, Son of Hastur who was Lord of Light.

  His solemnity reflected in the assembled company, for as he spoke, calmly stating his position, there were no outbursts, no visible reactions. Taniquel sensed rather than heard the isolated points of disapproval, of agreement, of incredulity. She dared to glance in Deslucido’s direction, to see his face darken, jaw rigid, the hard light of fury in his eyes when he looked at her.

  With the Comyn Council as his witnesses, Rafael Hastur publically declared Acosta a Hastur protectorate, with Julian Regis Hastur-Acosta its lawful ruler, and Taniquel Hastur-Acosta as his Regent until he attained his majority.

  When Rafael finished, the old man who was head of the Council rose to speak. “Think carefully on what you are doing, Hastur. If you mean to carry through these actions, you will place yourself in direct defiance of our orders.”

  “You know as well as any man how strongly I support the Council,” Rafael replied. “I believe in our united purpose and always I have worked for negotiation and compromise. My past actions speak for themselves. But in this matter, my duty and my conscience are to a greater good. I cannot and will not bow to an unjust decision.”

  “Unjust! What do you mean by that, Hastur?” rumbled Old Alton. “If you have charges to make, out with them! Don’t diddle around with bullying games!”

  Calmly, Rafael turned to face the older man. “I will not see this Council used for any man’s private purposes.” With the slight emphasis, he indicated, Including mine. “I believe this is now a private affair between Damian Deslucido, myself, and Taniquel, Queen Regent of Acosta.”

  “So you have named her,” Damian Deslucido said in a voice taut with suppressed anger. “But words cannot make her anything other than an obstinate girl-child who would leave a whole countryside in smoking ruins rather than submit to proper authority. When you lend your name to her cause, Hastur, you do her grave injury.”

  “It is not I who have done her injury,” Rafael replied temperately. “And as you all can see, she is no child but comynara in her own right.”

  “She is a woman!” one of the lords grumbled. “Who has no voice here.”

  “Husband or kinsman must speak for her, although I don’t much care which,” another said.

  The Aillard lady, who had until now remained silent, stirred. “My lords, if you are saying that no woman may speak in this Council, you had best reconsider your words.”

  The second speaker, whose lands bordered the powerful Aillard Domain, closed his mouth.

  “What say you, vai domna?” the old chief asked Taniquel. “Will you join in this Hastur rebellion against the Council?”

  “Deslucido invaded my country,” she replied, “seized the castle by trickery, slaughtered its rightful king, and attempted to force me into an unwelcome marriage with his son. But the rightful King of Acosta, the di catenas son of Padrik, son and true heir of Ian-Valdir, lives. For his sake, I will not give up my claim, not for a hundred Council verdicts. The gods have seen fit to bless me with the support of my kinsman.”

  “So be it!” Damian slapped his palm flat on the table and sprang to his feet. “You will regret those proud words, lady. On the battlefield, in chains. Acosta is mine by the will of the gods. Never will I permit you or your kinsman,” he spat out the word, “to diminish the glorious kingdom I have built with my own two hands.” He bowed to the assembly. “Vai domyn, I thank you for your support. But I have no choice but to enforce it myself.” With a jangle of spurs, he strode from the room.

  After a moment of silence, Rafael said, “I ask the Council to take no further action in this matter.”

  The old lord shook his head. “It is already out of our hands. I do not know if we, in our attempt at a peaceful resolution, have only made the situation worse. Adelandayo, Rafael Hastur. Go with the gods, and may their wisdom guide you.”

  BOOK III

  25

  Winter was no time for warfare, Coryn reflected, even if Neskaya Tower were not snowbound like Tramontana at this season. And yet war had come.

  He drew back from the casement into the warmth of the room. Even from inside, the translucent stone of Neskaya Tower caught the light of the slanting late afternoon winter sun. He remembered the first glimpse he had of the Tower, rising above the city of Neskaya like a pillar of glimmering sky-tinted ice, and h
ow his heart had risen in delight.

  Within, Neskaya Tower was organized somewhat differently from Tramontana. Without Kieran to exert such a dominant influence, decisions and power were spread more broadly over the Keepers and senior technicians. This was, Coryn suspected, in part due to the personalities of the last few generations of Keepers. Bernardo Alton was no exception in his willingness to listen to other ideas, and his innate respect for the people he regarded as his colleagues, not his subordinates.

  “A Keeper’s work is like any other,” he had told Coryn when they first began to work together. Work together was Bernardo’s phrase. “More glamorous to the public, perhaps, and certainly more demanding at times, but of no greater value. A Keeper without a circle is merely another technician. Never forget that the instrument with which you create your music is your circle, not yourself.”

  The second reason for the more democratic flavor of Neskaya Tower became apparent only after Coryn had been there some months, through the fall harvest and the beginning of winter. Unlike Tramontana, which had seemed a world unto itself, Neskaya owed clear obligations to its lawful lords, the Hasturs. For centuries it had been in Ridenow hands, until the peace forged by Allart Hastur between those two Domains. Bernardo once referred to Neskaya’s present allegiances as having been forged by a peace treaty.

  Neskaya had been asked, no, commanded, to make clingfire for the Hastur lords. Until now, Bernardo’s experiments with a safer, more stable form had been the only active work with the corrosive stuff, and only the Keeper and a few of the more senior technicians were involved. Once, Bernardo had told Coryn, there was not a Tower from one end of settled Darkover to the other which was not making clingfire. Once, he said, it was used as readily as arrows in warfare. But in recent times, the Domains lords had often held their hands, relying on plain steel instead.

  “Oh, laran still has a vital role in warfare and it always will,” Bernardo said. “How else can generals communicate quickly with one another, or spy out the land with their sentry-birds, if not with our help?”

  Now Coryn was to learn the creation and use of clingfire. He began by separating out minute particles of the flammable stuff and bringing it, bit by bit, to the surface. Once refined, the elements had to be kept separate in fields generated by great artificial matrix screens, or they would ignite. It was very much like the process of refining chemicals for fire fighting, only with far more disastrous results if an accident were to occur. Before long, he, and every other Tower worker who made clingfire, bore scars from momentary lapses in concentration.

  From those few accidents, Coryn tried to imagine what it would be like to have the deadly liquid fire dropping on him from aircars or shot over castle walls on the tips of arrows. He wondered what it would be like to pilot an aircar, to look down on the lands and fortifications of an enemy, to see them burst into unquenchable flame. The Hastur lord had not yet asked for the clingfire to be delivered, only made ready. Coryn found himself grateful for the respite.

  The light drained from the sky with the suddenness of winter. Dark settled over Neskaya’s walls, softening the shadows into velvet. Only Kyrrdis swung through the blackness overhead, and the Tower’s walls gave off a faint blue shimmer in its light.

  Coryn robed himself warmly for the night’s work. Neskaya was not nearly as cold as Tramontana, but the long motionless hours left everyone stiff. Constructing the huge artificial matrix screens for Bernardo’s experimental clingfire required even more concentration than other laran work. He could not afford the distraction of aching fingers or shivering muscles.

  He came down the staircase from the living quarters, on his way past the kitchen for a hot drink before joining his circle.

  “Coryn! There you are!” Amalie called to him. Slender and almost androgynous, she trotted toward him, pushing back an unruly cloud of pale-straw hair. “Come up to the relay room. You’re wanted.”

  He raised one eyebrow in question, a gesture he’d half-unconsciously adopted from his new friend Cormac, the matrix technician who’d first welcomed him and then dubbed him the other Cor of Neskaya. Coryn, in retaliation, had dubbed the older man Mac and the nickname stuck.

  Like everyone else in the Tower, Coryn took his turn at the laran relays, sending and receiving messages from other Towers. He could not think what difficulty could not be as capably dealt with by Mac or even Amalie herself. “What’s going on?”

  She gestured for him to follow her up the stairs. At Neskaya, the chamber housing the relay screens was set apart in its own tower to isolate communications from the stray mental energies generated by other projects. Chill radiated from the walls, for this section was part of the original Tower, old beyond imagining, constructed of fine-grained granite rather than the translucent blue stone of the central Tower. Amalie, swathed in the thick soft robe of a monitor, hugged her arms to her body as she climbed.

  “It is a personal message,” she said once they were well out of hearing of the lower common room.

  Coryn could not imagine who would send to him in particular, unless it were bad news, another death at Tramontana perhaps. Lady Bronwyn—

  No, surely he would have known. Their minds had been too closely linked for him not to sense her death.

  They came to a halt outside the relay chamber. White light from the glows mingled with the blue radiance of the screens to cast eerie shadows across the girl’s face. He thought he saw the glimmer of tears in her eyes, or perhaps it was the white flash of fear.

  At Neskaya, the relay screens sat on low tables, so that the workers did not need to crouch, but could sit on padded benches. A small coal brazier, its smoke contained by a heat-permeable laran shield, filled the room with gentle warmth.

  Amalie went to the bench covered by a rumpled shawl. Coryn recognized it as her favorite, thick chervine wool knitted in a ferny design with threads of green and brown. He picked it up and draped it over her shoulders. With a fingertip gesture, she motioned for him to sit.

  Coryn did so, bringing his mind to focus on the screen before him. It was active, the lattices tuned to Amalie’s clear, almost geometric thought pattern. Subtly, he shifted them to his own and felt himself rise into the moony radiance. He always thought of contact along the relays as swimming through a sea of light. Ripples of brilliance and shadow passed over him. Elongating himself like a sea creature, he plunged through cross currents of shivery cold, moving ever deeper. Music vibrated through him, the deepthroated resonant calls of mythic beasts. Light faded, colors muting to blues and purples, finally to inky shadows. Vision dimmed as he dropped into rapport.

  Coryn, are you there? Words touched him like the brush of a falcon’s wings. The sea fell away, and Coryn floated in a crystalline sky, surrounded by the mental presence of his friend.

  Aran.

  A rush of warmth and pleasure answered him. For a long moment, he savored the sense of loving union, of acceptance. A loneliness he had not known was there lifted from him. All was right, perfect, complete.

  I have missed you more than I knew, he thought.

  And I, you. A pause, an awkward pulling away into separateness. Lady Bronwyn is well, and sends her love. She asked leave to return to her family, but was refused.

  Coryn startled. What is it? What is going on? Why would she wish to leave?

  She asked surety that she would not be forced to make war against her kin. She is of Hastur blood.

  Coryn had not known that. Bronwyn had so clearly been highly born, she of the silvery bells. She had never referred to her rank.

  Wage war?

  This will be our last relay to Neskaya. Sadness weighed every syllable. We are to cease contact, least we betray some secret. . . .

  The clear skies darkened and Coryn struggled to keep the connection. Neskaya was making clingfire for the Hastur lord, but he had not thought of its target. Since coming here, he had thought little of the politics of the outer world beyond distaste at their intrusion.

  Without saying so, Ara
n had made his meaning clear. Tramontana and Neskaya were to join in the conflicts between their respective lords.

  “Yes, that is always a possibility,” Bernardo said in answer to Coryn’s question about friends or even kinsmen finding themselves on opposing sides in a conflict, once Towers became involved. “It has happened in the past and will again.”

  “But surely it is not right, especially when the quarrel is none of our making,” Coryn said, sitting forward on the chair in the Keeper’s study. He’d had to move a stack of diagrams for a new scheme of interlocking matrix screens, a stuffed owl, and three crumb-laden platters in order to make room to sit down.

  “The world goes as it will, not as you or I would have it.” Although Bernardo’s voice was neutral, fear and sadness resonated behind his words.

  Coryn was struck by how thin Bernardo looked, as if life’s struggles had pared him to the very bone. Coryn then remembered Bernardo was an Alton, and not immune to divided loyalties. As far as he knew, there was peace between Hastur and Alton, but in these uncertain times, that might not always be true.

  “If we are to serve Hastur in this campaign against Deslucido,” Coryn said slowly, “then we might be ordered to drop clingfire on any of the lands which he holds.”

  Verdanta going up in flames, Tessa screaming as her body burned like a torch, stone walls tumbling. . . .

  And Coryn himself in an aircar, looking down on the scene, wishing with all his heart it was he himself down there, burning, dying in agony, instead of his loved ones.

  Bernardo reached out to brush Coryn’s wrist with a featherlight touch of the fingers. It was meant as reassurance, but both of them knew that even though Bernardo might try, he could not lighten Coryn’s duties. Coryn still had a few years to complete his Keeper’s training, but there was no doubt that he would; his abilities and talent for the work had shown themselves clearly. He would be Keeper of Neskaya after Bernardo; his would be the responsibility.