The Fall of Neskaya

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  She stood on a plain of unbroken gray beneath an equally featureless sky. No wind stirred the air, nor did any sound reach her ears. It seemed to go on forever, gray ground, gray sky, gray horizon.

  Although she breathed, she had only the haziest sense of her own body. When she looked down, she saw the ghostly outlines of gauze-draped limbs. She had, by some eldritch magic, become a wraith in this strange colorless world. Yet she felt solid enough with her heart hammering against the inside of her chest.

  Tramontana! Where in this monotone world would she find the Tower? She did not even know in which direction to begin her search. She pivoted slowly, scanning the horizon.

  In the distance, Taniquel made out a building, squat and lit from within with lambent white. She made her way toward it. It grew larger much more quickly than it should have, given her own speed. Perhaps distances here did not mean the same thing as they did in the ordinary world.

  It was, she saw as she drew nearer, a sort of tower, but of no architectural style she had ever seen. It seemed more theater dressing, as in the plays she had seen performed in Thendara, than any real place where people might work and live. Jagged lines of brilliance coruscated over its surface. The air bore a slight metallic tang which reminded her of summer lightning. Within its flickering aura, nothing human stirred.

  “What is this place?” she called out. Her voice sounded tinny and weak to her own ears. She took in a breath and tried again, louder. “Show yourselves! Where am I?”

  When minutes passed without an answer, she began to circle the tower. What she discovered on the far side startled her. Instead of a glistening surface, featureless except for the darting lines of brightness, she found a huge round piece of blue-tinted glass, twice the height of a man and mounted in a frame of silvery metal. As she gazed upon it, watched it swivel on its mountings as if turned by an invisible hand, she was reminded of a giant lens. She’d seen their kind used to concentrate the sun’s energy to start a fire.

  By squinting, she could almost see the rays of invisible power streaming from inside the tower through lens . . . and disappearing from the Overworld. With a shudder, she realized that she stood before the psychic manifestation of Tramontana Tower even as it rained down madness upon her uncle’s camp. Here was the source. Here she must stop it.

  With an inarticulate cry, she hurled herself at the lens, thinking only to point it elsewhere. Even as her fingertips touched the silvery mountings and the blue glass, jolts of electric energy leaped out to sting her with a thousand points of pain. Her body jerked away of its own accord, her arms reflexively pulling back.

  She reached out a second time. Again, it was like trying to grasp a stalk of lightning or thrust a naked arm into a nest of scorpion-ants. She fell back, stumbling to her knees. Goosebumps covered her skin and every nerve shrilled. Too furious to think straight, she picked herself up, marched around to the smooth side of the Tower, and kicked it.

  To Taniquel’s surprise, her foot did not meet solid rock. Something slowed the blow, but did not stop it. She had expected an unyielding surface and when her foot kept going, she almost lost her balance. She pulled her foot free without difficulty and aimed another kick.

  Kick! Recover . . . kick!

  “Who is that down below, playing children’s games at our gates?” The voice was sepulchral, echoing. And familiar.

  “Tramontana!” she called out with all her strength. “Listen to me! I am Taniquel, Queen of Acosta! In the name of King Rafael Hastur, I demand that you break off this abominable spell! Let ordinary soldiers fight their battles without interference!”

  A surge of energy passed over the surface of the Tower, blinding in intensity. Taniquel threw her arms over her face to shield her eyes. Her breath, white hot, caught in her throat. A voice sizzled through her mind.

  The Hastur bitch! Seize her, that her spirit may wander here until her body withers and dies!

  Now she knew where she had heard that voice. Rumail—Damian Deslucido’s sorcerer brother!

  Her muscles tensed to flee, but for an awful moment, she found she could not move. She could not even see clearly. Rumail held her fast in his mental grip. She could neither defend herself nor escape.

  No! It must not end like this! Coryn, help me!

  But no answer came. She was alone with her folly. And she had come so far, been so close to her goal! Tears of pain and frustration smeared her vision.

  The Tower wavered, mirage-like. A human figure took shape inside the blur, as if someone were swimming underwater toward her. A corona of silver fire framed the woman’s ageless face. As if blown by an unfelt wind, a gown of luminescent gray swirled about her slender frame. Her voice whispered through Taniquel’s mind, each syllable ringing like tiny bells.

  “Kinswoman, you are in grave danger here in the Overworld. You must withdraw!”

  Kinswoman?

  Taniquel found that she could move again. Stepping closer, she recognized the familiar cast of the woman’s features. She had seen that faint elven tilt of the eyes, the shape of the nose and curve of the hairline in her uncle, in her own mirror. This stranger must be of Hastur blood.

  “Cousin! Please help me!” Taniquel said. “You must stop this attack—”

  “There is no time for discussion! I cannot hold the breach for more than a few moments. Go now, with the grace of the gods!”

  As if propelled by the other woman’s cry, Taniquel sprinted away. She ran faster than she imagined possible. Her feet skimmed the smooth gray floor. Her face burned with the wind of her passing.

  Once or twice, she glanced over one shoulder to see Tramontana shrunken to a fraction of its former size. The second time, she dared to slow her pace. From the light which pulsated over the distant Tower, she guessed it had taken up the attack on her uncle’s men once more.

  Were Deslucido’s forces even now bearing down on them? How much more could the Hastur army stand before it turned upon itself like a rabid beast, or fell, unable to act in its own defense?

  No, Taniquel murmured to herself. It could not end this way. It must not.

  Her body turned thick and heavy, like unfired clay. Unable to walk any further, she drew in a deep, sobbing breath. Her legs buckled beneath her.

  Coryn . . . Oh, sweet love, where are you?

  37

  “Taniquel?”

  Coryn sat up bolt upright, blinking away sleep. He had just fallen into a drowse after working the better part of the night charging the immense ranges of laran batteries. The complex matrix device which made up the weapon of ultimate defense—his weapon—was complete, awaiting only the reservoir of power. They had all been working extra shifts these past ten days, sharing the painstaking work. Some mornings, Coryn had barely enough energy to haul his aching body up the stairs to the part of Neskaya Tower reserved for senior technicians, Bernardo, and himself as under-Keeper.

  This night, though, he had called an early halt. Mac’s focus had gone patchy after the first few hours, as if he were a novice and not a highly experienced technician. Even Amalie, usually as steadfast as the Wall Around the World, had fidgeted, twice nearly breaking the link. As for his own performance as Keeper of this circle, that was nothing to be proud of. He had held them together perhaps longer than was wise, for his own judgment had been none too rational.

  Since late the previous afternoon, something had niggled at his nerves, never coming clear enough to identify. He’d meant to speak with Bernardo about it, to try to differentiate what was natural fatigue from a demanding task, and what perhaps stray psychic tension. He knew that he’d become much more sensitive since his return to Neskaya. Bernardo had noticed and suggested that perhaps his bonding with Taniquel, given her empathy and sensitivity to him, had awakened deeper levels of his laran talent.

  Taniquel!

  Now the unmistakable stamp of her personality, that sweet wildness which was so much the core of who she was, resonated through his mind. Linked as they were, she was never far from his thou
ghts. In the hypnagogic state of near-sleep, after long hours in psychic linkage with a circle, he was even more open to her.

  Somehow she had managed to reach him across the miles.

  He swung his legs over the side of his bed and went to the window, open in this mild season. A nuance of light touched the sky toward the east, little more than a mist of gold at this hour. His back and shoulders ached from the hours of immobility.

  Taniquel had laran, yes, but she was untrained in its use. As far as he knew, she did not even possess a starstone. He considered this nothing short of criminal. But the family which saw her primary value as a bearer of sons would think such schooling a waste.

  She must have been desperate to reach him, even in his receptive state. What had happened? Had Deslucido’s forces achieved a military victory? Was she now a prisoner? His heart stuttered at the thought of her in the hands of the Ambervale king and his brother. Gently, he tapped one fist against the pale blue stone of the windowsill. There was only one way to find out.

  Coryn returned to his bed and pulled the light summer blanket up to his chest. From the quilted silken pouch in which he carried his matrix stone, he drew out the hairs once tangled in the copper pin she’d given him in the garden. The pin itself was stored in his chest along with a cloak brooch which Rafael had given him and a few other small items of no value to anyone but himself. The filigreed metal still retained the imprint of her energy, but the hair, which had once been part of her living body, resonated even more strongly. He twisted the hairs through his fingers. They curled around him as if they recognized his touch.

  He arranged his body on the bed in a posture of minimum stress, a pillow beneath his knees and a smaller one supporting the curve in his neck, just as Gareth had taught him so long ago, when he had first come to Tramontana. Closing his eyes, he used the twined hairs as a talisman and sent his thoughts outward, questing for that evanescent contact.

  Tani!

  As effortlessly as if he had stepped through his own doorway, he found himself in the Overworld. He had been here many times before, from his days as a novice at Tramontana, but that had been with hours of preparation under the careful guidance of his Keeper. This was the second time in as many minutes he’d thought of Tramontana.

  The Overworld, for all its unchanging stillness, was a dangerous, even lethal place for the unprepared. There were few landmarks here, and those could change with the speed of thought. Time and distance lost their usual meaning. Even a skilled matrix worker could wander, lost or trapped, unable to tear himself free, until at last his physical body perished of starvation. Had Taniquel been thrust here unawares—was that why she’d reached out to him in panic?

  Tani!

  Now fear fueled his own cry, fear for her sanity as well as her life.

  But he would do her no good if he himself became lost. With a few practiced strokes, he summoned the thought-shape of Neskaya which its workers used as an anchoring place. Like the original Tower, it glowed with a soft blue light. But this version was taller and more slender, designed more as a beacon than anything solid enough to withstand Darkover’s fierce winter storms. Satisfied that he would be able to find his way back, Coryn turned to scan the horizon.

  Tani! Like a fisherman casting nets, he sent out his thoughts once more.

  Coryn?

  Faint and far away the answer came, as much whisper as word, but undeniably Taniquel. Coryn knew better than to race toward it, although at that moment there was nothing he wanted more. Instead, he imagined a thick silken cord running from the astral Tower along the sound of her voice. Slowly, with a firm even pull, he drew the far end of the cord toward him. For what seemed like an eternity, he gathered it in, seamless gray fibers. He felt a slight tug, a resistance at the far end, and his heart leapt. There, where the cord seemed to end, he made out a shape. As he hurried toward it, the cord vanished.

  He came upon her in only a few minutes. She’d fallen in a heap of gauzy draperies, head bowed, arms wrapped tight around her body, knuckles pale. Her hair, unbound, fell forward over her shoulders like a cascade of spun jet. He knelt at her side and gathered her in his arms.

  “Sweet love, it’s all right, I’m here,” he murmured into the soft cloud of her hair.

  Taniquel looked up at him, face shining with tears. Although people’s forms often altered in the Overworld, she looked exactly as he remembered her. Perhaps that was because, since the day he’d met her in the travel shelter, he had seen through the beautiful outer body to the even more precious person within. He kissed her eyelids and tasted salt.

  “Is it my Coryn and not yet another false vision? Are you really here?” With a wondering expression, she touched his face.

  He drew her closer, sending confidence—I am real and solid and here, beloved.

  My heart. Her arms tightened hard around him. After a moment, she drew a deep, shuddering breath and pulled back. When she looked at him this time, her eyes shone like hard-polished marble.

  “Coryn, there is no time to lose.” In terse, direct terms which would have done a general proud, she outlined what had happened, how Tramontana launched their psychic attack at Deslucido’s command, the desperation of Rafael Hastur’s situation.

  “Edric said King Damian’s army was but an hour away, and most of that time has already passed,” she added. She lowered her eyes, for the first time sounding uncertain. “I don’t know how long I’ve been wandering here.”

  “In the outer world, it is near sunrise,” he said, helping her to her feet. “Doubtless, Deslucido plans to follow the night’s confusion with a dawn offensive. Whatever can be done to even the battle odds will be done, I swear it. But you cannot linger here.” He did not want to alarm her with words of her grave danger. The longer she remained in the Overworld, the slimmer any chance of her successful return to her body.

  “Oh, no . . . I’m all right. Please, get help. I’ll just . . . just sit here.”

  He looked into her face and when he saw the vagueness in her eyes, his heart failed for a moment. This was a warning sign that the wanderer was losing touch with her physical body. Unless recalled, the tie would wither, leaving only a breathing husk on the material plane and the wisp of a ghost here.

  All the fire, the determination which had brought Taniquel so far drained from her as Coryn watched. Under his hands, her body grew airy, almost as insubstantial as the filmy gown her mind had created.

  Coryn took her hands between his, as if he could warm her back to life. Laced between his fingers were two strands of ebony hair. He brought them to his lips.

  “Find yourself,” he said. “Close your eyes, hold on to who you are, think of nothing else. You are Taniquel—Queen—mother—lover.”

  A smile flashed across her face, a moment of brilliance. Color brightened in her cheeks and the outlines of her form steadied. She clasped both hands over the entwined hairs, eyes closed, lashes dark on pale-rose cheeks, head tilted slightly back as if awaiting a kiss. His body moved without his will to bend and touch her lips with his, but he restrained himself. For her life’s sake, he must make no move to hold her here.

  Coryn . . . beloved . . . until we meet again . . .

  Taniquel’s words, unspoken, shivered through him. Then, as if she had never been, she vanished.

  Coryn paced the length of the matrix laboratory where he waited with the members of his circle. Quickly assembled, they lacked only their Keeper to begin. Bernardo himself had gone into the relays in an attempt to negotiate with Tramontana. Coryn studied the faces of his circle, from Mac, whom he knew as well as the back of his own hand, to fragile-looking, vivacious Amalie to serious Demiana to silver-haired Gerell, who had trained first as a cristoforo monk at Nevarsin and then at Dalereuth. They were seven in all, plus Bernardo. Although the First Circle at Tramontana was larger, Coryn did not think there was any working group on Darkover he trusted more, not since Kieran had died.

  They came alert as one, without any need for words, as Bernar
do’s footsteps sounded on the stone corridor outside. Amalie raked her fingers through her pale frizzy hair, a gesture of impatience. Demiana placed two fingertips on the back of her wrist, caught her gaze, and held her. She closed her eyes and then slowly opened them as tension left her jaw.

  Bernardo slipped into the room with barely a whisper of his crimson Keeper’s robes. “They refuse to alter their course,” he said. They all knew, of course, but hearing the words spoken aloud brought a certain finality.

  “This is the word of Tomas, Keeper of the First Circle?” Coryn asked.

  “Tomas no longer speaks for Tramontana,” Bernardo said, his voice rumbling. “Rumail commands there in Deslucido’s name. He is now Keeper as well as voice of the King.”

  Coryn flinched under the reflex sizzle of energy around the circle. These people had known Rumail, had worked with him . . . had made the painful decision to set him aside no longer one of them, when they expelled him from their company.

  “There is no hope of any further discussion, then,” Mac said. A statement, not a question.

  “It was a small chance,” Bernardo said. “We are no worse off now than before. Come,” he held out his hands for them to take their seats. Gerell, whose back had been bothering him, joints stiff from too many long Hellers winters as a younger man, arranged the cushions on his chair. “Let us begin.”

  Coryn went to the low bench he preferred. A thin pillow softened the wood surface. He crossed his legs loosely and settled his body. A wave of relaxation passed through his muscles. It was a posture he could hold for hours, head balanced on a straight neck, chest lifted, back long and easy.

  He closed his eyes and dropped into the circle. Bernardo began weaving them into a unified whole. As they attuned to one another, Coryn saw them as an ever-changing rainbow, then heard them as voices settling into harmony, then sparkling dots of sun reflected on a clear pool of water. Bernardo’s touch dropped a stone into the water, creating ripples. Energy surged through each ring, out and then in again—in to the center point, where Bernardo gathered it together.