Eduin’s first telepathic rapport with Saravio had been unintentional. He had meant only to shock the other man out of his seizure, not to penetrate into the inner depths of his consciousness. Certainly, he had had no idea of the extent of Saravio’s insanity or possession, whatever it was. Now the situation was different. He was no longer ignorant. He knew what he faced.
He settled himself on the bed beside Saravio and reached out to touch the other man’s hand. Physical contact was necessary for the depth of rapport he needed. Eduin steeled himself, repeating that he had no choice but to violate the most fundamental ethic of Tower work—never to enter unbidden into the mind of another person. It was all nonsense and pretension. Tower circles broke the rule every time they went onto the battlefield. Even the casting of a simple truthspell involved a certain amount of coercion.
Even as he justified his actions to himself, Eduin knew that what he was doing was different. He was not shaping the thoughts of a madman back to sanity for any altruistic purpose. On the contrary, he needed Saravio’s obedience, and he meant to get it any way he could. Why else would the gods have given him laran, if not for such a purpose?
He skimmed the surface of Saravio’s thoughts, finding only a howling emptiness that reminded him of a storm-swept plain. There were no images of everyday things, of light and food, the places he had passed through, the people he had spoken to. The very texture of the mental landscape felt barren, abandoned. Saravio had indeed withdrawn from life.
Eduin pressed deeper. He wandered through a house that had stood vacant too long. The impressions left behind by all the activities of daily living had faded and the unique stamp of personality all but vanished.
He had touched the minds of dying men. He knew the taste and weight of that severing. Saravio still lived, but had withdrawn to a level that mimicked death. Eduin had expected to find, somewhere within the tangled web of Saravio’s unconsciousness, some core of the man he knew. He had thought he would be able to manipulate the form of Saravio’s thoughts as he had done before, to enter into the other man’s delusions and dominate them to his own advantage.
But there was nothing here—no black-robed woman with burning eyes and a face like ice. No Tower racked by lightning. No multitudes pleading for salvation, for release from suffering.
Saravio had said that Romilla Aillard appeared to him as the incarnation of Naotalba. Was that why the Bride of Zandru was now absent from his mind? Had Saravio decided his own purpose was fulfilled, that he had no reason to continue living?
I still have a purpose for him, Eduin thought savagely. I cannot let him slip away.
If he could not track down the kernel of personality that was Saravio by means of the delusion they had once shared, then he must use something else. Eduin paused and gathered himself, turning inward for anything, any resonant imprint that he could use.
He remembered Saravio’s gentle voice saying, “I brought you in from the storm.” Saravio speaking of the innkeeper’s daughter and how he had sung her free from her pain. Saravio bending over the fallen musician, murmuring, “Rest now, be easy, no harm will come to you.”
Something inside Eduin, some tremulous childhood memory, breathed in the words like balm across his ravaged heart. Saravio, for all his divine insanity, had offered him simple kindness, generosity. Love. He had freely given these things not only to Eduin, the man he had dragged, a pathetic sodden wreck, from the gutters of Thendara, but others. The dispossessed, the hopeless. The injured.
And now, the daughter of this house. But only if Eduin could drag Saravio back to life.
Using Saravio’s own compassion to control him seemed like the only hope, and yet Eduin shrank from it. That moment of kindness shone out from all the years of filth and degradation. Now it seemed he must twist it, use it for his own ends.
He told himself that Romilla Aillard was in need, was not unworthy. He told himself Saravio would do these things anyway, that he would never know the difference, that he would give his consent if he could.
For a long, heart-chilling moment, Eduin hovered in indecision. None of these arguments changed what he meant to do. Saravio might cure the girl and lift the miasma of despair from the entire city. All the Aillard lands, not just Kirella but Valeron itself, might bow before him. All these actions, no matter how good they seemed, would forever be tainted. The work of Saravio’s remarkable ability would no longer be a freely bestowed gift.
Nothing in the world remained pure, as Lord Brynon had said. No man acted except in his own best interest. Not Saravio, not he himself, not Carolin Hastur on his high throne, or even Varzil the Good. In the end, what drove men was selfishness. Yet even as Eduin thrust the thoughts from him, he felt a flicker of shame for what he was about to do.
He found what he sought, a kernel of tightly interwoven mental energy, an ember of personality consumed and fallen in upon itself. It reminded him of an immense, congested energon node, one of the structures that channeled and stored laran in the human body. He used his own thoughts to shape a net around the kernel.
At first, Eduin met no resistance. As he tightened the strands and began to draw them toward himself, awareness sparked. There were no coherent thoughts, only a stirring, an expansion. Slowly, and then with escalating speed, Saravio’s mental faculties returned.
Quickly, before Saravio had regained enough awareness, Eduin struck. He did not reason through what he was doing. He only knew that this chance might never come again. Now, while Saravio was still confused and only fragmentally aware, before his sense of self-preservation had returned, he was still vulnerable.
Eduin speaks with the voice of Naotalba. Follow his commands as you would hers.
Naotalba . . .
Images drifted, ghostly and distorted, through the firmament of Saravio’s mind. Eduin made out the superimposed figures of two women—Naotalba as he had first seen her, beautiful and tragic, yet with a kind of nobility—and Romilla. For a moment, they seemed not at all alike. Then Eduin understood why Saravio had confused them. The sense of utter hopelessness, of doom, linked them. But for his plan to work, Romilla must have a future and the courage to meet it.
With all the skill at his command, Eduin began separating the two figures. Naotalba he drained of color, so she shimmered like a statue of ice, a true bride for the Lord of the Seven Frozen Hells. He brushed Romilla with brightness, envisioned her lifting her head, cheeks flushing, lips rosy. Then he had Romilla fall to her knees before Naotalba.
Surprise rippled through Saravio’s dreaming mind as Eduin raised Romilla’s hands in supplication.
Heal me, O great Naotalba. Give me strength! Give me hope!
Without Eduin’s conscious direction, the demigoddess responded. She placed one hand on the girl’s dark hair and smiled. Eduin flinched at that smile, for it was only partly in blessing. Underneath the benign surface ran an undercurrent of ruthlessness. There would be a price to pay for such healing and he did not think it would be an easy one. He nudged the figure of Romilla to her feet and watched as she dwindled in the distance. The test of whether he had successfully detached the girl from Naotalba in Saravio’s mind would come the next time they saw her.
Eduin waited as Saravio rose toward waking. Saravio’s thoughts strengthened and his mind once more took on its complex, familiar patterns. Eduin recognized the areas of damage, like burned patches of a forest after a fire has passed. He knew better than to try to speak telepathically. Instead, he placed his hands upon Saravio’s shoulders and shook gently.
“Saravio. It is time to wake up.”
Saravio’s eyes shifted behind closed lids. His chest heaved, lungs drawing in air. He stretched his legs. The joints of his spine crackled.
“Eduin.” Saravio’s voice was hoarse, his words slurred. “I feel so strange. I must have slept too long.”
“Indeed you have,” Eduin replied with a smile. He helped Saravio to sit up. “I will call for food and a bath. You must regain your strength.”
&
nbsp; “Have I been ill? What has happened?” There was something almost pathetically childlike in Saravio’s questions.
“There is much work for you to do.”
“Yes . . .” Saravio tilted his head in an attitude of listening. “I can sense it—so many people in pain.”
“It is Naotalba’s wish that you help them. I will guide you in this.”
Saravio’s expression turned eager. “Tell me, then, what I am to do.”
“After you have fed and washed, we will arrange an audience with Damisela Romilla . . .”
Eduin watched Saravio for any reaction, but the other man’s expression continued as eager and innocent as before.
Good, Eduin thought. Now we can get to work.
21
The whole castle buzzed with daily reports of Romilla Aillard’s decline. The girl had been unable to eat or sleep, becoming agitated whenever anyone approached her. By the time Lord Brynon sent a second, desperate plea for the intercession of Sandoval the Blessed, Saravio had recovered sufficiently.
Lord Brynon led the way into his daughter’s chamber, followed by Mhari, the household leronis, Lady Romilla’s nurse, and the physician. Dom Rodrigo insinuated his stout form as close to his Lord as was seemly, effectively placing himself as a barrier between Lord Brynon and Eduin and Saravio. He directed his attention entirely toward his noble patron. In unguarded moments, however, the lines around his mouth deepened. Mhari spoke little, although her gaze followed each of the others as they entered the chamber of her young charge.
Eduin took in the scene in an instant. The room was smaller than he’d expected for a young woman of Romilla’s rank. Perhaps it had been hers as a child. It was richly furnished, overly so. The ornately carved furniture seemed to overpower the delicacy of the chamber’s proportions. It might have been a pleasant room, if it were less crowded and if the curtains had been drawn back from the beautiful mullioned windows. As it was, he glimpsed those windows, with their garden view, only when Lord Brynon ordered a servant to open the curtains.
“No, no!” Romilla shrieked, her voice like the cry of a stricken dove. She thrashed on her bed.
Dom Rodrigo rushed to her side, and Eduin saw that the girl’s arms and body had been tied to the bed with lengths of white cloth. The physician checked and tightened the bonds. “She must have rest—complete rest! Why were these restraints loosened? I gave no orders to that effect!”
“The light—I am burning!” Romilla cried. “The fire is coming! It will destroy us all!”
“Close the drapes! Quickly, man!” shouted Lord Brynon, even as the servant hurried to obey.
Eduin halted inside the door. Indeed, there was almost no room for the addition of any other person, with servants, physician, nurse, leronis, and father all rushing about. He could scarcely see Romilla.
He touched Saravio’s arm and felt the instant response. “Go. She needs you.”
Somehow Saravio managed to steal his way to the bedside. No one paid attention to him and he had long ago developed the ability to move unobtrusively through a crowd. To Eduin’s relief, Saravio gave no sign he’d ever mistaken the girl for Naotalba.
Through the raised voices, Eduin caught the low, familiar murmur. “Be not troubled, sweet lady, for help is at hand. Soon all will be well. Rest easy, as I am here with you. There is nothing to fear.”
Eduin moved a step or two into the room, close enough to see Saravio crouch beside the bed. The girl’s slender white fingers lay in Saravio’s larger hand. Her face turned toward him, rapt.
Yes, that is good, Eduin thought, although Saravio could not hear him. Establish physical contact.
There was no need to encourage Saravio further. He was doing what he did instinctively, perhaps what he had been born to do.
Romilla’s distraught features relaxed. Eduin, his laran sense focused on the scene before him, knew the moment Saravio touched her mind. Eduin sensed a shifting of invisible colors, a spreading warmth. Pleasure surged through him and with it, the sudden lifting of pain, of sorrow, of struggle. He allowed himself to soar on the moment, knowing it would not last, but lacking the strength of will to break it off.
Romilla’s eyes opened with a look of incredulous relief.
“Get away from her, you barbarian! How dare you lay hands upon the lady!” Dom Rodrigo grabbed the nape of Saravio’s black robe and attempted to pull him away.
Saravio gave the physician not the slightest heed. His attention remained focused on the girl. Their gazes locked, unself-conscious bliss mirrored on their faces.
I knew you had come to save me. Her lips shaped the words, inaudible above the din and clatter, but readily discernible to Eduin’s laran.
“Guards! Summon the guards!” With a prodigious heave, Dom Rodrigo yanked Saravio off balance.
Her concentration shattered, the girl began screaming again. Lord Brynon, who had been supervising the drawing of the curtains, moved toward them. Eduin leaped into action. He cut through the crowded room, angling to intercept the lord.
“Vai dom,” Eduin cried. “I appeal to you, put a stop to this interference. Did you not ask for our help? Then let the Blessed Sandoval do his work!”
At these words, the physician spun around. Dusky blood suffused his features. He looked ready to strike Eduin, but for the nearness of his master.
“The damisela is under my professional care,” Dom Rodrigo said with stiff dignity. “I need not remind you that her continued recovery is due to my ministrations! She is too fragile for this kind of—of overstimulation, this—melodrama. It is highly detrimental to her progress. In fact, I classify it as outright abuse!”
“We see how well she has prospered with you!” Eduin flamed. “What are you afraid of, that someone else may succeed where you have failed?”
“Stop it!” Romilla wailed. “I want Sandoval!”
“Enough!” Lord Brynon bellowed. “Stand down, both of you! I will not tolerate such behavior! It belongs on the practice fields, not in my daughter’s bedchamber! Stand down, I say, or I will have both of you taken away in chains!”
Eduin instantly regretted his rash words. His self-control was not what it should be, or such an officious, prattling fool would never have caused him to lose his temper.
“I cannot believe you are seriously considering these charlatans from who knows where!” Dom Rodrigo said. “They are no more qualified in these matters than Durraman’s donkey!”
“Yet they—or rather Dom Sandoval—were able to help little Kevan when the dog slashed his throat.” Mhari glided to stand at the right hand of her Lord. Though her expression remained neutral, her eyes flickered over Rodrigo’s face.
Now Eduin was certain of the rivalry between leronis and physician. Clearly, Rodrigo had stepped in when Mhari failed to resolve Romilla’s depression and had usurped her position of influence with Lord Brynon. Mhari was not a woman to easily forget or forgive.
“A happy accident!” Rodrigo shot back. “The boy must have been less badly hurt than it first appeared. Blood flows freely from certain kinds of superficial wounds, giving them the appearance of greater severity. Clearly, that was the case. He would have recovered just as well with the attentions of—of a stable hand!”
Mhari’s voice remained serene, a counterpoint to the physician’s rising frenzy. “There have been other stories of Sandoval’s abilities—cures for the mind and spirit beyond the power of any ordinary medicine. They cannot all be accidents.”
“Mere rumors! I have heard them, too, down in the village. Tales to prey upon the credulous have no place in educated society. I will not be responsible for the consequences of the slightest disruption in Lady Romilla’s treatment regimen! I demand that these men be removed immediately and—”
“Papa, please! Make them stop!” Romilla sobbed. “The noise, it hurts my head!”
“That will be enough,” Lord Brynon said in a deadly quiet voice. He beckoned to the guards stationed just inside the door.
Before th
e physician could protest further, the guards each took one of his arms in a joint lock and escorted him, white-faced, from the room. Eduin permitted himself a moment to watch, although he was careful not to allow any hint of exultation to leak through his psychic barriers.
Mhari, he noticed, refrained from pressing her own advantage. Instead, she drew up a low bench and, helping Saravio to rise, placed him upon it. In her very action, she reasserted her own position; she was no lowly servant, easily dismissed. She might serve the Lord and his family, but her status as a trained leronis gave her the dignity of rank.
“My little love,” Mhari murmured, “here is Dom Sandoval to tend you, just as you asked.”
“Vai dom, I beg your forgiveness for my outburst,” Eduin bowed to the Aillard Lord. “I spoke only from my concern for Lady Romilla, although it was not my place in this great company to do so.”
Lord Brynon pardoned the breach with a slight inclination of his head. His attention returned to his daughter, for Saravio had once more taken her hand.
Murmuring in his soft, hypnotic tones, Saravio reestablished contact with the pleasure centers of her brain. Eduin felt the pulse of receding despair, as if a wave of living light flooded through the dark corridors of her mind. This time, however, he steeled himself against his own response. He had to move quickly, think clearly, act rationally. He could not afford to indulge in even a moment’s peace. That fool of a physician had almost ruined everything. Eduin swore to himself he would never be caught off-guard again. If he were ever to achieve his goal, his eventual release from his father’s compulsion spell, then he must set aside all immediate personal gratification. He must become an instrument of his own will.
Mhari stood behind Saravio’s bench, swaying slightly, almost close enough for her skirts to brush his shoulder. She had closed her eyes, her lips curving in a half-smile. Saravio’s talent was strong enough to overwhelm her defenses.
Of course, Eduin thought. With her laran sensitivity, she could not help being affected, too. In addition, she had recently fallen from favor, perhaps had even been publicly humiliated. On a daily basis, she would see the evidence of her failure, both in the person of her ailing mistress and the bombastic exultation of her rival. The burst of pleasure must be balm to her shredded nerves.