The next night, Varzil had no work of his own. For the past tenday, he had been directing a circle repairing some of the houses within the Hidden City. As in the Tower itself, no non-telepath might pass within those precincts, so laran workers instead of masons placed the new stones. This labor also required daylight, but fortunately there were few ordinary by standers. Any Comyn with business in the Hidden City knew better than to disturb a working circle.
This had been a particularly demanding day, using the combined mental power of the circle to lift, resurface, and replace several massive stones. It was not hazardous work in itself, but the power required drained vital energies. Afterward, he insisted that Fidelis monitor each member of his circle to make sure no one was dangerously depleted.
“No one but you yourself,” Fidelis told him. “You of all people should know better than to stay up half the night on the relays and then put in a day’s work as Keeper on a project like this. You are hereby ordered to eat and then sleep.”
Varzil readily agreed to the food, but would not break his rendezvous with Felicia. Fidelis was a good enough telepath to pick up the flicker of his thought.
“You will make yourself ill if you abuse your body in this manner. How can you set an example as Keeper, or truly be responsible for those in your circle, when you yourself behave in such a reckless manner?”
“I am a Keeper, and know my own limits.”
“You are an idiot if you do not listen to your monitor!”
Varzil refused to be drawn into an argument. He knew that Fidelis spoke out of love. “I promise I won’t allow myself to get too tired.”
“I have ordered you to rest. If you refuse, I cannot force you. I ask you to consider the consequences, not only to yourself, but to those in your circle, if you collapse because of stubborn pride.”
Varzil told himself that his emotional well-being was as important as any other aspect of his life. He was tired, true, but not too tired to work effectively. He relented enough to eat a hot meal before resting on one of the cushioned divans in the common room.
He started awake at the sound of footsteps and voices. “Has word come from Hestral?”
Marella turned from Richardo at her side, with a startled expression. Both of them were robed for laran work, and she looked pale and drawn. “No, nothing from Hestral. But there’s word from Hali that Rakhal Hastur has executed Lord Valdrin Castamir and all his sons and then sent aircars with clingfire to burn Highgarth Castle to the ground.”
“Horrible,” Richardo said.
“Valdrin Castamir?” Cerriana, coming downstairs a pace behind them, asked. “What has he done to so anger King Rakhal?”
“He gave shelter to Carolin as he fled to safety,” Varzil said. “And Rakhal, who had been as a brother to him, could not abide that act of loyalty.”
“Don’t let Barak hear you say such things!” Marella said.
“Barak may hear whatever I say,” Varzil said quietly. “Carolin is the rightful King of Hastur, no matter how many castles Rakhal destroys. If there were any remaining doubt of Rakhal’s fitness to rule, his actions have proven him a scoundrel and a tyrant.”
“No man dares say so aloud,” Richardo said, “lest he suffer the same fate as Lord Castamir. Rakhal may be ruthless, but he’s not stupid. The people he used as examples to others were chosen carefully. Keeper or not, you would be wise to keep your opinions to yourself, Varzil. Not even the walls of Arilinn will shield you, should King Rakhal decide to put an end to your accusations.”
“What are you saying, Richardo?” Cerriana cried. Two spots of hectic color rose to her pale cheeks. “Neither Rakhal nor any other Hastur lord has power here!”
“I say simply that we live in a world in which it is better not to interfere in the doings of kings, lest we suffer the same fate as Tramontana and Neskaya!”
Varzil straightened. “Ah, but Tramontana has been rebuilt and Neskaya may yet be, if Carolin Hastur regains his throne.”
“Richardo is right,” Marella said, shaking her head so that her curls trembled. “It is none of our concern who rules at Hali, so long as we at Arilinn are left alone. Our continued safety lies in keeping to our own affairs.”
“Silence will not bring about justice,” Varzil said.
“You are a fool, Varzil Ridenow,” came a voice from the far end of the room. “And it is only because of your Keeper’s skill that you have a place among us.” Face dusky, brows furrowed, Barak strode across the room. “Arilinn must remain apart from the affairs of kings! We take no position on any of these events, none! You have made your opinions clear. Every time we are asked to make clingfire, we go through another round of debates with you! Do you think your red robe will exempt you from the consequences of your rash words? We may not live in the greater world, but we are as subject to its laws as any other men!”
Varzil, who had risen to his feet at the entrance of the senior Keeper, bowed his head. He should have known better than to let himself be drawn into such a debate. Though he regretted nothing of what he had said, he now saw the folly of having spoken so frankly. Barak would not be swayed by argument, but would see any dissenting opinion as a challenge to his authority.
“Perhaps I spoke out of turn,” Varzil said in a low voice. “I can only claim fatigue and concern for my friend Carolin Hastur as an excuse for my lapse in judgment. I hope that at Arilinn we have not come to the point of condemning a man for a few unguarded words rather than actual deeds.”
“I pray that day may never come,” Barak said. His tone was still gruff, but his countenance grew calmer. “No one can accuse you of shirking your full share of work, Varzil. If anything, you take too much upon yourself and this—this misunderstanding is the result.”
“We live in times when much is demanded of us,” Varzil said. Bowing, he excused himself and made his way back to his chambers.
Although Varzil lay upon his bed, breathing deeply into the core of his body, sleep came slowly and with it, dreams of fire in the night.
Felicia listened gravely as Eduin explained he would not be available to work in the circle for the next two or three tendays.
Earlier, Eduin had sought out Loryn Ardais. He’d prepared what he was to say, for he needed a believable reason to absent himself from the laboratory. When the trap sprang shut, he must be elsewhere and beyond suspicion. He composed a series of reasons for transferring to Loryn’s circle. It wasn’t difficult to convince Loryn of Eduin’s eagerness to work with him.
“But surely you must want to be part of the trial of the device, after you spent so much time on its design and construction.” Felicia’s eyes were puzzled. For a single heartbeat, her skin paled.
She recovered smoothly, moving into a gracious statement of thanks for his contributions. “I hope you will be able to rejoin my circle before long,” she said.
Let her take some small measure of comfort from the pretense that she was a Keeper, Eduin thought as he watched her retreating back. She had not yet earned the right to wear the crimson robe. And now she never would.
On the third night with yet no word from Hestral about Felicia’s experiment, Varzil’s composure wavered. He could not think of any happy reason for her silence. The relays operated on their regular schedule with other news. Carolin Hastur had not yet been captured, and every day brought some new rumor of an army that had gathered around him. There had been food riots in the poorer areas of Thendara, put down after considerable bloodshed by Lyondri’s enforcers.
Vague fears nibbled at his mind, thoughts of what might have happened at Hestral. Was some illness preventing the circle from meeting? Felicia seemed to have made a complete recovery from her lung fever, but he’d heard that sometimes there was residual scarring, leaving a predisposition to future infections.
Had some disaster befallen Hestral, that the Tower had fallen silent? There had been no news of such, but Hestral did not send messages every night, and it might be some time before its absence took on any signific
ance.
Or had Felicia attempted the experiment, and had it gone badly? Was Hestral even now mourning the loss of an entire circle? Varzil felt sure he would know if something had happened to her. When he reached out, he felt the subtle pulse of her presence. She was alive and well.
Varzil attempted to quiet his mind, to practice the detachment and patience that he had worked so hard to master. He knew that the longer he allowed such thoughts to prey upon him, the more frantic and unbalanced he became. He told himself he was a grown man, a trained laranzu, and not some lovesick boy.
Meditation eased his anxiety, but only for a time. Instead of resting, he paced the hallways until Lunilla ordered him out of doors. He put on ordinary clothing and went down into the city as he used to do in his first years. Arilinn was yet untouched by the turmoil racking Hastur lands, although fear ran like a barely-felt rumble beneath every conversation. Varzil bought some fruit at the market and wandered by the shops. Fine cloth, knives with jewel-set handles, bridles of tooled leather, even carpets from the legendary Ardcarran looms passed before his eyes like dust. After a short time, the memory of Carolin rose like a ghostly form just beyond his vision.
Though he had never been gifted with prescience, Varzil shivered. There was more to his feeling of unease than frustrated longing. The brightness of the day, for it was midafternoon now, only accentuated the feeling that behind the facade of glare and normality, shadows gathered.
“Vai dom?” a voice asked. “Did you wish the head scarf?”
Abruptly Varzil came to himself. He stood at an open-air stall at the far end of the market square, holding a square of tartan suitable for a girl-child. He had no memory of having walked here or any thought as to why this particular garment should have attracted him.
The merchant, an aging man with the slack skin of one who has lost too much weight, too rapidly, watched him with an expectant expression. “No,” Varzil said, replacing the scarf on the table and walking away before the merchant could offer it to him as a gift. He didn’t want to bargain for favors, which was what would surely happen should he accept.
I cannot go on like this, he thought as he headed back to the Tower. Torn between two people I love, one in danger and beyond my help, the other in no trouble that I know. I will only make myself ill and endanger those who rely upon me in the circle.
For the first time he could remember, Varzil did not know what to do or even whom to turn to for help.
37
Days passed, and still there was no word from Felicia. At the insistence of Fidelis, Varzil called a halt to the construction work and forced himself to rest. He was having increasing difficulty sleeping, even with a telepathic damper to reduce the psychic distractions. If Hastur had been at peace, he might have taken a journey to Hali to see Carolin and the lake, and to visit with Dyannis. The exercise of travel and the change in scene would do him good. But Carolin was in exile, fighting for his life as well as his throne. The roads were increasingly unsafe and Arilinn itself was an embattled island.
He sat outside in the garden and here found unexpected solace in the company of the kyrri, the small furred servants who were the only living things other than Comyn to pass the Veil. Ever since the first morning he had woken outside the Arilinn gates, he had had a special fondness and respect for their kind. Now, two or three of them seemed drawn to him, offering their wordless comfort. He knew better than to try to touch them, for their bodies generated electrical currents that could create a nasty shock. Their nearness and the soft chirping noises they made among themselves soothed his frayed nerves.
Nearly a tenday after his last contact with Felicia, Varzil fell into a restless sleep. He dreamed in patches, moments in which he knew that he was searching for someone, or someone was searching for him. He woke, heart pounding, confused and grateful to be in his familiar bed.
Later in the night, he wandered through the Overworld, that strange and formless place where neither time nor distance had any meaning. He saw a Tower racked by lightnings and at first thought it was Hali from the far past, during the Cataclysm. Fire burst from the upper spires, drenching all the land around in twisted orange light. Then he seemed to be standing upon a rise or promontory, looking down upon a castle in flames. His vision took on an eerie doubling, as if he were seeing through the eyes of a sentry bird or another man. The images flickered by too quickly for him to be sure.
Varzil...
It was only a whisper, a breath across his mind.
Carolin? The ephemeral mental touch bore none of his friend’s masculine resonance.
Varzil ... help me ...
The words were faint and distant, sifted across leagues and through the psychic shields of two Towers. He struggled to maintain that state of receptivity, half-dream, half-Overworld. Fear trembled at the borders of his mind. The presence faded.
FELICIA!
Silence answered him.
In desperation, he summoned a mental picture of her as they had last touched across the relays, the tone and texture of her thoughts, the pride and playfulness, the unexpected turn of thought that was as much a part of her as breathing.
She was there and not-there, and with the fleeting contact came a jumble of other images, as if a panel of stained glass had been fractured into a hundred colored shards.
He glimpsed a room, recognizable as a matrix laboratory, though only a portion of it was visible. Another sliver showed two robed laran workers, hands joined, heads bent in concentration —Felicia’s circle?—and yet another revealed an intricately patterned matrix. Power pulsed through the crystalline lattice in blue-white flashes. He saw Felicia’s face bathed in that eerie radiance, as if in truthspell. Her eyes were closed, her countenance one of unearthly calm. Another glimpse showed a young woman, swathed in white, turning toward the giant artificial matrix with an expression of alarm.
Felicia!
He sat bolt upright. The air rang with her name.
“Felicia!”
The ring which she had given him, which never left his finger, erupted into brilliance. For a terrifying moment, Varzil could see nothing, not with his laran senses, not with his physical eyes. Then the light subsided, leaving the room in shadow. Only a dim glow persisted, pulsing gently like the living heart of the gem. It felt warm.
Varzil scrambled to his feet and snatched up the nearest garment, a robe in summerweight gold and green. Barefoot, he raced through corridor and down stairway, taking the steps two at a time.
Gavin! Lerrys! I need you! Varzil sent a mental call to the two strongest technicians in the Tower, with a single mental image of what he wanted to do.
He had never been athletic, and by the time he reached the level of the relay chamber, his breath was rasping through his lungs and he’d broken into a hard sweat.
When he shoved the door open, hands trembling, Cerriana was already rising from her place before the relay screens.
“Varzil! What’s wrong?” Are you ill? Injured?
“It’s Felicia! Something terrible has happened. Cerriana, you must send me through the relays to Hestral Tower.”
“Varzil, I cannot! That hasn’t been done since the Ages of Chaos! We are not nearly strong enough—”
“We have to be strong enough!”
Ah! Gavin is on the way, and Lerrys—And 1. Valentina Aillard stepped through the door. She wore the white robe of a monitor, yet some trick of light, perhaps catching the intense flame color of her hair, tinted the garment red. She looked as fragile as always, slender and pale as a chieri of legend, yet the very air around her vibrated with power, steel and silk rather than oak.
Gavin burst into the room an instant later, with Darriel Alton and Richardo on his heels. “Lerrys caught a backlash earlier tonight. Fidelis dosed him with kirian and he’s sleeping it off. Are we enough?”
Varzil, his eyes still on Valentina, nodded. Darriel and Richardo were both highly competent, schooled in Arilinn’s demanding standards.
“I will tell the f
olk at Hestral to make ready,” Cerriana said.
Using the relay screens as a focus, they placed themselves at equidistant points surrounding Varzil. In an instant, he gathered them into that seamless whole which was a circle. He had worked with all of them before, although less often with Valentina. With the proper training, he realized, she herself could have acted as Keeper of this circle. He wondered if Felicia’s experiment would put an end to the effort to train women as Keepers.
Varzil’s skin tingled with the electrical fields of the workers. Each shimmered like a focal point of swirling power. The screen crackled with energy.
He drew upon the forces surging through the circle and shaped them into a cone of power with himself at the apex. At the same time, he felt an answering resonance in the relay screens hundreds of leagues away, in Hestral Tower. Vision faded as senses overloaded and the reek of ozone filled his nostrils. His awareness of his body drained away, replaced by a flare of energy so bright and potent that for that instant, he seemed to be composed of lightning.
Ice shuddered through him. He gasped, but his lungs drew in no air. A piercing crack and jolt of sound tossed him like a broken doll. It faded to a vast singing silence.
Nausea swept through him and suddenly he had a body again and was kneeling on a stone floor.
“Varzil? Varzil of Arilinn?”
A woman bent over him, the monitor he had glimpsed from Felicia’s shattered telepathic communication. He opened his mouth to reply, sucked in air. The room turned gray and cold around the edges. He tried to rise, but found he had barely the strength to hold up his head.
“It’s all right,” she said, and introduced herself as Oranna MacLean. “The energy drain of traveling through the relays is extreme, but there is nothing wrong with you that food and rest cannot cure. I have studied the procedure in the records.”
As he followed her gaze, he saw more of the room. He recognized it as a relay chamber very much like the one he had left, yet with the differences of architecture, the placement of the screens, the minor ornamental touches, which assured him that he was no longer at Arilinn. The workers who had gathered around him, masking their curiosity under a discreet distance, were strangers.