Varzil hurried after Loryn and a hastily assembled circle. He had not worked with these people before, excepting Eduin, and that had been many years ago at Arilinn.
They used the laboratory which had been Felicia‘s, for it overlooked the road leading from the village. The chamber had been cleaned and the worktable replaced so that no trace of the ruined matrix remained. Sweet herbs freshened the air and the residue of a cleansing spell still hung about the corners.
Loryn did not so much gather up the separate minds of his circle as open a space between them. Varzil found himself gazing into a well of clear light. It reflected the faces of the men and women of the circle, not as they appeared in the flesh, but with a timeless sense of presence.
Look, Loryn’s mental voice resonated like the slow sweet tolling of an immense bell. Look there.
Varzil gazed into the chasm of light, and for an instant saw only a swirling of clouds. This quickly dissipated and in the clear space, he seemed to be everywhere at once. He saw the Hastur soldiers rushing the gates and felt the energon flows of the matrix locks rise and tighten at the approach of steel weapons. Drawn swords flashed into shafts of brilliance, as if catching the glare of the sun. Light and heat, as intense as any smithy’s fire, burst from blade and spear point. A dozen or more blazed as if ignited from within.
The foremost soldiers hurled their weapons to the ground. A few fell to their knees, clutching their hands, while behind them, others hesitated, glancing from their wounded comrades to the Tower before them.
Sorcery ... The whispers spread through the ranks.
“Forward! Attack!” screamed the captain.
Horns blared. A few of the men who had dropped their weapons turned and ran, but most of them held their ground. The bravest formed a wedge and hurled themselves bodily against the gates. At the first touch, the gates turned as hard as rock. Matrix-spelled, the wood could not be split by any ax or bent beneath any weight. With that preternatural clarity of vision, Varzil saw the forces binding each fiber glowing blue.
The harder they press the gates, the more unyielding the resistance. The vigor of their attack supplies the energy for the defense.
At the same time, Varzil realized the walls were of ordinary stone. They had been masterfully placed, but the passing centuries had weathered the rock and cracked the mortar. No spells bound them together. They could not withstand a determined laran assault.
The walls! he cried.
Watch, Loryn answered.
Smoothly, Loryn directed the linked minds of the circle into a river of power that flowed over the old fortress. In the clear light of their united minds, the walls now glowed faintly blue.
The Hastur men retreated from the gates. Many of the foremost had thrown down their swords and knives during the first onslaught. Some reached down with visible hesitancy, and then gathered up the weapons.
Loryn made no attempt to launch a counterattack, although the enemy was clearly demoralized and vulnerable. He allowed the soldiers to retreat back to the village.
Eduin scrambled to his feet, hands curling into fists. “Are we going to sit up here, doing nothing but deflecting one attack after another? Those filthy ombredin will not stop there. You know what will come next—fields and crops set ablaze, starvation next winter, hostages taken and executed, Zandru knows what other outrages.”
“They will do these things whether we retaliate or not,” Loryn said. “We cannot stop them by giving in.”
“We must. Loryn, surely you see that! We can do far more than simply stand against them. We have the laran power to smash that army and send the Hastur captain running back to Thendara with his tail between his legs like a craven dog!”
Loryn shook his head. “Eduin, have you learned nothing in your time among us? I know very well what you mean to do, and it is not to shower those men with flower petals. If we use our laran against them, we may indeed prevail for a few days or even weeks. Sooner or later, they will come against us with a force we cannot match, whether laran or some terrible machine of war. We may not rain down clingfire or bonewater dust upon them, but that will not prevent them from doing the same, or worse, to us. Instead, let us keep this battle small and insignificant. Our best hope lies in persuading them that we have nothing they want.”
Varzil did not think Rakhal Hastur would be swayed by this reasoning. A mouse might escape the notice of a hunting banshee by making itself very small, but only for a time. Sooner or later, the carnivorous bird would scent its prey and strike. So, too, would the men outside.
Eduin’s posture clearly expressed his opinion that Loryn was a fool, but he had the sense not to say it. Tight-jawed, he excused himself and stalked from the room.
Varzil watched him go. Eduin’s words filled him with apprehension. “He was ambitious when we trained together at Arilinn,” he commented to Loryn, once they were alone in the chamber, “and I fear his disappointments and my own advancement have festered in his mind. He so clearly expected to be selected as Keeper, for he certainly has the innate strength.”
“Eduin, like each of us, must find his own way. As for the other, you are right. He has powerful Gifts. I think eventually he might make a Keeper, but I have never seen in him that sympathy of mind to bring together the disparate personalities in a circle and make of them a single, harmonious whole. In another man, one less talented, I might say the fault lies in his own nature, but Eduin ... there is something, some part of himself which he keeps apart and hidden. Yet,” he continued, “Eduin has served Hestral well. His loyalty is above question.”
“You have created a Tower of individuals who follow the dictates of their own conscience,” Varzil said, “and now it is too late to instill blind obedience.”
“I believe you are right,” Loryn replied. “Even if I had known what would happen, I would not have chosen otherwise.” A smile, like summer sun on water, flickered across his weary features. He took Varzil’s proffered arm and leaned upon it, though such close physical touch was not the custom of telepaths. “Do you think our brothers down below have chosen this day’s work as freely as we have?”
“I suspect few of them are here of their own accord,” Varzil agreed, “but only by the command of their masters. And that is both their strength and their weakness.”
“Yes, exactly so. Should we do as Eduin suggests and rain down destruction upon them because they are too loyal or too frightened to rebel against their lawful masters?”
“You already know my answer,” Varzil replied.
“Ah yes, Varzil the idealist.”
Loryn moved toward the door. “Now I must finish this day’s business. You should rest as well, for we will need all our strength against whatever they throw at us tomorrow.
42
Mounted men rushed the gates of Hestral Tower in volleys, only to be repulsed. They had learned from their earlier failures, for this time few of them carried metal weapons. Instead, they brought up a battering ram, a solid old tree from along the river, many of its branches still intact.
Crash! Crash!
Varzil joined the circle to reinforce the gates. Hour after hour passed as the thumping and pounding reverberated throughout the Tower. The men below worked in relays, so that as each group tired, another came to take their place. They broke off only as the light faded from the sky.
No sooner had Varzil eaten the food laid out for him in the commons hall and returned to his chamber, aching with weariness in every joint, than a cry went out from the watchers posted high in the Tower. The attack had resumed.
The three leronyn in Lyondri’s army came forward, barely discernible in the gathering dusk. They gathered together near the base of the hill, well out of reach of any physical coun terassault, and spun their own circle. To Varzil, on watch, it had the semblance of a spider’s web.
And they will have as little power over us as the silk they spin, came Serena’s mental voice.
Varzil was not so sure. What did any of them truly know of laran
warfare, which pitted one Tower against another, save for ballad and whispered tale? The Peace of Allart Hastur brought a time in which those horrors were all but forgotten.
The spells came snaking up the hill like threads of darkness. Moment by moment, they gathered substance. They darted at the walls, as if seeking to insinuate their slender tips between the particles of mortar and enter through the very pores of the stone.
With every contact, Varzil felt the glitter of clashing energies as the laran shields held. The blue glow intensified. He bent all his trained power to the pattern that Loryn had set into the walls below.
Hold... hold ... hold... pulsed through the circle, each syllable a separate heartbeat. Varzil had no other thought than the energon flows binding each mote of stone and mortar. In his mind, he saw the walls as a patterning of elemental forces.
Hours slipped away in a numbing trance. From time to time, he became aware of the touch of Oranna’s mind as she monitored the condition of his body. It was a flicker only, for he had long ago learned the proper posture and breathing for strenuous laran work. All she could do was ease and support, for there was no question of dissolving the bonds that unified them. The Hestral circle dared not falter. Any break in their concentration might give the leronyn below the opening they needed. They could only endure and hold fast until the psychic battering ceased.
Eventually, in the darkest hours, Varzil felt an emptiness in place of the relentless pressure of the Hastur circle.
Loryn dissolved the circle. One of the workers gasped for air before collapsing forward on the table. Oranna rushed to his side. Her face, too, was so pale as to appear bloodless. Numb and drained, Varzil made his way to his chamber, where he fell across his bed, still in his working robes.
That afternoon, Varzil was heading down to the kitchen when he heard voices, hushed and tense, below him. The speakers were hidden by the curve of the stairs, their voices echoing in the tall open space.
“With every word, you disprove your own argument,” Loryn whispered.
Varzil turned to go back upstairs. There could be only one person Loryn would speak to in that way.
“Never mind about me! When are you going to do something, instead of sitting here like a pile of laundry. passively deflecting whatever devilry they think of?” Eduin demanded, his words now rising with each phrase. “Can’t you see that only encourages them to escalate the attack?”
“I have said there will be no more discussion of this. Dissension only aids our enemies by setting us against one another. If you cannot accept this, then I will arrange for you to leave Hestral under truce or else confine you to solitary meditation.”
“No!” Eduin’s breath came audibly, bordering on a sob. “I want to fight the Hasturs!”
Some sense in Varzil came alert. Eduin meant more than merely defending the Tower against Rakhal’s arrogant demands. In a moment of unguarded passion, Eduin had phrased it rightly. He passionately wanted to fight Hasturs, but for what reason, Varzil could not guess.
The next morning, a messenger rode up the hill under truce colors and demanded Hestral’s surrender. He returned without an answer. Then the soldiers arrived in their formation and began the day’s attack. That night, the three workers from Hali tried different spells upon the gates, all with as little success as before. Both sides seemed to be settling into a pattern.
The coridom had asked Loryn’s permission to return to his family and Loryn agreed, sending the man out under a banner of neutrality. One of the Hastur guards met with him and, after a few words, attacked the old man with the flat of his sword. The coridom scrambled back up the hill, panting with terror.
Varzil watched from the tower balcony. He felt the binding upon gate and wall strengthen, even as the coridom slipped through. There would be no second time, if the Hastur captain knew his business.
During a brief respite, Loryn organized the Hestral workers into two circles, the second one under Varzil, and a group of watchers. This way, everyone might rest while the Tower maintained a continuous guard. The whispered wisdom was that as long as Hestral stayed on the alert, there was nothing the besiegers could do.
Varzil stretched his aching body on his bed and folded his hands across his chest. The posture, one he had used hundreds of times for deep meditation, triggered relaxation. He tensed every part of his body and then, using his breath and energon control, released it. His heartbeat slowed and each inhalation brought a flood of oxygen to his cells. A tide of cleansing energy rose and fell, from the center of his diaphragm to the tips of his fingers and toes. His thoughts quieted.
With deliberate intent, he extended his consciousness deeper. Originally, he had practiced the technique to drop into rapport with another worker. Now he shaped his focus, keeping his mind receptive. He felt the wood and leather of his bed, still humming with life, and below them the carpet ... the stone floor ... the swirling air beyond the outer walls ... the singing joy of the river ... the fields like cradles of life, teeming with roots and stalks and many-legged creatures ... and finally to the far mountains, reaching like monks in prayer to the arching heavens. With each breath, he gathered them into himself, he felt their strength and stillness fill his energon channels and then recede.
Something pulsed nearby, bright and warm. A strangely familiar perfume suffused him. He thought of an arpeggio played on a rryl, of sun dappling spring leaves. Sweetness rose in him, answering, as if his own heart were a bell lightly tapped.
Felicia.
Though his body did not move, his mind shifted toward the ring on his hand. Her wordless presence answered him. One way or another, the siege would be resolved, the realm would pass from one liege to the next, and yet the mountains would endure, spring would come again in its proper time, lovers would find joy in each other’s arms, babies would cry aloud in delight
And this, he thought as he rose from the depth of his healing trance, this we will have forever.
Dusk blotted light from the sky. In the preternatural vision of the circle, Varzil, working as its Keeper, saw the fires that sprouted from the main buildings of the village. A group of villagers stood in the marketplace. Their cries rose toward the smoking heavens. Women clutched their young children tightly against their skirts, while their men muttered curses and clenched fists or hidden knives, but made no overt move against the armed and mounted men. One villager, a stout, bearded man with massive shoulders, shouted for a fire brigade. The Hastur captain struck him with a sword and he lay unmoving on the shadowed field.
“So much for your precious Tower!” the captain growled. “Did you think they’d protect you? They shut themselves up like cowards while your homes are burning! Where are they? Why do they not come to your aid?”
The next instant, fractured lightning shot through the Hestral circle. Rage surged up in Eduin; the chamber reeled with it. Someone cried out—Marius Rockraven. Varzil, in centripolar position, took the brunt of the energon flare. Oranna smoothed over the shock, her mental touch like balm over his nerves. He felt the circle grow clear and steady once more.
The village burned like a torch against the night. The terror of the villagers rippled through the darkness like invisible smoke.
Varzil stretched out his mind. Up the river, he sensed a buildup of moisture, a tension between earth and sky.
Marius? Can you feel the rain clouds?
The boy’s awareness unfolded like a fisher’s net. Yes ... It is not a storm yet, but if the winds shift like this—a series of images which Varzil felt as layers of color and heat—it will be.
Marius, you must bring the rain here.
The boy’s reflexive shudder rippled through the circle, but the unity held.
—not without the matrix—I can’t I’ll ruin everything—
Varzil caught bits of frantic thought, and with the same deliberate care he had used to break down the clingfire, he separated out each particle of fear.
You can do this, Marius. You were born with the strength and tal
ent for it. See how naturally your mind reaches out to the weather currents. Trust your instincts instead of trying to control them. Let your senses guide you.
But I don’t know how!
This is not a thing you need to know, only to feel.
Under Varzil’s words, Marius grew calmer, The patterns of his mind changed from a gossamer net, barely solid enough to hold the gentlest breeze, to a silken tapestry, supple and light but impenetrable. Varzil anchored him as he spread wider and higher. The clouds had not yet formed completely, moisture-laden air with only the potential to condense. Marius wove his mind through the layers, tapping into the temperature and electrical potentials.
Don’t think about what you’re doing ... Varzil said. Just feel it ... You don’t have to control the clouds, only give them direction.
Thunder rumbled beyond any human ears, a shivering in the air, a tinge of ozone. Clouds piled one on the other, growing rapidly in size and speed as they responded to the laran forces. Varzil, and the circle with him, rode the currents, felt the gathering power.
Now the burning village came into view. Already, the roofs and upper stories of the headman’s house and the larger craft halls were gone and their beams burned with a deep steady blaze. Adjacent buildings made a smear of brilliance against the night. Brightness answered from deep within the clouds, jagged explosions of lightning. Faces turned upward, ovals of paleness reflecting orange flame.
Anger pulsed once more from Eduin and his thoughts rang out, Hit them with the lightning! Kill them all!
No ... Smoothly, firmly, Varzil directed the interwoven laran forces with his own will. He sent Marius an image of water running free.
Just let go. Let the clouds do their work.
The next instant, rain began to fall. Smoke billowed from the burning buildings. Men cried out, in joy and in alarm. In the Hastur camp, the leronyn desperately tried to summon a wind to dissipate the storm.