Still the rain came, no longer sweet and gentle, but harder with every passing moment. The storm took on a life of its own, and it seemed that every effort of the Hastur circle to divert the clouds only aroused them to greater fury. The artificially summoned winds lashed the rain, driving it against the smoldering buildings. The soldiers rushed for cover, leaving the villagers to fend for themselves. The swollen river lapped its banks.
Smoke still rose from scattered pinpoint sources as the last remaining fire succumbed to the rain. The square was transformed into a field of beaten mud. The winds subsided, leaving the rain to fall like a misty veil.
Marius freed the storm to go where it would, where the natural forces of air and temperature took it. Eventually, it would run its course, but for the moment, it seemed caught between hill and river.
Only then did Varzil release the circle. His hands trembled as he ran them through his hair, an old gesture he used to gather his composure. Across the table, one of the women drew a sobbing breath.
The rain fell, lightening steadily, for three more days, during which the Hasturs made no attempt to attack again. Hestral Tower used the respite to rest. Villagers began moving to outlying farms, their belongings piled on carts or packs. Even the youngest child trudged along under a heavy burden. Serena, following them on the matrix screens, reported the theft of food, horses, and cattle. The Hastur army wasn’t going to give up easily; they were clearly settling in for a long siege.
43
A tenday later, Varzil was sitting in the common room, lingering over a mug of jaco laced with powdered roasted blackroot. Serena, who had taken the last relay shift of the night, crossed to the sideboard and poured herself a mug. Settling herself in a chair beside Varzil, she sniffed and wrinkled her nose.
“Ugh. Blackroot. I hate blackroot.”
Varzil grinned and indicated his own half-full mug. “So do I. In a few more days, it’ll be just blackroot if we want anything hot to drink. Either that, or some herbal concoction which is even worse.” He paused. “Any word from Hali Tower?”
Serena shook her head. She looked younger than her years, with bruise-colored circles beneath her eyes. “They haven’t formally broken off contact, they just say they have no messages, nor will they receive any. I suppose it’s to be expected. How could they remain apart from this—” She gestured toward the window overlooking the fields where the Hastur forces were encamped. Unless they mean to defy the Hastur King, as Tramontana did.
“Any word on my inquiry?” he asked. “The records?”
“No, but I do not think they would keep that sort of information from you. It may well be that it does not exist, or has been lost over the years.”
Varzil ran the fingers of one hand over Felicia’s ring in what had now become an unconscious habit.
If there is any way to restore her...
Varzil, there’s movement down below, came the mental voice of Marius, on watch that morning.
Varzil went to the window. The Hastur soldiers had indeed begun to gather at the base of the hill. As yet, there was no sign of impending attack. The men were not even in formation. The rain had barely ceased, and the ground was still muddy. If they charged, it would be uphill and on uncertain footing, highly vulnerable. No wonder the captain was cautious.
It was time to form the circle that would keep Hestral safe for another day. Varzil took one last bite of nutbread and headed for the chamber that by now had become like a second home to him. He sent a telepathic signal to the other members of his circle to meet there.
Something was subtly wrong, for the leronyn he summoned were already enmeshed in some kind of circle, along with others who normally worked with Loryn.
Halfway up the stairs, Varzil felt the screams from the fields below, even though he could not hear them. The sensation of gut-clawing cold struck him, so sudden and intense it was almost a physical blow. It was as if a thousand fevered nightmares had been condensed into one horrific vision and then hurled like a projectile. He staggered and caught his balance against the wall. His fingers scraped against the stone hard enough to draw blood. The pain brought him back to his own body.
He had caught only the edge of a powerful fear spell, and then only because his thoughts had been open, his barriers lowered. It had not been aimed at him.
Who, then?
Varzil spread his laran senses outside the Tower walls and down the hill to where he had last seen the Hastur men. With his inner eye he saw them now, staggering or lying curled on the ground, racing here and there, struggling with one another. Though he could not hear them, their mouths stretched in howls of agony. One man had clawed out his own eyes, leaving bloody sockets. Another had drawn his sword and was hacking away at his leg. Blood spurted from the arm of another where he had already severed his wrist with a battle ax.
Confusion rose like a dreadful miasma from the field. The very air, through his psychic senses, seethed with panic, with the stench of terror too great to bear. These men were not cowards, but seasoned veterans. Yet the bravest of them could barely keep his feet.
Blood drenched the soft wet earth, mixed with other things. Two men, officers by their helmets, had taken their swords to their own bellies and lay writhing in the blue-gray ropes of their intestines.
The Hastur soldiers struggled as if blinded or bewitched by things that were not there. In flashes, as if his own vision were illuminated by mental lightning, Varzil saw what they did. Demons straight from Zandru’s hells, blue with cold, clung to the bodies of the men. The demons were as varied as nightmares, horned and many-legged, some with forked tongues as thick as a man’s wrist, others with seven eyes or scorpions’ tails, the claws of a cloud leopard or the hideous hooked beak of a banshee. Many held whips or hammers with which they beat at the men or bound them, sinking fangs deep into flesh.
Illusion, all of it. Something—someone—had roused the deepest childhood terror of each man’s mind and brought it into searing form.
Pity swept through Varzil. He had had his own share of frightening dreams as a boy. But he had always known they were dreams and that soon he would awaken.
Blessed Cassilda, who has done this?
His own guts turned cold as Varzil realized he would find the answer aloft in the Tower. He climbed a stair and then another. It seemed to him that everything which had gone before in his life had been easy, whether it had been running away that first night he came to Arilinn or facing the catmen in their caves or even what he had witnessed at the bottom of Hali Lake. Those times had been frightening and difficult, but he had had no choice. Fate had brought him to them and it had never occurred to him to run away.
All he had to do was close his mind and retreat back down the stairs. Eduin’s circle would do its work. One by one, the Hastur men would fall prey to their own madness until nothing remained of the army. Word would speed back to Rakhal that Hestral Tower was not to be trifled with.
And men would die, those who still fought for life, helpless against the spells that bound their minds. Pain and death would be the price of Hestral’s freedom.
He had stayed at Hestral, rather than retreat to Arilinn under the safety of his neutrality, because of his oath to oppose any abuse of laran. Whether that came from Dalereuth’s illegal clingfire laboratories or from the leronyn below or from within Hestral itself made no difference.
He climbed.
They were very much as he expected to find them, a rough circle with Eduin seated in the Keeper’s position and four others, all strong men. No white-robed monitor sat to the side, ensuring their health. Eduin’s face was a mask of concentration and black triumph.
Varzil paused on the threshold to steel himself for what he must do. From his very first days at Arilinn, he had been taught the sanctity of the circle. Once joined, their very sanity was given over to the hands of their Keeper. He was the sole director of their combined mental and physical concentration. There could not be two Keepers in one circle, which is why he had subord
inated himself so completely to Loryn’s command when they first mounted the defense of Hestral.
Nor could a circle be lightly broken. Even with a monitor, it was dangerous to disturb the convergence of laran energies. Too abrupt a dissolution, and nerves could misfire, causing seizures and worse, hearts could stop completely or beat in such an uncoordinated manner that death would surely follow. Energon channels, which carried both sexual and psychic energy, could overload. The backlash could sweep the circle, affecting every member. Varzil had heard of one such case where all that was left of the unfortunate leronis was a charred husk. When he had first heard the tale back at Arilinn, he had thought it an exaggeration, a teaching story, but he did not think so now.
Eduin was a strong telepath, skilled enough to focus and direct the laran of a circle, even an improvised one like this. Only a Keeper, or someone with that potential, could create the nightmare illusions in so many men below.
Pity rose up in Varzil, mixed with loathing of the waste of such talent. He did not know why Eduin had never been selected for Keeper training, first at Arilinn and now here at Hestral, this most experimental of Towers. Whatever chance Eduin might have had, he had now thrown it away. No Tower would train a man who had proven himself so reckless, so willful, so defiant of every principle of circle discipline.
If Eduin were the only one involved, Varzil would have jarred him out of his trance, even if it meant seizing Eduin’s starstone with his bare hands. He knew the risk of serious, even fatal consequences. Carolin had almost died that way, that winter at Hali.
Eduin had been there....
Fury surged through Varzil. He had suspected Eduin then, but had no proof. Carolin, in his firm belief in the goodness of other men, had defended Eduin. But Carolin had been wrong about his cousin Rakhal, too.
The others in Eduin’s circle, men who believed they were protecting Hestral Tower, they did not deserve such a fate.
Instead of intruding upon the circle, Varzil took a moment to calm himself and focus his own thoughts. He knew Eduin’s psychic signature all too well, from the long hours they had worked together at Arilinn. Eduin had developed over the years, grown stronger and brasher, but he could not change the basic pattern of his mind. Varzil attuned his own laran energies and slipped into rapport with the circle.
No one had noticed his approach, but that was not unusual for the degree of concentration involved. He felt not a ripple of response, only a slight intensification of Eduin’s exhilaration. With the addition of Varzil’s mental power, Eduin’s emotions veered toward euphoria.
It is ill done to take joy in onother man’s destruction.
Eduin’s attention turned then from the bloody field below to Varzil’s presence within his own circle. Before he could react, Varzil struck, jamming the energy connections that bound Eduin to the others. As neatly as a boning knife slipped beneath the skin of a felled deer, he inserted himself into the circle as Keeper and shoved Eduin out.
Eduin’s cry echoed in the chamber like the ring of iron on stone. As quickly as he could, taking care for the safety of the other leronyn, Varzil dissolved the circle. One by one, they opened their eyes, stretched taut shoulders, looked around.
“Varzil! What—”
Varzil moved swiftly to the table, where Eduin slumped over, graceless and unmoving as a corpse. He knew from the light rapport that remained between them that Eduin was not dead, only deeply unconscious.
“By Aldones’ Holy Light! What happened?”
Varzil straightened up, drawing all the authority of a Keeper about him. “What you have done here violates our most sacred oaths. You have used your powers to enter the minds of other men with deliberate malice. Why not burn down the gates and issue a formal invitation to Rakhal’s men while you are at it? Today you have done far more to destroy this Tower and everything it stands for than to defend it.”
“We thought—Eduin said—” one of the men stammered. At Varzil’s words, his face went ashen with shock.
“We have no time for excuses now,” Varzil cut him off. “There is no telling what may come of this, but we must be prepared. You—and you—carry Eduin to his chambers. You—fetch a telepathic damper.”
“He already has one,” the man said, visibly miserable. “He needed it—he claimed he needed it for his privacy.”
“Did he, now? How very convenient.” Varzil heard the venom in his own voice. If he gave into anger and vengeful-ness, then what would become of justice?
An invisible shadow passed over him, a shadow of light instead of darkness, and it seemed to lift him out of himself. For a moment, his human frailties receded and he saw himself as the origin of that light, casting it from one end of Darkover to the other, a beacon in the darkness, a name on men’s lips stretching into the unimaginable future.
The pulse of radiance faded, leaving a sense of wordless compassion. Varzil moved to Eduin’s side and laid one hand on his forehead. The gesture was part comfort, part diagnosis, part blessing.
The poor benighted fool. We may never know what drove him to throw away all that potential, all that brilliant talent. May Aldones grant him peace, for the human world is not likely to.
“Carry him gently, and stand guard over him that he may not do himself any harm,” Varzil told the others. “I will confer with Loryn about what is to be done next.”
One of the men picked up Eduin’s arm and draped it across his shoulders. “And us, vai dom? What about us?”
Varzil suspected they would devise their own punishments, far more severe than anything he or Loryn would impose.
Below the Tower, the muddied road and fields lay quiet except for the soldiers carrying away their dead or maimed comrades. The Hastur leronyn moved about them, using their powers to ease the worst. Some of the remaining villagers came out to help, but under no discernible coercion.
The sky clouded over later that day and then it began to rain. There was almost no wind and the rain, falling straight as the Arilinn Veil, was surprisingly warm. Varzil thought the heavens themselves wept for what had been done, and then as quickly dismissed the idea as self-indulgent fancy. Or perhaps guilt, because he had suspected Eduin, he had seen every indication that Eduin might try something desperate and foolish, and yet had done nothing to prevent it. He had left the matter to Loryn, which was correct according to Tower etiquette, but did not absolve him of the responsibility.
He would see justice done by Eduin, though he did not know what form it might take.
In the Keeper’s private chambers, Varzil listened to the testimony of the other workers in Eduin’s circle. They entered one by one, shamed and chastened, with varying degrees of defiance. The watery gray light made the room seem colder than it really was. Loryn himself sat immobile, leaving Varzil to ask the questions.
“I thought—this siege will go on and they will sit there, slowly draining our strength while we starve,” one man said. “All the while our friends in the village lose their homes, their crops, who knows what else. I thought Eduin had the right of it.”
Loryn did not answer, either aloud or in his thoughts. He looked gray, on the edge of shock, an exhaustion of spirit as well as flesh. His shoulders sagged.
“We had the power to destroy them,” the man went on, his words tumbling one over the other but with an odd cadence which told Varzil these were not his own, but Eduin’s. “Why not use that power? Why not make the price of aggression too high for even a madman like Rakhal?”
“Those men down there did not choose that fate,” Varzil pointed out. “They are ordinary soldiers who fight with sword and spear and they were following the commands of those they had sworn to obey. What defenses had they against an attack on their very minds? You, on the other hand, decided they should die in terror. Do you take upon yourself the prerogatives of a god? Have those men somehow turned into beasts you may slaughter as you will?”
Although Varzil spoke mildly, the man’s certainty crumbled. “I—I am no such monster. I thought i
t was the right thing to do. Eduin was so persuasive, so sure. He said that since we have the power to stand against tyranny, we must use it.”
“Is Eduin the keeper of your conscience?” Varzil demanded.
For a stunned moment, the man stared at him. “Who, then, am I supposed to believe?”
Who, indeed? Varzil asked himself. A Keeper too weak to instill proper discipline? A usurper king bent on only his own lust for power?
The Compact, if it ever came into reality, would be only a beginning, a single underlying point of honor between all men. The Towers themselves needed more, because they wielded so much greater potential for discord and destruction. Varzil did not know what form that might take—a league of Keepers, a codification of ethics and tradition. Something must be worked out, or Darkover would descend from instability into chaos.
Nothing in this world is certain but death and next winter’s snows, went the old saying. Add to that, Varzil thought, the propensity of men to abuse however much power they had.
When they had finished, all but one truly regretted what he had done. Varzil suggested to Loryn that he be removed from work and, when the fighting was over, be sent to Arilinn or Hali for better training. The man accepted the judgment with surprising good grace, as if he realized that this was his only chance to continue in a legitimate Tower.
Serena tapped on the door. “Eduin’s waiting if you’re ready for him.”
“Let him come,” Loryn said.
Eduin walked in and, with a nod to Loryn, sat in the chair in the center of the chamber. Though his laran barriers were tightly raised, Varzil sensed the waves of fury resonating through his mind.
I had them! I would have won the day, but for that interfering, sanctimonious Varzil! And now he is to sit in judgment of me. Insufferable!
“Eduin,” Loryn began in a heavy, slow voice, “you have committed a grave offense against both this Tower and the principles of human decency.”
Eduin’s chin jerked up. “I am not the offender, as well you know. It is Rakhal Hastur and his wolves—although that is an insult to the wolves—who generated the present crisis. I—we—were not the ones to initiate this violence, but we will be the ones to end it. That is, if we are not crippled by those with their own private grievances to pursue.” He glared at Varzil.