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  “Children do not address a Keeper of Arilinn Tower in that manner!” Lunilla gasped. The green-robed man scowled, but Auster bent to look at Varzil even more carefully with those intense blue eyes.

  “No, it’s all right,” said Auster. “He has spoken like a man, so he deserves a man’s answer. Young Ridenow, you have undeniable talent, but you have also come here, by your own admission, without your father’s permission and against his wishes. We are not prepared to offer you a place here under those circumstances. In these troubled times, it is not a simple matter of accepting anyone with laran. We of the Towers must do everything we can to hold ourselves apart from the greater events of the world.”

  With a sinking heart, Varzil realized that he’d guessed rightly. His admission to Arilinn Tower involved much more than his own desires and abilities. Nothing he could say now would change that fact.

  “You seem untroubled by the illnesses which so often accompany the awakening of laran,” the white-robed monitor said, “so there is no compassionate need for training to save your life or sanity, no emergency which might justify overriding your father’s wishes. The training you have already received from your family leronis should suffice.”

  Auster rose, signaling that the interview was over. Stunned, Varzil stood as the leronyn left the room, all except the white-robed man. He gestured Varzil to follow him. They retraced their steps, descending in the strange matrix-powered chute as before, guided by ritual hand motions.

  In parting, the monitor spoke to Varzil in a kindly tone. “It has been a pleasure to breakfast with you. With the blessing of the gods, you will prosper, sire many sons, and be a credit to your family.”

  But the waste of talent—Abruptly, the man’s mental barriers slammed shut.

  Regardless of his private feelings, the laranzu would never speak out against his Keeper’s verdict.

  Varzil thought wildly that in another moment, he would be gone from the Tower. He must find a way back. There was so much he wanted to ask, wanted to know! Words clogged his throat as the seconds slipped by. He found himself standing at the entrance to Arilinn Tower with morning sun filling the streets of the city. When he turned back, the gate had closed.

  2

  From his turret window, Carolin Hastur, called Carlo after his boyhood nickname, watched the strange boy standing outside the gates of Arilinn. Fists clenched at his sides, back rigid, the boy drew in one heaving breath after another. Carolin himself did not have a vocation in Tower work, but he could recognize it in others. Never before had he seen such passion, such intensity as in that slender form below.

  Carolin had only a modest amount of laran and no particular interest in closeting himself inside a Tower. He was here for a short time only, for his destiny had been fixed on the day of his birth. He’d been sent to Arilinn last spring, at the age of seventeen, as part of the training suitable for a young man of his caste.

  Looking down at the boy below, seeing the bony shoulders rise and fall, the tension in each muscle, Carolin could well believe the boy was born to the Tower, even as he, Carolin, was born to the throne. He remembered how the boy had spoken to the kyrri, not only in words, but with a gentle mental touch that even Carolin could sense.

  Had he been turned away summarily? Any prospective student applying to the Tower was given hospitality as he was evaluated. Once or twice in Carolin’s knowledge, the Keepers sent a likely boy to another Tower. Each circle maintained a balance of different skills and gifts.

  The Keeper must have a good reason for what he did, he told himself. And would tell me to keep out of things which are none of my concern. He slumped in the window seat, wishing it were so simple to banish that slender, ardent figure from his thoughts.

  The outer wall of his room was rounded like the turret outside, with a bed built into the single straight wall. Set between the two windows, a rack of hooks held cloaks and ordinary clothing. A small chest of carved blackthorn wood was more than enough room for his few personal possessions. Because he was Hastur, he also had a small heating brazier and a desk. Unlike most of the other novices, he could read and was being tutored in other things a prince must know. He had an aircar at his disposal, a horse stabled below in the town, and many other privileges of his rank.

  A copy of Roald McInery’s Military Tactics lay open on the desk. Carolin strode over and flipped the book closed, impatient with its ponderous style. The material, once he waded through the antiquated language, was interesting enough. McInery wrote sensibly about fortifications, supply lines, and positioning of troops. But he also discussed laran weaponry as a natural and inevitable extension of force of arms. Some of the weapons were unknown to Carolin, but others were all too familiar to a royal heir in these chaotic times. Linked telepathically to their trainers, sentry birds could spy out an army’s position, clingfire could turn man and beast into living torches, relays could send messages faster than horse or aircar, and small circles of leronyn could control the very minds of the enemy.

  Yet even the powerful Towers of Neskaya and Tramontana could not protect themselves from the strife and chaos of the world outside. Drawn into war a generation ago by the command of their respective liege lords, the two Towers had ended by destroying each other. Most of their highly trained and Gifted workers had been killed or mentally crippled.

  No one was sure exactly how it happened, but the ballads suggested that Neskaya had been engaged in the development of a new, fearsome weapon that was accidentally deployed during a crucial confrontation. It was said that deep within the rubble, eerie blue flames still smoldered, feeding on the very substance of the stones.

  Once Carolin had met a survivor of that horrendous battle, a distant Hastur cousin who had been leronis at Tramontana. Old Lady Bronwyn had escaped the worst of the conflagration, but when he asked her about it, she had turned to him with a look of such desolation that his small boy’s heart faltered in his chest. She had not answered; her expression had been enough.

  Stories of how the Towers had been drawn into the war between Hastur and a ruthlessly ambitious neighbor, Deslucido of Ambervale, still circulated in the boys’ dormitories. It was said that the Keeper of Neskaya, in love with a leronis at Tramontana, had sacrificed himself in defiance of his lord’s orders in order to save her, but in vain, for both had gone up in flames. He still didn’t know if that was true, or any of the other tales whispered around the fireplace during the long winter nights, but he wished they were.

  With the defeat of Ambervale and all its conquered provinces, Darkover had achieved only an uneasy peace. A hundred kingdoms still dotted the landscape. Larger ones preyed on the small and then fractured in succession disputes and insurrections. From his earliest boyhood, Carolin had heard the lords of his own family arguing, debating, struggling to restrain the worst abuses of laran weaponry. He remembered his uncle Rafael saying, over and over again, “There must be a way.”

  The ruins of the Towers and the desolation of the Lake of Hali, the result of an ancient disaster known as the Cataclysm, remained as mute witnesses to their failure.

  Carolin snapped out of his reverie. He stood before his own door, fingers brushing the wooden latch, as if he’d been caught in a waking dream. When he returned to his window, the Ridenow boy was gone. Carolin knew, with that atavistic certainty, that they would meet again.

  Carolin made his way down the stairs and across the central room to the smaller chamber where his afternoon session, practicing the basics of monitoring with the other beginning students, met. He caught a snatch of conversation between the older workers as they sat together before the cold fireplace.

  “... Ridenow ...” “... who sent him?...”

  As he crossed the room, the two broke off their conversation. Darkeyed Marella looked up at Carolin and smiled. Only a few years his senior, she had flirted with him at Midsummer Festival, a tenday after he’d arrived at Arilinn. Despite his efforts to behave properly, she’d figured prominently in his dreams for a while. Carolin
knew she was aware of the effect she had on him, for at his grandfather’s court, he’d been the target of many feminine wiles. The combination of youth, good looks, and a crown attracted eligible ladies like a honeycomb attracted scorpion-ants. Only with his kinswoman, Maura Elhalyn, and Jandria, the cousin of his foster-brother Orain, did he feel fully at ease, but they were back at Carcosa.

  Marella’s companion, a slab-faced older man named Richardo, who never seemed to smile at anything, got to his feet. He nodded to Carolin and hurried away. Color rising to her cheeks, Marella followed him, so that Carolin had no chance to ask questions.

  It was just as well. He had been at Arilinn long enough to know that telepaths operated under a different set of social proprieties than ordinary people did. Some kinds of privacy were impossible, such as sexual attraction. Casual physical contact could be as offensive as an outright assault when people lived in such intimacy. Yet no code of Tower etiquette could overcome Carolin’s inborn curiosity. It was a fault he’d long struggled to overcome.

  Although Carolin’s family, the Hasturs of Carcosa, worshiped the Lord of Light, as was proper for the Comyn caste, he had also studied the teachings of the cristoforos. One prayer, in particular, had struck him as appropriate to his own character, Grant me, 0 Bearer of the World’s Burdens, to know what Thou givest me to know ... Sometimes that meant to keep his nose out of affairs which might cause him to lose it, and his entire head as well. At other times, such as this one, the prayer suggested that it was his right and responsibility to find out what was going on, although it did not imply how or when.

  At his uncle’s court, there was hardly a moment when some plot or scheme was not simmering. Political undercurrents were as numerous and changing as motes of dust in the air. Carolin had learned patience and the usefulness of a blankly innocent expression. In due time, he would find out.

  Carolin focused his thoughts on the task at hand, starstone practice with the other beginners. The class took place in a small, airy room that had been pleasant when he arrived at Arilinn in the summer, but now felt drafty. In another month or so, they would all be bundled in outdoor clothing against the chill.

  He took his place around the worktable with the other students, three boys he didn’t know well. Their teacher was Cerriana, an older girl with fiery red hair who had little interest in socializing with boys the age of her baby brother. She worked as a monitor while she continued her own training.

  Valentina, youngest of the novices, was absent, probably because she was ill again. Like many of her family, the Aillards, she was in frail health and had been sent to Arilinn in the hope that, with skilled help, she might survive the turmoil of threshold sickness. Carolin had developed a light case of it himself, a few months of queasiness and quick temper. He’d been told that it was often severe, even life-threatening, in those with exceptional talent. The combination of the awakening of laran and adolescent sexual energy, which were carried by the same energon channels in the body, could create fatal overloads. Fidelis, the senior monitor, had mentioned that rarely, perhaps once or twice in a generation, laran of extraordinary power arose earlier, in childhood, so smoothly and completely there was never any difficulty.

  With her usual methodical care, Cerriana directed the students through the morning’s routine. Together, they took out their starstones and began as usual by simply gazing into them, watching the patterns of blue light.

  Like all the members of his family, Carolin had been given a stone of superior quality, medium-sized but beautifully cut, clear and faintly luminescent. Now as he cupped it in his bare hand, the stone warmed against his skin. His starstone had grown noticeably brighter since his arrival at Arilinn, the flashes of brilliance more intense. Sometimes he sensed the crystalline structure that would focus and amplify his own natural psychic abilities. Cerriana had said that the more he worked with the stone, the more it would become attuned to him.

  After the preliminary exercises, Cerriana brought out a collection of objects—feathers, thin silver coins, small cubes and dowels of wood—and distributed them to the students. Using their starstones, the students were to focus their minds upon the object with the goal of either lifting or sliding it across the table.

  Carolin, as a beginner, was still working with feathers. The task, which had seemed all but impossible when he first attempted it, now began to make sense, although he had not as yet had any luck in producing so much as a quiver in the feather. He’d made the mistake of looking directly at it, as if by sheer force of will he could cause it to rise. Now he gazed at it only long enough to fix its features in his mind, its size and color, the curve of the quill, the curl of the down. Then he looked deep into his starstone, building a mental picture of the feather. He tried to imagine the air beneath it rising like the waves of heat above a summer field.

  The feather quivered, tilted. He sensed tiny currents of air pressing against its weight. This time, he decided to keep his attention on the air as it swirled upward.

  Let the feather go where it wills, he told himself.

  The air felt hot, exciting. He thought of storm clouds, mountains of gray-white, billowing to fill the sky. A taste and flash like lightning flickered across his senses.

  “Carolin!”

  He jumped, his vision leaping into focus. The feather sat on the table just as before. Then it burst into flame.

  Lord of Light!

  Without thinking, Carolin grabbed the feather. The fire went out immediately, but not before it had singed his fingers. He yelped and clutched his hand. His starstone went rolling across the table. Cerriana caught it just before it tumbled off the edge.

  Fire erupted inside Carolin’s skull. He could no longer feel his burned hand. For an awful moment, his lungs locked, unable to draw in air. He heard confused voices in the distance.

  The next instant, something small and cool was pressed into his hand. He could breathe again. His vision seeped back and he looked into Cerriana’s eyes. They were dark with concern. Her hand overlaid his, curling his fingers around his starstone.

  “What—” What happened to me?

  “I touched your starstone. I must now monitor you to make sure you have taken no harm from it”

  Carolin’s eyes stung and he felt shaken to his bones. He was grateful when Cerriana dismissed the class. All he wanted was to be left alone. He clenched the starstone, pressing it to his heart. His fingers throbbed where he’d touched the burning feather. The muscles of his belly quivered. But he was Hastur, heir to the throne, and it was not proper that he behave like a whimpering child.

  Only a moment had passed. Cerriana still waited for the answer to her request. As an Arilinn-trained monitor, she scrupulously observed the formalities of permission. This was not an emergency; she would not enter the energy fields of his body against his will. Finally, he lifted his head and gestured to Cerriana that he was ready.

  As she worked, relief and a sense of well-being spread throughout his body. Frayed nerves relaxed and the burns on his fingers cooled. His heartbeat steadied and his breathing came more freely.

  A short time later, she announced with a smile that he had not been damaged by either the fire or the accidental contact with his starstone.

  “I don’t understand,” Carolin said. Although he felt physically well enough, except for the fading heat on his palms, he couldn’t think straight. His skull seemed to be packed with feathers. “Other people have handled my stone before—Hanna at home, you and Fidelis and Auster here. I’ve never had a reaction like this.”

  “It’s usually safe enough at this stage,” Cerriana answered. “Few of the novices have keyed into their stones strongly enough to carry any risk in a trained monitor handling them. You certainly hadn‘t, not at the beginning of our session. Whatever you were doing must have accelerated the process.” She looked thoughtful. “Sometimes there’s a plateau in laran development and then a cascading effect. Contact with a catalyst telepath will do it, too.”

  She sa
t back, still studying him with renewed composure. “Listen, Carolin. This is very important. Now that you have attuned with your matrix, you must never let anyone touch it except a Keeper, and then it should be only your own Keeper. I cannot emphasize this strongly enough. Even though I am trained to oversee the physical and psychic well-being of those entrusted to my care, I am only a monitor. With all the best intentions, I could have seriously injured you. The only reason I did not is that I held your stone for only a moment. Do you understand?”

  “Oh,” he said with a wry smile, “I have no intention of repeating that experience.” With hands that still trembled a little, he folded the starstone back into its pouch of insulating silk.

  She nodded gravely. “I don’t think you have the aptitude for psychokinesis. The question remains whether you have a separate talent for creating fire or whether this—” she gestured at the few bits of charred feather on the table, “—was due simply to the energies generated by keying into your starstone.”

  “Well,” Carolin said with his usual levity, “at least it’ll be better than staring at those damned feathers.”

  The next morning, Carolin and Eduin passed beneath the arch-ways of the Tower on their way into Arilinn City, headed for the morning marketplace accompanied by one of the kyrri. Since only nonhumans and Comyn could pass the Veil, everyone took turns with daily household tasks, even the youngest novices. The autumn day was crisp. Last night’s rain had washed any hint of dust from the air and the city sparkled. Beyond it loomed the Twin Peaks, their pinnacles shimmering.

  Carolin paused at the place where the Ridenow boy had stood. Although no visible trace remained, no stain or mark on the age-smoothed stone, Carolin felt a sense of lingering presence so strong he could have sworn there was indeed someone there. Images flashed through his mind, half memory, half something else. He pictured the boy, not as young as he’d first supposed, only thin and undersized, his face pale and very serious.