A Flame in Hali Read online

  Darkness took him.

  “You there!” Hands dug into his arms, hauling him upright.

  He squinted at the unexpected brilliance. A torch—no, several—no, one—lit the night. One man held it while another dragged him to his feet. He gasped, inhaling the acid reek of vomit. The wind blew in cruel gusts, slicing through his clothing, burning on his skin.

  “Pah!” the man who held him snorted in disgust. “He stinks to heaven!”

  “He’s no gutter rat.” The second man moved closer. “Look at his clothes.”

  Eduin noticed the badges on their cloaks, the swords ready to hand, the polished boots, the precisely trimmed hair.

  City Guards. By Zandru’s seventh hell!

  “He’s just some poor devil who drank more than he could hold,” the second man said, lifting the torch still higher. “We’ll take him inside until he sobers up.”

  “Aye,” replied the first. He twisted Eduin around and pushed him in the direction of the Guard headquarters.

  In an instant of reflex terror, Eduin’s muscles locked.

  The Guard wasn’t expecting resistance. “Here now, you can’t go wandering off on a night like this. You’ll freeze to death!”

  Eduin turned and ran. Somehow, his legs obeyed him. He burst into a pounding run, heading for the shadowed alleys. His only hope was flight, and he clung to it as a lifeline. Years of finding cover, of skulking and hiding, guided him. The Guards shouted for him to stop, but he kept on, staggering around corners, hardly feeling the bite of the wind or the impact when he slammed into a wall.

  Finally, he came to rest at the end of a twisted series of lanes and alleys, some buried to knee-height in refuse and filthy snow. He leaned against a patchstone wall, lungs heaving, ears straining. Moments ticked by, marked by the slowing of his pulse. He heard only normal night sounds, the creak of timbers, the shuffle of a dog nosing in the garbage, the snort and shift of a horse rousing from sleep.

  In only a few minutes, the warmth his body generated during that brief flight faded. He began shivering; he had no cloak or any protection. The wind howled down the alley, eerily like the cry of a giant banshee bird of the heights. It seemed to be hunting him.

  The Guards were right. He would die out here, on a night like this.

  He was still drunk enough to keep off the worst of the compulsion, but not enough to completely befuddle his wits. Leaving the tomblike chill of the alley, he found his bearings. He was not far from the stables where he’d worked. With a little luck, he would be able to sneak inside.

  The side door creaked as he eased it open, but no alarm sounded. The air was warm, laden with the smells of fodder and animals. One of the horses startled awake, and two others shifted uneasily in their pens as he passed. Feeling his way through the darkness, he located one of the stalls he’d cleaned out earlier. The horse was an old white mare, sweet and docile. She nickered softly as he piled the cleanest straw in one corner and buried himself in it.

  Gray, filtered light filled the inside of the barn. Horses stamped and buckets rattled. Eduin’s head throbbed and his mouth felt thick and sour. His shirt was mostly dry, but smelled of ale and vomit. He cleaned himself as best he could with handfuls of clean straw. The white mare watched him with gentle dark eyes as he hauled himself to his feet and went outside.

  Shivering, he turned to look back toward the heart of the city. Tall buildings and stately towers, the citadel of Hastur Castle, rose above the humbler dwellings. He thought of the life he had lost, of warm, bright rooms, the keen exhilaration of using his laran, of the intimacy and comradeship of the circle. Gone, gone forever.

  Compulsion roused, gnawed at him like a wild beast. Soon there would be nothing left of him. It would eat him up, heart and dreams and will. As if in response, thirst clawed his throat.

  Drink . . . ah, yes . . . murmured the seductive thought, drink and forget. . . .

  And wake to yet another morning of pounding in his head and bile in his mouth, drinking again as the compulsion pressed in on him, each bout longer and sicker, each time with less hope, to the shambling, sodden creature he had made of himself. This time there would be no gentle stranger to drag him in from the storm, no dream—

  No dream.

  He did not want to die. Especially, he did not want to die alone. He did not know what to do. He only knew that he could not continue the way he had before.

  The dream itself had vanished, swept away by the pulse and throb of pain. But he had dreamed it. That much he must believe, or he would surely go mad.

  Not for an instant did he believe the vision to be true. It was simply an illusion born out of his own inner longing. Saravio must have induced in him a state of extraordinary euphoria or suggestibility, having learned the technique during his training at Cedestri Tower. Perhaps the kirian played a part.

  The dream . . . and then the blessed space of freedom. He must find out how it had been done.

  3

  Eduin paused in front of the weathered door, one hand raised. It was folly to return, like a moth to a candle, but some deep, wordless impulse had defeated all reason, overridden all instinct for survival. Perhaps after so many years of having no hope, only the long dark descent into despair, he could not turn away from that single luminous memory of chieri dancing beneath the moons, of himself being one of them.

  Before Eduin could knock, however, the door swung open. Saravio stood there, hood slightly askew over his red hair, as if he had just pulled it on. He grabbed the front of Eduin’s jacket, still flecked with bits of straw, and pulled him inside.

  “Did they follow you?”

  “No one follows me.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.” Stepping back, Eduin pulled Saravio’s hands away. “Do you think I wouldn’t know?”

  “Yes, of course. You would know.” Saravio’s posture softened. “Are you hungry?” he asked, as if Eduin had stepped out for a moment instead of the better part of four days.

  Saravio divided the heel of a loaf and gestured for Eduin to sit beside him on the pallet. Eduin bit into the bread, finding a dense, chewy interior beneath the stale crust. Ground nuts and some kind of pleasantly bitter seeds had been mixed into the dough. He knew from experience that such a mixture could keep a man going for a long time.

  Behind his eyes, the pressure nudged. Failed . . . you have failed . . .

  The two began talking, Eduin guardedly, searching for an opening. They spoke of inconsequential things, the coarseness of the nutbread, the weather that day, the price of salt. Eduin learned how Saravio had been supporting himself. Although Saravio’s voice was quite ordinary, he had been earning a few coins here and there by singing to the sick. The freemate wife of the man who ran the White Feather Inn had a daughter who was dying of a wasting disease. The child could not sleep for the pain. There was nothing to be done, for they could not afford the fees charged by the city physicians, let alone the even more costly charges of the few leronyn willing to accept such work.

  “Was there nothing you could do for her?” Eduin asked. Surely Saravio, like every other laranzu, must have trained as a monitor. Perhaps he had even used those skills, albeit in an unusual way, to temporarily lessen Eduin’s compulsion spell.

  Saravio shook his head. “Naotalba did not wish it. I do not know her will for the child, the reason she surrendered her into the arms of Avarra, the Dark Lady. Yet in her mercy, Naotalba permitted me to ease her pain.”

  Naotalba? Eduin blinked, momentarily stunned. Of all the possible explanations for Saravio’s mysterious behavior, this one was the least expected.

  Like any other educated Darkovan, Eduin knew the legends of Naotalba, The Doomed One, the Bride of Zandru. She might have been human once, a sacrifice to the Lord of the Seven Frozen Hells. Her name was invoked as a curse and it was considered unlucky for an unmarried woman to dress as she did in midnight black, the color of a starless sky. In another, more hopeful version, so great was her beauty and her
grief at leaving the world that Zandru allowed her to return for half the year, thus bringing spring and summer.

  Eduin had never paid any particular attention to any of the stories. They were all superstitious nonsense. What could a mythical demigoddess have to do with healing a sick child?

  “She came to me,” Saravio said, now closing his eyes and tilting his head back, rocking slightly with the memory. “She spoke to me. I saw the entire world laid out like a tapestry. It was to be mine, she promised, if I would faithfully do her bidding. I awoke the next morning with her kiss upon my brow.”

  One hand brushed the pale forehead. “I alone of all men was chosen to be her champion. I alone was given the mission of healing the pain of the world. I alone received her gift. I went to my Keeper with the news, for in those days I still believed there was hope for the Towers.”

  Eduin drew back unconsciously. He could imagine the reaction of Auster of Arilinn, or Hestral’s Keeper, Loryn Ardais, or even Varzil Ridenow, who now ruled at Neskaya, to such an announcement. Steadiness of mind was essential to matrix work, and no sane man claimed to commune with the gods.

  Why not? he thought. The scorpion-spirit of his dead father whispered its poison nightly into his own ears.

  Saravio opened his eyes, hands curling into fists. “Do you know what they said? They forbade me to use Naotalba’s gift! They cast me out! And why? Because of some idiotic rule about not messing with another man’s mind! As if the Bride of Zandru is bound by their petty tyranny!”

  Not messing—Eduin knew a moment of panic, for the most fundamental law of laran work was never to enter another’s thoughts unbidden. He had sworn it on his first day of training at Arilinn.

  And broken it, too, at the siege of Hestral Tower, he reminded himself.

  But was that so evil? He had lifted the siege and saved the Tower. It was only because of Varzil Ridenow’s relentless grudge that he had not been hailed as a hero and been made Keeper permanently. What Eduin had done would be doubly unlawful under Carolin’s Compact, which forbade any use of psychic force, or any weapon that killed without exposing its wielder to equal jeopardy, for that matter. Eduin thought the idea ridiculous. Men would always seize whatever power came within their grasp, even if they had to invoke some imaginary figure to justify it.

  And yet . . .

  He recalled what Auster, the Keeper who trained him, had said; that men devised myth and legend to explain what they could not understand. When he felt the spell his father had laid on him, he sometimes envisioned it as a frozen vice clamped around his temples, other times a slowly turning knife point in his belly. Perhaps Saravio envisioned himself acting upon the will of the demigoddess when he did his healing work. Surely easing the pain of a dying child was a good thing.

  Eduin, his interest aroused, asked, “What exactly is Naotalba’s gift? How did you use it to help this child?”

  In answer, Saravio closed his eyes and began humming. His sense of pitch was not very good, but Eduin recognized a common street song. The melody would have been familiar and reassuring to the child of an innkeeper. Perhaps her own mother had sung it to her as a lullaby.

  “Oh the lark in the morning,

  She rises in the west,

  And comes home in the evening

  With the dew on her breast.”

  As he listened, Eduin felt his own muscles soften and relax. The soreness from the unaccustomed hard labor melted, replaced by a warmth that soon spread along his limbs. His belly felt as full as if he had just risen from a holiday feast. The dull pressure in his head lifted, and within the confines of his skull, he heard only the lilting melody.

  His lips curved unbidden into a smile. Surely there could be nothing so wonderful as to sit here, surrounded and filled by this music. He could not remember feeling so safe, so content, so blissful. The knotted ice in his belly lifted like mist from summer fields. The hissing scorpion voice in his head fell utterly still. A wave of inexpressible relief passed through him. Tears rose to his eyes. From his groin, heat thrummed in rising pleasure.

  Pleasure . . .

  What in the name of all the gods was Saravio doing?

  Eduin jerked alert, his psychic barriers slamming into place. The physical sensations of arousal receded. He caught his breath in a gasp and realized he had been weeping silently. Saravio was still half-singing, half-humming, his words barely understandable.

  “What—” Eduin stammered, “what did you do to me?”

  Saravio met his gaze with a blankly innocent stare, devoid of any trace of dissembling. “You? I brought you in from the storm.”

  “You sang to me, didn’t you? Just as you did to the child, just as you did now?”

  “You were delirious and might have done yourself injury. I sang to calm you. There was no harm in it, any more than when I sang for the innkeeper’s daughter.”

  “And that’s all? You just . . . sang to me?”

  Again, that guileless stare, as blank as a child’s. “Why, yes, unless . . . You must mean the kirian. I had a little remaining to me. Are you angry that I gave it to you without your permission? We are neither of us bound by the rules of the Tower.”

  “No, I’m not angry,” Eduin admitted.

  The kirian alone could not have eased the spell. Either Saravio was a consummate liar with the best laran shielding on Darkover, or else he truly did not know what he had done.

  Saravio shrugged. “As you have heard, I am no minstrel. Still, it was honest work and paid for this room, food, a little heat. My needs are few. In the end, Avarra took the child to her bosom and I had not the heart to sing for another. On the day I found you, a man at the King’s granary gave me a coin. I wonder if he thought me a beggar. He should have known better, for he understood the evils that beset this city, which only Naotalba can save. But alas, Naotalba had not touched his eyes, as she has mine.”

  Before Eduin could ask any more questions, Saravio leaned closer. His eyes burned, as if lit with dark fire. He lowered his voice, now trembling with urgency. “I can trust you. You know what it is to run, to hide, to be persecuted for speaking the truth.”

  Eduin nodded, although he was not entirely sure what Saravio meant. His head might be steadier than it had been in many seasons, but he still had difficulty thinking clearly. The song and its effects lingered, wrapping him in a dreamy lassitude.

  “I believe that Naotalba has spoken to you, too,” Saravio whispered, his breath rasping between his lips. “Until now, I was the only one who could stand against her enemies, and you see what I have been reduced to. I live in this hovel, the object of charity, with not a single follower to hear her truth. I tell you, my friend, more than once I came close to despair. But Naotalba has kept faith with her servant. She brought you to me.” Saravio grasped Eduin’s shoulders, bringing his face within a few inches. Sweat broke out over Saravio’s forehead and his eyes bulged, so that the tracery of tiny red vessels stood out.

  “She has brought you to me, hasn’t she? Or . . . were you sent to destroy her work? Answer quickly!”

  Waves of trembling shook Saravio’s frame and his cheeks flushed a dark, congested red. His fingers dug into Eduin’s flesh like talons.

  Along with the shouted words, Eduin felt a renewal of the pressure against his psychic shields. If he failed to give the proper response, Saravio might well throttle him on the spot.

  You are right. She has sent me to you, he answered, mind to mind so that there could be no question of deception. Using the force of the Deslucido Gift as his father had taught him, even as he himself had lied under truthspell, he shaped the thought so that it would ring with sincerity.

  For a long moment, Saravio did not respond. Eduin wondered if he had said the wrong thing. Perhaps Saravio was so caught up in his own frenzy that he had not received the mental message. The pressure on Eduin’s throat tightened.

  “You passed her test—when you healed me,” Eduin gasped aloud, “and now I am here—to guide you—in your great work.”


  “I knew it!” Saravio crowed, releasing Eduin. “I knew she would not abandon her chosen one!”

  Well, Eduin said to himself as he rubbed his neck, making sure no trace of the thought leaked past his barriers, Naotalba is as good a god as any, these days.

  For so long, his only goal had been freedom from a quest that he could not possibly fulfill. As a penniless fugitive without any way of making a living, save with those skills that would betray him, he had no hope of putting an end to King Carolin. Now for the first time, he had both respite and hope—hope that with the help of this stranger, however odd he might be, Eduin might rid himself forever of his father’s dying curse.

  “I knew it—I knew it—” Saravio chanted, bouncing up and down on the rickety pallet like a small child. “I knew-ew-ew-ew it!”

  Dark Avarra, the man is not odd, he’s raving mad!

  Eduin got to his feet, thinking it would be safer to retreat for a time. He had already seen enough of Saravio’s shifting moods to suspect how uncertain, how dangerous his temper might be.

  Before he could turn toward the door, however, Saravio’s body went rigid. His eyes bulged, the whites stark against the dusky flush of his cheeks. He arched backward and fell upon the pallet with a loud thump. For a moment, he lay there, as still as a corpse.

  The door lay only a step or two away. Eduin could be gone in a moment, out into the streets and their familiar anonymity. Every instinct shrilled at him to run, to hide. He might have a few hours or days before the compulsion returned. Yet, he hesitated.

  Saravio’s next breath came as a hoarse gasp. His spine bowed upward, so that he rested on the back of his skull and his hips.