A Flame in Hali (11 page)

Dyannis returned her focus to the rhythmic pattern. By using what her first Keeper had called, “the back door of her mind,” she sensed the telltale residue of a matrix lattice. It was faint enough so that, no matter how hard she tried, she could not get more than a general impression.

One inescapable fact emerged. Within the depths of the lake lay a source of immense artificial psychic power that radiated through the cloud-water. How long it had been there, she could not guess. Quiescent, it might have been created at the very beginning of the world, only to awaken in these perilous times.

Despite her training, Dyannis shuddered away from contact with it. The muscles of her belly clenched and bile rose in her throat, pulling her back into her physical body. By now, the drain on her body and mind that accompanied intense
laran
work began to shred her concentration. She had no monitor to safeguard her.

I hadn’t planned on doing a little unauthorized
laran
work out here!

With an effort, she raised her
laran
barriers and crawled backward beyond the reach of the water. She’d only touched the surface of what was going on in the lake, but she was not going to solve its mysteries all by herself. She dared not delay. Gathering her strength, she clambered to her feet.

As Dyannis rushed back to Hali Tower, she sent a mental signal ahead to alert her fellow
leronyn
. At this hour, after a night of intense work, many were asleep or resting, their
laran
barriers raised. With the sensitivity necessary to join with other trained telepaths in a circle came an exquisite vulnerability to the intrusion of random thoughts and passions. Experience had shown this could be not only distracting, but destructive when dealing with immensely powerful matrix systems. Many
leronyn
learned to shield themselves with special techniques. For this reason, too, the Tower had been built at the far end of the lake, well away from the city of Hali.

She found one mind awake and receptive to her call, that of a brilliant young
laranzu
from Carcosa. He was younger than she by a few years, in his mid twenties, and of all the matrix workers at Hali, they shared a special kinship of spirit.

Dyannis,
he replied in greeting.
What has happened?

Behind Rorie’s thoughts, she heard the fear that her impetuous adventures might have brought her to harm at last.

I am well enough,
she quickly reassured him.
I have discovered something—at the lake—and I fear it bodes ill for more than just the Tower. I must tell the Keeper!

With a wordless acknowledgment, Rorie withdrew to prepare for her arrival.

Raimon Lindir, the Keeper of Hali Tower, was waiting for her beside the outer gates, along with Rorie and Lewis-Mikhail. His appearance, tall and thin, unself-consciously graceful, suggested the
chieri
blood that was said to run in his family. Sometimes his eyes had an almost silvery cast. The deep crimson of his formal Keeper’s robe and his fiery red hair contrasted with the paleness of his skin, but there was nothing anemic about his personality or powers. He might be one of the youngest Keepers to hold sole power over a major Tower, but his proficiency was beyond question.

He reached out his hands and Dyannis placed hers on them, his palms cool under her fingertips. The physical touch catalyzed the mental contact. She needed no words of description, no explanation, no interpretation of what had happened. She poured forth the memory of her experience at the lake, knowing that he sensed every detail as vividly as if he had been there himself.

The sharing took only an instant. Raimon shivered as he broke the physical link.

“What you have seen is indeed of grave importance,” he said aloud. “We must find out what is going on down there. I will reschedule tonight’s work.”

Dyannis nodded. The short distance from Tower to lake meant nothing to a full working circle under the guidance of a Keeper, particularly one as strong as Raimon. Together they had mined precious metals from deep within the earth and shifted cloud patterns in the skies above. Moreover, every one of them was familiar with the lake under normal conditions. Surely, their combined mental talents would unravel this puzzle.

That night, Raimon summoned the circle of Hali Tower. Halfway up the stairs leading from the common room, Dyannis swore gently under her breath. The hem of her robe had pulled loose again and she’d almost tripped and broken her fool head.

She bent to inspect the offending stitches.
After all this time, you’d think I could sew a decent seam,
she thought ruefully. She knew it was her own doing, that she would not take the trouble to learn properly. There was always something to do that was more interesting or important than sewing. Some of the older women in the Tower had maidservants to do such tasks, but Dyannis found their constant fussing an even greater burden. As she had so many times before, she simply tucked an extra fold under her belt and went on.

Dyannis had already forgotten the torn hem as she swept past the corridor that led to the Keepers’ wing. Only one of the three suites was currently occupied, and since the death of Dougal DiAsturian, no one had the heart to even broach the subject of turning his rooms to other uses.

A narrow stair took her up two flights to the smallest and most heavily shielded workroom in the Tower. Through the open door, she heard the murmur of voices. She paused for a moment to collect herself. On her heels came little Ellimara, wearing a thick shawl over her long white monitor’s robe. At thirteen, she was the youngest full member of Hali Tower, but she was of pure Aillard blood and strongly Gifted.

Raimon looked up as they entered. “Ah, there you are.”

Dyannis shot Ellimara a quick smile.
Thanks to you, sweetling, I am not the last to arrive.
Her disregard for punctuality had long been the source of jokes.

Ellimara blushed prettily and went to take her place on the benches along the far wall. As monitor, she would remain apart from the circle itself. Immersed in the mental unity, the workers lost track of their own physiological functions. It was her responsibility to keep them healthy and their channels clear, free to pour all their concentration and power into the joining of minds. No tense muscle or stuttering heartbeat, no fall in oxygen or fluctuation in hormonal levels must interrupt that unity, lest the backlash endanger them all.

Dyannis slipped into her place around the oval table. In the center sat the matrix lattice, an array of linked starstones, which would focus and amplify their natural
laran.
It glittered as if lit from within, a crystalline fairywork of tiny starstones, linked and attuned to their purpose.

The circle was at full strength tonight, six workers plus Raimon as Keeper. Two more made up Hali’s community, but a circle of nine was beyond his present skill, and they had not enough for two circles, even if they had a second Keeper. They often worked with only five, when others were needed for the relays or were barred from active work due to illness, exhaustion, or in the case of the women, the onset of their monthly cycles.

Hali is not the only Tower to be reduced to a single working circle,
Dyannis reflected. Her glance met that of Alderic, who had lately come to Hali. He had ridden with King Carolin in his struggle to regain the throne, and in his thoughts, she sometimes heard the echoes of the dying minds of those
leronyn
who had fought on both sides.

Too many lost, and too many demands on those of us who are left.
Hali had once housed a dozen or more young novices, as well as those
Comyn
youth in need of training beyond what their household
leronis
could provide. Now that Ellimara had finished her training, the novices’ wing lay empty.

All things come and go in their season,
her brother Varzil had said.
Nothing lasts forever, neither the good times nor the bad.

Dyannis shuddered and as quickly, swept away any hint of gloom. Such vaporish maunderings were dangerous to bring to a working circle.

After a brief introduction, Dyannis repeated for the circle what had happened to her at the lake, both in words and telepathically. They were already in light rapport from their intense work together. As she spoke, she felt the individual members shift toward a working unity.

“Now, let us take a closer look at this thing,” Raimon said. He gave the signal to begin.

Dyannis set her starstone before her, closed her eyes, and lowered her mental barriers. Already she felt Rorie’s strength as a steady warmth, like the sun of high summer on the rocks by the river at Sweetwater, where she had lived as a girl. Raimon’s mind brushed hers and she settled even deeper.

Drifting layers of color swept by her, blues fading into shades of green and then gold. It always felt this way when Raimon was weaving the individual members of the circle into a single whole. Once, she’d asked Lewis-Mikhail about the colors, only to be met with puzzlement.

“For me, it’s like singing in a Nevarsin choir,” he’d said, “many voices, some high, some low, all blending together until I can’t hear them separately.”

A hint of wildflowers shifted her awareness and she felt her shoulder muscles soften and her belly relax as she drew in a deeper breath. Ellimara was settling them all for a long session. Dyannis floated on the sensation of relief and contentment. She was no longer one solitary person facing the daunting mystery of the lake, but joined into a greater whole, with strength and wisdom beyond her own. At that moment, no challenge seemed beyond their combined abilities.

Raimon began his work, taking an imprint of the pattern in her mind and channeling it to the circle. Memories rose to the surface, the things she had felt and thought that day on the lake shore. This time they seemed distant, as if glimpsed through frosted glass. She felt him sifting, setting aside her own physiological reactions, her emotions, then refining and drawing out her direct perceptions.

A ripple passed around the circle and Dyannis knew that every one of them had shared those sensations, just as if they had all been there with her, put their own hands into the cloud-water, felt the jolt of electrical power.

A faint humming, little more than a vibration, swept through her. It was familiar, if artificial—the matrix lattice resonating to the pattern that Raimon fed through it. At this point, her entire work would be to concentrate on the lattice, to feed her own
laran
energy into it. Of them all, only the Keeper in centripolar position directed, controlled those energies.

When she first came to Hali, old Dougal DiAsturian had been Keeper, and most of what he did was a mystery to her. More than once, she’d been chastised for resisting his command. Raimon’s touch was far more subtle, and his mind had a transparent, almost pellucid quality. She retained some degree of separate awareness as he established an anchor point here in the physical Tower and began to create a resonant bridge to the lake below.

There were many functions a Keeper performed that Dyannis understood and could well imagine herself doing, but not this. For such a spatial leap of consciousness to work accurately and safely, the Keeper must be supremely confident of his destination. He must hold the image in his mind as clearly as if he were looking at his own hand. Raimon never hesitated.

The next instant, she felt a gust of chill air, just as she had on that morning, although now it was night and her physical body was safely immured behind the Tower walls. Through the circle’s power, she heard the soft splash of the waves and smelled the mingled odors of wet sand and river-weed.

Now, she floated above the lake, rocked by the movement of the waves. In a moment, she would feel their peculiar misty wetness. In one corner of her mind, she braced herself for the surge of eerie power—