A Flame in Hali (58 page)

The vaporous mouth opened once more, exhaling a breath that gave no life but chilled the blood within Eduin’s veins. Lips curved, shaping words.

For the space of a single beat of his heart, Eduin froze. The icy tendrils of his father’s command curled around his heart. His temples throbbed with urgency. He knew what had been done to him, and why. He had never had a life of his own, had never been anything beyond an instrument of his father’s obsession for revenge. When he tried to resist, from love for Carolin, from compassion, from decency, his own will had been wrested from him.

Just as he now stood poised to do to this helpless man before him.

What choice did he have? He could not even seek the oblivion of his own death. If he tried, his father’s shade would haunt him for eternity.

Forgive me,
he whispered in the confines of his own innermost thoughts, and knew there could be no mercy for what he was about to do.

Eduin set to work. He bent to scoop up handfuls of thought-stuff, sculpting it like soft clay. He was not much of an artist, but he did not need to be. Once the basic shape was established, he had only to imagine her features.

He was doomed either way, to torment and despair if he failed to fulfill his oath, or else to the certain consequences of his actions—the violation of the most basic moral principles of
laran
work. He had sworn never to enter unasked into another man’s mind, and this promise had been given with full adult awareness and consent, not with a child’s unquestioning obedience. How many times had he already broken it?

Either way, he would be forsworn, beyond redemption.

As Eduin worked, he thought not of who Naotalba might have been, a living woman caught up in the stuff of legend, or a figure embodying some deep primordial emotion, but only of what she represented to him.

Into her emerging form, he poured all his own desperate malice, his years of resentment against Varzil and those who stood with him. From the very first Keepers at Arilinn who refused to train him as a Keeper, to Carolin Hastur with his dreams of peace and brotherhood, to the still-raw wound of his separation from Dyannis, to the years of wretched drunkenness, he took each moment of pain, of hatred, of vindictiveness, and shaped it into Naotalba’s lineaments.

As Eduin did so, he became aware of an even darker power flowing through him, a bitterness that shivered through his bones, so cold it seared whatever it touched. It was not only his own personal hatred for Varzil, his determination to be free through the destruction of the man who had stood so many times in his way, but his father’s enduring vengeance. That which had shaped him, twisted his own life and made him what he was, now coursed through him and into the statue of Naotalba.

When at last Eduin was finished, he stood back to gaze at his work. She was again the woman he had first glimpsed—human, desolate, achingly beautiful. Or did she break his heart because of her sorrow? He watched as she turned toward him with those luminous gray eyes, blind and all-seeing at once.

Naotalba!
he called, and watched as she inclined her head in acknowledgment.

A voice shivered through the fiber of his being.
I am here. What do you seek of me?

A shudder ripped through the firmament that was Saravio’s slumbering mind. Awe, recognition . . . terror.

Eduin faced the goddess he had created, and answered her.
Freedom.

Colorless lips curved in a smile that held no trace of warmth. Eyes glinted like frozen steel. Her cloak rippled as if it were alive, stretching out its shadowed folds. Instinctively, he drew back from it. In its penumbral darkness, unspeakable desires curled like smoke.

Freedom?
Naotalba asked.
I see in your heart all that must happen for you to be at last free. You wish a death.

The wrong was done before I was conceived in my mother’s womb!
The cry burst, unbidden, from the deepest recesses of his mind.
I have no choice but to go on! There is no other way. This quest, terrible as it is, was chosen for me, and none of my own making.

Once you have set your foot upon this path, you cannot turn back.
Naotalba’s voice rang out, resonant as the tolling of a death knell.

Though he trembled as if he stood upon the brink of an abyss, Eduin bent his head in assent.
I wish it, no matter what the cost.

D
arkness seized him. For a time he knew nothing, felt nothing. Gradually, like the seeping of brightness from the east on a foggy morning, he returned to himself.

Eduin floated in a place that was neither the Overworld nor the physical realm, nor that strange convolution of consciousness that was Saravio’s sleeping mind. Around him, within him, lay a world without vision, without hearing, without taste or movement. Strewn across an invisible field before him, he spied nodes of thought-energy and knew that each was the innermost consciousness of a living person. Saravio lay the closest, with Romilla and the household
leronis
a little farther off. There were others he did not recognize or else dismissed as of little use. Lord Brynon’s presence was so dim as to be barely reachable. Queen Julianna was not present at all.

Eduin sensed another presence, this time behind him, as if someone were watching over his shoulder. He could almost feel the stirring of breath along the back of his neck, the heat of another body a hair’s breadth from his own, the pulse of another’s heart.

This is how it is done,
a silent voice whispered in his mind. It echoed, leaving ripples of familiar pain.
You reach out thus, and twist thus, and leave, indelible, the mark of your own will.

So it had been done to him. So he would do in his own turn. Naotalba, the figure he had created from his own hatred, stood on one side, and the shade of his father on the other. Implacable determination and malevolence surged through him, and it seemed these feelings were not his alone. He gave himself over to them, surrendering to them, abdicating all vestiges of generosity or kindness or compassion. No one had ever offered these to him; certainly, his enemies and the tools he must use to reach them deserved none.

This way . . .
The whisper was doubled now, as if two voices spoke with a single thought.

Eduin reached out with his mind to Saravio’s. This time, his thoughts were not shaped like the point of a spear, but a grappling iron with barbed, talonlike hooks. He set it deep within Saravio’s mind.

Whenever Naotalba is mentioned, in word or thought, there will be joy,
he commanded.
But whenever the name of Varzil Ridenow of Neskaya, he who is called Varzil the Good, rises to men’s minds or lips, there will be pain. Pain and fear and bitter hatred.

For a long moment there was no response, and he wondered if Saravio’s consciousness was too disordered to accept the command. Then he saw how the other man’s mind had become reorganized around the new, vengeful figure of Naotalba. Saravio had lain quiescent, caught between awe and terror, waiting only for the doctrine that would bring his mission to life once more.

K-k-kill,
rattled the scorpion, only this time it spoke not with his father’s voice but with his own.
K-k-kill Varzil!

Eduin watched long enough to be certain that Saravio would serve him even as he had served his father’s compulsion, with thought and deed and
laran.
When he opened his eyes, he saw that Saravio, too, was stirring.

Saravio’s eyes glowed against the paleness of his skin. His lips moved, then words formed. “You were right, Eduin. Naotalba has answered our prayers. She has spoken to me and shown me how to defeat her enemy. I must go out among these people and search out every trace of his vile influence. Will you help me in this holy work?”

Slowly, Eduin smiled. “I am now, as ever, in her service.”

An hour or so later, a tapping, light and hesitant, sounded on the door of their chamber. Eduin opened the door to find Callina standing there. She had changed from her gown of pale gray, embroidered with snow lilies along sleeves and modest neckline, to a loose robe like the ones universally worn for Tower work. For any other woman, appearing at a man’s door in the middle of the night would have occasioned irretrievable scandal. Callina wore her innocence like armor.

Eduin bowed and stepped back for her to enter.

“I am sorry to disturb you, but I searched for Sandoval the Blessed in the great hall and could not find him.” Her gaze flew to Saravio’s face. Pain and hope radiated from her.

“My child,” Eduin murmured, taking her hand in his.

Despite the warmth of the evening, her fingers were like ice. Although he had not intended to read her thoughts, the physical touch catalyzed a telepathic link between them. As vividly as if she had drawn the portrait in paints, he saw the face of a young man, earnest and laughing, his sword bright in the morning sun, with features that mirrored her own. In the image, the man swept Callina into his arms, and Eduin knew it was the last time she had seen her twin brother alive.

The darkness Eduin had sensed in her rose up like a tide. With the twin-bond to heighten the power of her Sight, she had ridden with him, had smelled the blood and ashes of the battlefield, had felt the sword slash through his side as if it had her own. Curled alone in her Tower room, she had suffered every moment of his long, festering death.

Then fragments of other memories brushed against him, fragile as
mariposa
wings. He felt the touch of her Keeper’s mind, the fatherly concern.

The same voice, now speaking aloud, explained that she must leave Temora for an easier post, to live among ladies and perform duties no more taxing than preparing sleeping potions or testing children for
laran.
With time and rest, her mind would recover.

Then came the numb sickness of dislocation, the loneliness that ate like a cancer into her bones . . .

“You do not need to explain,” Eduin said with a rush of compassion. “Sandoval the Blessed understands that some sorrows cannot be spoken aloud. He knows you have come for the healing comfort of Naotalba.”

“Oh!” she cried, half a sob.

Now, summoned by an appeal he could not defy, new energy suffused Saravio’s features. His eyes glittered.

“Come,” Eduin said, gesturing to the two chairs arranged in front of the small fireplace. No fire had been lit, for although the temperature was already falling, no one was expected to pass this night in his own bed.

Eduin placed each of them in a chair. Within a few minutes, Saravio began to sing. Eduin felt the instant response within his own body, the pulse and leap of pleasure.

He ached to give himself over to it, just for a moment of ease, an island in the storm of events.

Surely a brief rest would help him . . . a moment among the silvery trees, the graceful weaving figures. Longing rose in him, sweet and bitter all at once. He had closed his eyes, swaying with the silent melody, the waves of
laran
stimulation. No ancient forest, no echo of
chieri
song reached him. Instead, shadows curled and fire sprang up. A voice whispered to the flames, feeding them with his substance and spirit until nothing remained but the shadow, the ashes.

No!
The cry tore from somewhere deep within him. He could not give up, not now, not after all he had gone through. Varzil—and the peace his death would bring—was not yet within his grasp, but would be, and soon.

Eduin bent his attention to the young
leronis.
Beneath the youthful appearance, the slender girlish body held a core of power. Her
laran
shimmered like a mirror of steel. She was Tower-trained.

But he, he was Eduin Deslucido, and the blood of sorcerers and kings ran in his own veins. If he could hide his secrets from the Keepers of Arilinn and Hali, two of the most powerful Towers Darkover had ever known, then insinuating himself into the mind of even a trained
leronis
should be easy. He softened his psychic presence to a whisper, the gentlest shimmer. She had only the flimsiest barriers in place, barely enough to screen out the psychic chatter elsewhere in the castle. Under the influence of Saravio, she had softened all other defenses.

Like mist, like silk, he twined himself through the outer layers of her mind.