The Fall of Neskaya (12 page)

Coryn stared at the other boy, mouth open. “Well, yes, there was a storm, but—”

“But they’d never have made it if
we
hadn’t come along and rescued them!” Liane snapped her head around.

“We were doing just fine, minding our own business, when
you
came along and picked a fight! Almost got us killed. Some help!”

“Picked a fight?
We
weren’t the ones trespassing—spying—”

“That will be quite enough.” The quiet voice came from the other end of the table. Coryn recognized it instantly as Kieran’s. He flushed. What was he thinking, to let Liane goad him into such behavior and on his first real morning at Tramontana? He was not surprised when Kieran, in a voice just as calmly authoritative, commanded him for a private word after breakfast. Liane’s smirk quickly disappeared when she in turn was ordered to see Bronwyn.

Coryn got up from the table, his breakfast untouched. Aran touched him gently on the back of the wrist, a gesture Coryn now understood was common among telepaths.

“I never believed the story about the horses,” Aran said. “But it did sound as if something exciting had happened. Maybe you can tell me later. I’m sorry if I got you into trouble.”

“It wasn’t you, it was that—that—” Coryn managed to stop himself before he said anything else he’d regret.

A short time later, he stood before Kieran in the Keeper’s small, stone-walled sitting room. Despite the morning’s chill, no fire warmed the fieldstone hearth. Kieran sat at ease in his simple chair, his six-fingered hands quiet in his lap. The austerity of the scene, as much as the temperature, set Coryn shivering.

“It won’t happen again,” Coryn began.

“Perhaps, instead of making promises you have no idea if you can keep, you might explain to me why Liane irritates you so. Is it merely the feud between your two families?”

Need there be more?
Coryn wondered, but did not say so aloud. Under Kieran’s gentle prodding, he stumbled through the story of the fire, the storm, the rescue. He realized how unfair he was being. Liane wasn’t to blame for her father’s decisions and she
had
tried hard to be friendly that first time in the infirmary.

“Yet there is more that troubles you, young Coryn. Liane is a spirited young woman, perhaps a bit unmannerly, but without malice.”

Coryn thought suddenly that if Liane had not reminded him so much of Kristlin, he might not have felt such a sense of—was it betrayal?

“Listen to me,” Kieran said, leaning forward, his ageless features alight with intensity. “Out there in the world, a man’s family name counts more than the quality of his character. Women—and men, too—are judged and sold for nothing more than their bloodlines or the alliances they can bring.”

Coryn shivered, thinking of Kristlin’s marriage, of Tessa’s impassioned words,
I will not be
barragana . . . “But here in the Tower, while we are in service, we leave all that behind. It is who you are, what you make of your life, your honor and dedication, not your rank or clan connections that determine your future. You were born gifted with
laran
. All that grants you is the chance to know yourself and your fellows in ways you never dreamed possible. You can speak across miles, you can delve into the bowels of the earth for precious minerals, you can penetrate the very fabric of the world. None of this comes easily or without a price. And none of it will come unless you can leave the petty squabbles of the world behind.”

Kieran’s voice shifted, so resonant that tears sprang to Coryn’s eyes and he suddenly understood the passion with which Gareth had spoken of his Keeper.

“You are no longer Coryn Leynier of Verdanta and Liane is not Liane Storn of High Kinnally. You are Coryn and she is Liane. Nothing more. Someday, if you both have the talent and dedication to earn your places here, you may well hold each other’s lives in your hands. There is no room for a childish quarrel which is none of your affair. Do you understand me?”

Coryn, swallowing dryly, nodded. He vowed in his heart to take Liane as she was, chattering and all. In that assent, he passed some invisible barrier, some unspoken test, although he had only the roughest idea of what it meant to him. He only knew that he wanted what the Tower offered more than he’d ever wanted anything before.

A moment later, doubt curled like greasy smoke through his thoughts. Kieran spoke of a singleness of purpose, of leaving the outer world and all its concerns behind. But Rumail Dom served two masters, King as well as Tower. . . .

“Something troubles you?”

Coryn frowned, searching for words. “
Dom
Rumail, who tested me—” He found it suddenly difficult to breathe.

“—he—he came to Verdanta—not as
laranzu
—but as his brother’s—King Damian’s—agent—” Coryn broke off, gasping for air.

Kieran nodded gravely. “Yes, some of us are not entirely free of family allegiances, would that it were so. And there is always the fear that we may be pulled to different sides in an outside conflict, though the Hasturs at least have promised never to set kin against kin in Tower warfare.” The old
emmasca
paused. “As for that one . . .” The colorless eyes flickered, missing nothing. “He is not your concern. Go now and join the others.”

Oddly reassured, Coryn made his way to the big, sunlit room on the south side of the Tower where Gareth instructed the novices in elementary monitoring. They sat in pairs on the ubiquitous low benches around a cot, where one of the older boys lay. Gareth stopped to repeat his explanation of the proper distance of the hand from the body to “feel” the energon channels.

Liane came in a few minutes later, eyes red and puffy as if she had been crying. Coryn decided that however awkward his interview with Kieran had been, hers with Bronwyn must have been worse. He went up to her after the session, wanting to say something but not knowing what. He didn’t want to prolong the quarrel, but half of it had been his doing. At least half.

Just as Coryn caught up to Liane, Aran joined both of them, eyes dancing with adventure. “We’re to have an hour outdoors after lunch. Anyone interested in getting out of here? Can we take your horse, Liane?”

“Oh!” Her color heightened, but not in embarrassment. “Yes! Can we all three go?”

“You mean go out riding?” Coryn asked. He’d no idea that Tower life could be so normal. In the hours of his recuperation, he’d thought of his lost Dancer.

“Of course!” Aran said. “Once Tramontana kept no mounts, before the days of King Allart Hastur. Now there are always a couple of horses in the Tower stables. We’re permitted to use these for our own exercise.” He winked at Coryn. “They’re always telling us we need to keep strong to do all this matrix work.”

An image sprang to Coryn’s mind, the three of them laughing as they galloped across the hills, the wind singing in his ears, the sweet warm joy of the horse beneath him flooding up so that he was one with the beast, with the hawk overhead like a speck against the sun, and the singing grass. Green and gold and blue shimmered around him, inside him—

In that instant, too, he knew this was what
Aran
felt, the excitement rising in his new friend’s mind.

As they moved down the corridor, Liane caught one foot on an uneven stone and stumbled. Coryn reached to steady her. Her hand brushed his, a fleeting touch. He turned to her with eyes newly opened by the momentary rapport with Aran. It was as if he saw her for the very first time, not just an infuriating child, but a young woman—the woman she would grow to be—proud and loyal. He
sensed
the struggle within her, mirror to his own, the stories she’d grown up with about Leynier greed and treachery, the rages of her father, her love for family, the big brother who’d died in a Leynier cattle raid, all of this pitted against the boy who stood before her. He saw himself reflected in her mind, neither demon nor coward nor spy, not any more than she was.

He held out his hand and, with a timid smile now brightening into an outright grin, she took it.

F
our years later, the three friends rode together through the hills surrounding Tramontana. The bounty of a morning’s hawking, a brace of forest grouse for the Midsummer Festival feast, hung from their saddles. The men also had baskets filled with mountain daisies, skyflowers, and even a stalk or two of creamy white bellisma, to be arranged into gift packets for the women of the Tower. Neither had kinswomen to honor according to Midsummer tradition, as Hastur Lord of Light had honored Blessed Cassilda with fruit and flowers. Yet Coryn thought with anticipation of the expression on Liane’s face at the river-opals he had found for her, the sort of gift he would have presented Kristlin with.

Now Coryn and Liane rode easily together as brother and sister, watching Aran ride ahead, body moving fluidly with the horse’s swinging stride. On this morning, Coryn had lent Aran his fine Armida black, a gift from his father last winter. It was the same horse Petro had ridden on his ill-fated mission to Storn during that terrible fire.

Aran, still lanky and possessed of such dark-lashed eyes as to make most maidens envious, rode with his hands on his thighs, reins loose on the horse’s neck. The black arched her neck and broke into a canter, feet lifted high and tail bannered in the wind.

Coryn laughed. “She wants to run!”

“What have you been feeding her, dragon bones?” Aran called back. The horse, released from invisible reins, lengthened her stride. Aran lifted his gloved hand and the
verrin
hawk, which had been hovering at the limit of sight, circled down to meet him. Like many of his clan, Aran had the Gift, the
donas
, of rapport with animals.

Coryn slowed his own mount, closing his eyes to more easily follow the meld of animal, bird, and man. One hand crept to the starstone on its silver chain around his neck. Even insulated in heavy silk, it pulsed with energy as he focused his mind on his friend’s.

Wind streamed through his mane, lifted his wings, swept joyful tears from his eyes. Power surged through him, as if he could run or fly or ride forever. Of all the gifts of Aran’s friendship, this was the most precious.

Liane drew her horse even with Coryn’s, her ladyhawk hooded on her wrist. The years had straightened her nose and faded her freckles, leaving her handsome but not pretty. Yet when Coryn glanced at her, he saw the spirit behind her green eyes, the courage she brought to everything she did. She’d become a skilled monitor and, as Kieran had predicted, had guarded Coryn’s well-being on more than one occasion in the matrix circles.

“It isn’t fair!” she said, following the black horse with her eyes. “I can follow the course of a single blood cell through a man’s body, but try as I might, I can’t go with him like this.” She meant Aran’s oneness with horse and hawk. Although she could monitor and manipulate energon flows in a human body, she was far less talented in empathy, the ability to sense another’s emotions, and she had only the minimal telepathy to work in a circle.

“Ah, well,” she sighed. In the closeness of the Tower, it was impossible to keep her feelings for Aran secret, or the fact that he had only brotherly affection for her. They had been lovers for one brief night, at Year’s End when all normal barriers in the Tower community lifted. What for Liane had been an ecstatic awakening was to Aran only part of the shared sacramental rite of the festival.

Coryn, sensitized by his rapport with Aran, felt the pang of Liane’s longing. If she had been Kristlin, he would have felt duty bound to speak to Aran. But he knew that if he took any action, Liane would be furious and humiliated. She was a trained monitor, a
leronis
. As she had so emphatically informed Coryn on more than one occasion, he was not the guardian of her conscience. Furthermore, her own Keeper had determined that as long as she kept the channels which carried her sexual energy cleared, the situation was no danger to either her or to Aran. If she could not be trusted to take such basic care of her own body, then how could she be responsible for the life and health of her fellow workers?

It was a good thing, Coryn mused, that such independence in women was fostered only in the Towers, or the men of Darkover might well find their orders questioned at every turn.

Coryn’s horse pulled at the bit, eager to return to stable and oats. “All right, then,” he said aloud, letting the beast ease into a jog. He tilted his head back to scan the skies for his hawk, called to it. There it was, jesses trailing from its feet, lazily enjoying the afternoon thermals. Coryn called again, signaling the hawk to return.

With a shriek to curdle a banshee’s blood, the bird folded its wings and plummeted toward the earth.

Coryn’s heart leaped to his throat.
Open your wings!
he thought desperately.
Now, before it’s too late!
The body of the bird filled his vision, falling even faster now, looming larger and larger.