Zandru's Forge (38 page)

“I was glad of the chance to see Lady Bronwyn again,” Felicia said as they let their horses walk on easy reins. “I doubt I’ll get another chance, she’s so frail. In a few years, there will be no one left who remembers my parents.” She sighed lightly, without any trace of self-pity. “She swears I took my first toddling steps into her arms.”

She glanced at him, green eyes dancing. “Do you miss your family?”

“Only Dyannis, and she’s at Hali now, so we speak regularly across the relays,” he answered. “Once my father reconciled himself to my being in a Tower, he started referring to me as
my son at Arilinn.
I rather think he was as glad to find some place to put me as I was to get away.”

“Yes, there is that,” she said. “Carolin has offered to find me a nice husband, but I think he’s relieved at how adamantly I’ve refused.”

Varzil looked out over the sloping pastures. He felt absurdly happy that Felicia should be so firm in her refusal of marriage. She was far too talented to resign herself to a life of babies and fancy embroidery. He supposed her
nedestra
status added to the difficulty of a suitable match, but posed no problem in the Towers.

Varzil thought of Eduin, who for all his faults and obscure birth had become a skilled
laranzu,
a valuable asset to any Tower. Eduin had not yet returned to Arilinn from his journey home. Before Varzil and Felicia left for Hali, there had been some speculation that Eduin might wish to transfer to another Tower. Indeed, on the eve of their departure, a message had come over the relays from Hali Tower, requesting Arilinn to release him so that Eduin might join them.

In these unsettled times, few
leronyn
spent their entire lives at the Tower where they had first trained. Some, like Eduin, found one reason or another to start afresh; others, like Carolin, came for a short time only, whether a single season or a few years.

The memory of the riverside attack returned. The man in the leather vest had been fanatic in purpose, carefully prepared, armed with a sophisticated weapon attuned to Carolin alone. Whoever had planned it would not be deterred by a single failure. Carolin might not be so lucky next time. Varzil could not help thinking that he had missed some vital clue, had not pursued the matter to its end....

“Varzil, that thought has been nagging at you all morning,” Felicia said with a trace of acerbity. “Whatever is it?”

He realized he had been shielding his thoughts imperfectly and was about to apologize when her mind brushed against his.

So might a Keeper speak,
he thought.

Felicia was right. Working in a circle was like living without a skin. Matters normally considered exempt from polite conversation could not be concealed. A thought was as potent as a deed and few topics were taboo. It was the duty of Keeper and monitor to make sure each member was fit to work.

Speaking mind to mind, Varzil told Felicia what had happened on the road to Blue Lake. She kept her eyes downcast, her gaze somewhere in the direction of her horse’s ears, listening intently. Once or twice, she raised her eyes to his and he sensed the turmoil behind her quietness.

“This sad world of ours has more than its share of wickedness,” she said when he had finished. “Yet Carolin is a good man who has done nothing to deserve such a fate.”

“No, these men, whoever they are, hunt him for what he is—a Hastur.”

Felicia sighed. “Imagine them, Varzil, so consumed with the evil of their deeds, the dark malice of their thoughts. To nurture such hatred is to suckle a scorpion-ant at one’s breast.”
It is Evanda’s own grace that I am not such a one!

Varzil stared at her. Felicia had always seemed so gentle, so compassionate. Yet who was immune from the call of justice, given sufficient cause? Every man had his weakness, and even the strongest sword its breaking point.

“You are thinking of the great battle of the ballads?” he asked aloud. “The one which destroyed Neskaya and Tramontana Towers?”

She shook her head. “Even before that, King Damian Deslucido conquered Acosta and killed King Padrik, who was father to my brother Julian.”

Varzil heard the bitterness in her voice and knew it was not hers alone. It was something she inherited along with the color of her hair and shape of her hands. Just as he had been fed on suspicion of the Hasturs, from before he knew who they were.

“I had heard the family was extinct,” Varzil said.
And therefore you are free of the burden of hating them.

“They are, and I am. But my mother was not. If any had by some chance survived, I believe she would have hunted them down herself. She was adamant that no trace of them remain, It’s understandable, of course. She was very young when Acosta was overrun. And newly pregnant with Julian. It must have been horrible to see her husband cut down, to find herself a prisoner facing a forced remarriage.”

“It is something Carlo—Carolin Hastur—and I have talked of over the years,” Varzil said. He hesitated to say more, but under her gentle prodding, he found himself pouring out his dreams. He ended with the promise to rebuild Neskaya Tower as a symbol of hope.

“A hope of a new Darkover, one free of these incessant wars,” she murmured. “I pray I might live to see such a time.”

On impulse, he said,
You will see it. I promise you. You will be part of its birthing.

She pulled away from his mental touch with a sad little shrug.
Do not offer me empty promises, Varzil Ridenow. We may be blessed in our times, or cursed, and nothing we can do will change the will of the gods in this respect.

With a feeling of deep contentment, Varzil entered the matrix laboratory and studied the assembled members of the First Circle at Arilinn. Auster was turning over more responsibility to him as under-Keeper, although the older man would direct this night’s work. Varzil knew and loved every person in the circle, from Valentina Aillard to Gavin Elhalyn. They were his family, a family of the heart in ways that old
Dom
Felix Ridenow and Lord Harald could never be.

Felicia had joined the circle this evening. Since coming to Arilinn and proving to Fidelis’ satisfaction that she had truly recovered from her lung fever, she had been training with the higher-level matrices and had easily mastered the work.

She sat in her place around the low, round table, quietly preparing herself for the task ahead. This night, the laboratory had been set up for one of the most demanding tasks, the refining of raw materials for
clingfire.
Varzil was not happy about making the incendiary weapon and had urged Auster and the other Keepers to refuse.

“We are not willful children, to pick and choose what lawful work we will do,” Auster had replied. “Arilinn’s strength lies in our adherence to tradition, to those techniques which have proven themselves over the centuries. Dissension and rebellion are the surest way to disaster, and our world has seen more than its share in this last generation. I will not permit another such catastrophe under my authority.”

In the end, Auster’s word as Keeper was law. Just as a circle could not function as a conglomeration of individual talents, so a Tower could not continue with disparate voices. Barak, Keeper of the Second Circle, was even more conservative.

Now Auster would weave together the
laran
of the circle into a coherent whole, channeled and amplified through the enormous artificial matrix screens. They were working with a seventh-level matrix, which technically required seven qualified workers to control. Other Towers might have used six upon occasion, but Auster insisted upon things being done properly.

Cerriana took her place outside the circle, wearing the white robe of a monitor. The basic elements for the
clingfire
had already been mined and lay ready in their glass containers. The next step required distillation at high heat. Sometimes the glass vessels exploded, spewing bits of burning material. Even with protective clothing, workers were sometimes horribly injured. Iron or steel containers would have been more stable, but vulnerable to corrosion.

Varzil, in his capacity as under-Keeper, had already ensured that the chamber was shielded. He made one last check, for a distraction at a crucial time could prove disastrous, and then settled himself on his bench.

“Let us begin,” Auster said.

As one, the members of the circle reached out hands and minds to one another. Varzil slipped into the familiar stream of mental energy as each person bent his concentration toward the Keeper. With the confidence born of his decades of experience, Auster attuned the individual psychic signatures into a harmonious unity.

As an ordinary circle worker, Varzil had happily accepted the loss of personal separateness under his Keeper’s control, one note in a symphony, one color in an ever-changing rainbow, one droplet in a river of dancing light. Since he had begun his Keeper’s training, however, a shift had taken place. The relentless rigor of the exercises had altered his consciousness so that, while part of him floated, serene and blissful, in the energy nets, another part remained aware and separate. Later, as he progressed in skill, he would be able to control and direct the focused
laran
of the circle while still remaining an integral part of it.

Lorens, who had helped to build this matrix lattice holding the pattern in his mind like a map
...

From outside the circle itself, Varzil felt Cerriana’s subtle presence. Her mind moved constantly around the circle, checking each person, testing breathing, pulse, the rhythmic blinking of eyes, the tension in back and neck muscles, the temperature of extremities. Wherever she found discomfort, no matter how minor, she eased it. Even something as trivial as a toe cramp could mar the perfect concentration necessary for circle work. For this reason, she had not linked in the circle itself, but remained apart so that she could devote her entire attention to the others.

As if from a distance, Varzil felt a gentle warmth through his lower back as Cerriana relaxed the muscles there. He reminded himself to thank her afterward.

Auster had completed the work of weaving the minds of the circle together. The raw elements of the
clingfire
in their glass vessels stood ready. Using the artificial matrix crystals to amplify their already powerful
laran,
he began the next phase, raising the temperature to distillation levels.

Varzil felt the shift as Auster tightened his control. This work was doubly dangerous, first because of the power of the matrix lattice, secondly from the physical effects of the
clingfire
itself.

Something was not right.

Varzil could sense no disturbance in the energy net, no discord in the psychic resonances. Auster had done this work many times. The circle was more than able to manage the matrix. Cerriana had checked them all carefully before they began work, to make sure neither of the women was approaching her cycle, and no one was too tired for the demands of the work.

What, then?
he asked.
Cerriana?

I can find nothing amiss, only the trouble in your own thoughts.
This was a polite way of telling him to attend to the business at hand.

Time lost its meaning, moments or hours passing as the circle continued to pour their focused thoughts toward their Keeper. The first container grew hotter. The more volatile elements began to evaporate and pass through the distillation apparatus.

One mote, one fragment at a time, the process of separation and purification continued. The circle finished one vessel and began the next. Through his closed eyes, Varzil envisioned the corrosive stuff as glowing, molten orange-red particles which possessed their own eerie beauty.

The colors wavered in Varzil’s mental sight, the outlines of the containers vibrating. When he was six, he had fallen from his pony and struck his head against a stone. His eyes had fractured a single image into three, five, a dozen, all jerking erratically. His nurse fussed and his father had forbidden him to ride for a week. But there was nothing wrong with his skull now.

He felt rather than saw the first crack in the thin-walled distillation tube, waited for a horrified second for Auster to reinforce it. The massed
laran
of the group was more than enough to stabilize a minor flaw and continue working.

Instead, the circle wavered, its unity unraveling. Strands of mental bonds tore free, whipped by invisible winds. At first, only a few, then more and more with each passing heartbeat. The circle faltered.