A Flame in Hali (10 page)

They slipped through the shadows along the street leading to The White Feather. The last dusky light had faded from the sky and there were few lamps here. Even the inns and other places that did business after dark waited as long as possible, in order to save fuel. Eduin hugged the sides of the buildings. Saravio went more awkwardly, but he was learning fast.

Even a commoner could have sensed the fear in the streets, lingering after the last of the lightnings had ceased. Fires still burned in several areas of the city, although those in the richer neighborhoods had already been extinguished. Smoke and ozone tinged the air.

They were not the only men abroad at this hour. On their way here, they had passed several others, sometimes singly, other times in groups of two or three.

“They are frightened,” Eduin murmured to Saravio, “although they do not know why.” He raised his voice and adopted a coarse country accent. “Aye, it’s sorcery for sure. My wife’s cousin tells of storms like this, and worse, down Arilinn way.”

He felt the surge of interest in the group of approaching men. In a moment, they were passed, the seeds planted. As they had rehearsed, Saravio nudged the men’s minds. Fear sharpened to the edge of pain. Eduin smiled.

Yes, let them think that. Let them whisper. Let the whispers grow and feed upon themselves.

Within the inn, they found light and warmth, hard-edged merriment overlying resentment like tinder awaiting a spark. The innkeep’s wife brought watered ale and meatless stew, which was all the refugees could afford. She collected their money before she brought the drink, but she hovered just outside the door to listen.

From the moment he threw back the hood of his cloak, Saravio burned with a fervor that drew all eyes. The dozen men already in the room fell silent, as did the handful more who entered after them.

Saravio’s first words caught them as easily as netting fish in a stream. Understanding dawned in their faces, along with surging rage. In his speech, they saw the pattern and the reason for it all, not only the obvious horrors of
clingfire
and bonewater dust, of taxes and the ravages of war, but the way the very heavens had turned against them. The killing cold of this last winter, the failure of their crops, the stillborn children, and now the eerie turbulence in the heavens themselves, all had one cause, one origin.

It was, Saravio announced as Eduin had rehearsed him, the work of the accursed
leronyn
in their Towers. Anger burned hot and clear, without hesitation or doubt. All the while, Saravio’s deft mental touch roused adrenaline, damped thought, heightened desperation.

“But what can we do?” the crippled farmer was the first to speak. “We have no magical powers, not even swords if we knew how to use them. We are men of the soil—farmers, herdsmen, plain, ordinary folk.”

“It’s easy for you to say these things,” a black-haired man with huge, callused hands confronted Saravio. “At the first hint of trouble, you’ll go running. Why should you care what happens to us?”

Stung, Saravio started to reply, but Eduin silenced him with a gesture.

“If my friend did not believe as he speaks, would he be here with you now?” Eduin demanded.

“If we were to go against them,” another man muttered, “what chance would we have? No more than a beast in the fields!”

“How do we know you’re not one of their spies?” Scowling, the black-haired man got to his feet.

Eduin sensed the quicksilver mood of the group, how quickly their fury could be turned to an easier, more immediate target. He raised one hand to the insulated starstone at his throat, although he feared he could not control so many by himself. Yet he must protect Saravio at any cost.

“Because
I
say so.” The innkeeper’s wife stepped away from the door frame, hands on her hips. “And you all know me. I’d never sell out one of my own. I tell you, this man is to be trusted. All the time Nance was dying, did any of those fancy lords lift a finger for her? No, it was this man who stands before you, this Saravio, who came every day to ease her passing. Did he have to do that? I say you’re throwing away the best thing that’s ever happened to the working folk of Thendara if you don’t listen to him now.”

The black-haired man eased himself back into his seat.

“You want to know what we can do against the Towers,” Saravio said. From his mind, Eduin caught the image of Naotalba standing behind him, infusing each word with certainty. “If we are patient, if we are faithful, then we cannot fail. But the time is not yet ripe. You must be my heralds, to carry the message to all who still suffer.”

The men looked from one to the other, doubtful. Eduin stepped into the silence. “As has been said, we are too few to go up against the might of a Tower. It would be like storming a fortress with only a kitchen knife. We must bide our time and gather more men to our cause. We will wait and watch. Sooner or later, the accursed sorcerers of Hali must come out from behind their walls. Then we will see that even a man armed by magic can be felled.”

D
yannis Ridenow loosened the scarf that covered her copper-colored hair and gazed out over the Lake of Hali. A spring breeze, chill and laden with moisture, rippled through her cloak. She inhaled, welcoming the reflexive shiver.

Aldones, it was good to be outside again. The winter had seemed interminable, each tenday of confinement more tedious and unbearable than the last. She stretched out her arms. The old women of both sexes who made it their business to mind everyone else’s would work themselves halfway to apoplexy if they knew she was here, unchaperoned and dressed in the scullery maid’s borrowed cloak and overskirt.

Let them cluck over her; it wouldn’t be the first time or the last. She might just spend the rest of the day abroad and give them even more to talk about.

One sacrifice Dyannis had not been willing to make for the sake of disguise was her own boots, fine leather worn to butter softness and fitted exactly to her small feet, which now rested at the very edge of the golden sand. Just beyond, the cloud-water of the lake curled and receded. Instead of the usual gentle waves, the surface looked choppy, torn.

Above, the sky hid behind a blanketing overcast. For an instant, her fancy seized upon the image and she saw not only herself, but all of Darkover, caught and pressed like dried flowers.

Pressed.
Yes, the analogy was apt. Her nerves tingled with the electrical tension that had been growing daily. She could almost see the unborn lightning, taste its metallic trail.

The storms had been growing worse since winter’s end, both in frequency and intensity. The fire brigades in Hali and nearby Thendara had been run to the point of exhaustion, for the storms never brought rain. Nor did the lightning discharge the electrical tension. Instead, each one seemed to feed upon the one before.

Something had to be done. Even with maximum shielding, the circles at the affected Towers struggled for the concentration that usually came so readily. Sometimes, half the workers were incapacitated due to overload of their energon channels.

So far, the city of Hali was peaceful, but reports arrived daily of increasing unrest in Thendara. What began as a mere spark of temper or drunken quarrel would erupt into a riot filling the streets. Sometimes the City Guards could not restore order and had to let the outburst run its course. Dyannis, who had not worked as a monitor in some time, was called into service along with the other senior
leronyn,
to tend to the wounded.

Many times over the years, since Dyannis had first arrived at Hali Tower as a bewildered adolescent novice, she had sought the lake for the calm that the fresh air and rhythmic motion of the waves always evoked. Now she found the irritation was, if anything, worse here in the open than within the confines of the Tower. It seemed to permeate both air and land, sizzling over her skin. She wanted to lash out at something, to put her pent-up frustration into action. Even as her hands curled into fists, she knew how irrational that was. As a trained
leronis,
she recognized her own increasingly volatile temper as a response to the atmospheric disturbance, but as a human woman, she was still subject to its nerve-grating effects.

Impatiently, she kicked out with one foot, scattering grains of sand into the cloud-waves. The toe of her boot caught on a buried rock and she stumbled. She cursed, brushed damp sand off the leather, then bent to rinse her hands.

The instant her bare skin touched the mist, a jolt of psychic energy surged through her. Gasping, she tripped on the skirts that were two sizes too big for her and sat heavily on the sand. She drew breath, trying to calm herself, staring at the lake that had once been so familiar and soothing.

What in Zandru’s Seven Frozen Hells was
that
?

She felt as if she’d brushed an enormous bank of
laran
batteries, of the sort used to power an aircar or light an entire city, only unstable, so that the merest contact released a burst of discharge.

Impossible!
She had touched the cloud-water many times, had even descended a short distance down the lakebed, but never experienced anything like this. Nor had she heard any report of anything untoward or unusual at the lake; but then, it had been a long cold winter, and few had ventured outdoors without need.

The lake was filled with a mist that was neither liquid nor gaseous. It curled and drifted, always in motion, and could be breathed like air, although to do so carried its own dangers. At the same time, the cloud-water conducted sound and light very much like ordinary water.

Dyannis, her heart still racing, forced herself to think, to reason things through. Water also conducted electricity, and so did the lake substance. From what source? Why would the curling mists feel like an overcharged
laran
battery?

She tilted her head to stare at the sweep of sullen, gray overcast sky. Her nerves tingled. Although she could not have put it into words, she sensed a connection between the electrical tension of the sky and what she had felt in that brief moment of contact with the lake waters. She did not believe the unusual storms were the source, but rather the effect.

If the lake were generating psychic energy that bled off into the air and manifested as electrical storms, why had no one noticed before now?

Dyannis frowned, considering the problem. The lake bottom was largely unexplored, true, and for good reason. The cloud-water sustained life, but something in it suppressed the breathing reflex after a time, so that it was not safe to remain submerged for more than the briefest excursion. Perhaps, too, this phenomenon was new, beginning during a particularly harsh winter and growing slowly in strength. She could very well be the first person to walk the lake shore for pleasure since last autumn.

Moments slipped by. The cloud-waves plashed gently. The diffuse overcast light continued unbroken. Somewhere behind Dyannis, a bird called out a three-note song and then fell still.

Dyannis pushed herself to her feet. A step or two carried her halfway to the water’s edge. She drew out a locket of filigreed copper on its chain around her neck. Within its silk-insulated interior lay a brilliant blue-white starstone. Without slipping it from its anchoring clasp, she pressed her fingertips to the stone and felt the answering surge of power.

Dyannis placed one palm on sand left damp by a receding wave. Again she sensed the strange psychic energy. Every nerve screamed to jerk away, but she shifted her weight, thrusting her fingers through the coarse grains of sand. Shivering, she forced herself to hold still as the wave returned. Warmer than water, the cloud-stuff swept over her hand.

Her vision went white, as if she had plunged through ice into a winter river. Then the discipline of her years of Tower training took over. Even as part of her conscious mind reeled with the overload, she diverted it, restoring the integrity of her own
laran
systems.

Her first impression, she realized, had been correct. The cloud-water acted as a conducting medium. Just as ordinary water evaporated from the surface of a lake or river, so this energy bled off as electrical potentials, manifesting as worsening storms.

Dyannis found it less difficult to hold still for the next wave. The power came in ripples like the waves themselves, each one building, cresting, and then subsiding. The pulses functioned to collect and direct the energy. With a shudder, she realized that this could not be a natural phenomenon.