A Flame in Hali (21 page)

Lady Helaina took the occasion to excuse herself. Picking up her stool, she withdrew to the edge of light cast from the tent lanterns.

“It is no secret,” Varzil said, leaning toward Dyannis, “though many would like to keep it so. For the past five years, I have been quietly looking for a way to begin training women as Keepers.”

“Oh, surely that’s not possible!” burst from her lips.

“Yes, that’s what I was taught, as were you. But why should it be so? With a little care to her cycles, a
leronis
may do any work as well as a
laranzu
. Is Ellimara not as competent a monitor as any man? Are you not as strong a telepath as Alderic or Lewis-Mikhail?”

“Certainly she is, and so am I,” Dyannis protested in a furious whisper, “but Varzil, you’re talking about becoming a Keeper!”

“How is that different from any other work if one is qualified for it?” he demanded. “I did not take on the mantle of godhood when I completed my training, nor did Raimon, nor any of us! It is a skill that any
Comyn,
man or woman, can learn if they have the aptitude and the dedication. For that matter, any one with the talent, regardless of lineage.”

Dyannis downed the rest of her wine in a single gulp. “Now that is something that really will stir up the guardians of propriety—training commoners? Varzil, you will turn the entire world upon its head!”

“I mean to,” he replied with the impish grin she remembered so well, “but not all at once. The time for new ideas is fast approaching—our Towers are at a fraction of their former strength and in another generation, many will stand empty if we cannot overcome our prejudices. You know as well as I that many a
nedestro
carries a full measure of talent. How can we afford to let that go to waste just because its bearer is never legitimated, or the bloodline forgotten for a generation? Never mind, let it go. The more pressing issue is one of replacing those Keepers who are aging or lost for other reasons.”

She nodded, thinking of the empty Keepers’ quarters at Hali. Only a generation ago, there had been three Keepers, with apprentices in training. After the death of Dougal DiAsturian, only Raimon remained. He was from a long-lived family and was relatively young. He might serve Hali for decades to come. But he was human, of mortal flesh and bone. He could have been killed in the riot like any other man. If the stone had struck his head just a fraction lower—

Varzil had caught her thought. “There is no under-Keeper to follow Raimon at Hali. And why is that?”

“Because—” she frowned, “because there is no one he deems suitable to teach.”

“No man who is suitable.”

Dyannis stared open-mouthed at her brother. The noises of the camp muted, suddenly distant. A chill wind whispered through the tent. When she found her voice, she said, “Are you saying that there is some woman at Hali whom he would train?”

“Not exactly.” Varzil swirled the remains of his wine in his cup. “One of my reasons for coming to Hali was to discuss this very matter with him. While Raimon is sympathetic to the general concept, he is not yet ready to undertake the training himself. He will not, however, oppose my offer to bring a suitable woman candidate to Neskaya.”

“You. Or Ellimara.”

“Ellimara?”

“She is a powerful telepath, and young enough to endure the rigors of discipline. That is a factor against you, though you not only have the strength but the initiative and the self-reliance, as you so ably demonstrated at the lake shore riot—”

“Ellimara cannot possibly be a Keeper! She has hysterics—she’s far too emotional, she—”

“She has never been given the chance to use her passions instead of being at their mercy,” Varzil said, now darkly serious. “And you are evading the issue. Both Raimon and I believe you have the ability to become a Keeper. The work is not easy, but I do not believe anyone with the talent can be truly content with anything less. It would allow you to use all your abilities to their fullest, as well as serving Darkover in a way few others can. You would have to leave Hali and come to Neskaya. Will you consider it?”

“Varzil, you must be joking!” Dyannis scrambled to her feet, shaking with emotions she could not name. At the periphery of the tent lights, Lady Helaina looked up.

“All I ask at this time is that you consider it,” Varzil said quietly. “Nothing need be decided quickly, certainly not at the end of a long day of travel. I ask only that you think about it in the privacy of your own conscience.”

“You are completely demented!” Dyannis cried. Then she continued in a quieter voice, “Out of respect, I will think about what we have discussed before I tell you so again. My answer must remain the same. Meanwhile, I wish you good night, and dreams of sanity.”

With that, Dyannis swept off to her own tent, Lady Helaina following with a puzzled expression and tightly closed lips.

“Go away,” Dyannis cried. She could not bear the company of the other woman, so calm and sure of herself.

Helaina murmured that she would wait outside for a time, for the night was still mild, but would remain within hearing, should Dyannis need her.

Dyannis raged across the narrow space of the tent. Nameless emotions boiled up inside her, a tumult of jumbled thoughts.

Varzil was insane—the experience on the lake bed, contact with the
laran
-charged pillars, the turbulence of the day—must have warped his judgment. There was no other explanation. Training
nedestro
commoners was one thing—there had been a number of brilliant
leronyn
without proper family names in the past—and maybe—maybe some day, there might be a woman with the temper and strength to do a Keeper’s work—

But herself? After what she had done?

She was exactly as worthy to direct a circle, holding the minds and sanity of its workers in her grasp, as she was to sit on Carolin’s throne! She had no doubt of her own ability—the talent was there, she knew herself to be a powerful telepath, or she could never have controlled the minds of so many. Above all things, a Keeper needed self-restraint, judgment, discipline. She had never had those things in abundance—whenever she thought she had finally mastered herself, some wild impulse would seize her—she would go hawking, or run off to the lake—or in a moment of fury, heedless of the consequences, create the illusion of a dragon. . . .

No matter what Raimon said, she would never be free of the guilt of those three deaths, and the nightmares that haunted the survivors. She, she alone had done this thing. If her Keeper insisted she must continue to work, must go on this mission with Varzil, then in atonement, she would do her best. But she must never allow herself to be put in a position where she could do so much harm again.

True to his word, Varzil did not bring up the subject of training women as Keepers again. Instead, they talked of their mission at Cedestri and what they knew of the folk there, what strategies might be used to enlist their cooperation. Varzil had never met any of them, but Dyannis knew the Keeper, Francisco Gervais, for he had begun his training at Hali and had still been there when she first came.

“I dare say I will remember him better than he remembers me,” she said with a wry grin.

“Even then, you were hardly inconspicuous,” he said.

She laughed at that, and the tension from their previous discussion lifted.

There was little enough to laugh about. Cedestri had surely been alerted to their coming, having withdrawn their Overworld edifice for draining the energy from the lake rift. They must be expecting some reaction. Varzil was not, strictly speaking, an emissary of Hali Tower, but of King Carolin. His objective was to convince Cedestri to sign the Compact or, at very least, refrain from using the bonewater and any other
laran
weapons they had created. Dyannis did not think Varzil’s chance of success was very good, even with Francisco’s old ties to Hali Tower. Varzil himself was unremittingly optimistic.

“If the Compact does not reach all of Darkover within my lifetime,” he told her, “then others will take up the cause after me, and others after them, until there is no place from the farthest reaches of the Hellers to the shores of Temora, where an honorable man will use any weapon that does not bring him within equal risk.”

He will not give up,
she thought,
not until he is dead or we all are.

Varzil’s unswerving belief in the Compact brought Dyannis unexpected solace. The events of the riot had shaken her to her bones. It must never happen again.
Laran
was far too dangerous to be used, except in the most carefully controlled circumstances.

The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that the Compact was necessary. Not only necessary, but a form of salvation. If she could not rely upon her own self-control, she could help to change the world so that such abuses would become impossible. At times, Varzil’s patience exasperated her. He thought only in terms of weapons to be used in war—
clingfire
and bonewater dust, lungrot and root blight, which scoured the land sterile. He refused to see that any
laran
work carried the potential for harm. At times, she thought that even work in a monitored circle, under the supervision of a Keeper, was too risky.

They came down from the jagged hills toward the rolling countryside surrounding Cedestri Tower and, beyond it, the tiny kingdom of Isoldir. The land softened, as if weary of holding up the bowl of the sky. The hills were bare, bereft, and something in their treeless bareness struck a chord of sadness in Dyannis. She felt a kind of mourning, a destitution in the gray curling grasses and the sun-parched heights. A harsh land, she thought, and not one to foster any hopefulness of spirit. She hoped that the folk of Cedestri Tower were immune to its influence.

The road led them down from the hills and across a plain of hard-baked earth laced with cracks as deep as her forearm. There was no water beyond what they carried. The hooves of their horses stirred up dust as they slowed from a ground-eating trot to a walk. Once, they spotted a pair of
kyorebni
circling the heights.

Dyannis nudged her mount next to Varzil’s. “I do not know the history of this place, but I fear something terrible happened here.”
Or will happen.

“Yes, I feel it, too.”

For the past generation, Isoldir had been at war with a branch of the powerful Aillard family. Perhaps battles had been fought on the very terrain over which they now rode. Perhaps other, more terrible weapons had transformed lush pasture or grain fields into this near desert.

Varzil shifted his weight onto his stirrups, half-rising in his saddle, and pointed ahead. “Cedestri lies beyond. Another day or so should see us there.”

Dyannis shaded her eyes with one hand, as if she could penetrate the dust that cloaked the horizon. She glanced aloft, searching for the huge carrion birds they spotted earlier. Two dots hovered in the brightness. She squinted, her eyes watering.

Dyannis unconsciously dropped into mind-speech. She felt her brother open his mind, reach out with his
laran
senses. The land stretched around them, sere and gray as ash, pierced by motes of radiance, the seeds that lay dormant even now, awaiting the return of rain. Above, the sweep of wind and sky brought the kiss of moisture, freshening.

The first two dots had grown visibly larger now, and they did not circle the way natural birds did. As Dyannis watched, a third joined them. She tasted metal, the concentrated heat of charged
laran
batteries and shielded human minds. Deep within them, layered in insulation and fragile glass vessels, pellets glowed unnatural green.

Varzil signaled silent acknowledgment.
Aircars out of Isoldir. They must be bound for Aillard.