A Flame in Hali (30 page)

“I believe you will find,” Lord Brynon said darkly, “that this patient is no longer in need of your care.”

“But—” The physician’s glance darted from the bloodstained boy to his master. The boy, still under Saravio’s influence, lay quietly. His breathing was soft, his face relaxed, lips gently smiling.

The physician’s expression shifted from confusion to fear. He had enough sense, Eduin thought, to realize that something had happened beyond his medical skills.

The courtiers murmured. The
leronis
stood to one side, her
laran
barriers tight and pale face unreadable. Her gaze shifted from the physician to Saravio and back again, resting only for the briefest moment on Eduin.

Lord Brynon turned back to Saravio, but Saravio was already sinking into the stupor that often followed exertion of his powers.

Eduin moved swiftly between Saravio and Lord Brynon. Sandoval the Blessed, he said, using Saravio’s alias, must rest after communing with the gods.

“Rest you shall have,” Lord Brynon said, “and no farther than my own walls! Those outlaws at Cedestri may have Varzil the Good himself to aid them, but I doubt even he could have accomplished such a feat!”

Lord Brynon shouted for the
coridom
to arrange the finest guest chambers for them.

Varzil, truly at Cedestri Tower?
This time, Eduin had no difficulty believing the news.
Varzil, within the walls of Aillard’s bitter enemy!

The scorpion whispers of his father’s command died into silence. Hope rose, hot and singing, in his heart.

I will have you now!
Eduin swore.

“You did well tonight,” Eduin told Saravio once they were alone in their new quarters. The rooms, two bedchambers connected by a sitting room, were comfortable even compared to Hastur Castle. A small fire blazed in the sitting room grate. Feather comforters covered the beds, and basins of warm, scented water had been placed in each of the rooms.

“Naotalba was with us,” Saravio sighed.

Eduin’s first thought was that Naotalba had nothing to do with it. He was not accustomed to thinking of his own work as divine intervention. Yet he felt a kinship with the demigoddess, condemned as he himself was, to a fate not of her own choosing. What would have happened if he had not been born to his own father? What might he have become?

I should have been a Keeper.
Over the years, he had worked with several of the most gifted
tenerézi
on Darkover, and he knew that what he had accomplished an hour ago would have been worthy of any of them. The thought filled him with an oddly sweet bitterness. He had never had a chance to use his potential. He had been fashioned into a weapon—his father’s weapon—when he was too young to choose for himself. It had left him unfit for anything else.

As for Naotalba, whatever she had been, human legend or demigoddess, she was now the tool that would shape Saravio to his will and fulfill the destiny his father had laid upon him.

T
he next morning, a servant knocked at the door and carried in a breakfast tray with an assortment of pastries, an urn of steaming
jaco,
mounds of butter and soft cheese, and a bowl of stewed honeyed fruit. Eduin ate ravenously. The intense
laran
work of the night before had left him drained, yet he had feared that if he asked for this sort of rich, heavily sweetened food, he might draw undue attention to himself. Kirella might not be Thendara, where he was still hunted, but the old habit of hiding still ran like a current of darkness behind his thoughts.

Saravio had been sent a luxurious breakfast, suitable for a noble guest, in appreciation for his healing of the Lord’s
nedestro
son, that was all. Only Eduin’s ingrained paranoia questioned the gift. He would have to stop thinking this way, lest his very actions betray him. He must think—and act—like a man who had nothing to hide.

Despite Eduin’s urging, Saravio only nibbled at the food. He had been awake for some hours, lost in his own thoughts, rocking and muttering unintelligible phrases. Only the name
Naotalba
was distinguishable, repeated over and over.

Hours passed and the great Bloody Sun, seen through the narrow windows, swung toward midday. Eduin, to calm his restlessness, practiced the basic monitoring drills he had been taught as a boy at Arilinn Tower. He took upon himself the discipline of single-minded concentration, tracing the energon channels in his own body as if nothing else existed.

He was considerably clearer in mind when a knock at the door brought yet another servant, this one a boy in the tabard of a page in Aillard colors of scarlet and gray, with the badge of Kirella. The child brought the summons Eduin had been waiting for. Lord Brynon wished to see both of them.

The family’s private chambers, although beautifully proportioned, seemed even gloomier than the presence hall. Heavy draperies blocked most of the natural light, casting the interior into shadows so deep that colors muted to shades of gray. Woven hangings and thick carpets muffled all sound. A small fire and torches set into wall sconces cast an uncertain light upon the faces of Lord Brynon and the girl on the divan. The household
leronis, Domna
Mhari, stood like a servant along the far wall.

Laran
barriers tightly in place, Eduin bowed to each of them, taking care to include
Domna
Mhari. Her expression remained impassive, but he sensed her surprise. He guessed that she received little enough courtesy, barely that of a servant or common chaperone. She must have tried to cure whatever ailed the daughter, and failed. Thus, she had lost her previous status. Perhaps the physician had taken her place in the Lord’s confidence. Eduin mused that if he handled the situation right, she might prove an ally.

Eduin turned his attention to Romilla Aillard, heiress of Kirella. At first, he thought her half a ghost, she sat so still. Her chest hardly moved beneath her layers of gauzy gown. She looked to be about sixteen, possibly younger. In the uncertain light and with her extreme thinness, it was difficult to tell. Her face, which would have been beautiful if it bore any hint of vitality, resembled alabaster. Her dark hair had been drawn back in a plain, severe style. Only her huge eyes revealed her awareness as Eduin and Saravio entered the room.

He lowered his
laran
barriers just enough to brush the outer edges of her mind. Unlike her father, whose talent was minimal, she possessed the full
Comyn
gift. In that instant, he saw her as a tangle of colored threads, a half-woven tapestry strained almost to the breaking point. She was not mad, not yet, but she wavered perilously close.

Eduin thought of her cousin, Valentina, who had been sent to Arilinn for the sake of her health and had, so far as he knew, never departed. There she had found a measure of balance in her life, as well as useful work, when she was well enough to do it. This girl should have had the benefit of such training. She was probably too old now, even if her father would allow it.

“My daughter, Romilla, wished to meet the man who performed such a remarkable deed last night,” said Lord Brynon.

Eduin bowed again, this time directly to the girl. “My brother is most honored,
vai damisela.
As you can see, he is a man of few words.”

Pale hands stirred, and Eduin saw the length of scarf that she twisted into a complicated pattern of knots around her wrists. She caught his notice and slipped her hands free. As she did so, the cuffs of her long sleeves fluttered back to reveal bandages on both wrists.

“I have heard,” the girl said in a voice barely above a whisper, “that the greatest truths are those spoken in silence. Did not the poet say that, Papa?”

“Yes, my dear, or something very like it,” said Lord Brynon.

With a visible effort, Romilla stood up and took a step toward Saravio. “
You
know what it is to crave that silence.”

Eduin caught her next, unspoken words.
You know what it is to wish for nothing more than to sleep and never wake, that silence without end.

Pain lanced through Eduin, piercing him to the core. His own despair rose up like an engulfing wave. Caught in its power, he could not speak, could not move. Her agony was his. An image flashed across his mind, the two of them lying on a bed of unblemished white, staring into each other’s eyes with perfect understanding. Around them, the room grew hazy and dim. His heart beat more slowly and softly with each moment. No air stirred in his lungs. The only thing he could see or feel was the girl’s gaze upon his. With a sense of fulfillment beyond anything he had known, he closed his eyes and saw nothing at all. In that moment, he knew he would give all he had, all he
was,
for that to happen.

With a jolt, he came back to himself. Lord Brynon had said something to him, but he had no idea what. Speechless, Eduin bowed again. The movement helped unlock something within him. Perhaps Romilla’s own despair had affected him so deeply because she touched some inner longing for oblivion, but the feelings that had come so close to overwhelming him were not entirely his. Anyone with a hint of
laran
must also be affected. The
leronis
had turned white and looked on the edge of fainting. The gloom of the castle was more than an accident of architecture and neglect.

Yet, his task was going to be easier than he had imagined. Saravio would surely lighten the girl’s depression. She must come under their control and remain there. At the same time, the father and any important officials would experience a sense of hope, of well-being in their presence. From there, it would not be difficult to induce dependence, to convince Kirella to launch an attack against Cedestri Tower while Varzil was still there. It wouldn’t take much. Varzil had created the opportunity by his own actions, and Eduin had a potent, persuasive weapon. He knew only too well the power of anything that took away such pain.

Eduin gestured for Saravio to come forward. The other man remained as he was, swaying on his feet, face slack and eyes unfocused, as if he were utterly unaware of what had just transpired. Eduin frowned. Surely Saravio had sensed the girl’s agony. Why had he not responded, as he had to Jorge or the boy last night or even the fat old cloth merchant?

“What’s the matter?” he spoke beneath his breath, but saw not even a flicker of recognition in the other’s eyes.

Saravio!
He caught himself in the useless mental cry. Useless and dangerous, for even if Lord Brynon had little
laran, Domna
Mhari certainly did, as did the girl. There might be others within the castle walls with the talent to hear him.

“I pray you, excuse us,
vai dom,
” he said with yet another bow. “Sandoval the Blessed is, as you see, still drained from his exertions last night. How fares the boy?”

“He does well,” Lord Brynon replied, with a noticeable lightening of his expression.

They talked on for several minutes about the boy’s recovery, long enough for Eduin to achieve a graceful retreat and arrange a second audience the next day.

Only when they had reached their own quarters and Eduin had braced the door with a chair wedged beneath the latch, did he grasp Saravio by the shoulders. He shoved the other man into one of the bedchambers, closed that door also, and shook him.

“By Zandru’s Seventh Frozen Hell, what happened to you? Have you lost your mind? Couldn’t you feel her pain? Why didn’t you
do
something about it?”

Saravio sagged in Eduin’s grasp, head rolling from side to side. His lips moved, he moaned, and then the words came clear.

“She is . . . Naotalba, come among us. I have stood in her presence. Ah, my friend, can you not feel her touch upon your soul? She has brought us to her at last. Here we will do her bidding and bring about her kingdom.”