A Flame in Hali (59 page)

For that moment, Callina’s mind lay open, receptive and unguarded. Eduin could control her, shape her animosity toward Varzil, urge her to use her influence on the Queen without understanding why. Instead, he had a different use for her, not only for her talents but for her position. Unlike the other inhabitants of Valeron Castle, she had access to the Tower and all its facilities, most particularly the relay screens that linked them to every other active circle.

A thrill rose in him, chill as the wind from Zandru’s Forge. Through her, he could search the world of the Towers for Varzil’s location. Then, when the time was ready, he would know where to strike. Or perhaps some opportunity would present itself, some circumstance in which Varzil was on some mission, away from the protection of Tower or Carolin’s guards.

Find Varzil . . .
The command reverberated through the girl’s mind.

Find Varzil . . .
She answered with all the solemnity of an oath.

A
tenday after Midsummer Night, heralds signaled the approach of a diplomatic party from Isoldir, traveling under a flag for truce. Queen Julianna placed her own forces in readiness, so that Isoldir found a guarded welcome, one prepared from the security of strength.

Upon Isoldir’s arrival, Eduin and Saravio crowded into the central hall, jammed in behind the mass of courtiers and more highly-placed servants. Romilla stood near the front, beside her father. Of Julianna, Eduin could see only the curve of pale gray that was her throne and a drape of ice-blue brocade gown. He could hear nothing above the chattering of the courtiers, not even when the Isoldir envoy began to speak. In frustration, he tried to push past a tall, thick-muscled armsman.

“Keep back, or you’ll find yourself outside with the pigs,” the man growled, adding a phrase indicating Eduin was no more than a lady’s plaything.

Eduin bit back a reply. Saravio touched his sleeve and bent toward him. “Naotalba is at work here. I can sense her presence.”

Instead of trying to hear and see, Eduin reached out with his
laran
. He dared not drop his psychic barriers entirely, for that would leave him open to the barrage of emotions from the crowd. Instead, he focused narrowly on Romilla. He knew the pattern of her thoughts, the imprint of her visions of Naotalba and fire. The despair that had once spurred her to seek release in death had receded to a shadow, dormant.

Images formed at the back of Eduin’s mind, hazy and indistinct, but without question those from Romilla’s own eyes. When he caught a phrase or two, he heard it echoed, more clearly, from her ears.

The introductions were drawing to a close. Eduin caught enough of the speeches to realize the head emissary was none other than
Dom
Ronal, Lord of Isoldir. The answering exclamations of surprise and suspicion drowned out what came next and snapped Eduin’s tenuous telepathic rapport with Romilla.

Fuming in frustration, he tried to reestablish the bond, but there was too much confusion, too many churning thoughts. Pandemonium battered him. He flinched under the onslaught, his
laran
senses reeling. He slammed his barriers into place, as hard and tight as if he were back at Arilinn. For a long moment, his vision went dark, so intense was his inner concentration.

His neighbor, a heavy-set man in Aillard household livery, shoved him, snarling, “Watch it!”

Eduin gestured an apology. The nearness of so many people rasped along his nerves. For most of his adult life, he had either lived in a Tower, where casual physical touch was forbidden, or else he had been too sodden drunk to care. Not even his
laran
barriers could shield him from being shoved from every direction or the smell and heat of so many bodies. In this commotion, he dared not risk another attempt at mental contact.

Having wrestled his aggravation under control, Eduin shifted to ordinary senses. There wasn’t much to learn, although he had no trouble gleaning those few events from the mutterings of those closer to the throne.

Dom
Ronal had indeed presented himself to Julianna, and under flag of truce. She had offered him a guarded welcome and protection, suitable for one who had been an enemy and whose current intentions were unclear. He and his men had been given quarters that, while undoubtedly heavily guarded, were nonetheless appropriate for his rank.

Julianna rose, indicating that the audience was at an end. The Isoldir contingent bowed deeply and withdrew under their escort. With their departure and that of the Queen, the rest of the crowd began to disperse.

“What did they come for?” one of the house servants near Eduin asked. “You’d have thought they already learned their lesson.”

The other, the burly man who had shoved Eduin, shook his head, replying, “They arrived under truce, didn’t you hear? Whatever it is, we’ll hear once the Lady has dealt with them.”

Eduin, having left Saravio safely in their chambers, paced the public halls where courtiers gathered and gossip was to be heard. He had long discovered that he was, like any other servant, regarded as invisible, but he heard little of substance. One graybeard insisted that Julianna was even now torturing
Dom
Ronal, or at least forcing him to watch the torture of his kinsmen, in order to gain knowledge of their true mission at Valeron. Others insisted that the Isoldir party had come to arrange a marriage treaty of
Damisela
Marelie, Julianna’s heir, to one of Ronal’s sons or possibly to the Isoldir lord himself.

Eduin had come to trust the servants more than the perfumed, beribboned sycophants. He went down to the stables, put on a canvas smock, and lent a hand caring for the Isoldir horses. Julianna was taking no chances, and had arranged to take the beasts under her own control.

“Now, why would the Lady want to throw away such an advantage, and on a man she could have beat into the ground?” the stableman snorted at the idea of a marriage alliance. He bent to examine the near hind hoof of the roach-maned dun he was grooming. “Will you look at this? Poor beastie’s got a crack right through the wall. Bad shoeing job, too. I’ll get the smith to make him a better, ’fore he’s lamed for good.”

Eduin straightened up from picking out the feet of the next horse. Neither mount was of the quality he would expect from the lord of even as small a kingdom as Isoldir. Any noble who could command even a single aircar could certainly afford better horses. There was the one with the damaged hoof, his own a swayback with crooked hocks, and the next had one opaque, whitened eye. None of them, he judged, were fit for battle, but they were probably the best to be had. He said aloud that, given the state of their mounts, he doubted the Isoldir party was in a position to bargain for anything.

The stableman slapped the rump of the dun, who turned his head and began playfully nibbling on the man’s hair. Laughing, the stableman went on to the next, the blind-eyed mare.

“If you take my meaning, Isoldir’s come to keep what the Lady’s left him with, but I can’t think what he might offer her that she can’t take for herself. Oh, if he’s worth anything, they’ll be parleying long and hard on this one, I can tell you that much.”

“Privately, I suppose,” Eduin said in a careless tone.

“And how else, for the likes of us with wagging tongues and knowing aught but how to keep their horses sound?”

Eduin bent to his work, currying away the dried mud on the horse’s fetlocks, and reflected that the stableman knew more of the affairs of state than any ten courtiers.

On his way back to his chambers, he stopped to chat with one of the cook’s assistants, a snub-nosed girl whose freckled cheeks suggested she might have
Comyn
blood. She balanced a basket of root vegetables on one hip, only too happy to share what she’d learned.

The party from Isoldir had brought news from along the road. A new plague, called the masking sickness because of the black sores covering its victims, had arisen in the countries to the north. Frictions between Ridenow and the kingdom of Asturias had escalated, and Varzil had gone to the capital of Asturias to negotiate on behalf of Carolin Hastur.

“Who told you this?” Eduin asked. “The men from Isoldir?”

“Oh, no, they only talked about the masking sickness. Pepita, who waits on Lady Romilla, she heard
Damisela
Callina talking about Varzil the Good. They’re saying that unless
Dom
Varzil can make a treaty, Queen Ariel will go to war. Oh, that will be a terrible time, when kin-folk take arms against one another!”

“Yes, indeed,” Eduin said as he patted her shoulder and sent her on her way.

So Varzil had gone to Asturias. Eduin knew little of the quarrel there. Asturias was defended by a ruthless general known as the Kilghard Wolf, and had recently occupied the neighboring kingdom of Marenji. Such a man might not take kindly to unctuous words of peace, or be willing to surrender his military advantage for Carolin’s Compact.

There was nothing Eduin could do, nor did he see any way to use the news to intensify suspicions of Varzil. There was no point in trying to create further hostilities with Isoldir. The only thing to be done was to watch and wait.

T
he evening following the arrival of the Isoldir emissary, Eduin and Saravio attended Romilla in her chambers. She sent a servant to summon them. Word had flown about the castle that Queen Julianna and her advisers had already met in secret with
Dom
Ronal. Eduin hoped Romilla had been one of the council. If so, he intended to use whatever means available to learn what had happened.

When they arrived at Romilla’s chambers, they found her pacing the length of her sitting room. Rows of expensive beeswax candles filled the chamber with golden light, burnishing the silver inlaid furniture. Some woodsy incense had been added to fire. One of Romilla’s attendants stood holding a goblet and decanter of amber-colored wine.

Romilla seated herself, arranging her skirts with a mannerism she had copied from Julianna. “Take that away,” she told the attendant. “I will not need it, now that Sandoval is here.”

“Naotalba already knows what troubles your heart,” Eduin said, and watched the flicker of reaction in her eyes. “She will answer you through Sandoval the Blessed—”

“Of course,” Romilla interrupted. “I must prepare myself.” She sat very still, but the broken rhythm of her speech betrayed her agitation.

At the mention of Naotalba, Saravio began humming softly. Eduin, even with his
laran
barriers in place, sensed the pulse of psychic emanations. The effect upon Romilla was immediate. Her eyelids softened, her breath caught and then slowed. The color in her cheeks heightened minutely.

“All will be well,” Eduin murmured. “Speak aloud what troubles you, that Naotalba may pour the balm of her healing upon you.”

“It—surely it is all foolishness—born of my old fears. I should not have such—such doubts. . . .”

Her voice trailed off, the jumbled phrases stilled, and for that moment she looked very young, her pride and self-assurance only a brittle shell over the nightmare-haunted girl Eduin had first known. He remembered that first audience back in Kirella, the bruised darkness of her eyes, her fingers tugging at the white bandages on her wrists.

So she had been. So might she be once more, if there were any advantage in it for him.

“I thought it would be so easy to sit in council,” she continued, “the judgment so clear.”

“You are in Naotalba’s care,” he said in a soothing voice, “and it is by her will you take your rightful place as heir to Kirella. As long as you remain faithful to her and submit yourself to her guidance, she will not abandon you.”

Romilla closed her eyes, an expression of relief washing her features, and drew a long breath. The flush on her cheeks intensified, along with Saravio’s humming. “I knew that I would see things more clearly in the presence of Sandoval the Blessed. Yes, that is better.”

“Rest with your eyes closed,” Eduin said, shifting his tone from reassurance to command. “Sandoval will sing to you now and let the blessing of Naotalba flow into you. Through him, you need never be alone.”

With another sigh, Romilla settled back in her chair. Eduin spared a glance for her attendant, who, having put away the medicinal wine, had taken a stool in the corner and was now listening with half-closed eyes.

A wave of
laran
energy swept across Eduin’s mental barriers. He sensed its power, dark and intoxicating. All he had to do was open himself and let the flood of orgasmic pleasure take him. The schemes of great lords would no longer matter to him, or the bitterness of unfulfilled revenge and blighted dreams. He would walk among the silver trees and hear the song of the
chieri,
eternal and unchanging.