A Flame in Hali (65 page)

I ought to give myself to this thing,
Eduin thought furiously,
and let them fight it out between them.

He could not do it, turn his own mind and heart into a battlefield from which neither could emerge victorious. He was not ready to slit his own throat, not when Hali Tower—and Dyannis—depended upon him.

The relay screen lay only a few paces away. It hummed softly in response to the presence of two Gifted minds. He glanced at it, tearing his eyes away from the silver armature. He could reach it in an instant, but he would need a distraction, something to occupy the Keeper.

Eduin twisted in Callina’s grasp, using his weight and the power of his muscles, built up from hours of heavy labor in the stables. Her nails bit into his flesh as he wrenched free. He almost knocked her off her feet. She gave a little shriek as he grabbed her in turn. Her arms were so thin that his hands almost encircled them. He pivoted her to face the matrix device. The crystal blazed, more white now than blue.

Fool!
roared through his mind.
A woman cannot become a Keeper!

A woman
has
!

Incredulity answered him.

He summoned his own memories, shaping them like a weapon. When he had come to Hestral Tower in search of the daughter of Queen Taniquel, Felicia had already begun her training as under-Keeper. Arilinn Tower had refused to train her, despite the fact that she had, under emergency conditions, taken on a Keeper’s role. Only Hestral, small and experimental, had dared to allow her to develop her extraordinary abilities. Eduin had sat in her circle, felt her sure mental touch as she gathered up the massed psychic energies of each worker. In the centripolar position, channeling immense power, she had never faltered. What she could have become, what she might have accomplished if he had not put an end to her, he would never know. But she
had
worked as a Keeper, as powerful as any man. All this he summoned to hurl at the crystalline Keeper.

A silent howl reverberated in the chamber. Eduin shoved Callina at the armature. She crashed into it and went down in a flurry of skirts and silver wire. Romilla shouted, but he had no time to spare for her. He leaped for the relay screen.

Even as Eduin bent over the screen, bringing it to life with a touch of his mind, he heard Callina struggling to free herself. He glanced around. Romilla had backed against the far wall, hands over her mouth, eyes staring. The impact of Callina’s fall had toppled the matrix device, but the central crystal still blazed. White-hot fury seared his vision for a moment.

Callina thrashed on the floor, shrieking like a ham-strung animal. Her panic reverberated through the room.

He turned to the screen. It was tuned to another’s mental pattern, but he had no time to make adjustments. He must drive his message through by sheer mental power.

Hali!
He threw all the force of his
laran
into the call. Across the leagues, across the years, he cried out.

It was day, he realized with a sickening jolt, and therefore unlikely that a worker would be sitting at the screen. Almost all relay messages were sent at night, to avoid the low-level psychic chatter from ordinary minds.

Behind him, the sound of Callina’s struggle changed. He heard the screech of metal on stone as she shoved the armature aside, then the rustle of her skirts.

What if he were already too late? What if the silence from Hali were not daytime rest but the absence of all
laran
-trained minds in the Tower, gone up in smoke and ash, in flame and screaming?

No, surely he would have sensed it if Dyannis had suffered such a fate. He would know because a part of him would have died with her.

A moan reached his hearing, so raw and low he barely recognized it as human. Without looking, he knew that Callina had risen and now stood, clutching the Keeper’s stone, unable to tear her gaze away. The brightness of the day paled in the pulsating radiance of cold blue light. To the side, Romilla sobbed incoherently.

Eduin reeled with the effort. His vision grayed, blurring. He felt the faintest hint of response, a distant stirring like the lightening in the east before dawn. The
leronyn
of Hali were as powerful, as sensitive, as highly trained as any on Darkover. It was not impossible that he had reached any of them.

Even as Eduin gathered his strength to call out once more, a silent roar lapped at his mind. It was like his father’s dying command, and yet different. No words came to him, no compulsion to act, to kill. Hunger, like a ravening beast, reached for him.

Eduin twisted around on the bench. Callina had turned toward him, holding out the crystal that now blazed with eye-searing, colorless light. Her mouth gaped in a death’s-head rictus, her features distorted almost beyond recognition.

Reflexively, Eduin raised one hand to shield his eyes. Tears stung. His physical vision failed in the blinding whiteness, the burgeoning
laran
presence.

He saw then the thing that the Keeper had become. It had been a powerful mind, and its single motivation had been honed over years, decades, a lifetime and more. It had no care for anyone or anything else. There was nothing human left, no hint of compassion or joy or loyalty, no ties to king or kin, no old loves or long-dead
bredin
. Nothing but a single imperative, to imprint itself upon a living mind.

Eduin staggered under the onslaught. His thoughts crumbled. All awareness of his body, of the room in which he crouched, the relay screen, the message he must send, all fell away.

How simple it would be to just let go. He would feel no pain, no indecision or regret, none of the torment that had been his own life. His body, his mind, his very thoughts would belong to another, with another’s purposes.

As if it sensed his weakness, the crystalline Keeper flared even brighter. Within him, the gut-wrenching compulsion that was his father’s legacy burst into flame. It had never been attacked before and after that day in his father’s cottage, he had never had the will to resist. Now, like some wild beast, it sensed the threat to its very existence. All that was left of his father was the driving need for revenge. All that was left of the Keeper was an equally desperate need for survival. They were mirror images of one another.

And he himself, caught between them, what was he?

All his life, Eduin had been a tool for someone else. He had never been allowed to choose his desires, or even know what they were. He’d sacrificed Carolin’s love, a place in the Towers, whatever bizarre fellowship he might have had with Saravio, everything. Only in Dyannis had he found the smallest measure of happiness. To his father, he was a thing to be used, taken up and discarded or remade in a more useful, obedient mold, but in her clear eyes he had seen himself as something more, someone worthy of love. He would never see her again, or hold her in his arms, but if he could prevent her death, even at the cost of his own, even if it meant letting Varzil live, then he would do it.

Anguish rushed through him, pouring forth from some hidden recess of his being.

I will live my life on my own terms,
he raged,
or I will end it!
Against them both, the twin ghosts of father and Keeper, he threw all the passion of that cry.

The physical world rose up around him. His eyes focused on wall and window, the tangled web of gleaming metal, the ash-pale woman standing before him with a handful of sun-bright gemstone. He had won that much.

He hurled himself from the bench at Callina. Too late, the Keeper realized his intention. Callina jerked backward like a puppet, but not before Eduin reached her. He dared not try to take the crystal. It was somehow working through her. He took a long stride, turning sideways, and swung a backhand punch. His blow connected, spinning her around. The instant the starstone left her grasp, he felt a lessening of the Keeper’s mental attack.

Callina staggered but kept her feet. She screamed out a curse in
cahuenga.
The crystal rolled across the strip of bare floor toward the door. She lunged for it.

Eduin grabbed Callina around the waist and hauled her back. It was like trying to hold a furious cloud leopard. She twisted, kicking and scratching. Her nails raked the side of his face, drawing blood. She spat in his face, for a moment blinding him. Her weight unbalanced him. He fell back, landing against something low and hard-edged.

The two of them went crashing down amid splintering wood and shattered glass. Too late, Eduin realized they’d fallen on top of the table holding the relay screen.

They were on the floor now, rolling over the debris. Callina kept clawing at him, aiming for his eyes. Eduin tried to grab her wrists. She shoved a knee into his upper thigh, hard enough to numb the nerve. He released her.

She scrambled to her hands and knees. He rolled up and caught her on the temple with a roundhouse punch. It was poorly aimed, with little power behind it. He wasn’t much of a fighter, but he’d learned a few things on the streets of Thendara. He came at her again. Her body spun away and she landed, limp, a short distance away.

Eduin turned back to the relay screen, but he already knew what he would find. The delicate mechanism lay shattered past repair. His mind caught no hint of resonance.

The Keeper’s crystal still glowed, although not as strongly as when Callina’s mind had fueled it. Grimly, Eduin hauled himself to his feet. He walked the few paces over to where it lay on the stone floor and brought one boot smashing down on it. It shattered with an almost human wail that hung for a long moment in the air and then died away into silence.

Eduin stood, chest heaving. His muscles trembled and his stomach churned. Blood trickled down his face where Callina had gouged him.

He had failed. There was no way to get a message to Hali Tower, even if it were not already too late. Not even Varzil could reach so far with his unaided mind.

Eduin’s knees buckled under him and he collapsed. The hard stone floor stung his knees. He bent over, curling himself around the knot of pain. Moment by moment, one heartbeat after the next, it swelled until he was no more than a shell of agony. If there had been a dagger or any weapon to hand, he would have ended it.

In that vast and unchanging Overworld, he wondered, would he find any respite? Would his soul wander there, forever tormented, forever torn, until time itself came to an end?

An idea took shape in his mind, so fantastical that he would not have dreamed it had he not been so distraught. In the Overworld, neither time nor distance had any meaning. A
laranzu
could travel to a Tower halfway across Darkover, could shape thought into reality. He had been warned many times about the lands of the dead, which bordered the Overworld.

What if he could travel through the Overworld to reach Dyannis? Just because it had never been done before did not mean it was impossible. The worst thing that could happen was that he would remain there, without hope or home or meaning, long after his body had fallen into dust.

What was the risk in that? He was already doomed. He had nothing to lose.

Eduin felt his body drop gently to the floor even as his mind reached out.

He must have been partway into the Overworld to begin with, for he had never made the transition so smoothly before, not even with a trained Keeper to guide him. Perhaps his own desperation fueled the leap.

A featureless gray sky arched above an equally unbroken plain. Eduin turned slowly, scanning the distant horizon, but saw nothing. The light was diffuse, betraying no direction, but a chill breeze brushed his cheeks. He glanced down and saw himself clothed in a gray robe, loosely belted. A shiver passed through him, for he had not worn such a garment since he last worked at Hestral Tower. He wondered if he might encounter Felicia in this realm, and what he might say to her. Better that her spirit flee him, as the dead were supposed to do.

Valeron Tower had created no structure of mind and thought to mark its location. That was hardly surprising if its workers never ventured forth to the Overworld. Without such an anchor, he might be unable to return to his own place, his own body, but at this moment, he did not care.

He had no idea in which direction Hali Tower lay, but that made no difference. Here in the Overworld, only will and thought had any meaning. He must remember Hali as he had known it from the inside, the essence of the place, the mental signatures of Keeper and circle. These were the true landmarks of a Tower. It had been many years since he lived and worked there, but such communities had their own stability. Workers might come and go, novices complete their training, and Keepers pass away, but the spirit of the place, the ways of thinking and working together, these changed slowly or not at all.

Most of all, Dyannis would still be there. She would have grown. Certainly, she had increased in strength and skill. Her astonishing performance at Hali Lake proved that. Yet, he felt he would know her anywhere.

The unearthly stillness of the Overworld swallowed his cry. Again he called, pouring all his love, his longing, his anguish at lost hope, into that name.

Gradually, he felt a change in the air. He could not judge distances across the plain, but he sensed a ripple, like space folding in upon itself. The light shifted, charged now with a heightened energy, an imminence.

A figure condensed as if from mist, standing before him. His first reaction, joy and relief, faded as the outline became clear. It was too large, too thick, too stooped to be Dyannis.

His father stood before him, wavering and indistinct, yet unmistakable. Straggled locks framed a face as pleated and ashen as the tattered funeral shroud. Marble spheres veined in gray filled the eye sockets. Charcoal lips moved silently and a skeletal hand pointed a bony finger at Eduin.