Zandru's Forge (2 page)

DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED
U.S.PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES
—MARCA TEGISTRADA
HECHO EN U.S.A.

 

 

S.A.

eISBN : 978-1-101-14190-8

My gratitude to those who have graced my life with their compassion, kindness, courage, and hope. You know who you are.

The observant reader may note discrepancies in some details from more contemporary tales. This is undoubtedly due to the fragmentary histories which survive to the present day. Many records were lost during the years following the Ages of Chaos and Hundred Kingdoms and others distorted by oral tradition.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Immensely generous with “her special world” of Darkover, Marion loved encouraging new writers. We were already friends when she began editing the DARKOVER and SWORD & SORCERESS anthologies. The match between my natural literary “voice” and what she was looking for was extraordinary. She loved to read what I loved to write, and she often cited “The Death of Brendan Ensolare” (FOUR MOONS of DARKOVER, DAW, 1988) as one of her favorites.

 

As Marion’s health declined, I was invited to work with her on one or more Darkover novels. We decided that rather than extend the story of “modern” Darkover, we would return to the Ages of Chaos. Marion envisioned a trilogy beginning with the Hastur Rebellion and Zandru’s Forge, the enduring friendship between Varzil the Good and Carolin Hastur, and extending to the fire-bombing of Hali and the signing of the Compact. While I scribbled notes as fast as I could, she would sit back, eyes alight, and begin a story with, “Now, the Hasturs tried to control the worst excesses of laran weapons, but there were always others under development ...” or “Of course, Varzil and Carolin had been brought up on tales of star-crossed lovers who perished in the destruction of Neskaya...”

 

Here is that tale.

 

Deborah J. Ross
March 2001

“It is not lily days which shape our souls, but the frozen winter nights, when we find ourselves in the pit of Zandru’s Forge and discover who we truly are.”

 

—Felicia Leynier

T
he boy came to bid farewell to his father as the light of dying embers flickered across the fieldstone hearth. He shivered, thinking of the night outside and the horseman who would come to take him away. With a patience beyond his twelve years, he waited for his father to speak the words that would send him away, perhaps forever.

For a long moment, the man swathed in tattered blankets did not move. Only the slow, stuttering rise and fall of his chest and the glitter of his eyes indicated he still lived. The old injury to his lungs, from a time he would never speak of, had brought him to the brink of death before, and each time, he had recovered.

Father, please don’t die,
the boy thought, and wondered again if this were why he was being sent away. To Arilinn, so far, to live among beasts and wizards.

“Eduin.” A whisper, like a fall of ashes. “My son.”

Tears stung the boy’s eyes, but he fought the longing to throw himself into his father’s arms, to bury his face in the wiry gray beard, to feel the iron-thin arms around him.

“I do not know if I shall ever see you again. You are my last hope.”

“I won’t fail you, Father.”

The man’s shoulders lifted and fell under the layers of blankets. “And what is it you are to do?”

“To go to Arilinn. To become a—” the child stumbled over the unfamiliar word, “—a
laranzu.
The most powerful wizard on all Darkover.”

“Like your father before you.”

Eduin nodded, brow furrowing. If his father was the mightiest laranzu in the world, why did they live so far from everyone? Why did they go hungry and cold in the winter, and wear patched clothing? He knew the Hasturs had something to do with it. His mother, while she still lived, had taught him never to ask. But if he did not, he might never have another chance.

As if sensing his questions, the boy’s father gestured him closer and drew him into the shelter of one arm. “You are so young to carry such a burden, yet you are all I have left. Your brothers...” His voice trailed off.

“Who are you?” his father asked in a different tone.

“Why, Eduin MacEarn, as you named me, Father.”

“Listen carefully. Your mother knew nothing of what I am about to tell you. She knew only that I had been wounded in war and that I sought peace and forgetfulness. So I took her name and began a new life here. But the past must be made right.”

Eduin shivered on the brink of an enormous mystery.

“Your true name, my son, is Eduin Deslucido and you are the sole heir to what was once a vast kingdom. Your uncle was King Damian Deslucido, a man of surpassing vision, ruler of Ambervale and Linn—” the names rolled off his tongue like incantations, “—and High Kinally and Verdanta and Hawks-flight and then Acosta. But it’s all gone now, even the memory of that great man. Destroyed by the treacherous Hasturs, may their punishment last a thousand years! In their lust for power, they slaughtered your uncle and your cousin Belisar, who would have been king after him. They rained fire from the heavens and brought two Towers down in ruins. They thought I had perished, too.”

“No, Father, not you!”

“But Zandru smiled upon me and I escaped. I came here, took your mother’s name, and waited. I thought if I regained my strength, I could go back into the world and bring the Hastur fiends to justice. But,” gesturing toward his chest with his free hand, “this body has suffered too much at their hands.”

Breath rasped in the old man’s lungs. “When your brothers came of age, I began to hope again, that I might send them out in my place. They were good boys, loving sons. They tried their best. I realized then that the Hasturs are too powerful for any ordinary assassin, no matter how just the cause.”

Eduin shivered again. He barely remembered his brothers, only that they were tall and strong. How could he possibly succeed where they had failed?

“There is a great sense of justice in all this,” the old man said with a wry grin. “That you, the child of Rumail Deslucido, will bring to destruction the children of the accursed witch, Taniquel Hastur-Acosta, and everyone else in that miserable Nest who aided her!”

He broke off into a cascade of racking coughs. The boy scurried to the table across the room and brought back a battered wooden cup of herbal infusion.

“You must never oppose the Hasturs by force of arms,” the old man said, “for that way leads only to disaster. Instead, cultivate your talent. Earn your place in the Towers. Watch and learn. Wait. The right time will come. You will meet Hasturs there, of that I am sure. Laran talent runs deep in that family, as it does in ours. Make friends with them, gain their trust, obtain entrance into their homes. But never fear their strength. You have a Gift far beyond any of theirs. When the time is right, I will show you how to use it.”

The old man paused, but the boy knew there was still more. “Do not betray yourself by striking out at lesser members of that House. Save your efforts for your true targets—the guilty and their descendants. The ghosts of Damian Deslucido, of Prince Belisar, and all those who died in their glorious cause are counting on you.
I
am counting on you!”

Hoofbeats sounded in the yard outside. The boy glanced at the folded cloak laid atop the bundle beside the door. He threw his arms around his father and whispered once more—perhaps for the last time—

T
he great red sun of Darkover slanted across the courtyard at the entrance to Arilinn Tower on a morning in early autumn. Polished granite interspersed with translucent blue stone formed the floor and two walls. They were shaped and pieced together so artfully that not a blade of grass or tendril of ivy rooted there. Rising sharply, the walls framed a canyon where the chill of the night lingered. At the far end, the graceful sweep of arch enclosed the rainbow-hued Veil through which only those of pure
Comyn
blood, the caste of Darkovan aristocracy Gifted with psychic powers, could pass. In the dawn’s oblique light, the Veil resembled a waterfall of coruscating rainbow colors.

When he’d crept into the courtyard in the darkest hour of the night, Varzil Ridenow had not dared to approach the Veil too closely. Even here, in this comer where he’d curled up to doze fitfully until dawn, he felt its power dancing along his nerves.

The words echoed in his mind like the refrain of a ballad. He was a Ridenow and he had the gift of laran, the true donas. He had known this since he first heard the Ya-men singing their laments in the far hills under the four Midsummer moons. He’d been eight, old enough to realize there was something beyond what could be seen or touched, and old enough to know he should keep quiet about it. He’d seen the way his father,
Dom
Felix Ridenow, grew silent and tight-jawed on the subject. Now he was sixteen, older than most when they began their Tower training, and his father would like nothing better than to forget the whole matter and pretend his youngest son was normal.

Varzil had journeyed all the long leagues from his home to Arilinn, along with his father and kinsmen, to be formally presented to the
Comyn
Council. His older brother, Harald, who was heir to Sweetwater, had passed a similar inspection three years ago, but Varzil had been too young to come along then. His present recognition was clearly a political maneuver to bolster the status of the Ridenow. Many of the other great Houses still regarded them as upstarts, barely more civilized than their Dry Towns ancestors. It galled them to accord any Ridenow the respect of a true equal.

The peace that Allart Hastur had forged between his own kingdom and that of Ridenow was neither so long nor so deep to blur the memory of the bloody conflict that had come before. Dom Felix was never anything but scrupulously polite to the Hasturs, but Varzil sensed their doubt—their
fear
.

He would not have had to creep from the Hidden City at this scandalous hour, to wait half-frozen for someone inside the Tower to let him in. He hoped that would happen soon, before his absence was discovered and a hunt mounted. The Council session was all but over, with little further business to conduct. Dom Felix would not tarry, not with catmen sighted in the hills near the sheep pastures.

Varzil drew his cloak more tightly and set his teeth to keep them from chattering. The finely woven garment was meant for courtly show instead of protection against the elements.

Praise Aldones, it had been a clear night.

Through the long hours, Varzil felt the swirl and dance of psychic forces behind the Tower walls. The harsh bright energy of the Veil scoured every nerve raw, leaving him sensitive to the slightest telepathic whisper.

Much of the work of a Tower was done during the hours when ordinary men slept, to minimize the psychic static of so many untrained minds. This close to the city, even the occasional stray thought or burst of emotion, hardly worth calling
laran,
became cumulative, low-grade interference, or so he’d been told. For this reason, Towers like Hali and the now-ruined Tramontana stood apart from other human habitation. In the long quiet hours of darkness, Gifted workers sent messages across hundreds of leagues through the relays, and charged immense
laran
batteries, used for a myriad of purposes, including powering aircars, lighting the palaces of Kings and mining precious minerals, even performing the delicate healing of minds and bodies.

Varzil had drowsed and woken a dozen times that night, each time resonating to a different pattern. Whenever he roused, it seemed that his senses had grown keener. With his mind, he felt colors and music he had never known existed. He heard voices, a word here and there, phrases shimmering with secret meaning that left him hungry for more. The rainbow Veil no longer glinted from a distance, it reverberated through the marrow of his bones.

Movement caught Varzil’s attention, a shadow among shadows. Slender, gray-furred, bent over like a little wizened man, a figure slipped through the Veil. It halted, an empty basket clutched in its prehensile fingers, and stared at him.

Varzil sat straighter, pulling his thin cloak more tightly around his shoulders. He recognized the creature as a
kyrri,
although Serrais, seat of the Ridenow, had few of them as servants. They were said to be highly telepathic, but dangerous to approach. His father, in preparing him for the visit to Arilinn, warned him about their protective electrical fields. Nevertheless, he reached out one hand.

“It’s all right,” he murmured. “I won’t hurt you.”

Something brushed against the back of Varzil’s skull, at once feathersoft and grating, as if sand were being rubbed into his skin. But no, it was
inside
his head. Suddenly, a sensation of curiosity flickered through him and vanished as quickly.

The creature was studying him. Did it want something? He had no food—and then he realized he thought of it as an animal, instead of an intelligent, if nonhuman, being.

Without a sound, the
kyrri
hurried away. Varzil watched as it crossed the outer courtyard and turned aside at the street. He felt as if he had been tested in some mysterious fashion, and he did not know if he had passed.

“Look down there!” a voice cried from above. “Some ne‘er do-well rascal has camped upon our doorstep!”

Varzil craned his neck back to stare up at a balcony running alongside the Tower to either side of the arch of the Veil. Two older boys leaned over, pointing. They looked to be in their late teens, their voices already deepened, waists and hips slender but with the shoulders of young manhood.