Zandru's Forge (28 page)

Still clutching his friend’s twitching, palsied hands, Varzil threw all the power of his laran into the call. Chaos answered him, fragments of thought blown against the raging tumult.

Varzil’s own panic receded as he began to make sense of the howling madness of Carolin’s mind. Something must have happened to sever Carolin’s consciousness from his body, something so traumatic, so unbearable as to tear an otherwise sound mind loose from its moorings. Carolin had laran, enhanced by a full season at Arilinn, and if someone other than a Keeper had touched his starstone, even inadvertently ...

Using his breath to summon his strength, Varzil forced Carolin’s hands together around the starstone. Breath burst from Carolin’s lungs with a percussive sound, followed by gasping sobs. The iron rigidity of his body gave way. He sprawled, limp except for the grip, hard as rigor, on his starstone.

Varzil heaved himself to a sitting position with Carolin’s head and shoulders across his lap. Eduin had set the table to rights and relit the second candle. He bent over Carolin, face taut with concern. Together they lifted Carolin to the bed.

“We had best send for a monitor from Hali,” Eduin said. “What happened to him?”

“I thought you could tell me that!” Varzil glared at Eduin. “What did you do to him? Did you handle his starstone? Is that what put him in this state?”

Eduin held up both hands in a placating gesture. “No, no, he was like this when I came upon him. I didn’t do anything except try to help. You’ve got to believe me. I love Carlo like a brother, even as you do. I would never—”

Varzil thrust himself against Eduin’s mind, determined to learn the truth. Eduin’s barriers were as complete and reflective as a mirror of steel.

“I found him like this only moments before you came in,” Eduin said. “I didn’t know what was wrong, and there was no time to summon anyone from Hali or perform a proper examination. I did what I thought was necessary under the circumstances. It was an emergency.”

Varzil managed to rein his own temper under control, enough to see the sense in Eduin’s words. There were certain unusual cases, a crisis in threshold sickness, the backlash from certain psychic assaults, in which death was imminent. The only hope the victim had of surviving, or surviving with half a mind, was direct physical contact with his or her matrix stone. The risks were tremendous. Such a shock could stop a man’s heart or leave him alive but insane. The only people who could safely handle a starstone, once it had become keyed into the mental patterns of its owner, were the person himself or a trained Keeper.

“You are no Keeper,” Varzil said. He had not intended the comment as cruelly blunt as it came out.

Eduin’s gaze lowered for a fraction and his color darkened minutely in the light of the two candles. “I hoped that because Carlo and I are close, and I do have the potential to become a Keeper, that I might be able to reach him without harm.”

“And did you?”

Eduin met Varzil’s gaze, his expression smooth and cool. “I used the lightest possible contact. It made no—it didn’t make him any worse. I was about to try again when you interrupted us. Varzil, you must believe me—”

Eduin’s next words were cut off by a moan from the other side of the room. As one, they turned and rushed back to the bed. Carolin struggled to sit up. His hair was disheveled, his eyes white and staring like those of a madman. For a stomach-churning instant, Varzil feared that his own action had been too late. Carolin’s mental presence had returned, ragged and confused, but resonant with the force of his personality.

“What in the name of all the gods hit me?” Groaning again, Carolin raised both hands to the sides of his head.

“What happened?” Varzil asked.

Carolin bent over, his bright red hair falling across his face. His voice was muffled. “I have no idea. I can’t remember. One moment I was standing there, getting ready to take off my boots. The next, I’m here on the bed with you two looking as if—as if—Oh, my head hurts.”

That’s because Eduin’s been manhandling your starstone.
Varzil clamped down the accusation.

“It’s all right,” Eduin said. “We’ll send for a healer. You’ll be fine.”

Varzil bent over Carolin, easing him back on the pillows. After searching for a few minutes, he found the embroidered pouch for Carolin’s starstone. He held it in his hand for a moment, feeling the lightness of it, the layers of insulating silk, trying to summon a memory of it in Eduin’s hand.

Carolin reached for the pouch and slipped it over his starstone. His color brightened visibly, but he looked weary. He lay back with little objection while Eduin departed and Varzil monitored him.

The work gave Varzil something to do, a focus for his own unsettled feelings. Had he interrupted an assassination or a well-meant attempt at help? It made no sense that Eduin would wish to harm Carolin, who had befriended him, included him in these royal festivities, and taken his part with Dyannis.

To his relief, Varzil sensed little lasting damage to Carolin’s nervous system and
laran
channels. Carolin was young and healthy, with a mental resilience that allowed him to adapt as easily to being a student at Arilinn as to his duties as the royal heir. He had been disoriented by the shortcircuiting of the energy systems of his body and resulting muscle spasms. Carolin was going to have Durraman’s own headache.

With his innate strength and a few gentle nudges from Varzil smoothing the disrupted channels, Carolin quickly returned to normal. In a short time, only a Tower-trained monitor would be able to tell he had suffered anything worse than an exhausting holiday season.

At one point, Carolin reached down and took Varzil’s hand.

“We will not be together forever,” Varzil murmured aloud. “I hope you did not concoct this episode to delay my leaving.”

Carolin’s grip tightened. “Listen to me, Varzil. Whatever suspicions you have of Eduin, you must lay them to rest. You cannot go on like this. It will poison your mind.”

“You would think the best of every man, Carlo. Not everyone is so trusting. Nor, perhaps, should you be.”

Carolin shook his head. “That’s the old way of thinking, that every man must be your enemy or your rival. We were brought up on it, like mother’s milk. But we have seen beyond the old ways, haven’t we? We have dreamed a time when men no longer rain unquenchable fire from the skies on their neighbors, where honor prevails instead of self-interest.”

“Carlo, this is no time to be making speeches. I know you mean well, but you’re not thinking clearly. You need rest—”

“Then stop arguing with me! If you will not make peace with Eduin for the sake of harmony at Arilinn or for your sister’s happiness, then let it be for the dream we share. If that future is to be made real, we must treat all men as our brothers.”

Varzil looked away. Truth rang through Carolin’s words. He could not dismiss them as the ravings of a man who had just been through a near-fatal ordeal. His instinct was to temporize, to say that after he had wrung the truth out of Eduin, then he would consider this proposal of brotherly love. For Carolin’s dream to come to fruition, there could be no exclusions, no matters to be settled first.

“If a crime had been committed, by Eduin or any other man, let him answer for it according to custom and law,” Carolin said gently. “And not in the court of your opinion. I forbid you to take any action on your own.”

With an effort, Varzil nodded. After everything Carolin had done for him, even setting aside their friendship, he owed him no less. Besides, tomorrow he and Eduin would be returning to Arilinn, leaving Carolin safely behind at Hali.

Very shortly thereafter, Eduin arrived with the castle healer. After examining Carolin, he agreed that no lasting harm had been taken, said he thought it unnecessary to summon anyone from the Tower, and prescribed an herbal tonic to be taken in wine at bedtime.

The next morning, Carolin was well enough to bid his farewells in person, although he was still a bit pale around the mouth and eyes. The cold weather held, with rumblings of another storm in the next day or so, and an aircar had been arranged to take them back to Arilinn.

The pilot was a different one this time, a man of few words. Neither Varzil nor Eduin had much to say until the very end of the journey, when Eduin turned to Varzil. His jaw was tight but his gaze steady.

“For the sake of Arilinn and the circles where we must work together, Varzil, there must be an end to your suspicions of me. If you think I have done wrong, you must go to Auster and lay your charges before him. I will submit myself to his judgment.”

Varzil heard the certainty behind Eduin’s words. Surely a guilty man would not make such an offer. The relationship between each member of a circle and his Keeper was uniquely intimate. With a pang of guilt, Varzil realized that he himself had come perilously close to taking over as guardian of Eduin’s conscience, a thing he had no right to do.

What purpose would be gained by humiliating Eduin with accusations?

It is not necessary to like every man personally in order to deal
honorably with him. It was something, he realized with a start, that Carolin would have said.

“If I have wronged you, by thought or deed,” Varzil said, “then I am truly sorry.”

Eduin murmured a few gracious comments and the two fell silent again until the Twin Peaks of Arilinn, framing the gleaming Tower that was their home, came into view.

Spring came early with a flurry of rainstorms, each overlapping the one before. In the course of a month, the thick drifts of snow melted into slush. Moisture clung to the stone walls of Hastur Castle, and the smell of boiled laundry and mildew permeated the lower levels. Nothing seemed to dry out properly. Carolin’s favorite horse developed a bad case of thrush in its hind hooves. As soon as the roads were open to travel, Jandria left for home and Maura returned to Hali Tower. Carolin missed them more than he expected.

But it was Varzil’s absence which cut the keenest. Carolin found himself thinking of Varzil at odd moments, between hearings at the cortes, while washing his hands after a mom ing’s ride, when he picked up Roald McInery’s
Military Tactics.
Sometimes a feeling would pass over him, like a shadow of warmth, and he knew that across the leagues at Arilinn, Varzil was thinking of him too. He would remember the certainty he felt since their first meeting that somehow their lives were interwoven, that they shared a destiny.

Carolin quickly discovered he had to forge a new place at court amid subtle shifts of power and influence. Perhaps his time at Arilinn, where he had learned to guard his very thoughts, opened his mind to layers of unspoken meaning, to cross-currents of motivation and loyalty. Either his cousins, Rakhal especially, had altered in character, or else he himself was now sensitive to what had always been there. It was not that he distrusted Rakhal, only that he felt he no longer knew him.

Carolin told himself it was unjust to judge his cousin. He himself had changed during his season at Arilinn and here at home, with King Felix’s increasing debility, Rakhal had many duties thrust upon him and had borne his burdens nobly. Carolin had no doubt of his cousin’s passionate loyalty to the Hastur Kingdom, Carolin was fiercely loyal himself, but they disagreed on exactly what action those feelings of loyalty might inspire. There was no point in provoking a confrontation over things which would possibly never come to crisis. The day was coming when the most powerful lords would force the naming of Regents to prepare for the transition of power to the next King, and then everything would change again.

As for Lyondri, he was no longer a slightly hesitant outsider. He had assumed command of the castle guards and was developing a system of informants throughout the city. The shift imbued him with a sense of importance, and it seemed to Carolin that he thrived on it, although sometimes at the price of kindness. Lyondri seemed to take a particular satisfaction in the exercise of his power.

As the last of the spring showers soaked into the earth, crop plants began to burst forth in abundance. The generous rainfall combined with early warm weather to promise an especially bountiful harvest season. A portrait of Lady Alianora arrived, along with a procession of representatives whose principal responsibility was to oversee preparations for the wedding. King Felix met with them, beaming in approval at their every proposal, and then left them to the
coridom
to make their arrangements.

The portrait, a palm-sized miniature framed in costly copper filigree, was presented to him with great fanfare at the King’s court. Later in the evening, in his own quarters, Carolin tried to make out the character and temper of the original. It was skillfully enough executed, showing a young woman in a high-necked white dress. Her straw-colored hair was drawn back in a severe style which did nothing to soften the angular lines of cheek and jaw. Perhaps the artist had intended to render her as a mature, serious lady, worthy of becoming Queen, but instead she looked grim, her mouth a tight line above a stubborn chin. Not a hint of softness or humor showed anywhere in her face.