Zandru's Forge (49 page)

The knot of ice tightened. “Yes, I was acquainted with Carolin,” Eduin said, “and I spent a Midwinter Festival with him at Hali as his guest. It is not my place to judge who shall rule, any more than it is mine to tell a farmer when to plant his wheat or a shepherd when to cull the flock. My allegiance is to my Tower. I will do whatever work is given to me.”

Dougal bent his head in acknowledgment. “Would that there were more with your clear loyalties, Eduin. It would make the world a much simpler place.”

The world, Eduin thought as he returned to his own chambers, was not a simple place. It was complex, often puzzling, and always dangerous. And loyalty had nothing to do with it.

Dyannis had not yet returned and summer was just turning into autumn when Eduin set off for Hestral Tower. To his surprise, a royal steward arranged for a horse and escort for him. The two swordsmen wore Hastur colors with an insignia that marked them as members of Lyondri’s special cadre.

Several times along the road, the guards called a stop to visit a local manor house or question an innkeeper. Eduin quickly realized that they were searching for information about the whereabouts of Carolin and his sons, or word of any man who had helped them on their flight. As long as they treated him with reasonable civility and got him to Hestral Tower, it was no business of his what else they did.

They reached Hestral late in the afternoon, when the harvest sun poured down golden across the rolling hills. Here two traders’ routes crossed the Hestral River, forming a natural crossroads. The town sprawled down to the river wharves, a collection of rambling, one- and two-story buildings, many of them in antiquated half-timbered style, half-buried under sword ivy, their roofs sagging with age.

On a rise sat a heavily walled fortress. In contrast to the liveliness of the town, with its bright pennants and throng of people and their animals, the fort presented an insular, brooding aspect. It must have been built originally as a guard post.

They made their way through the town market square where farmers sold hard gourds and turnips, rounds of
chervine
cheese and bushels of grain. This late in the day, only a few women with baskets over their arms remained to haggle with the vendors over the day’s leftovers. Their voices rose like the shrill cries of birds. A pack of half-grown boys with sticks raced between the carts, chasing a ball and raising clouds of dust.

The bustle of the marketplace battered at Eduin’s mental senses. He slammed his barriers into place.

A man hawking baked goods stepped backward into the path of Eduin’s horse, which threw up its head. The man stumbled and the few misshapen buns left on his tray tumbled to the dust.

Though he wore the apron of his trade, the baker spoke boldly. “Now, there, yer lordship, you must buy my fine buns!” He held out a hand, palm up.

“Show proper respect to your betters!” one of the guards snarled. “In Thendara, you’d be whipped for such insolence.”

The baker’s man scowled. “But this is Hestral, not Thendara. And here a man must pay for what he’s ruined, whether it’s buns or pots.”

The guard lashed out with one booted foot, but the baker’s man twisted so the blow missed his face by a hair’s breadth. He darted away. The second guard held up a cautionary hand. “If not him, then we’ll find some other. There’ll be a right time and place to teach such rabble their manners.”

“Aye, and a healthy respect for His Majesty’s colors.”

Tentatively, Eduin lowered his mental barriers. The hum of so many people within a confined space swept over him, but it was not as bad as he’d expected. Most of the mental impressions were quiet, everyday pleasures. A cascade of images brushed his mind, like jewels strung one after another: the brightness of sunlight on running water; a child’s laughter; water curling around bare toes; a fish quick and slippery darting through the shadows; the smell of rivergrass—

A woman strode toward him, a basket swinging from one hand and two adolescent boys in tow. Except for her crown of tangled flame-red curls, she could have been any of the townswomen, out to buy a few last vegetables for dinner.

For a moment, Eduin did not recognize her. When he’d last seen her at Arilinn, she had been thin and pale, only lately recovered from illness. Now she walked with a long, free stride, kicking the damp hems of her skirts. Sun and exercise in the fresh air brought color to her cheeks, and health had softened the angles of her body.

His stomach curdled. It was
her.

“Eduin, don’t you know me?” She’d reached him and stood at the head of his horse, shading her eyes with one hand.

He inclined his head.
“Domna
Felicia.”

One of the boys giggled and the other hushed him up.

“You must forgive their manners,” Felicia said in an easy way. “We’ve been down by the river, communing with frogs. They’re not back to human level yet.”

Her words and manner were disarmingly friendly, yet he sensed in her an
awareness
of the world around her. Any overt attack, physical or mental, would surely fail.

Quickly, he reined his thoughts under control. “Are you heading back to the tower? I must present myself to the Keeper.”

“We have looked for you this last tenday,” she replied. “I will return with you, for it’s clear we’ll get no more work from these two today.”

Felicia refused Eduin’s offer of his horse, walking beside him. The guards followed.

“The Keeper of Hestral must be an unusual man, to train novices in such a way,” Eduin said, searching for some neutral topic. “We certainly did nothing like that at Arilinn.”

“Arilinn is the very embodiment of tradition,” Felicia said. “Loryn Ardais, who is Keeper here in Hestral, does not subscribe to the theory that nothing should be ever done for the first time. As he is so fond of saying, ‘Innovation does not necessarily portend deterioration.’ As for the frogs—well, perhaps there is more than a little playfulness in that exercise. How else can we expect boys to sit still for their indoor lessons, except by rewarding them with warty, slimy things?”

“You do not object?” You, who are
Comynara
and
leronis?

Though Felicia’s expression was perfectly serious, Eduin caught the undertone of merriment in her voice. “I have always thought that the best use of our Gifts is to create harmony with the world around us, not separation.”

“So you would oppose using
laran
to move a storm from a place where it would create a flood to one where it would relieve a drought?”

“Hardly that. In fact, one of the projects in which I hope you will join us involves some new ways of detecting those weather conditions that can give rise to forest fires so that we can intervene. One of the workers in my circle has Rockraven ancestry that gives him a very strong weather sense, though it’s erratic. But enough for now! You are not here an hour, and already I am giving you a dissertation on my work!”

They neared the gates. Eduin felt the shimmer of power. Felicia passed her free hand over the
laran-
keyed lock and the spell shifted but did not dissipate. One half of the gate swung open and she gestured for him to enter.

The two guards nudged their horses forward. Ears back, tails held at an angle eloquent with reluctance, the beasts shuffled a pace or two. “Good masters, you must leave your weapons outside,” Felicia told them.

“We go armed by the orders of His Majesty, King Rakhal,” the senior of them said, glaring at her.

“It is by the orders of the Keeper of this Tower that no one shall enter bearing arms.” She spoke the words as simple fact.

“You have fulfilled your mission in escorting me here,” Eduin intervened. “Surely you are not required to go within.”

Unless you suspect the Keeper of Hestral Tower of harboring fugitives.
Were that the case, he added, there would be little which steel could accomplish.

Eduin dismounted, untied his saddlebags, and handed the reins of his horse to the nearer guard. He took out the small purse that he had been given for expenses on the trail. It still held a few silver coins. “Here’s for your trouble.”

The guard took the purse, weighing it for an instant before tucking it inside his jacket. “No trouble, my lord. We will leave you here, then, and wish you good fortune.”

Felicia watched them ride back down the hill.

“What would have happened if they had tried to take their swords inside?” Eduin asked.

“Hmm?” She sounded a little distracted as she turned to close the gate. “Metal acts as a conductor of energy, somewhat like lightning, so it heats up. The last time anyone tried was ten years ago. A thief, the story goes. He’d only a dagger, which he carried in a sheath filled with spring water because someone had told him it would protect the weapon against magic. I’m told it made a spectacular explosion. The towns-folk still sing a drinking ballad about it.”

Inside lay a little courtyard with a well and rows of dwarfed fruit trees, and a tiny kitchen garden. Beneath a trellis of yellow rosalys, a young woman sat playing a
rryl.
The sound had not carried beyond the gates.

The girl set down the
rryl
and darted toward them. She was barely in her teens, with a fresh innocence that reminded Eduin of Dyannis when they had first met. As Felicia introduced them, the girl lowered her eyes.

“You must forgive our Alys,” Felicia said, “for she is new-come to Hestral and has not lost her shy ways. Ah!” she turned toward the portal of the Tower, where a man in the flowing crimson robe of a Keeper emerged. “Loryn, here is Eduin of Hali, come at last to join us!”

Loryn Ardais seemed to float above the ground, so smooth was his stride, his feet hidden beneath the rippling folds of his robes. His hair was a dark, intense red, almost black, and his gaze entirely too penetrating as he inclined his head in greeting. “Come inside and meet the others,” he said gravely. “We are very happy to welcome you to our fellowship.”

The introductions went smoothly, for Hestral was far smaller than Hali. Even the common and dining rooms had been framed on a more modest scale.

Left alone at last, Eduin surveyed his own chamber on the second floor facing the river. It looked comfortable enough. Beside the fireplace stood a washstand holding a basin, an ewer of water scented with petals from those very rosalys he had seen in the garden, and a bar of fine soap. Best of all, it possessed only a single wall in common with another inhabited room. He unpacked his few belongings, beginning with the telepathic damper he had brought from Hali. Setting it on a table beside the door, he tuned it to its highest setting. The familiar buzz and wash of deadness reassured him that it had survived the journey intact.

His cloak went on one of the hooks, his extra shirt and linens into the small, exquisitely carved chest at the foot of the bed. He listened for a moment before checking to make sure the corridor outside was empty. Then he closed the door once more. Though there was no lock, he did not think anyone could enter unawares.

From the pocket sewn into the lining of his winter cloak, he drew out a pouch of triple-layered silk. With a tug on the drawstrings, he turned it upside down, so that its contents, a single blue gem, fell into the opened palm of his hand.

Such a small thing it was, so harmless in appearance. It looked like nothing so much as an unkeyed matrix, and one of only mediocre quality. He had carried it from his father’s cottage, hidden it at Hali, and now ...

Holding it to the light from the river view window, he marveled again at his father’s consummate skill. He himself, or any qualified matrix technician could have constructed such a device, but it would have been many times this size and used multiple stones. This one caught the light only dully, as if a twist of fog marred its center. He had carried it, undetected, through the warded gates of Hestral. With it, he would at last fulfill his oath and bring about the destruction of the last remaining heir of Taniquel Hastur!

The next months passed uneventfully as Eduin settled into life at Hestral Tower. Loryn Ardais ruled with a light hand, not only allowing but actually encouraging his people to develop new ideas. He was, he told Eduin, very much in sympathy with the ideas of Varzil of Arilinn.
Laran
was at its best and noblest when used for peaceful purposes. War not only demeaned but tarnished the Gifts.

Eduin had countered with the list of new developments in
laran
weaponry. He steered the conversation toward the topic of the use of a trap-matrix keyed to an individual’s signature for selective assassination. Had the news of Gwynn’s failed attempt—and the device he’d used—reached this far? He needed to know how suspicious the folk here at Hestral were before he set his own plans into motion.

Loryn brushed the topic aside. “Innovation in the service of a single goal—the destruction of fellow human beings—may result in a few new devices, but the very process of creativity is stifled. You see, once you define your goal so narrowly, once you say, I must have a weapon against an invading army, or I must target a single leader for assassination, then you close your mind to all else. Your creativity becomes so tightly funneled, you cannot follow your spontaneous impulses, your curiosity.”