Zandru's Forge (56 page)

Passing one hand across his eyes, Varzil turned away. Loryn withdrew the telepathic contact in respect for his privacy. On Varzil’s finger, the white stone pulsed gently. She had given it to him on a night of passion and hope. Would it be all he had left of her? He cupped it in both hands.

As his lips touched the gem, warmth surged through him. For an instant he felt Felicia’s presence. Not her thoughts, nothing so clear as that, but the unmistakable stamp of her personality. His first thought was that, against all evidence and everything Loryn and Oranna had said, she herself still lived in her body.

But no, that was not possible. He knew the truth of their words.

Memory came in a flash—Felicia calling to him, driven by such desperation she was able to cross leagues and formidable Tower barriers. The darkness of his room at Arilinn—the flash of the crystal—

Somehow, she had transferred her mind, or some part of it, to the ring.

If that were so—his thoughts careened on like beasts driven mad by a storm—and some way might be found to restore her body—if enough of her mind survived—if the crystal were complex enough to sustain her—

With a cry, Varzil covered his face with both hands. He needed time to think, to calm himself. Hope and despair clashed within him, jumbling all reason.

Time
—

Time also to discover exactly what had happened, so that he might find the key to her recovery. If he understood
what
and how, he might also discover the way to reverse it.

Varzil gentled his voice as he turned back to Loryn. They were all distraught by the suddenness of the events, he said. No one wanted to take premature action that they would later regret. Surely, there was no harm in maintaining Felicia’s body in its present state. For a time, at least, until more could be learned about what had happened.

Loryn listened, nodding compassionately. In the normal course of events, without the extraordinary resources of a Tower, Felicia would already be dead.

“You are right,” he said. “We all need time to accept this terrible tragedy.”

“I would like to investigate,” Varzil said. “There are many things I do not understand.”

Loryn regarded him calmly. “If it will ease your mind, you have my leave.”

Oranna came over and laid her fingertips on the back of Varzil’s wrist, a telepath’s light contact, a world of sympathy in a single gesture. “We can create a stasis field which will isolate and protect her. Her life forces are already very low, but within such a field, time would lose all meaning. An hour, a day, or even a century might pass without any decay.”

“I thank you,” Varzil said. “I—I have heard of such a technique at Hali, at the
rhu fead.
In ages past, things too dangerous to be handled or destroyed have been safely kept in this manner. I did not think the knowledge still remained.” He smiled, half-bitter. “Perhaps we at Arilinn, with our pride in our traditions, have much to learn from other Towers.”

“Perhaps,” Loryn agreed. “And perhaps you also have much to teach. We have become strangers to one another, each hoarding our own knowledge and skills, each terrified that the other will make some discovery leading to a tactical military advantage.”

“This much is true,” Varzil replied with feeling, “and it must stop. Perhaps we cannot bring an end to all disputes, armed or verbal. But we can at least attempt to contain them within the sphere of physical conflict.”

“Ah!” Loryn said. “Even here at Hestral, we have heard of Varzil’s Compact of Honor. I had hoped for the opportunity to sit and discuss it with you.”

“Compact of Honor? Carolin Hastur and I just called it our Pact, but I like the sound of that.”

Loryn was about to say more, but paused. Someone had approached the infirmary door and sent a telepathic query instead of the usual knock. The Keeper excused himself and went to the door. Varzil caught a glimpse of a young woman, her face troubled. Either she had not yet learned to mask her feelings or else something had disturbed her deeply.

“I will be with them presently,” Loryn said. “They can wait outside the gates. We do not permit armed men to enter Hestral Tower, and certainly not before breakfast.”

Varzil caught the slight lift of the other man’s shoulders, the ring of authority in his voice.

“What was I saying? Ah, yes. Your Compact. Throughout Darkover, there is a longing for peace, for justice. We of the Towers cannot sit by, complacent in our seclusion, while kings and lordlings set the very land ablaze. Once we made
clingfire
at the command of the Hastur Lords, and to this day still hold a stock of it, hopefully forgotten. Perhaps one day, not only will the stuff be forgotten, but the very word will have lost all meaning. Can you imagine that? A time when no one knows what
clingfire
is?”

“I, too, hope for a day when such words are but empty sounds.” Varzil followed Loryn into the corridor. “It is not
my
Compact, as you call it, but rather a dream I share with Carolin Hastur, who has been my friend since we were boys together at Arilinn. I fear that it will be many years before there is hope of persuading men to follow it.”

“Do not lose heart,” Loryn said, “for here is one man—and one Tower—ready to listen. We will speak more of this later. For now, the hospitality of Hestral is yours, and I hope you will stay with us for a time, at least long enough for resolution of this incident. Go with Oranna. Rest and eat.”

Varzil bowed and, thanking Loryn for his graciousness, headed back toward the laboratory. He had arrived in the middle of the night, uninvited, in the middle of a crisis, and had found an unexpected welcome. These armed men Loryn spoke of, whoever they were, would get a far cooler reception.

O
ranna led Varzil down a wide staircase and into Hestral’s common room, part dining area, part meeting place, and part sanctuary. Like the rest of the Tower, this room had once served another purpose. The walls were rich red-brown brick flecked with bits of mica that winked softly in the morning light. The windows had been thrown open, so that the breeze carried the faint scent of rosalys. Instead of a central divan, wooden chairs sat arranged in small groups. They were of unfamiliar design, with curved backs and armrests, covered with cushions in bright orange and yellow.

Eduin looked up from where he was sitting alone by the empty fireplace. After a moment of hesitation, he came toward them. “What news?”

“It is as we feared,” Oranna said in a voice strained with fatigue.

She went to the table that ran the length of one wall underneath the opened windows, took up a plate, and filled it with the food arrayed there. Most was familiar to Varzil, but a few dishes, such as the stewed mushrooms dotted with pea-sized balls of fresh cheese, surprised him.

Eduin sat with them as they ate. After he and Oranna had exchanged a few pleasantries, he said, “Did you hear the ruckus at the gates earlier?”

“I fear it bodes nothing but trouble,” Oranna said, in between mouthfuls of crumbled cheese and honey-glazed apple. “Until now, we have had an overly easy time-of it here at Hestral. But we cannot remain apart from the world’s sorrows forever.”

Excusing himself, Varzil walked over to the window nearest the corner. From this vantage, the gates themselves were obscured, but he had a fair view of the men and horses arranged outside. The sun reflected off their shields and lances. Even knowing little of military matters, Varzil recognized the groupings, the banners of blue and silver bearing the badge of Lyondri Hastur. This was no simple escort but a show of rank by numbers. This was a party armed for war.

Hestral’s layout was simple and central, the commons having once been the great hall of its original design. The working areas comprised one wing, with living quarters diametrically opposite. The matrix laboratory was very much as Varzil remembered it from his arrival, only now the full morning sun streamed through the eastward facing windows. It had been a pleasant space, well proportioned and comfortable.

No one had yet come to set right the overturned benches or clear away the pulverized crystal which made a halo around the central worktable, broken by a swathe where Felicia had fallen.

A young man, still robed for circle work, huddled on a bench beside the table, gazing down at the ruined lattice. Shadows hid his face. By his posture, he looked to have not moved for some hours. He had probably been there all night.

“I still can’t believe it,” he stammered, flinching at Varzil’s approach. “It worked so well the last time we tested it. It was
designed
to prevent this kind of power surge.”

“Felicia told me a little about the project,” Varzil said, “but I’d like to know more.”

“It’s all my fault!” The lad turned and Varzil saw him clearly for the first time, a rawboned, gangly youth not yet at peace with his growth. Fading acne reddened his face. Varzil recognized him as Marius, the Rockraven boy whose talent was the focus of Felicia’s research.

“How is it your fault? Did you attack Felicia? Did you deliberately channel destructive energy in her direction?”

“No!” The boy’s voice cracked. “No, I would
never
—”

“Then you have nothing to reproach yourself with, certainly not something you neither caused nor could possibly control. Exactly what
did
happen?”

“I don’t know! I’ve been racking my memory, trying to find a reason! There’s nothing—”

“Just start at the beginning. How did this—” Varzil indicated the matrix apparatus, “come about?”

The boy took a deep breath to steady himself. “Our goal was to modulate my weather talent. If only I’d been able to manage it properly, none of this would have been necessary. I have something of the old Rockraven weather sense, did you know?”

Varzil nodded and sent a pulse of calm to the boy’s mind.

“It seemed to be more than just a talent for sensing patterns in wind and cloud. Lots of people can do that, even if they don’t know it. They think it’s the birds nesting a certain way or the growth of a sheep’s wool that tells them a bad storm is coming. I—I have moments when I see these flows of energy, at least that’s what Loryn and Felicia say they are. To me, they’re like rivers and streams, so big and deep and strong I don’t have words for it. Ordinary storms—those waft about in the air. These rivers lie deep underground, and everything—” he gestured to include not only the room, the Tower, the valley, but all the lands beyond, “—everything resonates to them.”

“I can’t see them all the time,” the boy rattled on, “not even when I concentrate, and I’ve never been able to
do
anything with them. Felicia thought that some day I might.”

If you could, every tyrant on Darkover would be after you.
Varzil did not want to imagine what uses Rakhal Hastur might put the boy’s talent to.

The youth went on to describe how Felicia planned to use a specially constructed matrix to focus and balance his natural ability, enhancing or buffering it as needed.

“It should have worked! All the preliminary tests we did were wonderful—as if I’d suddenly taken off blinders I’d worn all my life. But we hadn’t used it as a circle—that was the first test. We started off in the ordinary way and then, when we were settled in our circle, I felt Felicia make the bridge to the lattice. Something—I don’t know—something hot and white exploded right where she was. She tried to hold the circle. I felt her struggling. There was this jolt like being hit with bucket of live coals. I’ve still got a headache from it.”

Varzil paced the room, his mind ranging through the psychic space. The atmosphere still quivered with the residue of destructive energy. He couldn’t identify it. There was no trace of outside intrusion or any invading personality. His circuit took him to the door, where a telepathic damper sat on a table beside the platters of food, beakers of sweetened wine, a folded shawl. He touched the damper and felt the faint, fading pulse of its interference fields.

“This was turned on?”

The boy looked startled. “Of course. Don’t you use them at Arilinn?”

“Indeed. And no one entered the room physically?”

“No, nothing like that. Why are you asking? It was an accident!”

Either that, or Felicia’s own carelessness.
Varzil could not bring himself to believe that she had somehow brought this on herself. She was too competent, too well-trained by Arilinn’s exacting standards, to attempt work beyond her ability, especially when the minds and lives of others depended upon her. In their last conversation over the relays, her words had rung with assurance and competence. She’d known what she was doing.

Varzil gestured toward the ruined matrix. “I must study this. Perhaps I can discover some flaw, some reason for what happened.”