Zandru's Forge (8 page)

“And the other two men?”
Dom
Felix asked in a hoarse voice. Varzil had never heard such fear in his father.

“After the battle was over and the catmen fled, a pair of shepherds brought the bodies of the slain men back to Sweetwater. Your son and the other man were not among them.”

“The catmen carried them away?” Felix asked, incredulous.

“Either that, or they fled and may yet still live, wounded and in hiding,” Carlo said. “Your household
leronis
could not reach the mind of your son, nor could the folk at Serrais.”

“I must return at once!” Felix cried, taking a step back toward the watering horses. Then he paused, as the enormity of the distance impressed itself upon him. No horse alive, not even the magnificent black which Carlo had ridden so hard, could cover the leagues in less than a tenday. By then, Harald could be dead or, at very best, the trail too cold to follow.

Varzil caught a flicker of emotion from Carlo. The red-haired youth bowed again to
Dom
Felix.

“If you would care to return to Arilinn with me,” Carlo said, “an aircar will be placed at your disposal. With luck and a clear sky, you can arrive at Sweetwater this very evening.”

Varzil drew in his breath at the generosity of the offer.
Laran
-powered aircars were fabulously expensive to own and operate, a luxury restricted to kings and the very wealthy. Aircars depended upon technology developed in the Ages of Chaos, much of it now lost. Even now, few were used outside of warfare and the most urgent diplomatic missions. The Lord of Serrais had one which he never entrusted to anyone else, lest it be damaged. Had Auster used his influence as Keeper to secure one—and why would he go to such lengths to help someone he hardly knew?

“Who arranged this?”
Dom
Felix said, scowling. “And what will it cost me?”

“The owner wishes to remain unknown, for reasons you must surely comprehend,” Carlo said. “And there is no price. Only a word of advice. There is room for three passengers. You could do no better than to take your younger son.”

Dom
Felix made a rumbling sound in his throat. He clearly didn’t want to refuse so magnanimous a gift or to make a powerful enemy by an ungracious reply. Varzil almost heard the thoughts in his father’s mind. The important thing was that he reach Sweetwater as soon as possible, assess the situation, and take swift action. If it meant dragging along his useless younger son, that was a small price to pay.

They returned to Arilinn at a somewhat quicker pace. Even Carlo’s black horse picked up its feet as it headed toward the stables it knew.
Dom
Felix rode ahead with Black Eiric, giving orders for the return of the rest of the party.

Carlo nudged his horse even with Varzil’s. They rode near the rear of the Ridenow party, far enough from Varzil’s father so they could not be easily overheard.

“When I was telling your father the news from the relays,” Carlo said, pausing faintly over the next words, “what did you...
see
?”

Varzil started, quickly masking the lapse by adjusting the reins. Then he remembered that Carlo had Tower training, so he must sense
something.
He did not believe Carlo was his enemy.

“I—it was as if I were there, watching the battle. I saw two men fall, the catmen with their curved swords. I saw the hill, the rocks...”
The blood.

Carlo’s gray eyes widened. “I am not so strong a telepath for you to have taken that from my mind.”

Varzil looked down at his hands, the reins worn soft and dark by much usage. The horses moved on, shod hooves clicking against small stones on the road. Stirrup leathers creaked.

“
I
am not so strong a telepath ...”Carlo’s words hung in the silence.

“Your father
must
allow you to return to Arilinn,” Carlo said with same tone of command he had used to suggest that
Dom
Felix take Varzil in the aircar.

Varzil shrugged. “I see little chance of that. Even without the political aspects, my father believes I have so little talent, Arilinn would not have me, whether he granted his blessing or not. I will go to Sweetwater in your aircar if that is his wish, and I will do whatever I can to find my brother, but I do not hope for anything further coming of it.”

“How can you give up so easily?” Carlo responded with heat. “Was camping out all night at the gates of Arilinn some sort of prank? If so, you possess an astonishing ability to dissemble. You have truly mastered the art of double tongues, for you managed to convince me—us—that you truly desired admittance. Desire would have struck me as too mild a word.”

Stung, Varzil replied, “I pretended nothing. I—”
I still want it more than I’ve ever wanted anything, but what is the use of tormenting myself?
He went on in a tightly controlled voice, “I cannot defy my father, especially with my older brother gone missing. To lose us both would kill him. Nor do I believe Arilinn would have such a man who would so easily forsake his duty and his honor.”

A frown darkened Carlo’s handsome features, like a cloud passing across the sun. He said nothing more of the matter.

They rode no farther than the field on the city outskirts, where an aircar sat ready. Varzil had never seen one so close before. It was shaped like an elongated teardrop, crafted of a glassy material which was clear in some areas and cloudy or completely opaque in others. A hinged door stood open to reveal a narrow compartment. Banks of instruments of the same substance, some fashioned with strips of polished metal, lined the nose of the craft. There was one seat facing the controls, another by its side and two more in the broader belly. Behind the seats lay a compartment for storage.

A man in livery of blue and silver stood beside the aircar. With the air of one who is sure of his competence, he indicated where the baggage was to be placed and then set about securing it with straps. Then he assisted
Dom
Felix into the forward passenger seat.

Carlo took Varzil aside. “Whatever happens, you must convince your father to let you come back.” Then, before Varzil could frame an objection, he was being helped into the aircar, to sit beside Black Eiric. Within a few short minutes, they were aloft.

Varzil had never traveled by aircar before, and he found the experience unsettling. Lord Serrais had one, and Varzil had caught a glimpse of another as it landed on the airfield at Arilinn before the Council meeting. He’d admired its silent grace, the skill and cunning of its fashioning.

He sat behind the pilot, watching the man’s fingers on the controls or making cryptic gestures. From the belly of the car,
laran
batteries sent a stream of harnessed energy to the propulsion and guidance mechanisms.

Varzil’s contact with the Tower telepaths had opened him up to new, disturbing sensations. He felt the stored power like a caged predator, rumbling and lurking. Even through the exhilaration of soaring, he sensed how easily so much power could be turned to other, deadlier purposes. Like so many other things,
laran
could cure or kill, serve or destroy.

The pilot glanced over his shoulder at Varzil. “There’s nothing to fear. It’s not magic, but a technique which anyone with skill and training can master.”

“Anyone with the riches to afford something like this,”
Dom
Felix grunted.

“Yes, they are costly, but that is because there are so few with the Gift and the discipline to operate them,” the pilot replied. He spoke politely enough, but without the deference ordinarily due from a servant to a lord, however minor.

He is no servant,
Vatzil thought.
He is a
laranzu
in his own right.

“What is your name, pilot?” he asked.

“Jeronimo Lanart,” came the response without any added “m‘lord” or
“vai dom.
”

Varzil caught the edge of the man’s thought.
Lord Carolin must have thought it important to speed these two home, or he would never have commanded his own aircar to bring them.

A sudden gust swerved them off course, and the pilot bent over his instrument panel again. Varzil hunched forward in his seat, straining for a better view. Once they were set right, he asked about the controls.

“Some have mechanical linkages.” Jeronimo explained the simpler levers. “Others require shaping thought. The guidance systems are tuned to specific
laran
patterns. We use standard gestures for uniformity. Here—” He held up one hand and moved his fingers from one position slowly to another and then a third. “You try it.”

The gestures were easy enough to copy. “Now, follow my movements like this—”

An image appeared in Varzil’s mind, a hawk extending its wings in the air. Varzil echoed the thought along with the finger pattern. The movement shaped the energy of his mind to slide along the matrix guides within the aircar. An answering surge of power lifted the stubby wings of the craft.

“You see,” the pilot said, “it’s not so mysterious. You could learn to do it.”

“We’ll have no such talk,”
Dom
Felix said, shifting uneasily, “or any more idle diversions. Your instructions were to take us to Sweetwater as quickly as may be, and we have no time for dalliance.”

“As you wish, though we are already making the best possible speed, so there is nothing lost in a simple demonstration,” Jeronimo answered. “In my experience, nothing learned is ever a waste of time.” However, he refrained from further comment.

In the silence of the remaining flight, Varzil tried to imagine what might have befallen his brother Harald. They were not especially close, for they were separated in age by the twins, Ann‘dra and Silvie, who had both perished in adolescence from threshold sickness, and by Joenna. A third sister, Dyannis, was still a child. Varzil had been eight when the twins died, about the time he first heard the Ya-men singing in the hills. Joenna was now betrothed to the son of a wealthy Alar dyn lord, and much more interested in her upcoming wedding than anything having to do with
laran.

Of all his siblings, Varzil felt the deepest kinship with Dyannis. Her own Gift had not yet shown itself, but he never doubted she had one, for she always seemed to know what he was thinking before he spoke.

Harald was fair, bespeaking the Dry Towns ancestry of the Ridenow. Like many of his family, he had a talent for working with livestock. In his memory, Varzil saw his brother, golden hair tied back with a rawhide thong, sitting on the back of a green-broken colt, stroking the trembling animal, calming its fears with mind as well as words. A big man he was, strong in the shoulders, with gentle hands, a weather-reddened face, an easy laugh....

With a jerk, the aircar touched ground. Varzil blinked, staring through the transparent panel. His stomach lurched. The darkness of his vision receded to reveal familiar surroundings. They were a little distance from the main house at Sweetwater, in the field by the paddocks. A handful of men ran to meet them.
Dom
Felix clambered down from the aircar, shouting for saddled horses and torches.

Black Eiric jumped to the ground.
“Vai dom,
you cannot mean to ride tonight! The sun is already near set! Not even the best tracker can follow a trail in those hills in the dark. The catmen could as easily ambush you, too.”

“My son, my Harald, is out there! I must go!”

Varzil heard the brittle desperation in his father’s voice. The old man had been pale with exhaustion even before they’d started back to Arilinn. He had rested a little in the aircar, but only because he had no choice, confined as he was within its narrow space.

“Father, you will make yourself ill if you keep on like this.” Varzil touched his father’s arm.

Before his father could protest, Varzil rushed on. “What can you accomplish that Eiric and his men cannot? Can you see in the dark? Can you track better than they? What will become of Sweetwater if there is a fight and you are wounded?”

“You young pup—”
You think to give me orders?

Though his father pulled against his grasp, Varzil held him firm. Through the layers of his father’s clothing, he felt a faint, bone-deep trembling.

“You are lord and master here!” Varzil said. “This entire estate depends upon you, from ordering the day’s work to speaking for us at
Comryn
Council. You are not an ordinary man, who can risk himself at his pleasure!”