A Flame in Hali

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  No matter what Raimon said, she would never be free of the guilt of those three deaths, and the nightmares that haunted the survivors. She, she alone had done this thing. If her Keeper insisted she must continue to work, must go on this mission with Varzil, then in atonement, she would do her best. But she must never allow herself to be put in a position where she could do so much harm again.

  True to his word, Varzil did not bring up the subject of training women as Keepers again. Instead, they talked of their mission at Cedestri and what they knew of the folk there, what strategies might be used to enlist their cooperation. Varzil had never met any of them, but Dyannis knew the Keeper, Francisco Gervais, for he had begun his training at Hali and had still been there when she first came.

  “I dare say I will remember him better than he remembers me,” she said with a wry grin.

  “Even then, you were hardly inconspicuous,” he said.

  She laughed at that, and the tension from their previous discussion lifted.

  There was little enough to laugh about. Cedestri had surely been alerted to their coming, having withdrawn their Overworld edifice for draining the energy from the lake rift. They must be expecting some reaction. Varzil was not, strictly speaking, an emissary of Hali Tower, but of King Carolin. His objective was to convince Cedestri to sign the Compact or, at very least, refrain from using the bonewater and any other laran weapons they had created. Dyannis did not think Varzil’s chance of success was very good, even with Francisco’s old ties to Hali Tower. Varzil himself was unremittingly optimistic.

  “If the Compact does not reach all of Darkover within my lifetime,” he told her, “then others will take up the cause after me, and others after them, until there is no place from the farthest reaches of the Hellers to the shores of Temora, where an honorable man will use any weapon that does not bring him within equal risk.”

  He will not give up, she thought, not until he is dead or we all are.

  Varzil’s unswerving belief in the Compact brought Dyannis unexpected solace. The events of the riot had shaken her to her bones. It must never happen again. Laran was far too dangerous to be used, except in the most carefully controlled circumstances.

  The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that the Compact was necessary. Not only necessary, but a form of salvation. If she could not rely upon her own self-control, she could help to change the world so that such abuses would become impossible. At times, Varzil’s patience exasperated her. He thought only in terms of weapons to be used in war—clingfire and bonewater dust, lungrot and root blight, which scoured the land sterile. He refused to see that any laran work carried the potential for harm. At times, she thought that even work in a monitored circle, under the supervision of a Keeper, was too risky.

  They came down from the jagged hills toward the rolling countryside surrounding Cedestri Tower and, beyond it, the tiny kingdom of Isoldir. The land softened, as if weary of holding up the bowl of the sky. The hills were bare, bereft, and something in their treeless bareness struck a chord of sadness in Dyannis. She felt a kind of mourning, a destitution in the gray curling grasses and the sun-parched heights. A harsh land, she thought, and not one to foster any hopefulness of spirit. She hoped that the folk of Cedestri Tower were immune to its influence.

  The road led them down from the hills and across a plain of hard-baked earth laced with cracks as deep as her forearm. There was no water beyond what they carried. The hooves of their horses stirred up dust as they slowed from a ground-eating trot to a walk. Once, they spotted a pair of kyorebni circling the heights.

  Dyannis nudged her mount next to Varzil’s. “I do not know the history of this place, but I fear something terrible happened here.” Or will happen.

  “Yes, I feel it, too.”

  For the past generation, Isoldir had been at war with a branch of the powerful Aillard family. Perhaps battles had been fought on the very terrain over which they now rode. Perhaps other, more terrible weapons had transformed lush pasture or grain fields into this near desert.

  It must end. It must end now.

  Varzil shifted his weight onto his stirrups, half-rising in his saddle, and pointed ahead. “Cedestri lies beyond. Another day or so should see us there.”

  Dyannis shaded her eyes with one hand, as if she could penetrate the dust that cloaked the horizon. She glanced aloft, searching for the huge carrion birds they spotted earlier. Two dots hovered in the brightness. She squinted, her eyes watering.

  Varzil—

  Dyannis unconsciously dropped into mind-speech. She felt her brother open his mind, reach out with his laran senses. The land stretched around them, sere and gray as ash, pierced by motes of radiance, the seeds that lay dormant even now, awaiting the return of rain. Above, the sweep of wind and sky brought the kiss of moisture, freshening.

  The first two dots had grown visibly larger now, and they did not circle the way natural birds did. As Dyannis watched, a third joined them. She tasted metal, the concentrated heat of charged laran batteries and shielded human minds. Deep within them, layered in insulation and fragile glass vessels, pellets glowed unnatural green.

  Crystalline bonewater!

  Varzil signaled silent acknowledgment. Aircars out of Isoldir. They must be bound for Aillard.

  We have come too late! she cried.

  Varzil did not respond, and she felt his attention shift, leaping ahead to the pilot of the foremost craft. Dyannis had ridden in an aircar only once, for in these times, the cost of their manufacture and operation had become prohibitive except for military uses. The pilot, a trained laranzu, bent over his instruments, using his talent to guide the teardrop-shaped craft.

  She sensed the pilot come alert, jarred from his concentration. In an instant, Varzil established rapport. Dyannis caught only the periphery of the link, a flash of the pilot’s temperament, the desperation lashing at him.

  We of Isoldir are poor and few. With each round, mighty Aillard harries us closer to ruin. The fields that grow our food, the rivers that meet our thirst, the trees that shield us against the winter’s cold, they leave us nothing. Now even our children grow sick and die under their foul spells. We have only one chance, with surprise as our ally.

  The aircars seemed to move faster as they approached. Dyannis had no doubt that the sentiments of the lead pilot were shared by all. In a short time, they would pass overhead and be beyond reach. If only Varzil could convince them in time!

  Abruptly, and with a force that rocked Dyannis in her saddle, the pilot broke off the rapport with Varzil.

  Spies! Enemy spies out of Aillard! The naked hatred of the man’s mental scream gripped her heart for an awful moment. She gasped, and only the fact that she was already gripping the pommel of her saddle kept her from falling.

  But we’re not—She cut off the thought, realizing how their party must appear to the Isoldir pilots. Surrounded by armed men, deployed along the road in military fashion, what else could they be but a small, elite strike force, traveling swiftly to avoid detection?

  The leronyn of Cedestri Tower might recognize Varzil or Dyannis, having exchanged messages by the telepathic relays, but to these pilots, they would be strangers. Varzil’s overture, his attempt at a peaceful greeting, would be seen as a subterfuge to lower their guard.

  The foremost aircar, almost upon them now, began descending. Dyannis clapped one hand over her mouth, her stomach roiling.

  They do not mean to pass us by.

  Beside her, Carolin’s captain shouted out orders to his men. Quickly, they took up a defensive formation, lifting their shields overhead. What protection would that afford against bonewater, she wondered, which poisoned the very earth they stood upon?

  For an instant, hope stirred. If the Isoldir aircars discharged their deadly burden, here upon their own lands, then none—or less, at any rate—would be left to reach Aillard. But she would not survive to see the result.

  “Here it comes!” shouted one of the men.


  In the blink of an eye, a handful of tiny glass spheres, no more than points of light at this distance, spilled from the belly of the nearest aircar.

  Link with me! Varzil called. At the edge of her vision, she saw him, sitting erect in the saddle, reins loose upon his horse’s neck, eyes closed, hands cupping his starstone. She shut out the visual world and launched herself into rapport with him, as if the two of them composed an entire circle.

  Varzil seized upon their joined mental force and shaped it into a barrier like an invisible dome between the glittering spheres and the assembled men. Dyannis felt the first sphere break open upon contact, as if it were meant to hold together for only the briefest transit. Its contents splashed out, acrid and familiar.

  Clingfire!

  In her early years at Hali, Dyannis worked in a circle separating out each component element, combining and distilling the mixture, then pouring it into vessels of flawless glass, for it would eat through any lesser material. She knew its color, like clotted flame, its smell, the screams when a single droplet had spattered on the bare skin of a worker, a knife slicing through living flesh, cutting away every affected fiber, lest it continue burning through bone and sinew, nerve and organ, until nothing remained to be consumed.

  She threw the full force of her laran into the shield, pouring forth every bit of psychic energy at her command. The torrent burned as it flooded her channels, at a speed and intensity she would once have considered suicidal. She gave no care to the pain, only to the utter determination to hold—hold—against the onslaught.

  The first volley broke and splashed harmlessly to the barren earth. Men and horses escaped untouched. A wave of dismay and relief swept through her; un-barriered as she was, she caught the depth of their emotions.

  Within her own body, nerves and laran channels ached with the strain. Varzil’s mind was like a rock. She held on, afraid that if she loosened her focus for an instant, she would break like a twig in a spring flood.

  She felt the first aircar veer off, a second come into position for its own attack. Varzil held the shield firm, as if he commanded an entire working circle. She could not imagine the scope of his talent, that he could do such a thing. She thought only of sending him strength and more strength, emptying herself into the psychic link between them. She must be his circle.

  The second aircar discharged its cargo. This time, the angle of attack caused the clingfire to disperse in a different pattern. Most of the liquid particles followed the course of the first, but a few went wild. They landed upon the outer edge of one of the baggage carts. The woven fabric and leather burst into flame. Dyannis felt this much before her ordinary senses were jarred by the screams of a panicked horse and the shouting of the men. She could not tell if any of them had been touched by the caustic fire, only that the discipline that had held them all beneath the psychic shield had broken.

  In the fraction of an instant in which her own concentration had wavered, the entire burden of the shield fell upon Varzil. Dyannis blinked, seeing the psychic and material worlds as overlapping images. Men rushed to put out the fire, some of them using their bare hands or cloaks, heedless of the danger, for the clingfire would spread to anything it could burn. A grizzled veteran struggled with a younger soldier, trying to force him away from the burning cart. Another clung to the reins of a rearing horse as it dragged him beyond the shelter of Varzil’s shield. Beneath her, her own mount skittered, pulling at the bit. Only Varzil’s horse remained still, though its eyes rolled nervously. His will held the beast under control.

  With this second attack, his concentration was pressed to the brink.

  Dyannis threw her head back to see the third aircar bearing down on them.

  NO!

  She trembled with the power coursing through her. Memory stirred, branded into the very core of her laran. A dragon, a creature of frozen unholy fire, bent over a crowd of lawless men and turned their resolution into groveling terror. The dragon was inside her—it was her—

  It was their only chance. It was the one thing she swore she would never do again.

  Oh, sweet mother, Blessed Cassilda—help me!

  As if in answer to her prayer, Dyannis sensed her brother’s steadfast presence, the strength and complexity of his trained talent, and something beyond him, a luminous pressure. For an instant out of time, her fear disappeared. She soared upon a current of purest light, utterly at peace.

  Varzil dropped the shield.

  13

  No! Dyannis cried. We will be defenseless—

  She cut herself off as the truth rose, inexorable as night. They were already defenseless. Varzil could hold the shield for only a few more moments, but not in the face of another attack. The men and animals were already scattering beyond the perimeter of safety. Even if the next round of clingfire failed to finish them, there was still the bonewater dust. . . .

  Still in rapport with her brother, she caught no hint of fear or even resignation. Instead, he seized upon her first reaction.

  We must reach the minds of those who commanded the aircars, yes, but not as some fearsome monster, striking terror and causing mayhem.

  Varzil launched his consciousness as a fisher might cast a net. Dyannis fell into anchor position, feeding him power. The pilots reacted with surprise to the telepathic contact. Hands paused on the controlling mechanisms, but not from any imposed paralysis. Varzil had attracted their attention as perhaps no other living man could.

  You must not continue on this mission. There is another way to peace. His words rang out like the deepest bell in Thendara. How could anyone, she wondered, doubt that he spoke the truth?

  We have no choice—attack or die, kill or be killed.

  And this is what you would do! Varzil’s mental voice thundered, each syllable building, storm cloud layer upon layer until the very fabric of the psychic realm reverberated with its power. Then, through the lens of the most powerful Keeper on Darkover, Dyannis saw each man’s private vision. She saw families, fathers, gray-bearded elders, children, lovers, mothers with babes in their arms, glimpses of firelit hearth and sweep of meadow, snatches of lullaby and rousing chorus, a hound’s soulful eyes, felt the silken hide of a horse, tasted brambleberry ale and crusty bread.

  Over all these myriad impressions a veil of dust drifted, each particle luminescing faintly green. It clung to leaf and rock and roof, washed into stream and barrel, a colorless film, a hint of shadow.

  As Dyannis watched through three pairs of horrified eyes, the laughter of the children fell silent, the mothers’ smiles turned to keening wails as they looked into the sunken faces and swollen bellies of their babes. The rich, ripe gold of wheat and barley faded to ash; leaves curled and fell from blackened branches. A horse stumbled, ribs gaunt in a coat covered with festering sores, fell to its knees beside the rat-gnawed carcass of a hound, and then lay still. A withered hag crouched before a cold and lifeless hearth, chewing on a scrap of leather, still wearing the bridal robes of a young girl. In the next heartbeat, she was no more than a pile of whitened bones, unburied and unmourned, beneath the sterile light of a single moon.

  Behind the vision, Dyannis sensed yet a deeper shadow, one neither Varzil nor the Isoldir pilots had envisioned. A woman, her face no more than an ashen glimmer, hooded and robed in night, watched . . . waited . . . hungered . . .

  In the echoing silence that followed, Varzil spoke, his words gentle and relentless, infinitely sad. This is what you would bring, not only to Aillard, but also to Isoldir. To every land. I beg of you, let us pass. Return to your homes in peace. Do not spread this madness any further.

  For a long moment, there was no answer. The aircars continued in their formation, but seemed to slow their pace. Suddenly, the foremost broke off, circling back.

  Even in Isoldir, we have heard tales of Varzil the Good, who preaches the Compact of King Carolin Hastur. We believed such a thing was folly, to surrender our only advantage and go disarmed among our enemies. But some things are more horrible
than defeat, more final than death. I cannot speak for any other man, but I will not be a party to what you have shown us.

  I am willing to die for my country, the second said, his mental words heavy with reluctance, but I am not willing to bring that fate to any land, not even the Aillards.

  Dyannis covered her cheeks with her hands, feeling her tears hot and slick. Against all reason, against all hope, they were turning back! There was nothing to stop them from destroying this small force and continuing on their mission, and yet they had listened—they had believed!

  Above, the lead aircar was already headed back to Isoldir, the second just beginning to turn. Lady Helaina burst into tears. The Hastur soldiers hugged each other and danced. Dyannis very nearly got down and joined them. She wanted to laugh, to shout. She looked toward her brother, thinking to share the triumph.

  Varzil kept his gaze aloft, following the path of the third aircar, the one from which there was only silence. It continued on its deadly course, past them and on toward Aillard.

  Rowland, are you crazy? Think what you are doing! came from the first aircar.

  While I live, Isoldir still has one loyal son! was the reply.

  Dyannis, watching the third aircar increase its speed, disappearing into the distance, cried out, “Can we do nothing to stop him?”

  “Even if we could send word to the Aillards in their stronghold at Valeron to blast him out of the sky, I would not do it,” Varzil replied in a low voice. “For to them, that would only prove the necessity of such weapons.”