A Flame in Hali

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  “It will come,” she answered. “Try it this way.”

  Eduin glanced back to the camp where he’d last seen Saravio, but the other man no longer stood there. What had he seen, gazing up along the riverbed? Another vision of Naotalba? A past impression of water flowing, perhaps a storm to come? Eduin reached up with his laran, beyond the covering clouds, sensing the air currents—

  He heard a series of muffled thuds and then, Raynita screaming. Eduin whirled to see both performers lying in a tangle on the ground. He rushed to them. Raynita was struggling to rise, but Jorge lay motionless. Bright blood gleamed in the tangle of his hair.

  “He just collapsed,” Raynita stammered. “He must have put his hand wrong—I couldn’t hold him—oh, gods, it’s all my fault! I should have never—I was too tired—”

  Eduin knelt to examine the boy. Old training took over. Without thinking, he lowered his barriers and began scanning, using his laran to trace the flow of nerve and blood, sensing the integrity of bone, the smooth arching vault of the cranium, the webwork of membranes cushioning the brain, the delicate pattern of blood vessels. The bleeding from the boy’s scalp was superficial, the bone intact. But there—within the circle of interconnecting vessels at the base of the brain—

  Jorge had not injured his head when he fell. He fell because of what was already within his head. Though Eduin was no monitor, he knew the basics. He could sense the integrity of muscle and sinew, blood vessel and energon channel, the nodes carrying life force and laran, the ganglia of nerves, the pulse and ebb of lymph, the slow secretions of glands. The thing within the boy’s brain throbbed with its own arcane rhythm. Not a cancer, nor any abnormal formation of artery, but a kernel of unnatural blackness. Surrounding it, tissues fought and died, subsiding into a necrotic shell. It stank of laran.

  Not only that, Eduin recognized the characteristic energy pattern of bonewater. He had never made the toxic dust, but every Tower-trained laranzu knew its signature. He’d never heard of a form like this, a single, relatively huge particle like a crystal, instead of motes of dust. The boy was still alive because the bonewater had not dispersed throughout his body, but it would nonetheless take his life.

  Eduin pulled back, drawing the back of one hand across his mouth. Never in all his years of Tower training nor his exile had he encountered such a thing. He could not guess how it had been introduced into the boy’s body, only that now it sapped vitality like a cancer, surrounding itself with a wasteland that spread ever outward with each passing day.

  Then he remembered what Raynita had said about the battlefield they had passed: an aircar blasted from the sky . . . blackened earth all around . . . Tia forbidding the gathering of precious metal. The old woman herself had given a surprisingly accurate description of the lingering effects of bonewater.

  “Death hangs in the very air you breathe. You cannot see it or touch it, but it is there all the same.”

  The aircar must have been carrying this new form of bonewater when it was attacked, and even though the musicians had not handled the wreckage, they might have been exposed. Jorge, with the impulsiveness of youth, might have ventured too close and a few crystals somehow made their way into his body.

  As Eduin considered this, a wave of pain passed through the boy’s barely conscious mind. Eduin saw it as a curtain of scintillating crimson, blanketing all else, yet when it touched his own thoughts, he recoiled.

  The deadly particle pressed not only upon the boy’s balance centers, but upon those areas of the brain that registered pain.

  Eduin’s body thrummed with a fine tremor, as if in response. It was no use. He could not penetrate the waves of agony to nullify the energy produced by the particle, even assuming that was possible.

  With an effort, Eduin stilled the resonant echoes within his own body. His fingers moved automatically to his starstone folded into his belt. Grime stiffened the insulating silk pouch.

  He hesitated. Fear, made reflexive by so many years of hiding, roused in him. The only safe course would be to shake his head and turn away, to let the natural course of the boy’s injuries prevail. He owed these people nothing.

  Yet something even deeper than fear spurred him on, the part of him that still held to the oath he had taken when he first opened his mind to a Tower circle at Arilinn. That part of him opened like a flower to the sun to the music and Raynita’s easy friendship. That part of him could not leave Jorge to die along the trail.

  A shadow fell upon him and then a figure knelt at the boy’s other side. It was Saravio, his awkwardness transformed into supernal grace. Jorge’s pain must have roused him to action. Saravio touched the boy’s wrist with one hand and laid the other upon the bone-pale brow.

  “Rest now, be easy,” Saravio murmured. “No harm will come to you.” The words were more sung than spoken, with a gentle calm that Eduin felt in his marrow.

  “We will see to the boy,” he told Raynita. “Go and prepare a bed for him in the wagon. Ask Tia to brew one of her tisanes.” When she hesitated, he said with greater urgency and a nudge of his laran, “Leave us now. We must not be disturbed.”

  When he was sure Raynita could not see, Eduin took the starstone from its wrappings. He clenched it in his fist. It felt cool and then warm against his palm. He closed his eyes, looking inward.

  Focusing his mind through his starstone, Eduin bent once more over the boy. Power surged through him, his own powerful laran amplified by the matrix crystal. As Saravio continued his hypnotic chant, the boy’s pain lightened, soft as dawn. Though the laran particle still pulsed, now with an eerie luminescence, a sense of utter well-being suffused the boy’s body. His mind drifted from agony to dreamy calm.

  So this is what Saravio did for the dying girl back in Thendara, Eduin thought. Saravio could not save the innkeeper’s daughter, but he could bring comfort to her passing. His Gift seemed to act like a mirror to each person’s need.

  The edge of euphoria brushed against Eduin’s mind. His inner torment receded. Temptation soared, to drown himself in what Saravio offered. As much as he longed for it, he knew it for what it was, a trap more deadly than drink. He bent once more to the healing task.

  The mote was small, and though there were several more in the boy’s lungs, only this one had caused any degree of damage, and that only because of its location.

  Eduin had never been taught how to neutralize bonewater, but he saw no reason it could not be done. What had been created by laran could as easily be un-created. At Hestral Tower, Varzil and Loryn Ardais had dismantled the old supplies of clingfire, rather than turn them over to Rakhal Hastur.

  It took a few moments to find the right vibrational signature. Under the onslaught of his trained mental probe, the crystal disintegrated. Within moments, the natural circulation of the tissues began removing cellular debris and draining excess fluid. Fortunately, there had been little permanent damage.

  By the time Eduin had rooted out the remaining particles, the boy was already emerging from his daze.

  “You see,” Saravio murmured, “it is even as I told you. All is well with you, is it not?”

  The boy sat up. His eyes were not quite focused, but the sudden lifting of his pain smoothed his features, giving him the aspect of a child awakened from a long-overdue sleep. “I fear I have practiced overmuch today. The heat . . . I must see Tia for one of her tisanes.”

  Eduin and Saravio helped him back to the camp. Eduin knew better than to try to discuss what had happened, though this was the most alert and responsive Saravio had been in a tenday. The red-haired man would only insist it was the will of Naotalba.

  Several times, Raynita tried to talk with Eduin about what had happened. He brushed off her questions, saying that in their travels, he and Saravio had learned to treat simple injuries.

  “I am not such a fool as that,” she faced him, her gray eyes stormy. “I saw how he fell. I heard his head strike the ground. I saw the blood. I know it was not mere words and looks that healed him.”
<
br />   When Eduin started to protest, she rushed on. “No, do not spin me lies about Jorge was not so badly hurt or You were too upset to see clearly! I know Saravio worked some magic upon him. Tell me!”

  “Jorge is well,” Eduin said. “Can you not be content with that?”

  “Ah!” she said at last. “I see you will not answer.”

  Eduin read the cost of his answer in Raynita’s eyes. The easy, open friendship drained away. Something flat and gray took its place. She wanted answers, and he offered evasions. After a lifetime of keeping secrets, why should this one bother him now?

  They traveled on between the hills, following a natural course over the dry riverbed. Gradually, the terrain shifted, growing less rocky. Copses of brush and groves of trees appeared. They passed a lake and fishing village, where they performed a few times, washed, and replenished their supplies of water and dried fish. From there, the road broadened. They saw other travelers, merchants with their laden wagons, a drove of sheep, an armed party escorting a covered carriage.

  They camped in a grove of ancient oaks beside a stream. The site was just off the road and looked well used, for there were several stone circles for cook fires.

  Raynita continued to watch Saravio. At twilight, Eduin spotted her behind the horse’s picket line. She had cornered Saravio against a dead tree. Her voice was raised in pleading.

  “It is only a small thing I ask, and not even for myself,” she said. “After the way you healed Jorge . . .”

  Eduin hesitated. They had not seen him yet. It was not too late to withdraw.

  “Naotalba has said nothing to me concerning the blessing of babes,” Saravio said. Something of the girl’s anxiety must have roused him, for he sounded unusually alert.

  “It is early yet,” the girl’s voice sank. Eduin heard the fear naked in her voice.

  He stepped forward, breaking the awkward silence between them. Raynita whirled and fled into the shadows of the massive trees. Her feet kicked up piles of withered leaves.

  “No babes,” Saravio mumbled. “Nothing for babes.”

  “Why not?” Eduin said. Saravio’s refusal rankled unreasonably. “You had no problem helping the boy. Surely you can manage a blessing out of mercy.”

  As soon as Eduin uttered the words, he realized that mercy had nothing to do with Saravio’s interventions. Had it been mercy to drive the Hali Lake mob into a killing frenzy or inflict lethal pain upon the two thieves? He stared at Saravio and wondered if this were the same man who had dragged him from the gutters of Thendara, fed him, befriended him, given him a glimpse of hope. Like Naotalba herself, Saravio seemed to have two faces. Eduin hoped he would never call upon the friend, only to be answered by the fanatic.

  “Come, my friend,” he said. “It is time for rest. We have a long way to go tomorrow. We must be rested to serve Naotalba.”

  “Rest,” Saravio repeated. “Yes, rest is good.”

  Saravio dropped off to sleep as soon as he stretched out under his blanket beside the dying cook fire. Eduin sat gazing into the shifting orange embers, trying to still his thoughts. Sleep would not come.

  Above, mauve Idriel and pale Mormallor spun their milky haloes across the sky in the opening between the inky shadows of the trees. The faint smell of river-weed and plashing of water came from the river. The echoes of Saravio’s spell resonated faintly through Eduin. The pressure inside his head receded.

  Nothing for babes, Saravio had said. Surely it would do no harm to make sure Raynita carried a healthy child. He could monitor her himself and then offer reassurance in Saravio’s name. It was a small enough favor and would mean much to her. He wondered who the father was. Raynita had never shown any particular interest in a lover, but then, how should he know? If Tia did not object, it was hardly his place.

  Strung on a cord between the wagon and a tree, Raynita’s tent was barely wide enough for one sleeping person. He crouched beside it, for the coarse, patched cloth presented no barrier to his thoughts. Here in the shadows, he had no fear of discovery. He slipped out his starstone. A twist of pale blue fire flickered in its depths.

  Raynita’s mind wandered in dreams like those of a fever victim, casting an odd distortion over her energy channels.

  As easily as sliding between layers of silk, Eduin reached through the girl’s defenses. Though he probed through layers of muscle and connective tissue, he sensed no golden glow emanating from her womb. With a sickening jolt, he realized that Saravio had been right in his mutterings about Naotalba’s silence on the subject of babes.

  Raynita was not pregnant. Instead, she carried a pit of sickly green luminescence deep within her belly.

  This particle was larger than the one in the boy’s body, or perhaps there were several of them, aggregated together. They had lodged in one of the tubes leading to the womb, where a blood-filled sac had formed in grotesque mimicry of a true pregnancy. Very soon now, it would rupture, taking the girl’s life with it.

  Eduin did not pause to consider. He shaped his laran into a spear-point and thrust at the clump. Before, in Jorge’s brain, the particles had flickered and gone inert. These turned molten for a terrifying moment before disintegrating into ash. Pain lanced like jagged lightning through Raynita’s dreams. Dimly, he heard her shift toward a whimper. The flash of heat died, leaving a thickened scar. Eduin did not think he could open the blockage in such delicate tissues, and he was already feeling the quiver of exhaustion.

  It was enough that the girl would live. He withdrew.

  Sound jarred him back to the physical world, a rustle of the dry leaves, the crackle of a twig. A figure appeared, for an instant back-lit against the faint glow of the cook fire embers. Eduin made out the old woman’s full skirts, back hunched under the weight of years. As he drew his feet under him to rise, he searched for a likely explanation for his presence here.

  He cleared his throat, but she spoke first. “You are not such an evil man as you believe yourself to be, nor is your friend a simpleton. Keep your secrets; I care nothing for any man’s past. Listen to me, Eduin . . . Isoldir has wizards aplenty and no need for your Gifts. Instead, I advise you to turn your path toward the Plains of Valeron and the city of Kirella, where the Lord’s youngest daughter wanders within the prison of her own mad dreams and none can reach her. You could do worse than earn the gratitude of that family.”

  With those words, she retreated into the shadows.

  Eduin sank back on the ground. Kirella was home to a small but powerful branch of the Aillard clan, and Aillard was Isoldir’s sworn enemy. If he could gain the trust of the Lord there, he might well be able to use that great clan as his weapon against Varzil. Even if he failed, he still had Saravio. Together, they would find sanctuary at Kirella. That is, providing they were able to cure the daughter whose sickness had become such a well-known story.

  17

  Eduin and Saravio traveled with the musicians until they reached Carskadon, the next good-sized trading town. Only a ramshackle palisade defended the place, but crews of men worked at its repair and guards stood uneasily beside the gates. No collection of hovels marred the surrounding countryside. Cottages with neatly tended gardens and coops of barnfowl lined the road. The town itself had grown up around a central plaza, once an unpaved field where traders met to bargain, now bordered with wooden buildings, stables, inns, warehouses, craft halls. Upon their arrival, a boy driving a herd of fat chervines directed them to a place on the outskirts they might safely leave their wagon and find cheap feed for the horse.

  The troupe gave performances in the market square and then moved on, but Eduin and Saravio remained. Eduin used their share of the takings for a room at one of the poorer inns. By then, he had formulated a plan.

  “Naotalba has spoken to me again,” he told Saravio. “She has commanded me to seek out those in need of her miraculous powers. Through us, she will restore them to joy.”

  “What must we do?”

  “We must take on new names. We must turn away from an
ger and instead sow healing. Through us, Naotalba will cure the sick and make glad the hearts of all who heed her call.”

  Eduin then went about advertising Saravio as a divinely-inspired healer. Since there was no Tower nearby, few of the folk had access to any medicine beyond traditional herbs. Eduin clothed Saravio in robes of solid black, “as Naotalba’s captain,” and a tightly knitted cap of the same color. The unusual garb enhanced Saravio’s charisma.

  Saravio sang, while Eduin applied his laran skills. Together, they were able to deal with various disorders of both body and mind. After a few free treatments, they had enough work, between the townsfolk and the traders, to move to better lodgings. News of their success quickly spread throughout the surrounding countryside. People from outlying farms and villages traveled to the town with ailing loved ones, or sometimes just out of curiosity.

  Soon it was time to move on, while the fair weather still held. They must not risk an early winter here. They had acquired enough coin to purchase decent clothing, two horses, and a pack animal.

  From Carskadon, they descended onto the Plains of Valeron. Eduin had never seen anything so vast. The sky above the Plains was larger than he’d imagined possible. He had spent most of his life bounded by either mountains, the confines of a working Tower, or city walls. Something within him expanded, as if in response to the endless horizon. On rare occasions, he caught a glimpse of an aircar in the distance or kyorebni hovering on the thermal currents. Grasses bent their heavy heads in the wind, filling the air with musky sweetness. The horses snatched mouthfuls as they walked on.

  Days merged into each other. At night, Saravio stared unblinking at the sky and carried on long dialogues with Naotalba, whose form he deciphered in the starry patterns.

  Sometimes Eduin lay on his back, watching the moons spin their complex dances, each at its own pace, sometimes greeting one another but never touching, always apart. He felt a strange kinship with those orbs of colored light. His own life seemed to be a series of near-collisions—with Varzil, with Carolin. With Dyannis. And now with this poor benighted soul who was, for good or ill, the keeper of his sanity.