A Flame in Hali

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  30

  A tenday later, returning from her early morning ride, Dyannis knew something was wrong as she rounded the last curve of hill back to Sweetwater. Harald still wasn’t happy about her going out on her own, but as long as she returned by midmorning, he kept his objections to himself. It was one of many things they tacitly agreed not to discuss.

  As usual, she rode the roan gelding. Given an easy rein, he set a brisk pace back to his familiar corral and breakfast. He showed no particular sign of alarm, yet even before the house and stables came into view, something shrieked like a burst of acid fire along her nerves. She caught a visual image of colors smeared together like a child’s painting, overlaid with the hot silvery shiver of terror.

  Lerrys!

  She dug her heels into her horse’s sides. The beast snorted in surprise, then moved into a bone-jarring trot. They pounded down the steepest part of the trail. The horse lost his footing on a patch of loose rock, forefeet skidding. The next instant, he turned sideways and arched his back, and shifted his weight to his hindquarters. Snorting and blowing, the roan gelding came to a halt. Dyannis nudged him to continue downhill, but he flattened his ears and hunched his back menacingly.

  Without warning, the sense of urgency returned. Colored lights twisted and melded behind her eyes. Her stomach rebelled; bile rose to her throat. She retched, swaying in the saddle. Around her, the horizon smeared into a sickening jumble of earth and sky. She took hold of the reins, dug her knees into the horse’s sides and yanked his head around, facing downhill. The horse took one step and then another, picking his way. His tail lashed in protest.

  Without thinking, she blasted out a psychic command with all the power of her trained laran and her special Ridenow Gift: GO!

  The horse bounded down the last slope. Dyannis clung to his neck, using all her remembered skills to hang on. He clattered into the yard and she jumped off, even before he came to a halt. One of the stable hands ran toward her, hands raised to catch the dangling reins. The beast shied and the man ran after him.

  “Lerrys! Where is he?” she gasped.

  The stable hand was too busy cursing under his breath at idiots who ran a horse like that and then turned him loose without walking him cool—

  “WHERE IS HE?” The commanding Voice came roaring out from her throat, reverberating through the yard. Every animal turned in her direction, eyes and ears focused solely upon her.

  The stable man whirled, his jaw dropping. “In—in the house. Damisela—”

  Dyannis sprinted from the yard. Her breath rasped like fire through her lungs. Her feet pounded up the wooden stairs. She shoved aside the great heavy door as if it were paper.

  Lerrys! A silent howl answered her.

  Once inside the shadowed entrance, Dyannis knew exactly where he was. She burst into the central hall at a dead run, her riding skirt flapping about her legs. The servants in the hall jumped aside, except for one maid carrying a pitcher on a tray. Dyannis swerved, but not soon enough. She brushed the girl’s shoulder. Tray and pitcher crashed to the floor, splattering steaming jaco in all directions. Rohanne, pausing halfway down the staircase, shrieked.

  Dyannis crossed the hall just as Rohanne drew breath for a second scream. She took the stairs one, two at a time, slipping and scrambling.

  The boy’s mind went silent.

  The hallway sped by in a blur. Behind her, Dyannis heard shouting. She yanked open the solarium door. Instantly, she spotted the overturned chair and the tightly-curled body on the carpet beside it. The chair still vibrated with the force of his first convulsion. The air reeked with surging, chaotic laran. Dyannis threw herself to her knees beside Lerrys. She knew even before she touched his shoulder that he had stopped breathing.

  Lerrys! She drew upon her years of training at Hali, shaping her thought to penetrate the psychic turmoil. Taking his hands in hers to amplify the contact, she dropped below the level of thought.

  As a novice and later as a working leronis, Dyannis had monitored many others, both her colleagues and commoners. Never had she done it under such pressure for speed. Lerrys had stopped breathing a minute or two before she arrived. His heart had already begun to falter and his energy channels were so congested, they looked almost black.

  With a practiced movement, she opened the locket containing her starstone. It flared into brilliance at her touch. As she had so many times, she used the gem to amplify and direct her natural laran.

  Breathe! Lerrys, breathe!

  She sensed the clogged laran-carrying nodes just below his diaphragm, pressing on his solar plexus, pulsing with dark energy. It would take time to drain off the blockage, but Lerrys did not have time. Each passing moment further depleted his vitality. Working with critically-injured patients at Hali and then at Cedestri, Dyannis had learned to temporarily sustain life processes. At her command, muscles tightened and ribs lifted. Air rushed along breathing passages. Darkness eased. She felt the life spark brighten.

  Dyannis poured strength into the boy’s heart, stimulating the contracting fibers. The heart responded, beating once, twice, each time more strongly.

  “What are you doing?” shrieked a woman’s voice, barely recognizable as Rohanne’s. “Get away from him!”

  Dyannis turned her head to glimpse her sister-in-law’s livid face. Beyond her, servants hovered, and the same maid Dyannis had knocked over stood wringing her hands.

  “I need kirian!” Dyannis cried. “The blue bottle—still house—near the rosmarin. NOW! ”

  A sudden shift in the boy’s energy riveted her attention once more. She dimly heard receding footsteps and the chatter of feminine voices. Lerrys still breathed and his heart still beat, but deep within his psychic form, another upheaval was building. It would burst forth into a physical convulsion in a matter of moments. His muscles would lock in spasm, his heart would falter, and the very cells of his brain might burn out from the overload. What was she to do? There was no one to turn to, no one else to act.

  Dyannis could think of only one course of action, so desperate that had the boy’s very life not been at risk, she would never have considered it. She must take his starstone into her own hands. The risk was extreme; from her very first days as a novice, she had been warned of the dire consequences of even casual contact with another person’s starstone. It might throw him into the very crisis she hoped to prevent. Yet if, by the physical connection, she could somehow reach his mind, she might have a chance of saving him.

  Lerrys had curled into a tight ball, his muscles quivering. Dyannis let her starstone locket swing free on its chain. She needed both hands to loosen the boy’s shirt around his waist. Bless all the gods, he still wore the strip of fabric as a sash beneath his clothing. She felt a lump within its folds. Her fingers trembled as she tugged at the folds. For an infuriating moment, it resisted her. Everything she did tangled it further.

  The matrix crystal, afire with inner light, dropped into the palm of her hand. She sensed the answering rush of energy as a burst of heat from her own stone. Closing her eyes, she felt herself suspended in an ocean of brilliance. Like twin suns, the two starstones filled the psychic firmament. Rays of blue-white clashed and fractured. They warred with one another in overlapping patterns. She became a mote within the storm, torn by invisible gales of radiance, at any moment on the verge of being ripped loose from her moorings. If she gave in, if she failed to hold fast, then Lerrys would surely perish, and she along with him.

  In a flash of understanding, she saw the light not as two separate sources but a single entity out of phase with itself. Using the power of her mind, amplified through both starstones, she began to shift the light within them, to guide and reshape it. Slowly, order emerged. Color attuned into harmony. Overlapping images resolved into a single, stellate focus.

  Carefully, Dyannis allowed the two patterns to separate. One remained as she had always known it, the faceted brilliance that was her own starstone. The second, belonging to Lerrys, immediately began to drift,
dimming and assuming a darker shade of blue. The configuration was more a twist of muted color than the star-shaped a energy pattern of her own matrix. This was a crucial moment, she knew, for once freed of the order imposed by her own stone, his might revert to chaos. But it did not. Not yet, anyway.

  Dyannis shifted her awareness now to the boy’s body. He was breathing slowly but regularly. His heart beat steadily, blood circulating and organs functioning normally. The dusky red of congested laran nodes had lightened. Flow returned to his channels.

  His mind, however . . . how had it fared?

  Lerrys . . .

  An answer came like the clangor of a distant bell, fading quickly. This time, the silence carried no deadly emptiness. Dyannis sensed, rather, the boy had slipped beyond her hearing. With each passing moment, his starstone grew darker and more muted. In some ways, it resembled an unkeyed stone, one that had never been in resonance with a Gifted mind.

  How was that possible? Lerrys had keyed into his starstone so strongly that the same storms of light and power had raged through its crystalline structure and the fabric of his own mind. Dyannis had little experience with such things, but she wondered if the convulsions had damaged the laran centers of his brain. Raimon, back at Hali, would be able to tell.

  She opened her eyes and studied the stone in her hand. It looked subdued, almost quenched, with only a glimmer of blue light in its core. She did not trust that quietness, not until she proved to herself no invisible storm still lurked within its faceted confines, a mirror to the boy’s mind.

  Trembling rippled through her, bone-deep weariness and hunger. She had not felt this depleted since she had raised the stones to rebuild Cedestri Tower.

  Someone cried, “He’s awake! He lives!”

  “Oh, my baby!” Rohanne sobbed.

  “No, my lady, leave them be. See, he rouses.”

  Lerrys moaned, opening his eyes. Dyannis steadied herself enough to lift his head.

  Someone, the same servant who had restrained Rohanne, thrust the glass bottle of kirian into her hands. Dyannis yanked out the stopper and held the bottle to the boy’s lips. The faint lemony tang of the psychoactive distillation filled her head. Her own body revived, drawing nourishment from the aroma.

  Lerrys swallowed the two mouthfuls she provided. He sighed, murmured something, and fell into a deep, natural sleep. Dyannis caught an image from his mind of a young man, face flushed with excitement, galloping away on a chestnut horse with three white legs.

  “Take him,” Dyannis said, lifting her head to the circle of worried faces. Hands reached down to lift him. “Take him to his bed. The best thing for him now is rest. I will check on him in a short while. I must—”

  She meant to say, I must speak with his father, but got no further, for as she attempted to rise, another wave of weariness swept through her. The brief surge of energy from the kirian had vanished, leaving her even more drained than before.

  “Vai domna.” It was the servant who had handed her the kirian, an old woman with a face carved from granite. Dyannis remembered her from her childhood, although Nialla had worked in the kitchen then. She’d run into Nialla a few times since her return. Now they were alone in the solarium. Lerrys had been carried away by his mother in a flurry of exclamations. “How may I serve you?”

  By not asking me to stand up, Dyannis thought. She accepted the old woman’s surprisingly powerful support, enough to seat herself in a chair. She felt the urge to simply fall asleep where she was. Then nausea clutched her belly. Years of experience had taught her that was a sign of how dangerously depleted she was. “Bring me something sweet—candy or dried fruit or spiral buns. And a goblet of honeyed water, not wine.”

  I’ll just . . . close my eyes.

  Dyannis startled awake as the old woman set a plate of sugared nuts, spicebread smeared with apple compote, and dried honey-glazed pears on her lap. Despite her aversion, Dyannis forced herself to eat. The food was delicious enough to tempt even a recalcitrant appetite, and her trembling subsided as it replenished her spent energies.

  “It was ever so with Master Varzil,” Nialla said, nodding. “Always wanting sweets after he’d been out dreaming.”

  Dyannis nodded, unexpectedly moved. Intense laran work sometimes left her feeling emotional, but this was something more, this kind-hearted woman who remembered her brother as a child.

  Dyannis felt the uproar of Harald’s arrival even before she heard his booming voice, calling out for his son. Although she still ached with weariness in every joint and muscle, the food had restored her enough to speak with him.

  “You sit there, m’lady,” the old woman said. “Let him come to you.”

  Harald burst into the solarium a short time later. His spurs jangled as he strode across the room. He smelled of horse sweat, wild herbs, and leather. His fear filled the room, a rank undertone.

  “Lerrys—”

  “He’s all right,” Dyannis cut him off. For the time being. “Even as I feared, he suffered a threshold crisis, an intense initial episode of laran-awakened sickness. I don’t know what precipitated it, but it was by Cassilda’s own mercy I was nearby. Otherwise, I do not think he would have survived.”

  She paused to let her words sink in. Harald paled as the realization shook him. He ran one hand over his reddened, sweating face. “I—I am grateful, sister.”

  Dyannis brushed his words aside. She had warned Harald and urged him to send Lerrys to Hali, but had she really done everything in her power? Had she failed because she was preoccupied with her own unanswered questions? She felt as if a mist had lifted from her eyes with her own decision. Yes, she had contributed to the boy’s danger by not acting upon her best judgment. And yes, he ought to have had proper training before this, but in all truth, that might not have averted the crisis.

  “He is stable enough for the moment,” she said. “I will examine him while he sleeps, and again when he is awake. Meanwhile, we must make preparations for his further care.”

  “I thought you said—he was all right.”

  “I meant that he is alive. I do not know if his mind and body have taken any permanent damage. How his laran centers fared, I cannot tell yet, either. And he may suffer another episode, as bad or worse.”

  “Holy Aldones, Lord of Light, have mercy on us!” In a couple of long strides, Harald flung himself into a chair. “What am I to do?”

  Dyannis sensed Harald’s memories of Anndra and Sylvie, who had died at the same age, despite the best efforts of the household leronis. It was said that during the heights of the Ages of Chaos, when the great houses enforced selective inbreeding programs to fix genetic traits for laran, such deaths were common.

  What if such a thing had happened to Varzil as a child? she wondered. Or Raimon, or herself? The fate of their world turned upon such a fragile axis.

  Lerrys remained unconscious for two days. Rohanne fussed and wrung her hands and Harald looked taut and anxious. Dyannis, once she had rested, examined the boy several more times, and was able to offer the reassurance that for the time being, he appeared to be out of danger.

  Lerrys had always been an active, healthy boy. He was soon well enough to get out of bed. His appetite returned and he quickly grew restless in the house. His laran remained clouded, his starstone infused with dull blue light. Dyannis judged it unsafe to try any psychic contact for the present, except within the safety of a Tower.

  Dyannis thought of urging Harald again to send Lerrys to Hali. The boy would soon be fit to travel. She herself would be returning to the Tower, although she had not yet found the time or a way to tell her family. At first, she was too weary, and Harald clearly too distressed to discuss anything as emotional as sending the boy away. She decided to wait until they were both rested and clear of thought.

  Just when Dyannis was about to broach the subject to Harald, a rider arrived from Serrais, his horse lathered to exhaustion. He remained closeted with Harald for half a day. Then Harald gathered the entire household an
d the leaders of his men, both on the home estate and outlying farms.

  “Evil tidings have come from Asturias,” he announced. “That nedestro offspring of King Rafael, may Zandru scourge him with scorpions, whom men call the Kilghard Wolf, has taken to the field. Serrais is thrown back, the entire army in disarray, and Dom Eiric now lies in the Asturias dungeon.”

  “No!” one of the men cried, and a ripple of dismay passed through the assembly. “The scoundrels! How dare they!” “Witchery, it must have been, damnable witchery!”

  Rohanne gave a little shriek and looked as if she were going to faint. Lerrys, standing beside Dyannis, flinched.

  “When did this come to pass?” Dyannis raised her voice. When Harald told her, her heart clenched. It was the exact time Lerrys had suffered his attack. She turned to him and saw the echoes of a horror too great for his young mind to bear. With his awakening laran, he had somehow linked to his friend Siann, the one who’d gone with the Serrais levies. This had been no ordinary battle. She caught fragmentary images from the boy’s mind—Men and horses thrashing in pools of blood . . . the stench of clingfire . . . spell-cast terror shredding men’s minds . . . swords . . . arrows . . .

  Dyannis saw the Ridenow army lying cut to pieces, the remnant fleeing in confusion; the heart had gone out of them with the first charge, slashing through their rear guard. Clingfire shells burst into flame, stampeding the horses. Men blazed, their flesh on fire, and died screaming. Then it was all over but the slaughter and the final surrender. The armed men inside the castle covered their foes with bowmen from the walls, and at the end, the Asturias leronyn spread terror among the Ridenow army, so they fled shrieking as if all the demons in all of Zandru’s frozen hells were after them.

  Through the boy’s mind, Dyannis felt each death, each scream, each drop of molten fire. These were her own people, her kinsmen and their vassals, now scattered on the blood-drenched field as the kyorebni circled silently overhead. Horses lay among them, some thrashing in agony, others still. Because she saw through the mental eyes of Lerrys, she recognized the chestnut horse with three white socks that had been his favorite, now a lump of inert, gore-encrusted flesh. Beneath the horse lay the trampled form of a man in Ridenow colors crossed by the insignia of Sweetwater. Lerrys, linked through his awakening telepathic Gift, had felt them both die.