A Flame in Hali

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Only a short distance from Hali Tower, three motes like encapsulated emptiness zoomed ever closer. They felt like nothing she had known, certainly not ordinary aircars, more like disturbances in the air currents with only the faintest auras of psychic energy.

  Hail, aircars approaching Hali Tower! she called out.

  Silence answered her. She might have been shouting into an empty sky.

  Do you need help?

  If the aircars did not change course, they would swoop over the topmost turrets in only a few minutes. As near as she could judge, they were too high to collide with the Tower. Even unguided, their momentum would carry them beyond. They might crash into the surrounding countryside or—Her breath caught in her throat—they might be heading for the lake.

  The lake, and the Cataclysm device beneath it?

  No, Varzil had sealed the rift, forever barring access to that terrible laran machinery. Perhaps these invaders did not know that. In the process of attempting to recover the Cataclysm device, what disaster might ensue? The cloud-water of the lake retained the vibrational pattern of its transformation. Dyannis knew all too well how readily it could transmit psychic energy.

  A series of breaths heightened her trance, freeing her mind to quest deeper. Perhaps if she searched on a wider band, not just the usual mode of telepathy, she could discover something about the intruders. She could not have done it a year ago, before she began her training as under-Keeper, but she had grown in skill as well as strength and confidence.

  By shifting her own mode of mental listening, she was able to glimpse the patterns of inanimate glass and metal that comprised the aircars. Laran energy sizzled like tiny lightnings along the mechanisms that controlled the flying apparatus, wings and stabilizer fins. The craft were functional, then, and not derelict. Why could she not reach the pilots?

  Dyannis pressed her search harder and brushed against a grating vibration. Instantly she recognized an interference pattern like that generated by a telepathic damper. They must have found a way to surround themselves with a barrier impenetrable to laran and still be able to guide the aircars with their minds. It was not impossible, just puzzling.

  Unless they mean to wall themselves off from any possible communication or psychic influence . . .

  Something tugged at the lower levels of her mind, a ripple, an ache, a calling. She paused in her reflections.

  It came from the Overworld. Someone was crying out to her with an urgency that transcended the usual separation between the ordinary physical realm and that vast, formless region.

  It made no sense that one of the pilots might be trying to reach her. This was no general plea for help, but rather a sending aimed at her specific mental pattern, which meant an intimate familiarity. It could not be one of the pilots.

  The call came again, too faint for recognition yet imbued with desperate need. A cold shiver passed through her, as if some demon from Zandru’s Hells ran its talons along her spine.

  Dyannis summoned the image of Hali Tower in the Overworld, the psychic counterpart that she had helped to establish and maintain. This would be her anchor, as it had so many times in the past. In form and color, it resembled its physical counterpart, a slender structure of white set with panels of translucent stone, a bejeweled finger reaching for the heavens.

  The next instant, she stood upon its threshold. The temperature and odor of the air shifted. She blinked, waiting for the distant gray horizon to come into focus. The sky would be overcast and featureless, the light diffuse. A flat plain would stretch in every direction, until she shaped it into something else.

  Instead of a gray monotone overhead, an enormous boiling darkness rushed toward her, growing larger and closer with each passing moment. She had never seen anything like it, either in the physical realm or this one. In its churning shadows, she glimpsed the form of a woman, face white as a polished skull, cloak whipping about.

  Dyannis!

  A man raced toward her, outstripping the storm. Although she could not make out his features, she instantly recognized the touch of his mind.

  Sweet Cassilda, it’s Eduin! What are you doing here?

  Neither time nor distance held any meaning in the Overworld. Between one heartbeat and the next, Eduin stood before her. If she had not known him, she would never have recognized the man who stumbled to a halt, barely able to keep his feet. Hair hung in sodden ropes about a haggard face, creased with lines of suffering. He wore only filthy rags, which might once have been the robe of a laranzu, and he looked as if some huge predator, a banshee perhaps, had savaged him. A mangled wound gaped in his belly, dripping blood. Through the tatters of his clothing, welts and scratches marked his body.

  Yet it was undeniably Eduin, and for an instant, she wanted nothing more than to take him into her arms. The eyes that glowed in their bruised sockets met hers, both resolute and pleading.

  “Dyannis, there is no time! Run, get out of there! Any moment now, you will be attacked!”

  “Eduin—what are you talking about? What—”

  He turned to glance at the onrushing storm. The cloak of the ghostly woman blew aloft and Dyannis saw that she held in her outstretched hands three firebolts and was even now preparing to hurl them at Hali Tower.

  “You cannot stop them!” Eduin cried. “They are shielded against any contact—please, you must save yourself!”

  The first firebolt left the hands of the ghost-woman. It moved faster than Dyannis could follow, faster than thought. Eduin screamed, “No!” and struggled to sculpt the Overworld thought-stuff to stop the missile.

  Screams filling her head, Dyannis was jerked back into her room in the Tower. The very stones around her vibrated. The silent cries fell away and she heard Rorie’s clear mental voice.

  ATTACK! Rorie called. Anyone who hears this, help us! Raimon, answer me!

  Dyannis pulled the door open and sprinted down the corridor. Only a few of Hali’s inhabitants were asleep at this hour, whether they were working in Raimon’s circle or not. Some were finishing other laran tasks, or keeping to their schedule of daytime sleep. She passed a servant bringing warm water and towels.

  “Oh, Domna Dyannis, what has happened? Is it an accident?”

  “I don’t know!” Dyannis did not slow her pace. In her mind, flames encircled the laboratory in which Raimon worked. One of the workers was injured, her mind sending out waves of pain. The circle had fractured; all was in confusion.

  She reached the stairwell. Without warning, something burst through the outside wall just above her. Stones tumbled inward, fracturing with a horrendous noise. Orange-white flames poured through the opening. Dust and shards rained down upon her. She ducked, instinctively covering her head with her arms, and drew in the acrid reek of clingfire.

  Motes of the deadly caustic sprayed the stairwell. She flung herself backward, narrowly avoiding one of the larger drops. Stumbling, twisting, she escaped back into the corridor leading to the living quarters. Smoke and flame filled the air, each moment hotter and denser.

  She was cut off from both the laboratories and her only escape.

  One of the older women, a matrix mechanic named Javanne, rushed up to her. “Blessed Cassilda, we’re under attack!”

  Dyannis felt rather than heard her words above the roar of the flame and the crack of splintering stone. Somewhere else in the Tower, another explosion shuddered through the stone walls. She heard screaming, distant and muffled.

  “Come with me.” With a firmness of touch almost unknown among telepaths, Dyannis grabbed the other woman’s hand and pulled her back along the corridor. The clingfire would eat its way to them eventually, or the Tower would collapse, but in the meantime, they must find a place quiet enough to create a circle.

  The two of us?

  Dyannis closed the door of the farthest room behind them. Its owner had been working in Raimon’s circle; Dyannis did not know if the woman was still alive.

  She went to the window and looked down. Like most of the r
ooms in this wing, it overlooked sheer rock walls. There was no possibility of jumping to safety.

  Safety. What was she thinking? There would be no escape for any of them.

  Dyannis pulled the other woman down to sit facing her on the bed and took both her hands, Cedestri-style. Javanne’s eyes were glassy with fright.

  Gently, with a Keeper’s quiet confidence, Dyannis touched Javanne’s mind with her own. Together we can reach Raimon and strengthen his circle. Our only hope is to contain the fire with our joined laran.

  Javanne calmed under the mental contact. She had spent many years at one Tower or another, drilled in obedience to a Keeper.

  The clingfire crept along the corridor, gaining intensity as it went. Dyannis felt it through her closed eyelids, a heat upon her mind.

  Javanne fed mental power to Dyannis. Dyannis seized it, wove it together with her own, and reached for Raimon and his circle. Dyannis thought that with the addition of her own strength, Raimon might be able to regather the circle and throw up some kind of psychic shelter around them.

  Raimon!

  For a terrifying moment, she could not locate his mental signature anywhere. Then she saw the laboratory through his eyes, wooden floor and furniture ablaze. One figure lay writhing, outlined in eye-searing orange-white. A robed figure tried to reach her, but could not penetrate the fire. Raimon himself sprawled face-down on the floor. Lewis-Mikhail sobbed as he slashed away the muscle on Raimon’s upper back, digging for the mote of clingfire.

  Dyannis! Lewis-Mikhail cried out, recognizing her.

  I am here and unhurt, though not for long. What can I do?

  Save yourself, little sister, for there is no hope here. Aldones preserve us all! Who has done this thing, and why?

  I do not know, she answered, and then realization shook her. But I know who does.

  A blast from above jerked Dyannis back into her physical body. She glanced up just as the ceiling broke open and flaming rock poured down upon her.

  44

  Dyannis hurled herself into the Overworld. Her only thought was that Eduin had known about the attack before it began, that he was somehow connected to the dreadful shadow-woman.

  She stood outside a burning Tower, and it seemed to her that the flames fed not only upon the physical structure, but the minds of the people within it. The Tower itself had gone translucent, fading. Its form might persist for a time, even after those who created it had perished.

  A shadow fell across her, a blotch of darkness. She turned to see the cloaked woman, shrunk now to almost human size.

  Someone was grappling with the woman. Eduin had placed himself between her and the Tower. They struggled silently, twisting to one side and then the other. The cloak flared out like a living thing, seeking to wrap itself around its adversary. Somehow, Eduin managed to keep free from its entanglement, or perhaps that was because he fought with such single-minded determination. Step by shuffling step, he forced the figure backward.

  They sprang apart, and the cloaked woman drew herself to her full height. Her eyes blazed like live coals.

  “You made a bargain, Eduin Deslucido,” she said, raising one skeletal hand to point at the Tower. “Do you now deny me my prize?”

  Deslucido? Dyannis wondered.

  “I never said you could have her,” he answered, his voice hoarse.

  “A death, you said, and we agreed. You have your death and I will fulfill the purpose for which I was created.”

  Eduin shook his head. “May all the gods forgive me, I made you what you are. What I have made, I will now unmake!”

  The figure turned, and a flicker of human emotion passed across the skull-white face. “You will not find it so easy. Some things, once set in motion, cannot be stopped.”

  “If you must have a death, take me instead, but let her live! Let them all live—even him—and let it end here.”

  “You swore an oath, so many times that it is etched into your soul.”

  “Then I am forsworn.” His voice rang with resolve, and at the same time, despair. “I give it up, now and forever!”

  “Ah!” The woman in the cloak shuddered as if wounded. At the same moment, the skies convulsed. Winds sprang up, rapidly gaining in ferocity.

  Dyannis crept forward. She recognized the figure now. It was Naotalba, the Bride of Zandru, sometimes considered a symbol of noble sacrifice, but as often, an evil omen. How had Eduin come to deal with a demigoddess?

  I made you, he had said. Here in the Overworld, the only reality was thought, and once he had been a powerful laranzu. Had he indeed conjured up a mythic image and shaped it to his own ends?

  He now stood, legs braced wide in a posture of confrontation. Dyannis dared not break his concentration, though a thousand questions boiled up in her mind. In an odd shift of vision, she saw what linked Eduin and Naotalba. Strands of psychic material, some as fine as spider’s silk, others coarse and knotted, ran between them. Some pulsed the color of clotted blood, like congested laran channels. In places, they twisted together, forming webs and nodes of darkness.

  The strands, thick and thin, all sprang from the ravaged wound in Eduin’s belly and converged upon a single point deep in the substance of Naotalba’s form. Instinctively, Dyannis knew that each was born of some moment of bitterness, of resentment festering into hatred, of twisted dreams and poisoned fears.

  Dark Lady Avarra, what could have happened to turn that radiant boy—or any man—into a source of such evil?

  Singly and by handfuls, Eduin wrenched the strands free from his own body. Colorless blood streamed from the fresh wounds. If he cried out, Dyannis could not hear it above the shrieking of the storm. The loose ends whipped free in the winds, shriveling. Within moments, they turned into dust that was blown away.

  When he grasped the last one, the thickest, it writhed in his hands. He staggered, almost losing his balance. Dyannis had heard of men who, under the control of laran spells of madness, had taken knives to their own bellies, disemboweling themselves. She had heard that Eduin had used such spells in defense at Hestral Tower against the besieging armies of Rafael Hastur. She wondered if, in some twisted version of justice, he were not inflicting the same dreadful injury upon himself.

  The twisted rope came free in Eduin’s hands. Dyannis could not see his face, but she felt the desolation that gripped him, the terrifying aloneness, the absence of the presence that had shaped his entire life.

  The storm died as quickly as it had begun. Naotalba lifted her face, no longer smooth and pale, but fallen in upon itself. Whatever strength of purpose Eduin had poured into her was now gone.

  Bloodless lips moved, shaping speech. “You have done a brave and foolish thing, Eduin Deslucido.”

  Deslucido, Dyannis repeated in her mind. That was the second time Naotalba had called Eduin by that name.

  “I have seen the world of gods as well as men,” Naotalba continued, “and I do not know another who would have chosen as you have. I will return now to the realm of my bridegroom. We will meet there soon.”

  Naotalba turned away, and the folds of her cloak gathered her into nothingness.

  With a cry, Eduin fell to his knees. Dyannis rushed to his side. He pressed both hands over his belly, as if to staunch the flow of blood. Even as she approached, he lifted his hands, revealing unbroken skin beneath the tattered shirt. He looked up at her, his eyes filled with amazement. His mouth moved, but no words came.

  Dyannis felt no pity for him, only realization condensing into fury. “You knew about the attack before it ever began! You—you must have sent it!”

  He flinched at her words, but did not turn away his gaze. In that moment, she read the bitterness of years reaching back far before she had known him. She saw, but could not understand the driving obsession. A chain of deeds, like loathsome beads strung on a silken cord, stretched into the past. She heard a voice like the slither of scales over rock, whispering, You swore to kill, k-k-kill . . .

  She saw a stern Queen upon her
throne, the rapt look on the face of a pale, dark-eyed girl, the storm-racked landscape of a once-Gifted mind, an old man in physician’s robes led away in chains . . . and farther back, the lake at Hali, an army of beggars poised to attack . . .

  “Why?” she cried. “Why would you do such a thing? Why destroy an entire Tower?”

  “I did not mean to destroy Hali Tower, only one person within its walls.” His voice was inexpressibly bleak.

  Her heart froze. Had he hated her so much, all these years?

  “No, not you!” Eduin cried. “Never you. It was Varzil’s death I sought, and to my damnation, I have brought about yours as well.”

  “But Varzil isn’t here!” Dyannis said. “He left on a secret mission some days ago.”

  “Then it has all been for naught.”

  She brushed the thought aside. “Why kill Varzil? What has he done to harm you?”

  Surely it was not her brother’s attempts to foil their budding romance so many years ago. She had rebelled against Varzil’s orders, plunging headlong into the affair. Time and distance and some mysterious change within Eduin, not Varzil’s interference, had ended it.

  An icy thought trickled through her mind. She remembered Varzil sitting with her outside the ruins of Cedestri Tower, remembering his lost love. She could almost hear his words, as appalling now as when they were first spoken.

  “Felicia was Hastur and Eduin tried to kill her—did kill her. Eduin tried to kill Carolin, another Hastur, and failed, for which he probably hates me even more.”

  “You hated Varzil because he stood in your way of destroying first Carolin Hastur and then Felicia of Hestral Tower,” Dyannis said. In his eyes, she read the truth of her words.

  She took a step closer. He was trembling. She wanted to lash out, to hit him, hurt him. Yet he made no move to defend himself, either in word or action. He saw himself as utterly damned, irrevocably lost, and she, for whom he was prepared to sacrifice everything, would be his judge and executioner.

  She lowered herself to the ground in front of him. Her anger drained away. “Why?” she repeated. “Why did you hate the Hasturs so much?”