Toward afternoon on the fifth day, the clouds lifted altogether. They halted at the crest of a pass to let their horses breathe. Above them, a lonely hawk hovered against the sky. Varzil spotted what looked like a shadow across the distant hills. He pointed it out to Carolin, for the day was clear.
“Yes, that’s recent clinngfire burn. See how it stops at the rock seam?”
Varzil, searching with laran as well as vision, shuddered. Now that he knew what it was, he smelled it across the leagues.
“Sometimes I fear that you and I will see no end to such things,” Carolin said.
“I pray we are both wrong about that. I’m always being told, Wait. Be patient. Let things develop in their own manner, until I’m sick of it. I expect you hear the same things, too.”
“That I do, but I won’t give up and neither should you. Just because a pack of old donkeys can’t see past their own noses doesn’t mean the rest of us have to live that way. I have a whole court full of them to deal with! Not to mention the aunties of both sexes who think that nothing should ever be done for the first time!”
Varzil chuckled. Arilinn, too, had its share of conservatives. While few Towers were more prestigious, none were less likely to experiment. Sometimes Barak, the younger Keeper, acted as if preserving the past was so important, it overshadowed any other concerns.
“I agree,” Varzil said. “Whether it’s your pact or something else, we must never give up trying to change things for the better. Perhaps what’s wrong is that although people suffer the way things are, they don’t suffer enough. They fear what they don’t know far more than what they do.”
Carolin nudged his horse down the pass, loosening the reins so the animal could lower its head and set its own balance. “Maybe true change requires desperation. I hope it will not come to that. I cannot imagine anything more horrendous than what happened at Neskaya and Tramontana, and that didn’t have any lasting effect. The new Tower at Tramontana serves Hastur alone. There will be no shortage of clingfire when the next war comes. If the rumblings out of Asturias continue, that won’t be long.”
Varzil heard the disappointment in his friend’s voice that the new Tower at Tramontana had only increased the potential for destruction. “Someday,” he said, “when I am Keeper and you are king, we won’t have to do things as they have always been done.”
“We will rebuild Neskaya Tower,” Carolin replied. “Not as yet another source of dreadful laran weaponry, but as a symbol of peace and hope. Upon my honor, I swear it.”
“Look!” Carolin pointed. “Can you see the lake?”
This morning, they had come down from the hills into rolling pastures. Graceful, water-loving willows lined the many streams. The land itself smelled fresh. Varzil spied an oval of blue, like sky made liquid and collected in a cup, a sprawling manor house, lawns dotted with shade trees, gardens with low rock walls, and the rows of a small orchard.
“It’s not as exciting as court, but it was a grand place to grow up in,” Carolin said.
Varzil thought of his own home at Sweetwater, the rugged land, the herds of cattle and horses. In comparison, Blue Lake was a princely estate. It did not have to support itself, although it looked as if it could easily do so.
As they went down toward the river and denser woods on either side, Varzil began to grow uneasy. The day was fair, the birds trilling to each other in the branches. Carolin talked on, sharing memories from his boyhood, the little stag pony which had been his first mount, the red leather belt he and Orain had come to blows over, stealing berry scones from the kitchen without getting caught and then finding out Cook had left them out for him. Varzil heard the happiness shine through Carolin’s words.
With a cry, a rainbird took wing from the undergrowth in front of them. Varzil’s horse snorted and pranced as if the tiny bird were a giant carnivorous banshee on the hunt. He kept his seat with an effort. A faint prickle crept up his spine.
“What’s the matter?” Carolin asked.
Varzil shook his head, but he was already scanning the open sky. With the river gleaming through the bushes, the air felt heavy and damp. He’d be happier once they were in the open, though he could not explain why. These were not wild woods. There would be no wolves or Trailmen lying in wait. This deep into Hastur territory, they had little to fear from an armed assault. The most dangerous part of their journey had been the passage through the Venza Hills. The road had been peaceful and until now, Varzil had felt perfectly at ease.
Settling himself again in the saddle, Varzil reached out with his laran. He touched the curling river currents, the sleepy green peace of the woods and surrounding pasture land. Bits of brightness marked livelier minds—silvertrout, fox, rabbit-horn, the rainbird’s nesting mate....
Something mechanical ... the hard bitter edge of a starstone shield—
Just a little farther and I’ll have you, Hastur scum....
The edge of the thought trailed across Varzil’s mind like a molten brand. He jerked alert.
—Carolin spinning through the air, his back arched, arms flung wide, a blossom of crimson unfolding across his blue-and-silver jacket—
In front of him, Carolin rode easily, now glancing back over his shoulder. His black mare bobbed her head, ears relaxed, tail swishing an errant fly.
Varzil clamped his heels into the sides of his horse. The animal surged forward. Its hindquarters bunched, ears flattening against its skull. He lashed it with his mind as well as his heels. Within a stride or two, it was at full gallop and even with the rump of Carolin’s horse. Varzil caught the expression of amazement on Carolin’s face, the quick movement as the black mare threw up her head.
A slender shape like a splinter of silvery metal burst from the tangle of brush ahead of them. If Varzil’s horse were not already at a gallop, he could never have reached it in time. It pierced the air, emitting a thin whine. He grabbed a handful of his cloak and thrust it in front of the sliver. At the same time, he gathered his laran like a battle hammer and brought it smashing down. Something within the device shattered.
The lined wool of Varzil’s cloak slowed the sliver’s progress. Momentum pulled him from his horse. He hit the road in a snarl of cloak and legs, but he had the thing wrapped.
“ Aldones!” Carolin dropped to the ground and rushed over.
The impact of Varzil’s fall knocked the breath from him. His cloak twisted sideways around his shoulders, much of it bunched up in his hands. He didn’t dare loosen his physical grip until he was certain that the thing—whatever it was—was truly inert.
Carolin reached for the bundle.
“No, don’t touch it! It isn’t safe!” Varzil said.
With his mind, Varzil explored the device. It reeked of laran technology, glass and metal, though he had never encountered its like before. He’d heard of mechanical birds in which a laranzu could send forth his consciousness over great distances, akin to the link with sentry birds but without their fleshly limitations.
This one was too small for such a task. It did, however, contain a starstone chip.
Varzil told Carolin to stand back while he slowly unwrapped his cloak. The gleaming dart was perhaps a hand’s length from tip to slightly rounded belly. Fins of metal ran its length for balance and guidance. A tiny starstone winked at its tapering head like a malevolent eye. “That thing—”Carolin began.
Varzil did not respond, for at the sound of Carolin’s voice, the dart began vibrating. He tightened his grip to hold it fast. He felt rather than heard a faint, ominous humming from its core. The sensible thing to do would be to take something solid—a rock if there was one to hand, or the hilt of a dagger—and smash the starstone. The thing had been aimed at Carolin, and might yet prove deadly if it pierced his flesh. Yet some instinct held him back. Destroyed, its secrets would perish with it.
He thrust deeper into the thing with his mind. The starstone was a guidance device, of that he was certain, but it did more. In a flash, he realized that it generated an
energy field that masked the contents of the body. The barrier gave way under his determined probing.
Clingfire!
A mote of the caustic burning stuff lay within a fragile glass bubble. Even the lightest impact would crack the vessel, releasing its contents into the flesh of its victim. There it would ignite, burning away vital organs, muscle and bone until there was nothing left to be consumed. Neither water nor smothering blankets could extinguish it, and it would spread to anything combustible that came into contact with it.
It would be a death of screaming torment. Men had been known to slit their own throats rather than endure the pain of clingfire. A victim’s only hope was to cut away all the flesh around the burning area.
Varzil recoiled in horror. The dart was designed to place the clingfire deep within the victim’s body—within Carolin’s body—where there would be not the slightest hope of rescue.
Carolin bent over Varzil’s shoulder. “It’s some kind of killer device. I don’t recognize the exact type. There was a report of such things at the Comyn Council last season.”
“Someone is making these—these—?” Varzil’s mouth filled with bile.
“No legitimate Tower, at least none that will admit to it,” Carolin said. He reached one hand toward the dart, which quivered even more strongly. Reflexively, he drew back. His face paled.
“It’s keyed to me.”
“Yes, and whoever sent it is still here ... nearby.”
Varzil tightened his grip on the device. Even through the folds of his cloak, he felt its thrumming as a sickness in his blood. It was not alive, but it carried the intent of its master. With one hand, Varzil freed his own starstone and focused on it. Within moments, he overshadowed the vibrational pattern of the chip. The humming ceased, although the linkage to the guiding mind remained. Whoever had sent this thing would believe it still active, at least for the next crucial minutes....
Varzil cast his telepathic sense like a net over the surrounding woods. He felt Carolin link with him and used the stamp of Carolin’s personality as a resonance, a lure. The killer would be thinking of Carotin—
There, in the brush beside the river!
Moving silently, Varzil and Carolin crept along the road. Carolin slipped his short sword free from its scabbard, slow and easy, almost soundless. Varzil felt the killer’s mind, knew exactly where the man crouched. Aside from the river itself, there was only one path of escape. He pointed for Carolin to position himself there.
Varzil took out his small traveling knife and pried the starstone chip loose from the dart. The clingfire would have to be disposed of later, preferably in a Tower. He placed the chip on a rock and, using the hilt of his knife, smashed it.
There was a sudden rustling in the brush along the bank, a body thrashing. Varzil felt the man’s mind reel in shock and surprise. Shouting, Carolin rushed forward. Varzil left the dart, still wrapped in his cloak, and pushed his way to the river.
A man in a worn leather vest lunged into the water, splashing wildly. His movements were uncoordinated, the river current strong. He lost his footing and went down just as Carolin jumped into the water.
They floundered in the hip-deep water. Carolin hauled the other man upright, one hand twisted in the man’s collar, the other holding the short sword to his throat. He half-dragged, half-prodded the man toward the bank where Varzil waited. The man struggled, arms and legs flailing, but he could not resist Carolin’s expert hold.
Carolin threw the man down on the rocky bank of the river. Panting heavily, the man lay against the crushed reeds and moss-laced stones. Varzil knelt and peered closely at the man. Blue eyes glinted in a darkly bearded face like chips of cloudless sky. The man’s mouth worked soundlessly. A mixture of rage and terror emanated from him.
“Who sent you?” Carolin snarled. “Where did you get that thing?”
“Let me do this.” Varzil placed one hand on Carolin’s arm. He had not the Alton Gift of forced rapport, but he could do far more, mind to mind. He reached out with his laran, only to meet a shield like twisted clouds. It wouldn’t be hard to penetrate, given the man’s fear and confusion.
The man had laran enough to guide the killer dart, but he could not have created it. Despite the hatred emanating from the man’s mind, Varzil did not think he was the one to plan this attack. He had acted for someone else.
Varzil pressed deeper, and the man’s psychic shields began to give way.
“No! Ye’ll ne‘er trap me that way!” The man spat in Varzil’s face. For a moment, Varzil was blinded by the man’s spittle. He felt Carolin’s recoil of shock, heard the scuffle of the man scrambling to his feet, slipping in the mud, the scrape of wet boot leather on rock. By the time he’d wiped his eyes, Carolin had pinned the man against the knotted roots of an ancient willow. The smell of churned mud and the sweat of fear stained the air.
Varzil caught only a glimpse of the man’s eyes, the instant of wide white despair.
The man’s body stiffened, an arc of agony before he crumbled. He lay against the tree, twisted to one side. The angle of his lolling head and splayed arms gave him the look of a doll tossed carelessly aside.
Varzil did not need to touch the man to know he was dead. The sudden tearing away of the man’s life energy left a fading clamor, like an ill-tuned bell struck but once and then forever-more still. Nausea rose, a noxious river swell in Varzil’s throat. He turned to the water, retching.
“Bredu!” Carolin’s voice pierced the waves of sickness.
“I’m all right,” he managed to speak. “Are we far from Blue Lake? I need a secure place where I can examine this man more closely. We must find out who sent him to kill you ... and why.”
25
Varzil would have wished for a different introduction to Blue Lake. The house and grounds held all the charm and tranquil ity he had seen at a distance. It was the perfect place for an active, imaginative boy to grow up, and in later years, it would offer a sanctuary against the intrigues of the court.
The coridom of Blue Lake and the servants who rushed out at Carolin’s arrival stared open-mouthed at the limp body slung over the pack animal. Varzil could tell from the ease and speed with which Carolin’s orders were obeyed how greatly he was loved. These people remembered him as a child, as a youth; nothing he did as a man could shake their trust. They needed no explanations, although it must have been unusual for their master to arrive with a dripping corpse.
Varzil refused to perform his laran examination inside the house, where people lived and slept, nor the barn with its flammable materials. The little stone-walled building used for making ale and cider was lined with racks of bottles, empty barrels, and glass containers. It smelled of apples and its clean dirt floor. A burly man in a farrier’s leather apron picked up the dead man as if he weighed no more than an empty saddle and carried him inside.
It was a simple matter to clear off one of the worktables and lay the corpse upon it. His clothing and hair were still damp. Varzil opened the shutters to admit more light, happy that he would not need a candle.
Carolin stood in the doorway. “I don’t like leaving you alone with him.”
“It’s safer this way,” Varzil said. He did not want to add that any distraction, no matter how inadvertent, could risk his own life, if not his sanity. “Go and greet your people. I’ll be along as soon as may be. The longer I delay, the less information I can recover.”
And the farther into the Overworld I must search ...
Varzil drew up one of the three-legged stools so that he sat level with the man’s head. He unwrapped the dart, inert now, and laid it where he could easily reach it.
The man’s body was almost cold and had begun to stiffen. His face was purpled with blood from having been carried face-down across the chervine’s saddle. Nothing could be read in his features, no clues as to what sort of man he had been in life. His hands and forearms bore the pattern of calluses and scars typical of a mercenary or adventurer. He wore no amulet or othe
r jewelry, nor any identification papers in his folded belt. Varzil and Carolin had searched the river area briefly for some trace of a horse, but found nothing. The man might have been waiting there for days. As Carolin had pointed out, he had made no secret of his intention to visit Blue Lake. His departure had been delayed a few days by the funeral.
Varzil took out his starstone, holding it in his cupped hands. Closing his eyes, he focused his attention through the stone. Within a few minutes, its familiar pulsating warmth spread through his mind.
He laid his fingertips on the man’s exposed wrist, where once he would have felt a living pulse. The flesh still retained the imprint of that rhythm, leading inexorably to the man’s heart. Just as a physician might trace the physical vessels, now Varzil used the same pathways to follow the dead man’s mental energy.
Fleshly decay had hardly begun. The chill of the river had delayed its onset. The man’s energon nodes and channels had shut down, but their structure as yet remained intact. Sometimes, Varzil knew, when a person died suddenly, the spirit often lingered for a time. He had hoped such would be the case, but now, as he went deeper and farther along the pattern of energy channels, he felt no trace of any consciousness. The utter absence struck him as unusual. The man had been dead some hours, true. In even a natural death, there should be some imprint of personality, some persistent attachment to living. Unless ...
Unless the man knew he was going to die. Unless he meant to die.
Varzil wondered if he were looking at one of the fabled Aldaran assassins, mentally implanted with a suicide command should their mission fail. He wasn’t even sure whether they existed or were a product of the distorted legends from the Ages of Chaos. Stranger things had been proven true.