Dismay shook the circle. There was no use in trying to shore up the Tower. The disintegration had already progressed too far. Even if the bedrock could have been welded solid in an instant, the entire dormitory wing was unstable. It was rapidly collapsing under its own weight.
Hali Tower paused in their onslaught, but only for a moment. Varzil, attuned now to the method of their attack, sensed the next target almost at the same moment. Hali was systematically demolishing the key supporting structures.
Varzil did not know how long they might hold out, or how long Loryn’s will to resist would last. The Keeper held the circle in an iron grip. Iron, he reminded himself, could be brittle if stressed too far.
The floor beneath them staggered, slipped. Although the blast from Hali had not been aimed directly beneath the infirmary, the devastation from the dormitory wing had destabilized connecting structures, setting off a chain of collapse.
Loryn, we cannot stay here, he said silently.
At that very moment came a crash so loud and percussive, it stunned him. The air burst from his lungs; his psychic vision darkened. He reeled with the sudden, jolting return to his physical body. Heart hammering in his chest, muscles quivering, he scrambled to his feet. The floor at the far end sagged. A cot slipped toward the depression, colliding with an upended stool.
VARZIL!
The cry came not from one of the other leronyn, now stumbling toward the doorway, but silently.
Felicia?
White light surged around him, filled him, blinded him. His body tripped and caught itself against the wall beside the door. From what seemed an immense distance, someone cried, “Loryn! Help him!” and “Varzil, are you hurt?”
The light drew him up like a vortex. He had no strength to fight it. For a terrible moment, he found himself stretched and scraped thinner than the finest parchment, then twisted and wrenched—
Around him, stone walls toppled. He saw them as shadows of white against white, bathed in stark brilliance. Dust and powdery shards rose like a stormcloud. Something sharp and hard shattered, throwing out slivers that shot right through him.
Ahhhh!
The shriek of pain shifted his vision once more. With the eerie doubled sight that came from being partly in one world and part in another, Varzil looked down/around at the little stone cellar where he and Loryn had so painstakingly disassembled the stockpile of clingfire. Here, on the very table they had used, Felicia’s body had lain, held in stasis.
Instead of the table, and the shrouded form of his beloved, Varzil stared at a pile of rubble. One wall had fallen and the adjacent ones were about to give way.
NO!
He threw himself where the table had stood, thinking only to pull the stones away, quickly while there still might be hope. He thought nothing of their weight, of his own danger—
His hands passed, ghostlike, right through the stone. The ceiling crashed down through him, completely filling the remaining open space. The white light seized him once more. He was no longer in the little stone cellar, or the infirmary either, and he was not alone. Though he was again blinded, he was filled with that familiar presence, light and sure.
Quickly! Felicia’s mental voice sang in his mind. We must force Hali to end this madness before anyone else dies!
Sweet gods—
Her face floated before him, very much like the last time he had seen her, a vision spun of dreams and the memory of the heart. A smile, inexpressively sweet for all its briefness, flickered across her lips. She reached out one pale hand to him—
—and he stood at her side in the Overworld. Her fingers slipped through his, insubstantial as mist. He saw that, like the strange gray plain, she had turned colorless. Already her eyes, once so full of intelligence and emotion, were fading. She gathered herself with visible effort. An instant of clarity kin-died. Her lips moved—
Go—
Though she stood as still as before, she began to recede. A great maw of distance opened up between them. Varzil thought he had only to reach out and touch her, to take her in his arms once again, to taste her lips—
Felicia took a step away and shook her head. He understood; he was no raw novice, but laranzu and Keeper. He had been trained in the dangers of the Overworld, and most especially the certain failure of trying to maintain contact with the dead. Once he gave way to this temptation, he knew, there would be no turning back. No matter how far or how fast he ran after her, she would elude him. Time; which was difficult enough to keep track of in the Overworld, would lose all meaning. He would go on and on in fruitless chase, bound by desperation and hope, until his physical body withered and died.
And so would those who depended upon him.
Go—she had urged him. Begged him.
Though it felt like tearing his heart from his breast, he turned his back on her and summoned the Overworld landmark of Hali Tower.
45
Varzil pictured Hali as he had first seen it, a slender white Tower with the cloud-waters of the Lake at its base. The image wavered, mingling with the vision of the same Tower at the far distant time of the Cataclysm and his all-too-brief warning. He bent his will and concentration on the flashes of present-day personalities—Dougal DiAsturian ... the laranzu from the relays ... Dyannis ....
Varzil, no! wailed through his mind, distorted, barely recognizable.
He had never worked in a circle at Hali. From his visits, he knew only a little of the layout. He remembered the room in which he had woken, the kindness of the healers who tended him. Details evaded him; he had been a boy then and had just suffered a tremendous shock.
It was years ago, he told himself. They will not remember me.
Yet he recalled the translucent blue stone of Hali Tower, used not as accents but in huge opulent blocks, tokens of a time when the will and pleasure of the Comyn lords was the only consideration. Once more, he looked down upon a circular room, generous in proportion, and the enormous artificial matrix at its center. A circle had gathered here, eyes closed in concentration, heads of flame and copper hair bowed, hands linked. Energy, visible as a eoruscation of blue-white, bathed their faces. In memory or perhaps in sympathetic resonance, he felt an answering surge along his own laran channels.
His mental vision leaped into focus and he stood, not as a passive observer looking down upon the room, but at its very center. The faceted white light of the matrix surrounded him.
Somehow, Felicia had linked him with the device, and it had drawn him here.
Heads remained bowed, for the discipline of the circle held.
I am Varzil of Arilinn, guest and comrade to the leronyn of Hestral Tower. I speak for them, for all of us. I ask you, mind to mind, where there can be no secrets, no betrayal, to stop your attach Towers must not wage war upon each other. We must put an end to this madness before it destroys us and everything we have built!
The Keeper, Dougal DiAsturian, a heavyset man whose hair and beard were more silver than red, answered. His expression did not alter in the least. Have you come to surrender? It is too late. King Rakhal has given the order that we must continue our attack until Hestral is razed to the ground.
I have not come to surrender, Varzil replied, for that would not solve anything. Only a generation ago, Towers fought each other at the whims of kings. Have you forgotten Neskaya and Tramontana? Yes, you at Hali can prevail against Hestral, a small and insignificant Tower. But what will you have gained? A show of brute strength? Is this why the gods bestowed our Gifts? So that we can carry out the orders of bullies like Rakhal the Usurper?
Watch your words, lest you indict yourself. I think you, too, are a partisan here.
Varzil wanted to strike back, but he restrained himself. His goal was not to solve the problem of who was rightful Hastur King, but something far more important. Anger and righteous indignation fell away from him. It seemed he stood once more in a cone of light, which illuminated and purified all thought.
It does not matter who rules this Kingdom o
r any other, he said, for it seems to be human nature to squabble over land and power. I say, until such time as men have learned to resolve their differences with words instead of swords, let them have their swords. Let us not turn our own powers, which can create marvels and which bind us in an intimacy of mind which ordinary men can never know—let us not abuse these Gifts so they become instead curses.
A nice sentiment, Varzil of Arilinn, and spoken by one whose only weapon is eloquence!
So the Keeper of Hali thought Varzil spoke from weakness, with everything to lose and only the desperate resource of persuasion. There was no point in arguing further, for anything he said now would only reinforce that belief.
This is no child’s game of bluff-and-blunder, Varzil replied calmly. Even if you blast us into nothingness, you cannot win. You will be forever a pawn in the hands of Rakhal and his like, a dangerous and powerful toy.
In his mind, he formed the image of two boys, barely past adolescence, thwacking away at each other with wooden practice swords. Varzil, like every other Comyn youth, had spent hours on a field like this one. His lack of aptitude had earned him more than his share of bruises. Now he drew upon those memories to fill in the sensory details—the smell of the dust, the sweat trickling down the side of his neck, the weight and awkward balance of the wooden sword as he tightened his two-handed grip. Just as he had projected his thoughts at the catmen and had honed his laran in his years at Arilinn, so now he sent the mental picture into the very heart of the Hali circle.
One sword caught a boy across the shoulder and sent him staggering. The sound of a bone breaking reverberated through the circle. Somehow, the boy managed to hold on to his own sword with his free hand. He screamed and charged, swinging.
The other boy, visibly surprised by the intensity of the counterattack, fell back. He lifted his sword to ward off the blows. Wood struck wood with bone-jarring impact. The mingled smells of adrenaline and dust hung in the air.
For a time, the first boy prevailed, carried by the impetus of his own fury. It quickly burned itself out. He retreated, stumbling, but not before he had smacked the other across one cheek. The blow raised a bloody welt.
Back and forth they went, each one pressing the advantage in his turn, each one defending himself with increasing desperation until the roles changed once more. Before long, they were coated in sweat and bruises, their shirts torn, their wooden swords splintered. The pauses between attack and counterattack grew longer. Each time one or the other was knocked down, he rose more slowly. Their breath came fast and harsh.
Finally one boy, the one whose collarbone was first broken, fell to his knees and stayed there. His adversary bent over, bracing himself on bent knees. There was no disguising the light of malicious triumph in his eyes.
What is the meaning of this? roared Dougal. Do you think to frighten us with a tale of childish squabbles, or so impress us with your own laran talents that we will give in to your demands?
Varzil drew himself up, and it seemed that the light cloaked him, sustained him. He felt Felicia’s presence, her trust in him and in what he must do.
Have you never heard the old saying, It is ill done to chain a dragon to roast your meat? he asked.
The fallen boy lifted his head and yelled a command, Dragon, come!
The sky darkened and a shadow swooped down, its form immense and distorted. No living man had ever seen a dragon, and it was far from sure they had ever existed on Darkover, save in folklore and proverb. What Varzil intended to evoke was the awesomeness of the legend, its raw inhuman power.
The creature blotted out the blood-red sun. Wings, leathery and pinioned, but blurred with motion, churned the dust.
Still standing, the other boy shrieked in terror, and then issued his own command. Before the claws could rend his flesh, a second shape, equally hideous, appeared.
The battle cries of the dragons shivered the air, brassy as thunder. Gouts of flame, hotter than any Hellers wildfire, swept the practice field. One blast caught a boy full in the chest and left him a charred husk. The shout of glee from the other was cut off as a spiked-barbed tail as thick as a man’s waist slashed across him. Two scaled bodies, steaming as they grappled with each other, slammed into the earth where the boy had fallen.
The field became a smear of blood-soaked mud, of ash and splintered bone. Claws slid over armored scales and dug deep. Ichorous fluids spattered the earth, which cracked open. Fumes burst from the fissures.
Tattered wings beat the air. The dragons lifted into the sky. Thick black smoke billowed from the intertwined bodies. Yellow blood, reeking of sulfurous smoke, sprayed in all directions. The dragons bellowed, blaring mindless fury. The din escalated and then cut off suddenly. In the metallic silence, a single form of smoke and scales plummeted downward. The shock of its impact splintered the bedrock beneath. A miasma of dust and brimstone-yellow vapors spread for leagues across the scorched and cracked earth.
Who is the boy and who is the dragon? Varzil demanded.
This—the Keeper’s mental voice faltered for the first time. This is a tale to frighten disobedient children, an attempt at intimidation, nothing more. Nothing real.
A TALE? NOTHING REAL? Then I will show you what is real and what is nightmare!
With a power he had not known he possessed, Varzil reached for that other Hali, the one from the distant past. He pictured it in his mind, dredging memories he had tried to bury forever.
Two circles now occupied that same room, yet only the present circle was aware of the other. The circle from the past was totally absorbed in their own desperate struggle.
Outside the phantom walls, the sky crackled and thunder rolled, even as they had in Varzil’s vision. The heavens turned white. A torrent of blackness swept down from the north—from the Tower at Aldaran. In the city of Hali, pale ghosts of people thronged the streets. Their terror rose up like curls of smoke, mingling with the vapors from the lake and the blazing wooden buildings. Unnatural thunder built, shivering through earth and stone.
What—what is happening? came from the circle in the present. What trick of illusion as this? Who would dare to attack Hali Tower?
I show you what I have seen with my own eyes, Varzil answered. What has already come to pass. What may come again.
As before, the storm from the north reached down to the land. Light exploded over the Tower like Zandru’s own lightning and then slowly faded.
From the circle in the past, power swelled. Steam arose from the surface of the lake. The very substance of the water shifted as more and more power poured into it, both from above and below, where the Hali circle-that-was summoned its counterattack. Molecules tore apart as jolt after jolt of energy shot through the Lake.
The Cataclysm! Dougal cried silently.
They each thought they had a weapon so terrible that nothing could stand against it, Varzil said. They began as you have, in loyalty and obedience ... and pride.
He paused, for no words he could summon, no eloquent turn of phrase, could match the power of this vision which now filled the mind of every person in the Hali circle. No one with a shred of laran could escape the impact of the images, the terror of the burning city, the rending of elemental physical forces.
In the space between one heartbeat and the next, Varzil caught a glimpse of what must come next. Forces this enormous, once unleashed, could not be easily contained. Storm and wave were nothing compared to the energies behind them.
The fallen columns at the bottom of the lake ... even now ... pulse with power.
He turned all his concentration back to the present. Thunder receded, leaving dull silence. The ghostly forms of the second Tower and its inhabitants faded like mist at dawn. The present circle, along with the contours of their work chamber and the matrix lattice, which had seemed solid to him, wavered, thin.
Yet to these people, Varzil himself was the phantasm, the apparition. The contact with their joined minds diminished. He saw himself through their eyes, a figure
limned with brilliance.
The circle was broken. Dougal DiAsturian lifted his head, his eyes clear.
Go in peace, Varzil Ridenow, for never again shall we of Hali meet any other Tower in battle. You have my oath as a Keeper upon it.
Walk with the gods, Varzil thought, and then a vortex of darkness took him.
Varzil woke to the sound of a woman humming. His body ached in every joint and muscle, and his eyes had gummed closed. He reached up with one hand to wipe them clear and found that his head was wrapped in bandages. The effort of struggling to sit upright left him gasping, his heart fluttering in his chest. Gentle hands pushed him back against his pillow.
“Varzil, it’s too soon for you to be up,” said Oranna’s voice. “Leave those bandages alone if you want the use of your eyes again.”
“What has happened? Have I been ill—the attack from Hali—tell me!” he cried.
Felicia—
But there was no answering pulse of sweetness in his mind.
“Loryn will tell you all the details himself. He’s given specific orders to be informed the moment you were awake.” Oranna clucked her tongue very much like Lunilla.
Varzil felt a brush of warmth against his skin and Oranna’s voice very close to his ear. “We feared we’d lost you, that you sacrificed yourself to save us. Loryn told us you went into the Overworld to stop the attack from Hali, Aldones only knows how you managed that, but we—I—am grateful.”
Then she was gone, and a few minutes later, Varzil heard footsteps, quick but irregular and marked by the tapping of a cane. Wood scraped over stone floor as a stool was drawn up by his bedside.
Varzil, my friend, it brings me such joy to see you awake, even if you are more bruise and bandage than intact skin.
“Loryn! Tell me what happened!”