They returned to Arilinn at a somewhat quicker pace. Even Carlo’s black horse picked up its feet as it headed toward the stables it knew. Dom Felix rode ahead with Black Eiric, giving orders for the return of the rest of the party.
Carlo nudged his horse even with Varzil’s. They rode near the rear of the Ridenow party, far enough from Varzil’s father so they could not be easily overheard.
“When I was telling your father the news from the relays,” Carlo said, pausing faintly over the next words, “what did you...see?”
Varzil started, quickly masking the lapse by adjusting the reins. Then he remembered that Carlo had Tower training, so he must sense something. He did not believe Carlo was his enemy.
“I—it was as if I were there, watching the battle. I saw two men fall, the catmen with their curved swords. I saw the hill, the rocks...” The blood.
Carlo’s gray eyes widened. “I am not so strong a telepath for you to have taken that from my mind.”
Varzil looked down at his hands, the reins worn soft and dark by much usage. The horses moved on, shod hooves clicking against small stones on the road. Stirrup leathers creaked.
“I am not so strong a telepath ...”Carlo’s words hung in the silence.
“Your father must allow you to return to Arilinn,” Carlo said with same tone of command he had used to suggest that Dom Felix take Varzil in the aircar.
Varzil shrugged. “I see little chance of that. Even without the political aspects, my father believes I have so little talent, Arilinn would not have me, whether he granted his blessing or not. I will go to Sweetwater in your aircar if that is his wish, and I will do whatever I can to find my brother, but I do not hope for anything further coming of it.”
“How can you give up so easily?” Carlo responded with heat. “Was camping out all night at the gates of Arilinn some sort of prank? If so, you possess an astonishing ability to dissemble. You have truly mastered the art of double tongues, for you managed to convince me—us—that you truly desired admittance. Desire would have struck me as too mild a word.”
Stung, Varzil replied, “I pretended nothing. I—” I still want it more than I’ve ever wanted anything, but what is the use of tormenting myself? He went on in a tightly controlled voice, “I cannot defy my father, especially with my older brother gone missing. To lose us both would kill him. Nor do I believe Arilinn would have such a man who would so easily forsake his duty and his honor.”
A frown darkened Carlo’s handsome features, like a cloud passing across the sun. He said nothing more of the matter.
They rode no farther than the field on the city outskirts, where an aircar sat ready. Varzil had never seen one so close before. It was shaped like an elongated teardrop, crafted of a glassy material which was clear in some areas and cloudy or completely opaque in others. A hinged door stood open to reveal a narrow compartment. Banks of instruments of the same substance, some fashioned with strips of polished metal, lined the nose of the craft. There was one seat facing the controls, another by its side and two more in the broader belly. Behind the seats lay a compartment for storage.
A man in livery of blue and silver stood beside the aircar. With the air of one who is sure of his competence, he indicated where the baggage was to be placed and then set about securing it with straps. Then he assisted Dom Felix into the forward passenger seat.
Carlo took Varzil aside. “Whatever happens, you must convince your father to let you come back.” Then, before Varzil could frame an objection, he was being helped into the aircar, to sit beside Black Eiric. Within a few short minutes, they were aloft.
5
Varzil had never traveled by aircar before, and he found the experience unsettling. Lord Serrais had one, and Varzil had caught a glimpse of another as it landed on the airfield at Arilinn before the Council meeting. He’d admired its silent grace, the skill and cunning of its fashioning.
He sat behind the pilot, watching the man’s fingers on the controls or making cryptic gestures. From the belly of the car, laran batteries sent a stream of harnessed energy to the propulsion and guidance mechanisms.
Varzil’s contact with the Tower telepaths had opened him up to new, disturbing sensations. He felt the stored power like a caged predator, rumbling and lurking. Even through the exhilaration of soaring, he sensed how easily so much power could be turned to other, deadlier purposes. Like so many other things, laran could cure or kill, serve or destroy.
The pilot glanced over his shoulder at Varzil. “There’s nothing to fear. It’s not magic, but a technique which anyone with skill and training can master.”
“Anyone with the riches to afford something like this,” Dom Felix grunted.
“Yes, they are costly, but that is because there are so few with the Gift and the discipline to operate them,” the pilot replied. He spoke politely enough, but without the deference ordinarily due from a servant to a lord, however minor.
He is no servant, Vatzil thought. He is a laranzu in his own right.
“What is your name, pilot?” he asked.
“Jeronimo Lanart,” came the response without any added “m‘lord” or “vai dom. ”
Varzil caught the edge of the man’s thought. Lord Carolin must have thought it important to speed these two home, or he would never have commanded his own aircar to bring them.
Lord Carolin? The heir to the Hastur throne? Was he at Arilinn for the Council session?
A sudden gust swerved them off course, and the pilot bent over his instrument panel again. Varzil hunched forward in his seat, straining for a better view. Once they were set right, he asked about the controls.
“Some have mechanical linkages.” Jeronimo explained the simpler levers. “Others require shaping thought. The guidance systems are tuned to specific laran patterns. We use standard gestures for uniformity. Here—” He held up one hand and moved his fingers from one position slowly to another and then a third. “You try it.”
The gestures were easy enough to copy. “Now, follow my movements like this—”
An image appeared in Varzil’s mind, a hawk extending its wings in the air. Varzil echoed the thought along with the finger pattern. The movement shaped the energy of his mind to slide along the matrix guides within the aircar. An answering surge of power lifted the stubby wings of the craft.
“You see,” the pilot said, “it’s not so mysterious. You could learn to do it.”
“We’ll have no such talk,” Dom Felix said, shifting uneasily, “or any more idle diversions. Your instructions were to take us to Sweetwater as quickly as may be, and we have no time for dalliance.”
“As you wish, though we are already making the best possible speed, so there is nothing lost in a simple demonstration,” Jeronimo answered. “In my experience, nothing learned is ever a waste of time.” However, he refrained from further comment.
In the silence of the remaining flight, Varzil tried to imagine what might have befallen his brother Harald. They were not especially close, for they were separated in age by the twins, Ann‘dra and Silvie, who had both perished in adolescence from threshold sickness, and by Joenna. A third sister, Dyannis, was still a child. Varzil had been eight when the twins died, about the time he first heard the Ya-men singing in the hills. Joenna was now betrothed to the son of a wealthy Alar dyn lord, and much more interested in her upcoming wedding than anything having to do with laran.
Of all his siblings, Varzil felt the deepest kinship with Dyannis. Her own Gift had not yet shown itself, but he never doubted she had one, for she always seemed to know what he was thinking before he spoke.
Harald was fair, bespeaking the Dry Towns ancestry of the Ridenow. Like many of his family, he had a talent for working with livestock. In his memory, Varzil saw his brother, golden hair tied back with a rawhide thong, sitting on the back of a green-broken colt, stroking the trembling animal, calming its fears with mind as well as words. A big man he was, strong in the shoulders, with gentle hands, a weather-reddened face, an e
asy laugh....
Darkness. A line of fire along his ribs, stiff with crusted blood. Pain throbbing deep within his shoulder. Thirst. Adren aline like coppery ashes in his mouth. A sword hilt hard and sure in his hand. Light seeping through the crevice above. The musty spoor of cat. A voice, hoarse with urgency—“Did they see us, m‘lord?”
With a jerk, the aircar touched ground. Varzil blinked, staring through the transparent panel. His stomach lurched. The darkness of his vision receded to reveal familiar surroundings. They were a little distance from the main house at Sweetwater, in the field by the paddocks. A handful of men ran to meet them. Dom Felix clambered down from the aircar, shouting for saddled horses and torches.
Black Eiric jumped to the ground. “Vai dom, you cannot mean to ride tonight! The sun is already near set! Not even the best tracker can follow a trail in those hills in the dark. The catmen could as easily ambush you, too.”
“My son, my Harald, is out there! I must go!”
Varzil heard the brittle desperation in his father’s voice. The old man had been pale with exhaustion even before they’d started back to Arilinn. He had rested a little in the aircar, but only because he had no choice, confined as he was within its narrow space.
“Father, you will make yourself ill if you keep on like this.” Varzil touched his father’s arm.
Before his father could protest, Varzil rushed on. “What can you accomplish that Eiric and his men cannot? Can you see in the dark? Can you track better than they? What will become of Sweetwater if there is a fight and you are wounded?”
“You young pup—” You think to give me orders?
Though his father pulled against his grasp, Varzil held him firm. Through the layers of his father’s clothing, he felt a faint, bone-deep trembling.
“You are lord and master here!” Varzil said. “This entire estate depends upon you, from ordering the day’s work to speaking for us at Comryn Council. You are not an ordinary man, who can risk himself at his pleasure!”
“I will risk myself as I please!” Dom Felix cried, “How can I sit by my own fireplace like a useless old woman? My son is lost in those hills, perhaps dying!”
You have another son, Varzil thought, who stands before you now. But he could not bring himself to say it.
They glared at one another, barely able to see each other’s features in the gloom. “A Ridenow of his own blood should go after him,” Dom Felix said in a thick voice.
Varzil leaped into the opening. “Then let me go!” When his father hesitated, he pushed on. “You are always urging me to take my place here, to be responsible—so let me! Give me the command of these men and let me lead the rescue. I swear that whether Harald still lives or not, I will bring him back to you!”
He felt the slight sagging of the old man’s body in his grasp, the burst of quickly-suppressed relief.
If only Varzil could become such a son to me, a credit to his house! But he is a green boy, weak, and given to moony dreams. These men are used to hardened leaders. I have ruled them with an iron hand. They will not follow a weakling.
There was only one way to find out. Varzil released his father, calling to Eiric. “Take my father back to the house and see him properly cared for, then return. You others, bring the horses and torches. We will ride for the hills!”
“You men,” Felix said, his voice roughened by emotion and fatigue, “you heard the words of my son. Obey him as you would me.”
Varzil mounted up and in short order selected the men who were to come with him. One of the shepherds had been summoned to lead them into the hills. His hardy little chervine was almost as shaggy as its master. The beast trotted along the thread of a path, as surefooted as if it had been a wide road at midday.
After they were well beyond the outer buildings, Eiric spoke to Varzil as they rode side by side. Eiric held his torch high, to cast a flickering light over the next few feet of trail and the bobbing form of the shepherd’s white fleece jacket.
“Master Varzil,” Eiric said, “this is madness, and cruel besides to get the old man’s hopes up. Yon shepherd can take us to the place, right enough. It’s said that they can see in the dark as well as their beasts. But what then? We cannot summon a track out of nothing. For all we know, this quest is for naught and the young master is already perished.”
Darkness. Harsh breathing. The dull sick throbbing of a wound turning bad.
“He is still alive,” Varzil said with a sureness that surprised him. He could not see in the dark any better now than before, yet other, newer senses awoke in him, ignited by the intense contact with the folks at Arilinn. He had no words for his knowledge, only the absolute certainty of its truth.
“We must find him soon,” Varzil said, half to himself. “He is hurt, and the catmen are still on his trail. For the moment, though, he is safe.”
“Now, how could you be knowing that?” Eiric’s voice raised in pitch. Then he fell silent and Varzil touched his thoughts. From the time he were a laddie, he had the Gift. The old lord tried to hush it up, but you cannot ignore such a thing forever. ‘ And he’s been to Arilinn, that nest of sorcery. Something happened to him there, it’s plain to see. Don’t know if it were good or bad. Time alone will tell. But if he can find our young lord and spare the old man’s heart, it’s worth the chance.
They rode on, more slowly now as the land rose and turned rocky. The last rust-tinged light left the sky. With the luck of Aldones, three of the four moons were shining in the cloudless night sky.
The land sloped sharply away. Granite boulders shimmered in the multihued light. Iridescent flecks gleamed in the rock. Some were as large as cart horses, others fist-sized. Between them the shadows lay dark and darker.
Years ago, Varzil had explored the area when he was supposed to be rounding up lost sheep or riding the borders. The hills were riddled with caves, wonderful places to seek blessed coolness during the few hot days of summer.
“This is the place?” one of the men behind Varzil asked.
The shepherd mumbled something. His chervine tossed its antlers to the jangling of bells.
“Go home,” Varzil told him. “You have done a great service this night.”
With another muttered comment and a tug at his forelock, the man wheeled his mount and disappeared.
Varzil nudged his horse forward, letting the animal pick its way through the jumbled rocks. Eiric rode a pace behind with the torch held overhead. Its light flickered over muted grasses. The clotted shadows below resolved into shapes, the bodies of two men, one fallen across the other. Nearby, sprawled three or four dead catmen.
Varzil swung down from his horse and approached the two fallen men. Kneeling beside them, he shivered in the sensation of emptiness, the utter absence of life spark. It was not the mo tionlessness of their limbs or the silence of their heartbeats that touched him. All around, he felt energy—the slow patient grass, the bright motes of insects, the twitter of rabbit-horns in their burrows, the far-off glide of an owl. He had seen death before, in both beasts and men. He had been present when his grandfather took his final shuddering breath. The awe and terror of that mysterious moment still haunted his dreams.
But this, this was something different. He sensed an imcom pleteness, like a still-bleeding wound. There was none of the peace of his grandfather’s passing. As he reached out with his newly-enhanced laran, he could almost taste the final moments of these men’s lives. Something of them still lingered, the door between life and death held ajar by the shock of their parting.
Yes, now that he focused on it, he saw that emptiness was an unhealed rift. Gray lapped his vision. With an effort, he turned from the seductive urge to follow where these men had gone.
He spotted no weapons, neither the men’s straight swords nor the curved blades of their feline attackers. Metal was too precious to be casually abandoned. He only hoped that he would not find one of his father’s own swords turned against him.
Eiric dismounted and traced a widening cir
cle, scanning the ground. “Ah, it’s all either too hardscrabble for aught to show or else amuck with tracks every which way. Catmen don’t leave much trace with those soft paws. It would take Aldones’ own miracle to find a chance sign of their passing.”
“Or Zandru’s accursed luck,” one of the other men muttered.
“Aye, that,” Eiric nodded. He pointed north, where the hillside met another in a narrow defile. “It’s my guess the catmen are laired up yonder. There are caves all through here.”
Stumbling over stones and fallen furred bodies, racing downhill, stopping to slash and parry. The image of thin lips drawn over fangs, a hissing cry of pain. Running, more running. The caves our only hope ...
Varzil gestured to the north. “Harald is there.”
Eiric nodded. The movement threw spectral shadows across his cragged features. “Aye, if he had the chance to get to safety, that’s where he’d go. He’d come up here of a Midsummer. Once young master Ann‘dra followed them, d’you remember?”
Varzil remembered hearing the story told, though at the time he was too young to join the escapades of his older brothers. He stood still and tried to focus his thoughts. If he could somehow let Harald know he was here and help was on the way...
Moments passed, but there was no response, not even another fleeting contact. Eiric spoke to him again, breaking his reverie, and they headed downslope. From time to time, Varzil halted to search with his mind. No impressions came to him. Having once touched his brother’s mind, he felt sure he would know if Harald were no longer living. There could be other explanations for the absence of contact. Perhaps Harald was unconscious or so lost in the delirium of infection to be beyond coherent thought. Either way, time was running out.