“Such an alliance now is not only unnecessary, but beneath you,” Damian cut him off. “No longer need we bargain with these mountain peasants. Acosta is the key, and it is there you will find your bride. I had not planned on being able to move against them so soon, but recent events—” he meant Rumail’s departure from Neskaya and the premature release of the lungrot, “—have changed the timing. Once Verdanta is peacefully ours, I will seize whatever gifts the gods present me with.”
Belisar looked puzzled. “But the heir to Acosta is male, and newly married. To a Hastur daughter, I believe.”
“You are well informed,” Damian said. “What you may not realize is that because of her higher rank, she will inherit upon his death. She cannot rule, of course. Outside of those dim-witted sandal-wearers at Aillard, no woman can. But her next husband will.”
A slow smile spread across Belisar’s face. “So instead of a reluctant child, you present me with a young—experienced—widow. Is she beautiful as well?”
“She’s probably a hellcat, like all the Hastur women,” Rumail said with a curled lip. “But she’ll bear you laran-gifted sons. Of that you may be certain.”
“A dozen at least!” Belisar laughed, throwing back his head.
“Away with you, then!” Damian said to his son, laughing also. “Sit with my officers and see what you can learn from their planning. Your uncle and I have other things to discuss.”
In the silence that followed Belisar’s departure, Damian studied his half brother. Rumail’s mood showed in every deep-etched line of his face, in the hunch of his shoulders and his very stillness. Except for his comment about the Hastur girl, he’d seemed to pay scant attention to the discussion. If Rumail were to be of any use to him at all, he couldn’t go on like this, fretting and sulking. Eventually, given enough time, Rumail would come to see his expulsion from the Tower as a blessing. He was far superior to those sandal-wearers and their esoteric mysteries. But with the schedule for conquest accelerated, Damian could not afford to wait.
“Regardless of which plan we adopt, intelligence will be necessary,” Damian said. He used the inflection to mean spying. “A team of sentry-birds, able to fly over the enemy’s encampment or supply lines, would give us a valuable edge. Such information might save many soldiers’ lives.”
“You know I cannot link with a sentry-bird,” Rumail said. “It is not a matter of training, a skill which anyone with laran can learn. One must have a certain empathic resonance with the birds, which I have not.”
“Ever since you got home, it has been I cannot do this and I cannot do that!” Damian snapped. “Have you suddenly become a cripple? Do you have no powers of your own, or do you exist merely as an appendage of your precious Tower?”
Rumail flushed under the goading. “I am as I have always been, Keeper in all but name! But I cannot work in isolation. Cut off from a circle, matrix screens, monitors, and technicians to support me—”
“And why must that be?” Damian pounced on the opening.
“You know as well as I do! All those fools at Neskaya cared about was their prissy, headblind traditions! Rules and more rules, with no room for vision or creativity! I opened new vistas for them—and they forced me out. Ingrates, after all I’d done for them! They closed their eyes to my discoveries, rejected my innovations, refused to listen. If it hadn’t been done by their grandfathers, they weren’t interested!”
He wasn’t seeing it. Not yet. Damian went on, “And are all the telepaths on Darkover confined within these Towers?”
“Of course not. There are leroni who work alone, in noble households or with their lords on campaign. There are even those with untrained laran who work as horse-handlers or country midwives, little knowing what they truly do. That Nest down near Temora will sell lungrot spores or anything else to whoever meets their price. But once I . . . “Rumail’s voice trailed off as understanding dawned. “Are you proposing, dear brother, that I assemble and train my own circle?”
“Who live and work by your laws, not some Tower’s? Why not?”
“I would have to search out those of the proper temperament.” Now a spark lit the darkness of Rumail’s eyes. “Yes, there are others of like mind . . . but not enough to make a circle capable of doing anything beyond charging a few glow-lights. I would have to train my own . . . that boy from Verdanta, for instance, so talented—”
“How long before you have a circle capable of, for instance, clingfire?”
“Oh!” Rumail pursed his lips. “If they’d had early training with a matrix, such as a household leronis might give, if they were the right age . . . perhaps five years to come to strength. That is, if I can enlist a fully-trained matrix technician and a mechanic or two.”
“I have a war to fight, and I have not the luxury of time,” Damian said regretfully. “I cannot wait for years while you train a bunch of youngsters.”
“You offer me my own Tower and as quickly snatch it away.” Rumail’s expression verged on a snarl. “What kind of game are you playing with me? I am a Tower-trained laranzu, not some vassal you can break promises to whenever it pleases you. Do you think I would not know it if you tried to lie to me? If you were not my brother and my liege—”
Damian held up a hand. “You will have your Tower and you will accomplish great things, of this I am certain. The only question is when. I need the weapons and the power which only a working circle can give me.” He shook his head again. “I cannot wait.”
Rumail drew himself up with dignity. “As always, I and my abilities are at the service of your great cause.”
Although his words were spoken graciously, Damian caught the hint of another meaning, as if for that moment, Rumail gave his allegiance to some other, even greater vision. But that was nonsense! Rumail had no political ambitions or experience in leading armies. He’d never expressed the slightest interest in ruling a kingdom.
“Meanwhile, I must use whatever resources are at hand,” Damian said, shaking off the moment. “Temora would be happy to lease me aircars and even make clingfire, but at an exorbitant price, and with no guarantee that the next time I have need, they will be willing.”
Rumail turned away, a thoughtful expression flickering across his features. “But that may not be necessary. It might be possible to gain lordship over an established Tower.’
“I—I don’t follow you,” Damian said, blinking in surprise.
“I speak of allegiances and those ancient traditions the Towers are so fond of. Neskaya was in Ridenow hands for centuries before the Peace of Allart Hastur. Now they look to Hastur, although they are so far distant, they’ve never been asked for war matériel. But Tramontana . . . Tramontana’s legal obligations have long been unclear, or so I understand. Long ago, they were said to answer to Aldaran. And in the days of the Keeper Ian-Mikhail, they had strong ties to Storn.”
“Storn of Storn or Storn of High Kinnally?” This could be an unexpected difficulty, if Tramontana were to enter the battle in defense of the latter.
“I’m not sure, for that was long ago and the records may no longer exist. But we—I mean Ambervale and Linn—may have an equal claim. Certainly we can keep Tramontana out of any present conflict, but perhaps we can also compel their fealty later. The difficult part will be persuading Tramontana that it owes any loyalty. Kieran Aillard, oldest of the Keepers there, is notorious for his advocacy of Tower neutrality.” Rumail gave a derisive snort.
“Which can work both for and against us,” Damian said. After a few moments of reflection, he had formed a plan. A search would be made at Ambervale Castle and at Linn for any record of past lordship of Tramontana Tower. At the same time, he gave permission to Rumail to contact any disaffected Tower workers he knew and make discreet inquiries of any likely youngsters. For the long run, it would be better to have an Ambervale Tower, workers specially trained and devoted to the Deslucido line. Some benefit might eventually come of it.
For today, Damian accepted with a sigh, he would continue
to pay the renegade group at Temora. His treasury was still low, drained by the fees for the lungrot and aircars, on top of the ongoing expense of maintaining an army. Perhaps, though, treachery would prove as powerful a weapon as clingfire.
11
Word arrived at Tramontana one bleakly overcast morning that Verdanta Castle had fallen to King Damian Deslucido. The messenger, a half-grown boy from one of the outlying small farms and son of one of Old Timas’ cousins, clattered up to the gates on a lathered, exhausted pony, barely able to babble out the news. The takeover, hardly enough to be called a battle, had been short and almost bloodless. Eddard still lived, although a prisoner in his own castle, with his wife and surviving infant son held as hostages. The boy did not know what had happened to Petro or Margarida, although there had been a hasty wedding, presumably Tessa’s, to one of the Deslucido officers. One-eyed Rafe, the coridom, and several others had died defending the gates.
When Kieran banned him from doing any matrix work, Coryn paced his narrow room by the hour, muttering curses at Deslucido Oathbreaker, who could shift from eager ally to usurper in such a short time. All he could think of was racing back home. He knew how useless and foolhardy that would be. It would not bring back either his father or sister, nor could he free Verdanta singlehandedly. All he would accomplish would be to get himself killed or, worse yet, imprisoned along with Eddard in his own home. He couldn’t hold Eddard’s surrender against him; Eddard was probably doing the best he could for his people. Weakened by lungrot, his forces disorganized, what else could he do? Verdanta had no chance against a trained, healthy army.
Liane and Aran did their best to calm him. He would have none of their soothing, reasonable words. He could not sit still. Images flamed behind his eyes
—Margarida and Petro, crouching in the farthest root cellar, digging their way out with their bare fingers, holding hands as they raced across the moonless night for the safety of the forest
—Rafe slashing at a man in Ambervale livery with his long knife, then another, then facing six at a time, his one eye red with madness
—Tessa biting down hard on her rumpled pillow to stifle her sobs every night.
When he spoke of these things, Aran tried to comfort him, saying they sprang from his natural feelings, the shock of the news.
“Leave him,” Coryn heard Liane saying to Aran, outside in the corridor. “There are some things each of us must do alone.”
Late one night, Coryn stood at his unshuttered window. Three of Darkover’s four moons were scattered like jewels across the cloudless sky. The night air smelled of snow. He drew it into his lungs, welcoming the shiver which rippled through his muscles, and tried not to think of how much Kristlin had loved those moons.
The faint scuff of boots on the stone floor behind him reached his ears. So finely tuned were his senses, he felt the whisper of air as the door closed, the warmth of another human body.
“Aran,” he said and turned around. Moonlight silvered his friend’s face, accenting the dark hair, the eyes like pools of midnight. The stark beauty of that face sent another shiver through him. “You need not have come. Liane said, rightly, that I must face this alone.”
Coryn felt Aran’s feather-light touch on the wrist. “I can almost see what you’re seeing—images of people I don’t know, of scenes neither of us could have seen.” Aran’s empathy, naturally strong with horse and hawk but honed by hours of minds joined in a matrix circle, now laid him open to Coryn’s raw emotion. “At first, I thought they must come from your own pain, the way so many dreams do. But these are not dreams. I can feel the difference.”
“I don’t know if they are real or not,” Coryn answered. “They could just as well be products of my own mind. I suffered hallucinations during threshold sickness. Those were just as vivid.”
“They are real . . . here.” Cool fingers curled around his, lifted his hand to Aran’s breast. Through the thin linex shirt, Coryn felt a fluttering, light and quick. “Sometimes the heart speaks in pictures,” Aran said, “things we have no words for.”
Coryn’s breath caught like a sob in his throat. He bent his head, buried his face against Aran’s shoulder. Strong arms enfolded him.
“Bredu.” The word meant brother . . . but also beloved.
Warm breath whispered through the fine hairs on Coryn’s neck. In that instant of intimacy, standing so close that the same body warmth enfolded them both, Coryn felt Aran’s lips tremble against his hair. Part of Coryn wanted desperately to open himself to that uncomplicated love. Beyond the fumbling experiments considered normal for all boys of a certain age, Coryn felt no particular attraction to other men. But neither did he feel any revulsion. Aran loved him according to his nature, loved him for who and what he was, and Aran was a good and decent man.
Yet now, something within Coryn clamped down in an icy knot. For an awful moment, he could not move, could scarcely breathe. He had not felt this loss of control, this paralysis, since his arrival at the Tower and his attempts to describe what Rumail had done to him.
In the silence that followed, Aran drew back, dropping all physical touch. The set of his shoulders showed clearly that he knew something was wrong. And Aran, being who he was, would assume it was his unintended overture.
Oh, my friend, my sworn brother, what is wrong is not you! Coryn opened his mouth to speak, but his throat had frozen. The place deep within his belly, the old wound he could barely remember, the wound without a scar, throbbed.
“I’m sorry,” Aran said in a thick voice. “I didn’t intend for this to happen—I would never—”
Miserable and mute, Coryn watched Aran stumble from the room. He lowered himself to the bed, wondering if he would ever be able to repair the hurt he had caused. The pale, multihued moonlight shone through his window. He found no solace in its terrible, stark beauty.
A second message arrived shortly afterward, this one from High Kinnally. The forces of King Damian had not stopped with the easy conquest of Verdanta but had marched on. Kinnally Castle was under siege and could not hold out for long. The Storns in their desperation appealed to Tramontana for aid. Tramontana’s fealty by law and custom was unclear, one reason Kieran had long advocated a neutral stance. Originally, some believed, the Tower had been allied to Aldaran. At various other times, it had served Storn, Ambervale, or another small kingdom bound to Acosta but long since absorbed into neighboring lands.
Liane, her reddened eyes set in a face as set and pale as ice, urged Coryn to add his voice to hers.
“We have no standing army, any more than you did, Coryn,” she said. “No matter how bravely our guards fight, they are no match for Ambervale. I’ve known these men from before I could walk. They will hold out as long as they can. We must act quickly, before it is too late.”
“We?” Coryn, stirred out of his misery, asked, “What must we do?”
“Tramontana must give us clingfire and the means to deliver it. Rain it down on the tyrant! Destroy his armies and scatter their ashes to the winds! Free both our lands! Once we have lifted the siege, we obliterate the vermin’s nest itself.”
Clingfire was indeed a potent weapon, and it was High Kinnally’s only chance. A few men, flying overhead in gliders or shooting arrows tipped with the deadly stuff, might well destroy a small army.
Coryn shook his head. “Ambervale now occupies Verdanta. For all I know, Verdanta men march with their armies. Would you have me turn against my own?”
“No! I would have you destroy the outsider! Or have you so quickly given up any thought of saving your people?”
“I hardly think it would be saving my people to drop unquenchable fire down on them.” Coryn thought of that terrible forest fire so many years ago, of how his father had battled to protect everyone under his care, from closest family to poorest smallholder. He had never witnessed clingfire in battle, though he had seen what a small slip in concentration making the stuff could do. Each droplet of clingfire adhered to whatever it touched. It would g
o on burning, through metal as well as flesh and bone, as long as there was anything left to be consumed. A trained matrix worker, especially one armed with a fire-talisman, might contain a stray bit here and there, but not a coordinated onslaught.
In a flash, he saw himself swooping over Verdanta, hands filled with fragile glass spheres. Each glowed like a malevolent ember. Eddard’s face, pale and furrowed, lifted to see him, eyes straining wide in disbelief. The vessels slipped from his fingers, bursting into corrosive fire. Tessa ran screaming, her unbound hair a curtain of flame down her back. A slender skeleton staggered through the familiar courtyard, bony arms smoking, and fell into a heap which continued to glow and smolder.
I cannot do it! I cannot betray the people I love!
“What,” he cried, his voice shaking, “should I firebomb my own brother in Verdanta Castle, attack my home and my people? What kind of monster would do that?”
“You may think it better to live under an invader’s yoke,” Liane shot back, “but I do not! If it were my brother torn from his wife and baby—as well he may be if we do not act quickly—I would stop at nothing to free them! Even death would be better than such a life. And if I were held captive there, I would say to you, I would beg you, Send the clingfire! Burn the castle to the ground beneath my feet! Better a quick death than a lifetime of slavery!”
Liane went on with scarcely a pause for breath. “Have you heard of the Sisterhood of the Sword? Each one carries a dagger around her neck, so that she may never fall alive into the hands of the enemy. Can a mere woman have such determination—such courage—such honor, and you have them not?”
“Liane, that’s not fair! My honor has nothing to do with it! Our enemy is Damian Deslucido, not each other. I want him gone just as much as you do. But I will not sacrifice the lives of my family and all those who owe us loyal service. I love my country! Besides, I can no more save your homeland than you could save mine. The fate of High Kinnally hardly rides on my decision.”