Once again, Coryn found himself standing outside the Overworld manifestation of Neskaya. Bernardo moved them to the topmost spire, looking down. Deftly, he began to reshape the psychic substance of the tower. Walls thickened and grew battlements, windows narrowed. A tracing of lace-ivy burgeoned into a covering of sword-edged thorn vines. From a landmark of grace and beauty, Neskaya drew in on itself, now a fortress.
“Tramontana!” Bernardo’s psychic voice rang like a gong, reverberating from ground and sky alike.
With the speed of thought, they now faced the other Tower. Here in the Overworld, it was as easy to move an edifice as a game token.
Although the Tramontana circle must surely be aware of their appearance, there was no reaction. For a moment, Coryn did not recognize his former home. This squat edifice, encased in constant electrical discharge and dwarfed by the huge lenslike structure, bore no resemblance to either its physical reality or the airy, graceful form Kieran had designed, reminiscent of a grove of willowy goldenbark trees.
A beam of thought-energy, invisible but readily discernible to Coryn’s laran senses, emanated from the lens and disappeared through the seamless ground. This, he knew, was the source of the spell which held the Hastur army in shambles. He felt Demiana’s shiver of disgust, Gerell’s stony loathing of the thing. From Mac came a simple, almost mechanical suggestion.
Why not block the accursed thing?
With precise control, Bernardo shifted the position of the astral Neskaya to take the full impact of the lens beam. Atop the tallest battlement, Coryn reached out his hands. Strength flowed around the circle. The walls, resilient as living things, flexed and held.
Coryn caught a fleeting glimpse of soldiers in Hastur colors scrambling to their feet, of officers waving them forward, hands clutching sword and bow, men mounting and spurring their horses into formation, eyes glowing like white-hot coals. Then a ferocious shout from Tramontana brought his attention back to the present.
“NESKAYA SCUM! GET OUT OF THE WAY OR WE WILL BLAST YOU ALL TO ZANDRU’S COLDEST HELL!”
He had almost forgotten that voice, though he had dreamed of it enough times in his early years at Tramontana. Just as some people had different bodily appearances in the Overworld, so did their voices sound different, although still recognizable. They sounded more like themselves, their true selves. This voice, though, had not changed since the first time he’d heard it as a child.
By what right does Rumail of Ambervale speak for Tramontana? The thought flamed within him.
Coryn held back his mental challenge, for it was Bernardo’s place, as Keeper of Neskaya, to speak for all of them. Bernardo simply waited.
Slowly, silently, the lens swelled even larger. It tilted on its bearings so that it faced Neskaya directly. Scintillating particles of blue and poison-green appeared in the colorless beam. At first, there were only a few, drifting outward like so many colored dust motes. They moved almost lazily, coming to rest on the outer surface of Neskaya’s wall. Tiny explosions blossomed into pinpoints of brightness where they touched. They reminded Coryn of the stinging flies of Verdanta summers.
Within moments, the colored specks multiplied, not tens but hundreds, thousands, even more. The beam swarmed with them. Several struck at once, so that the combined impacts grew ever larger and brighter. Fire lingered in the wake of each explosion. Coryn felt the heat on his face. He sensed the flames burrowing through the substance of the wall, searching for what it could feed on, like some demonic mental clingfire.
Even as a roar of denial rose in his throat, he felt Bernardo’s sure guidance. From Neskaya’s slitted windows came a flurry of wings—feathers in every hue of the dawn or skin stretched over long, delicate bones. Hunting cries filled the air, sweet and high. The beam disintegrated into shards of brilliance as birds and tiny bats dove and fed on the light-motes.
Laughter bubbled up in Amalie, spreading through the circle. Minutes seeped by and the flying hunters slowed as fewer of the motes appeared. Soon only a cluster here and there remained, quickly snatched on the wing. Moving as one, the flocks circled Neskaya and rose skyward.
Somewhere below, in the material world, steel clashed against steel, sweat ran with blood, war cries rent the air . . .
“Hastur! Hastur! Permanedal!” The Hastur motto, I shall remain.
A figure appeared on top of Tramontana’s manifestation, arms raised. Red robes whipped in unseen winds. The hood had been pulled far down to shadow the face, but Coryn would have known Rumail anywhere.
The winds died, leaving an island of crystalline calm. As clearly as if they faced each other across a sparring square, the Tramontana circle appeared. Coryn knew that Bernardo and the others were equally visible. He recognized each one who stood to the side and behind Rumail—Cathal, Garreth . . . Aran. Aran, once so filled with life, now bore the appearance of an old, gray man. He stared past Coryn with white, unseeing eyes.
Only Tomas and Bronwyn were missing from the Tramontana circle, though Coryn sensed their presences elsewhere in the Tower. Rumail had taken Tomas’ place as senior Keeper.
Rumail lifted the hood back from his face. He looked younger than the last time Coryn had seen him, his skin unlined over arching bone. With an impassive expression, he surveyed the Neskaya circle. His gaze rested on each one in turn, as if none of them were worthy of further notice. When he came to Coryn, however, he lingered for a heartbeat. His eyes glinted red in the reflected color of his Keeper’s robes, as if they glowed with their own inner fire.
Burning . . . probing . . . the light in those eyes shifted with recognition.
Deep within Coryn’s body, something roused, uneasy as the memory of a half-healed wound. He told himself he had nothing to fear. Whatever had happened was a long time ago, and he was no longer a child. He was a grown man, a trained laranzu, and he stood in the midst of his own circle.
Dark patches swirled across the gray Overworld sky. Coryn licked his lips, tasting ozone. A gust of chill, moist air lifted his hair. He tightened his hold of Demiana on one side and Bernardo on the other and took a deep breath, steeling himself for what he feared would come next.
Rumail reached up with one arm. He cried out, though Coryn could not make out the words. Lightning, a jagged tree of eye-searing white, burst from the sky and came to his hand. For an instant, he poised there, though whether he held it or hung from it, Coryn could not be sure. He remembered the old proverb about the perils of chaining a dragon to roast one’s meat. Surely dragon-fire could be no less brilliant . . . or deadly.
Rumail shifted, gathering himself beneath the pulsing lightning.
“Here it comes!” Mac cried.
With an odd, puppetlike jerk, Rumail hurled the bolt toward them.
38
Even as the lightning bolt left Rumail’s hand, Coryn felt a terrible pull, a drawing of energy from his own Keeper. He channeled all his strength into his response. He felt the skill of Bernardo’s mental shaping and saw instantly what the Keeper was doing.
Bernardo acted the instant before the lightning struck. Instead of stone and thorn-vine, it crashed into a sheet of impenetrable mind-stuff, smoothly curved, a mirror to the other tower’s lens. White heat reflected back. For a long moment, the backlash played over Tramontana’s walls, smoothing out the crazed energy patterns. Then it vanished in a sizzle and a fall of fine black powder. Atop the tower, Rumail slumped. The sky cleared.
“Coryn,” came Bernardo’s voice. “We have a moment of respite before he can try again. But there is great danger here. He is using forces he cannot control, forces that span both worlds. Should we take a direct hit here in the Overworld, I fear the result would break through into the physical plane.”
Coryn’s thoughts raced ahead. And that would be equivalent to an actual laran attack. The doomsday device—
“Yes!” Bernardo agreed. “You must go quickly and disarm it, lest we destroy Tramontana in truth.”
It would put an end to Rumail Deslucido, Coryn tho
ught hotly. Then, with a rush of shame, he remembered—Aran is in that Tower, and Bronwyn, and Gareth, people I love. As quickly as he could, without disrupting the linkage, he dropped from the circle and into his physical body.
To reach the laboratory where the laran shield had been assembled, Coryn had to descend one staircase and cross to another. As he went down, he missed a step. His legs gave way beneath him so that he had to grasp the rope support which had been strung along the stone wall. He stood there, gulping acid, fingers curled around the coarse twisted fibers, and sweated hard in the cool of the stairwell.
He was not alone. Something—someone—rode within him, no longer quiescent but aroused.
Rumail . . .
When the two circles faced one another in the Overworld, Rumail had known him. And what of that? Rumail knew them all, from Bernardo the Keeper to Amalie, from his years of service here. The man had gone mad with power now, unfit for the robes he had taken on. Any fool could see that.
Then what had he, Coryn, to fear? Why did he tremble like an orphaned chervine kid in the shadow of a banshee?
Suddenly, Coryn’s fingers opened, nerveless upon the rope railing. Without support, he crumpled on the stairs. Stone, hard and cold as ice, bit into his flesh. As if an invisible hand turned a key in a lock, something opened inside him, no mere physical wrenching of the gut, but an even deeper, more profound ripping at his very essence.
Memories filled his vision, blinding him to the shadowed walls. As it had so many years ago, a corridor appeared before him, composed of the featureless gray substance of the Overworld. He had been here before, had sought refuge from a shadowy figure. The memory shifted, dissolving as quickly as it arose. Cold, more than marrow-deep, shivered through him and for a moment, he was a child, painfully poised on the brink of manhood, tortured with the changes racking his body as his laran awoke. Wordless terror jolted through him, stripping thought. He bolted down the corridor.
No escape this way . . . The words came slowly, pale and thin. He struggled to remember more. There had been a talisman, something which would guard him. Darting this way and that, he searched for it. His hands were empty, the gray corridor featureless. There was no help there, or anywhere.
Walls surrounded him, drawing closer until he could no longer run. Coryn tried to brace one shoulder and shove it aside, to kick out. Each time, the substance of the walls gave way, elastic, only to constrict even more. He was trapped, like a rabbit-horn in the coils of a snake. Knowing this, he tried to calm himself, to gather his resources. There must be some way to escape.
The walls pressed closer with each passing heartbeat, squeezing the air from Coryn’s lungs. Panic drove him like a whip, but he could not move his arms or legs. His vision went dark, streaked with red. Pain lanced through his lungs. His muscles turned to water as his strength flowed out of him. Unable to resist any longer, he sank down into the gray floor. It covered him in its muffling blanket. Silence and numbness bathed him. He could fight no longer.
NOW YOU ARE MINE.
That voice, that hated voice!
For the first time in his life, Coryn prayed to Avarra, Dark Lady of night and death. Take me! he begged. His only answer was a resurgence of despair.
There is no hope.
His physical body righted itself, stood, continued down the stairs. He seemed to be watching its movement across a great distance.
No hope . . .
Like a white bird piercing the darkest stormcloud, a thought came to him, the image of his mother’s handkerchief. He remembered holding it in his hands the morning after Rumail had examined him, remembered the softness of the worn fabric between his fingers, the relief soaring in his heart.
Remembered giving it to Taniquel.
That part of me is safe. Rumail can never have all of me.
In his darkened mind, her eyes glimmered, her chin lifted proudly. Blue flames surged up to surround her, and yet she walked on, untouched. Free.
And yet, the body moved, more surely now with every passing step. It hurried across the adjoining corridor and up the flight leading to the second laboratory.
Glow-globes placed at either end filled the room with a soft illumination. One of the novices, a boy from the Alton border who had not got his full growth yet, bent over the battery ranges, making notations on a pad. He looked up at Coryn’s approach, his broken complexion flushing. Normally, checking the charges of the batteries would fall to a more experienced worker, a mechanic, but everyone else was either aloft with Bernardo or resting, drained from the night’s work.
“I require isolation for this task.” Coryn picked up a tray of tools set with starstone chips and went to the shrouded device. Setting down his pad, the child darted from the room.
Coryn approached the great matrix screens which formed the device itself. He pulled away the triple layers of insulating silk and felt the familiar buzzing between his temples. Blue light shimmered through the room in every hue from palest bird’s-egg to deep azure. Each layer of the device gave off its own unique color and, because of the way the artificial crystals were linked, they interpenetrated one another. When he and Mac worked on the device, they used the signature tone of that particular element as a focus point.
The trigger lay in the first layer, the lightest shade of blue. As he had practiced so many hours while working on the screens, Coryn let his eyesight soften and then blur. He envisioned himself floating down a river. In some places, sunlight glared off the water’s surface, in others lay pools of shadow.
Light . . . gather the light . . .
His hands moved over the tray of instruments, fingertips skimming their shapes.
WHAT ARE YOU DOING? The words whispered through his mind in a voice that was his and yet not his.
What am I doing? he wondered, momentarily puzzled. His vision cleared enough for him to look down at the tool in his hand, poised over the great glittering screen.
I am disarming . . . disarming the trigger . . .
WHAT WEAPON?
The motes of sunlight flashed hot and white, blinding him. He flung up one hand to shield his eyes. The movement sent sprays of brilliance in all direction. They encircled him so that he stood in the center of a glowing ring. The ring hummed with its own energy, sending reverberations through his body.
Dimly, he felt the clash of thunder and the rattling of steel. Sparks flew as shields raised against a volley of psychic arrows. Coryn tensed, then relaxed as the deadly barrage fell away.
Before his sightless eyes, his hands took up a different tool. He circled the screens, moving through their scintillating colors like a fish in that river he had imagined.
Dark blue . . . dark and darkest . . . that was what he sought. Yes, there it was! The third layer, keyed to redirect incoming laran energy, rose into clear view. The tool interrupted the energon link connections. Strand after severed strand fell away.
At last it was done.
Coryn stood looking down at the great matrix screens, momentarily unsure how he had gotten here. In one hand, he held a slender metal tool which he could not remember having picked up. A fine trembling vibrated along his jaw and forearms. He rubbed the muscles, feeling the whipcord tension there.
But there was no time to rest. Tramontana might resume the attack at any moment. Bernardo needed him back in the circle. He had accomplished his mission here. He paused only long enough to replace the tool on its tray.
Coryn sensed the disturbance in the Overworld even as he climbed the stairs back to the laboratory where the others waited. He had just set foot on the landing between the two stages of stairs, beside the tall narrow windows, when the sky above flashed into brilliance. Ozone and the unmistakable reek of clingfire filled the air. The sudden percussion almost knocked him from his feet.
Grasping his starstone where it hung on a chain about his neck, he set his mind aloft to the laboratory chamber. He found the circle there, intact but locked against him. They had formed an impenetrable link, an unbroken
sphere of power. To allow him to join them, they would have to relax their concentration and reconfigure the pattern. It would be like cracking a window open, and Rumail might seize upon the moment of weakness. Coryn would have to wait until another lull in the battle, if there was one. He watched while lightnings of pure mental energy rained down upon them.
Across the flat gray Overworld sky, patterns of brightness shimmering with rainbow edges exploded and then blurred into darkness. The stones of the mental projection of Neskaya Tower quivered under the onslaught. Dimly Coryn felt the real Tower shudder under the energy lash as if it were a living thing.
Hold! He sent the thought to his own circle. There was not much chance it would get through, that his Keeper might be able to draw upon his strength, even for an instant. Coryn dropped back into the physical world, strode over to the windows on the stair landing, and stared out.
The fight raging above him had very much the feel of a stalemate, and a stalemate meant success for the Hastur army. Already, they had interrupted the barrage of fear-spells from Tramontana. Taniquel’s forces would win or lose on their own, steel against steel, unhampered by any interference.
Perhaps all that was needed now was to remain firm until Rumail had expended his anger.
It would not end here, Coryn thought. Not as long as Damian Deslucido ruled with Rumail as his right hand. Taniquel had been right. The Deslucidos must be stopped by whatever means—sword or laran spell—necessary.
More of that bizarre silent lightning jagged across the sky outside the windows. He winced. It reminded him of the storm which had swept across the mountains during his journey to Tramontana. Only luck and Rafe’s skill had kept him alive. Rafe had mentioned the Aldaran ability to work weather-magic, and there had been real fear in his voice. This flashing turbulence lacked the pattern of normal weather. When he opened his laran senses to it, he felt other differences. The Aldaran storm had been an attempt to replicate natural processes for human purposes. Perhaps those who shaped it desired rain in one place and not another, and directed air and wind and cloud to that end.