The Plains were neither entirely flat nor featureless. The Valeron River cut through the expanse, providing lush forest on either bank. They spotted it from a distance as a line of dark green. Far to the west, the river widened into the marshy area where lay the city of Valeron and Castle Aillard. Valentina Aillard, who had served with Eduin at Arilinn so long ago, came from that region. He did not know what had happened to her, whether she still served in a Tower or whether her recurrent illnesses had overcome her at last, or her family had deemed her of greater value in an arranged marriage.
Turning south along the river, they came to the walled city of Kirella. As Eduin and Saravio approached, the road broadened through a series of sprawling villages that had grown up to house workers and supply goods to the citadel itself.
Kirella was much smaller than Thendara, but just as heavily fortified. Mounted soldiers drilled in formation on the one good flat stretch of land. They passed watch-towers, set within sight of one another in a perimeter. A deep channel cut from the river ran past walls pierced by slits for archers. As they approached, an aircar rose and then sped away in the direction of the city of Valeron.
Armed guards stopped them well before they reached the bridges and demanded their business. The guards eyed their clothing and laden pack animal, clearly reckoning their wealth and rank, and let them pass.
Once inside the city, they had no difficulty finding respectable lodging. Eduin spent several days walking the streets, familiarizing himself with its various districts, listening to the people’s complaints, measuring the temper of the place. His years of hiding in Thendara had attuned him to the pulse and rhythm of the streets. With only the lightest use of his laran, he could sense the shadows of fear, the pinch of hunger, the belly-gnawing thirst. This was, he quickly concluded, a city on edge, but the people’s concerns went beyond preparations for battle. Few had seen actual combat, and fewer feared an immediate assault upon their own city. The stresses lay right here within their own country, centered on the citadel.
Lord Brynon held his title as a courtesy, for in truth he was Regent to his only daughter. It was the late Lady Aillard whose lineage carried the rulership of the city and surrounding lands. Only a daughter could inherit, and it was she whom Eduin had come to heal.
The castle sat upon a little rise, the only hill in the entire area. In the brightness of the day, it seemed to draw in upon itself, gray-walled and unyielding. It was, Eduin thought, a place that gave nothing, that kept its secrets. He could not have wished for a better stage to play out his little drama.
First he must set the scene. A few judiciously placed inquiries brought him the information he needed. Instead of gathering a crowd in some public place, he sought a means of entry into the higher social circles. It was not long in coming. Tales of their healing miracles along the road reached had Kirella. With his strange manner and black robes, Saravio was unmistakable. Eduin soon obtained an introduction to a wealthy cloth merchant, recently widowed.
On the night Eduin and Saravio presented themselves at the merchant’s residence, the wind blew chill and damp with the first intimations of autumn. Saravio as usual donned the black robes of Naotalba’s servant. The house with its walled gardens sat within the protective sphere of the city, within sight of the residences of the nobility.
A coridom greeted them at the door, branched candelabrum held aloft, and led them to the room where his master waited. The place had a deeply funereal air, more tomb than presence chamber. The merchant looked up from his seat beside the empty hearth. A single candle sat upon a table of some darkly marbled stone. Deep vertical lines marked the man’s face, as if tears had etched runnels there. Eduin sensed the man’s grief as a dammed river, stagnant and festering.
The servant asked if he should bring more light. Eduin seized the opening. “On no account discommode yourself, worthy sir. It is we who are at your service.”
“There is nothing you can do for me,” the merchant said in a heavy voice. “Not unless you can raise the dead. I must have been mad to agree to this meeting.”
“Sometimes our truest instincts speak through us in ways we least intend,” Eduin replied. “I do not believe it is necessary to raise the dead to cross the abyss of parting.”
“You speak nonsense.” Despite his words, interest flared.
“If common sense can be seen on one side,” Eduin said, holding out his right hand, palm up, “then the deepest desires of our hearts lie on the other.” He raised his left hand and extended it toward the merchant.
“Deepest desires of the heart . . .” Pain welled.
Almost in reflex, Saravio responded. He stood behind Eduin, at the edge of the cone of light cast by the candle, where his black robes blended into the shadows. Eduin felt him reach into the merchant’s mind.
The coridom departed, but his presence would have made no difference. There was nothing out of the ordinary to be seen, no incantations to be heard, no arcane rituals to be witnessed. Only someone gifted with laran and trained in its use could have detected what transpired.
As Saravio shifted energy currents within the merchant’s brain, Eduin used his laran to reach behind the man’s emotional barriers. The merchant had a touch of laran, but not enough to withstand a trained telepathic probe. Eduin found a tangle of regret, of petty unkindnesses, of hopes disappointed, of all the ordinary irritations of a long marriage. Interwoven with them were moments of tenderness, of trust, of wordless comfort. Caught between the good and the bad, the poor man could release neither.
Saravio’s song evoked a rising sense of well-being in the merchant. It was just what Eduin needed to break through the despondency. Emotions surged forward—loss and love and even relief. Tears streamed down the merchant’s cheeks. His body shook as he sobbed out his grief.
Now you are both at peace, Eduin spoke mentally while Saravio cast a euphoric veil over the pain. Peace . . .
Yes . . . the merchant repeated silently. Peace . . .
Eduin fed words into thoughts. Let there be an end to mourning, to pain itself . . . embrace hope . . . return to health . . . joy . . . must tell the story . . . must . . . reach the ears of Lord Brynon . . . his daughter . . .
They left the house some hours later with a filled purse. The merchant sang as he went to his bed, his head swimming with pastel visions and the promise to write the next morning to the castle steward who purchased his goods.
“The brothers Eduardo and Sandoval Hernandez,” the herald called out the names that Eduin had presented, having devised them during their stay at Carskadon. The herald’s voice filled the presence chamber of Lord Brynon Aillard. The room was long and low-ceilinged, its stone walls bare of tapestry, the floor rushes worn with many cleanings, yet some trick of construction rendered the acoustics superb. If the Lord whispered, everyone in the chamber could hear.
Lord Brynon slouched upon his heavy chair set upon a raised dais. The chair was draped with the gray-and-red feather pattern of Aillard. He braced one elbow upon the chair’s arm, his chin resting upon his fist. Flanking him were a handful of somber, solid-looking men.
A lone woman, her chestnut hair coiled low on her neck in a style Eduin had never seen outside a Tower, stood a little apart from the others. From the simplicity of her dress and the telltale signature of laran, Eduin guessed she was the household leronis. He did not think she could penetrate his barriers, but he would have to be careful with any use of his powers lest she detect his trained laran at work.
The rest of the courtiers wore such dark colors that Eduin wondered if someone of importance had just died. They watched him with wary, almost haggard expressions.
Eduin stepped forward from the line of supplicants and bowed. At a murmur from the courtiers, he glanced back. Saravio did not bow but stood swaying. His black robe swirled around his angular frame as if caught in an invisible wind. Above it, his features shone with an unearthly pallor, his eyes burning in hollowed sockets.
“Uncover before His Lordshi
p,” a courtier hissed.
Eduin realized that although he had taken off his hat as he bowed, Saravio still wore the skull-clinging knitted cap of their journey. Before he could act, a guard stepped forward, hand outstretched to sweep it from Saravio’s head. Eduin held his breath, for he had not shaved Saravio since their arrival in Kirella.
Saravio did not flinch as the strings that anchored the cap upon his head snapped. The guard stepped back with the offending garment in his hand. A murmur rippled through the assembly. Instead of treacherous red, a pure shimmering white covered Saravio’s head. It was little more than a fuzz, but it gleamed in the light of a hundred torches.
Eduin caught the sudden flare of interest from the household leronis, as if she had sensed Saravio’s mental powers. Eduin tensed. She was clearly the only one at court with any formal training, but his impression of her was one of a minor degree of talent, enough to teach children the rudiments of control, diagnose threshold sickness, ease a fever, or cast truthspell. And that, he thought with a trace of exultation, he need not fear.
Lord Brynon drew himself upright and for the first time, Eduin noticed the six fingers upon his hands. Many Aillards had that trait, said to be a product of their chieri blood. Certainly, this man did not resemble the half-mythical nonhumans in any other way. His hair, where it was not age-grizzled, was so darkly red as to appear almost black, and the shoulders beneath the rich mantle were broad and masculine. Even his face looked as if it had weathered years on the fields of war.
“So you are the healer half the city has been talking about,” he rumbled. “A few hysterics claim to be cured, and everyone is amazed. I am not so easily fooled.”
Eduin bowed again. “Vai dom, if you were, then you would be standing here and I in your place. Since it is otherwise, clearly you are no fool and I am but your poor servant.”
The court fell silent, stunned. Faces turned from Eduin to the dais. Lord Brynon threw back his head and roared with laughter. “A man of wit as well as impudence! I like you already. But your companion there, the one they claim worked these miracles, can he not speak for himself?”
“He speaks but rarely, and then only to Naotalba or to me.”
“Naotalba? The Bride of Zandru? I have never heard of such a thing. He must be mad.”
“Some have said so,” Eduin replied, “but it is that very madness that so often comes with the healing gift. Perhaps the rest of us, who do not speak with the gods, are not as often answered by them.”
“Indeed. And is your friend one of those?”
“I am a simple man, vai dom. The gods do not concern themselves with the likes of me. Yet since Naotalba spoke to my brother, Sandoval the Blessed, I have seen men who were broken in body and mind returned to health when all else failed. If that is not a miracle, I do not know what is. You must judge whether he can do the same for anyone in this house.”
“That remains to be seen,” said the Aillard Lord, “Come, you will dine with us tonight, both of you.”
The coridom who arranged the seating at dinner placed Eduin and Saravio at the end of one of the long tables, well away from the Aillard Lord. The men who sat at the head table were important courtiers, signified by their rich robes and emblems of office. A few of them glanced curiously at the strangers, but most ignored the lower tables. They bent over their food, barely conversing with their neighbors.
Eduin accepted the situation without complaint, for he had accomplished his first goal. He was not so long from the gutters of Thendara to scorn a decent meal, but memories of his life before that came back to him. He remembered dining at Hali with Carolin, then yet a Prince, at the table of King Felix.
He had never seen such elegance as at the Hastur court, as if he had wandered into a dream. Memory burnished candlelight, the jewel-toned tapestries, the curve of a lady’s arm, the brilliance of her glance.
Now, sitting in a smoky, crowded hall, crammed in among men he would have once scorned, Eduin remembered the smoothness of his borrowed silk shirt against his skin, smelled the fragrance of the green boughs and spicebread, heard the lilt of a superb singer, clasped the light, supple body of his dancing partner.
Dyannis.
He must, he knew, take care not to idealize her. She was human, as capable of folly as any other, and more than that, she was the sister of the man he must destroy. For all his wishing, Eduin could not tear away that luminous shimmer from her image. She had been the sweetest of young maidens, afire with life and joy, and immensely, unself-consciously generous in spreading it to everyone she touched, at a time when his own heart was starved.
She existed only in the past, that radiant girl. The boy he had been no longer existed, except as nostalgic reminder, and the same must be true for her. He could not afford such sentimentality, especially here in the court of uncertain allies.
The next moment, he jerked awake from his reverie. Two of the Lord’s dogs, huge rangy hounds, had lunged at the same time for a bone tossed from the table. The larger, a young male, caught the end of the joint between his jaws. The other was older, unused to challenge. Hackles raised, lips drawn back from yellowed teeth, he advanced growling upon the other. Eduin saw this much from his seat, halfway down the table.
The next instant, the two dogs erupted into a snarling, rolling mass. Someone shouted to stay back, another called for a bucket of water to throw over them. Several men rose to pull them apart. A lady shrieked. One of the young pages, a boy of six or seven, stood motionless, his mouth open and eyes frozen, as one dog drove the other, snapping and yelping, in his direction. Before any of them could react, the animals had knocked the boy down. His scream pierced the air.
Lord Brynon strode across the room, sweeping a table out of the way with one blow. He grabbed the nearer dog by the back of the neck and tore it away, in one movement hurling it against the next table. The other dog retreated, yipping in terror.
Eduin pushed through the onlookers. Lord Brynon knelt, his broad back cutting off sight of the fallen page. Blood soaked the floor rushes. Eduin could smell it. Adrenaline and shock rose like smoke from a wildfire. Around him, men drew back in silence. One of the women began sobbing, quickly hushed.
Yet the boy lived. Of all the swirling energies Eduin sensed, death was not among them. Not yet. Blood spurted from a deep, ragged gash along the side of his neck to soak the fabric of his tunic.
Eduin knew he’d be taking a desperate chance, using his powers in the presence of a leronis who, however minor her own talent, might well recognize his. She would ask why a Tower-trained laranzu was masquerading as the servant of an itinerant healer. But he might never have a better opportunity to gain Lord Brynon’s confidence.
If he used Saravio’s laran as a shield, he might yet escape detection. The leronis would see Saravio as a wild talent, trained but flawed and erratic. She might not think to look deeper. And if she did, then he would have to deal with her.
“Vai dom,” Eduin cried. “Is this not the reason you have kept us here, to help in such a case?”
Lord Brynon spun around, rising to his feet with the deadly speed of a swordsman. His face contorted for an instant, and Eduin realized that the page was not some youngest son of an insignificant distant cousin, but his own. Nedestro and unable to inherit, but deeply loved all the same. Even if Eduin had not possessed a scrap of laran, he would have been able to read the older man’s thoughts, that for such a wound, there was no chance.
“Do—whatever you can—”
Eduin had no need to summon Saravio, for the other man had followed him like a shadow. He pushed Saravio toward the dying boy, aware that they had only moments in which to act. It was vital that Saravio be seen as the one who saved the child, and not Eduin.
Saravio responded instantly to the torrent of pain issuing from the boy. He threw himself to his knees, oblivious to the pooling blood, took the boy’s hand, and began chanting loudly.
“Naotalba, we call upon you, save this boy—”
Eduin r
etreated to the shadows, confident that all eyes would be upon Saravio and the wounded boy. Slipping one hand between the folds of his belt, he grasped his starstone.
“Hear my plea, O great Naotalba, come to us now, heal him speedily—”
The court’s attention now fixed firmly upon Saravio, whose voice rose in pitch and loudness. Reaching out with his peculiar laran, he propelled the boy into a state of pleasurable somnolence, damping all sensation of pain. The effect rippled through the audience.
Eduin plunged into the mass of energy currents, the outpouring of life force. He worked quickly, with all the skill of a laranzu trained at Darkover’s finest Tower. The cut looked messy, the edges mangled by the dog’s twisting bite. The artery, for all the profuse bleeding, had been only nicked, not severed.
With his mind, Eduin spanned the gap, creating a cuff of psychic force over the vessel. Nothing, not the droplets of liquid or the forces that bound them together, penetrated the barrier. The physical mending would take longer, but the boy’s life was no longer measured in heartbeats.
Behind the temporary bandage, Eduin began weaving together the tiny fibrous threads that made up the wall of the blood vessel. Bits of clotted blood caught in the strands, matting them together. Eventually, the seal would resolve into a scar as the body itself completed the healing.
“I am here! All is well!” An elderly man in the robes of a physician rushed forward. His face paled visibly as he took in the extent of the bleeding. “My—my lord, you must prepare yourself, I—” He pointed at Saravio. “What is this man doing here? Clear the area! I must attend to my patient!”
“I believe you will find,” Lord Brynon said darkly, “that this patient is no longer in need of your care.”
“But—” The physician’s glance darted from the bloodstained boy to his master. The boy, still under Saravio’s influence, lay quietly. His breathing was soft, his face relaxed, lips gently smiling.