A Flame in Hali

  “Pacer.”

  “Oh?” Dyannis settled herself on one of the tattered pillows, tucking her skirts under her. That had been Varzil’s name when the toy had first been made for him. They’d almost come to blows when she tried to rename it “Sunshine.” She wondered if the boy might have picked up some psychic residue from the horse. Varzil had powerful laran even as a child, enough to leave an invisible trace for anyone sensitive enough to read it.

  Lerrys looked away, flushing.

  “It’s as good a name as any,” she said carelessly. “Come, tell me what the others are doing. You’ve arranged them in such an interesting way. It looks as if they are speaking to one another.”

  In response, he began stuffing the toys into a canvas sack. The last one, the oudrakhi, he held for a moment, as if weighing it. His eyes flickered to her, then he shoved it in with the others.

  Even as Varzil did, he has learned to hide his feelings, especially those his father cannot understand.

  “I used to play with those very same animals when I was a girl, did you know?” She underscored the overture with a gentle psychic nudge.

  He shrugged. “I guessed they belonged to somebody, my father or Uncle Varzil.”

  “Oh, yes, he had them before me, but everything he had, I wanted, do you see? So even before he left for Arilinn, I’d sneak up here and play with them.”

  “My sister is like that, too,” Lerrys said, brightening. “She’d be up here right now, except Mother wants her to act like a little lady.”

  Dyannis made a face. “Poor thing, do you suppose she’s inflicting embroidery practice on her? I hated needlework, always have. Sticking little pointy things where they don’t belong, ugh! I’d much rather be up here or on a horse. Do you ever go out to those caves beyond the sheep pastures?”

  “Where Uncle Varzil rescued Father?” The boy’s eyes widened. “Father would kill me if I went out there!”

  “Let me tell you, my father wasn’t too happy about it, either.” But I went, anyway.

  “You did? ”

  She nodded, suppressing a surge of excitement. He’d heard her unspoken thought and responded, in an unguarded moment. “Lerrys, may I touch you?”

  He looked puzzled, but held out a grubby hand for her. She took it between her own, a perfect contact, and reached out with her laran . . .

  When Dyannis closed her eyes, the pattern of nodes and channels of the boy’s energetic body glowed like a constellation of brightly-colored spheres joined by white-gold cords. She searched further, looking for congestion, the shift toward reds and muddy browns, disruption of flow. Yes, down along the pathways leading to the lower body, she spied the warning signs. As she watched, the colors darkened, pulsing.

  The boy’s hand trembled between her own. As she released him, he blushed again. She caught a surge of embarrassment, of sexual awareness. Here he was, alone with his young and pretty aunt, holding hands.

  “Lerrys, how old are you?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Hmmm.” She would have guessed twelve from his size, but Varzil, too, had always been slender. “I can’t keep track of who was born when.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “Are you ever sick to your stomach for no good reason? Or out of sorts, quick of temper? Or do your eyes play tricks on you?”

  “What do you think I am, crazy?” He drew back, and she knew from the vehemence of his denial how deeply troubled he had been by these symptoms.

  She shook her head. “I am a leronis, trained at Hali. I do not ask these questions lightly, or as an insult.” How much did the boy know? Did he realize the risk? “Do you have a starstone? Might I see it?”

  If Lerrys kept it at the bottom of a chest of toys, or some other separate location, then his laran might be as yet unawakened. He fumbled at his waist, beneath his shirt, where he wore a strip of cloth folded to make a sash. He drew out a small bluish crystal and held it up. The interior was as yet dim, untouched by inner fire.

  “Here.” Without warning, he tossed it in her direction.

  By reflex, Dyannis caught the crystal, and then in horror realized what she had done. She thrust the stone back into his hands and folded his fingers around it.

  “Never do that again!” Although she was not skilled in the use of the commanding Voice, as Varzil was, Dyannis was powerful enough to reinforce her words telepathically. The boy flinched visibly.

  “You may think this is only a pretty toy, a trinket,” she plunged on, “but once you have attuned it to your mind, it is your very life. Do you understand me? No one else must ever be allowed to handle it, except a Keeper.”

  Except a Keeper.

  The world fell away beneath her.

  “You don’t understand,” Lerrys said, clearly unhappy. “I can’t have laran. Oh, enough so Father can present me to the Council. But anything more only brings trouble.”

  Dyannis pulled herself back to the present. “We are as the gods made us, chiyu, and not as our fathers,” or brothers, “would have us. If you have been given the talent, nothing anyone says will change that. It’s no surprise, considering how many of your relatives have strong laran.”

  He looked unhappy. “Aunt Dyannis, I know you mean well, but truly, it would be best not to say anything to Father. You don’t know how he gets when his mind is set.”

  “Your grandfather, Dom Felix, was the same way. Harald is very like him.” At first, their father had flatly refused to allow Varzil to train at Arilinn. Dyannis hoped Lerrys wouldn’t have the same difficulties. If necessary, she could appeal to Varzil. After all, Harald owed him his life.

  Harald did not return that night until well after the rest of the family had dined. From Rohanne’s lack of concern, Dyannis gathered this was the rule during the working seasons. The dinner honoring her return had been a special occasion.

  She retreated to her room, rather than be left alone with Rohanne. Although she tried to meditate, her mind would not be calmed. When she rose to pace, the sensation of suffocation only intensified. The closeness of the walls, the constant reminders of a time when she was small and subject to the orders of older men, pressed in on her like the bars of a dungeon.

  Gods, how had she ever stood it? How had Varzil, with his powerful Gift awakening in him so young, ever stood it?

  She remembered standing before her father, Dom Felix, half-crazed with anticipation of leaving. A change had come over him ever since he had given his blessing for Varzil to enter training at Arilinn Tower. Before that, he would never have agreed to let her go, not even when the household leronis pleaded with him.

  “Dyannis is at grave risk if she remains here, and you know it.”

  Dyannis, then about the same age as Lerrys was now, had felt the passionate words of the old leronis even here, in her own room. They seemed to hang upon the air even now, so many years later.

  “The danger comes not from the threshold sickness that carried off Anndra and Sylvie, but from the very power of her Gift. I tell you, if you keep her caged like a songbird, or marry her off to some head-blind oaf who will get one brat after another upon her, or try to thrash that indomitable spirit out of her, you might as well slit her throat now and be done with it!”

  She had crept down the hall to hear the rumble of his answer.

  “I have lost too many I love. My wife, two of my babes, and now Varzil gone.”

  Gently came the woman’s response: “It is your only hope of getting her back, to let her go.”

  And so, Dyannis thought, I have come full circle of my own accord.

  Sensitized as she was, she felt Harald’s return. It seemed she was retracing the past in more ways than one, making her way down that same corridor to the chamber that had once been her father’s and now belonged to her eldest brother. She tapped on the door and heard his invitation to enter.

  Stepping inside, she could not shake off the sensation of moving into the past. The outer chamber still had the same heavy, dark-polished wooden chairs
, the table with its bowl of sugar-dusted nuts, the grate in the patchstone fireplace. Harald stood sideways, stirring the kindling. For an instant, she saw—not him, but their father. Then he moved and the illusion vanished.

  She gathered herself like the skilled leronis she was and seated herself near the fire. “I must speak to you about Lerrys. He is very near the time when his laran will awaken, and I believe it will be strong. You should take precautions, should he develop threshold sickness.”

  “Surely, he’s too young, and we have had no such problems in a long while.”

  “He is not too young,” she said flatly. “I have seen this before, at Hali, where a delayed puberty produces exceptionally powerful upheavals in both sexual energy and laran. Believe me, he is—”

  “Silence! Enough!” Harald rounded on her. “You may be my sister, but I will not permit any woman in my house to speak such filth.”

  Dyannis was so stunned, she could only stare at him. In the Tower, physiology and health, even sexuality, were discussed frankly, without any hint of shame.

  “You are not to mention such things again! It is not seemly, nor is it modest, as becomes a decent woman.”

  She got to her feet. “I am speaking of your son’s health, perhaps even his life. What could be more decent than that?”

  “There is no problem. He is a strong, healthy boy.”

  “Yes, but he will soon become a man and therein lies the danger. Have you forgotten what happened to Anndra and Sylvie?”

  “Better than you!” For an instant, he looked as if he might strike her, but then he softened his tone. “He is my son and heir. I will not send him away from Sweetwater.” As Varzil was sent, and then lost to us. He could not even return home when Father died.

  Her heart ached for him. “Perhaps that will not be necessary. You are not without resources. I trained first as a monitor at Hali and I know how to handle many aspects of threshold sickness. If you will permit it, I will do what I can.”

  Harald inclined his head. “It is said, Bare is brother-less back. In these perilous times, we must all of us, sisters as well as brother, stand together.”

  Dyannis nodded, already planning what she would need. “Do you have a supply of kirian, perhaps stored with the other medicinals?”

  “I doubt it,” Harald replied, scratching his head. “That is, unless there’s some left over from your time. There’s been no need since you left.”

  There would be little call for the psychoactive distillate outside a Tower, except for the treatment of threshold sickness. Dyannis knew a dozen other uses for it, but only for laran-associated disorders.

  She sat down again and drummed her fingers on the wooden arm of the chair. “Unless it’s been wax-sealed and undisturbed all these years, it will have lost its potency. I’d better make some fresh.” She glanced out the window, where clouds, wind-driven, scudded across the sky. Her body remembered the rhythm of the seasons here; spring had hardly begun, and there would still be snow on the heights, and more storms to come.

  “It will be another month, I think, before I can gather the kireseth,” she commented.

  Harald scowled.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Dyannis said lightly. “I’ve done this before. Everyone at Hali is trained in the preparation of something as necessary as kirian.”

  “I do not doubt your competence,” he said. “It is your business as a leronis to know such things. But there is no kireseth within a day’s ride. You will have to travel high into the hills and that is too dangerous.”

  “Harald, I am a Ridenow. I learned to ride before I could walk, even as you did.”

  He shook his head. “But not to wield a sword. Asturias grows more belligerent with each passing season, and all the lands between us are rife with displaced and lawless men. So far, Sweetwater has remained unmolested, but with the end of winter, I cannot tell how long the peace will hold. As head of this family, I am responsible for your welfare. The only way I will permit you to go that far is with an armed escort.”

  “I do not think that wise,” Dyannis said. The pollen of the bell-shaped flowers could produce dangerous, unpredictable hallucinations in both men and beasts. “I am trained to handle the kireseth pollen, but I do not want the responsibility for anyone else. Swords cannot protect ordinary men against an inadvertent exposure.”

  She did not want to provoke a quarrel in which Lerrys would be the real loser. Harald was only thinking of her welfare, as both her brother and lord of Sweetwater. She reminded herself that none of the men here were strangers to natural dangers. Some of them might have weathered a Ghost Wind, an unseasonable release of kireseth pollen.

  “I will respect your wishes in this,” she said, “so long as I may use my best judgment regarding the other risks.”

  Harald consented, although he was clearly unhappy about letting her go so far from the main house. Soon after, Dyannis took her leave. She knew she should be satisfied, for his concession was more gracious than she expected, but she could not shake off the feeling there was something important she had missed.

  As spring settled on the land in earnest, the days grew longer, the air milder, the smells of budding trees and moist earth more pungent. Dyannis awoke, fully alert and rested, two hours before dawn. Pushing the bedcovers aside, she rose and went to the window. Her body ached from inactivity. She had been at Sweetwater for a full month now, and had not had the opportunity to ride much beyond the yard. Her escort had returned to Thendara after a few days’ rest. After the first flurry of welcome, the estate continued about its business. Rohanne repeatedly urged her to sit and embroider, which Dyannis had so far found one excuse after another to decline. The rest of the time, she had been left to her own entertainment with the constant assurance that she need not bestir herself.

  Bestir myself? Drive myself mad!

  Outside, the gardens and yard were washed in pastel, multihued light. Craning her neck, she saw three of the four moons spread like gemstones across the sky. She could almost hear them calling to her.

  On impulse, she pulled on her boots and traveling clothes. Downstairs, servants were already about their work, and the smell of baking bread rose from the kitchen.

  In the stables, men mucked out stalls and carried in fodder and buckets of water. Horses moved restlessly in their stalls. Dyannis, not wanting to explain herself, slipped into the tack room, took up a bridle, and went out to the corral where the working horses pawed the last of their morning’s ration of hay. These were hard, rough-broken mounts, not the docile mare Rohanne used. They snorted and jumped as she entered the enclosure.

  Dyannis reached out with her laran, soothing the nervous beasts. They watched her with wary, curious eyes and allowed her to move among them. She chose a small, sturdy roan gelding, one she could mount bareback without too much difficulty.

  Will you carry me, little brother? she asked, stroking the coarse gray mane.

  In response, the horse bent his head and nuzzled her shoulder. He stood quietly as she slipped the bit into his mouth and tucked the strap behind his ears. Speaking softly, she led him from the corral. One of the stable hands called out to her, but she waved at him and sent a mental suggestion that all was as it should be, and he turned back to his work.

  Once beyond the yard, she slipped the reins over the horse’s head, took a double handful of mane, and managed to scramble on to his back. His spine was bonier than she expected and she’d be sore the next day, but she didn’t care. She clucked to the horse and tapped him with her heels, turning him in the direction of the hilly pastures. He went off willingly and once they were well clear of the house grounds, moved from a walk to a bone-jarring trot and then into a rocking canter.

  Dyannis laced her hands in the horse’s mane, feeling the animal’s muscles bunch and surge between her legs. Wind brushed her cheeks and ruffled her hair. She inhaled the horse smell, the sweetness of the grass, and the cool moistness of the coming dawn.

  The horse, sensing her m
ood, bounded forward. For that instant, she felt nothing but the rushing air and the muscled strength beneath her, saw only the milky skies above, the rising gray-green hills. She and the horse became a single creature, plunging between earth and heaven. Together they inhaled fire and breathed it out again, straining at the bounds of flesh. She felt sun and wind, grass and stone, the thrust of bone and muscle.

  Run away . . . run far away . . . pounded through her mind to the rhythm of the horse’s galloping hooves.

  She bent low over his neck, as if she could merge with the beast, leaving behind all human thoughts, all memory, all desire. Above her, beyond the brightening sky, the moons swung through a field of stars. Distant creatures fought and mated, swam and danced, howled out their lonely anguish to those same stars. . . .

  Dyannis jerked free from her reverie so sharply the horse shied, stung by the abrupt rupture of their bond. The roan plunged sideways, lowering his head as if to buck.

  She had heard, no—felt something. Only a mind attuned to the natural world could have picked up the faint, far harmonic.

  The Ya-men wailing beneath the moons. Varzil had described hearing them as a boy, but no one believed him then. Their father had thought him fanciful, deluded, and certainly devoid of any respectable laran. Varzil had turned out to be the most powerful Keeper on Darkover. Perhaps his story had been true.

  By the time she slowed her panting, sweating horse, the great red sun stood above the horizon. The roan pulled at the bit, clearly wanting to keep running. Heat radiated from his body.

  Dyannis glanced back the way they had come. They were well up in the hills, beyond the sight of the house. Something inside her relaxed, unfolded. For the first time in longer than she could remember, she was alone, truly alone. She opened her mind and sensed only the simple emotions of beasts—the horse beneath her, rabbit-horns with their new babies hiding in their burrows, a hawk circling, mice and birds, the distant contentment of sheep beyond the ridge of hills. And there, hidden in their fastnesses, the Ya-men and their song.