“So it seems,” Julianna said, “that you may have something to tell us, after all.”
Eduin suppressed a smile. In that brief moment, she had lost her capacity to intimidate him. Indeed, it was she who had fallen within his power. Since an answer seemed to be called for, Eduin bowed again and murmured that he attended Her Majesty’s pleasure.
“I didn’t mean you, I meant him.” She indicated Saravio.
Saravio remained impassive and unresponsive. Romilla clenched her hands so tightly, her knuckles popped.
“I must serve to answer for him,” Eduin said. “It is ever his way. What would Your Majesty ask?”
“I believe you and your brother were in Thendara at the time of the disturbance at Hali Lake.”
Ah, Romilla had done her work well.
Word of the riot must surely have spread through the Towers to every corner of Darkover. Every competent monarch must keep alert to such populist uprisings, or be caught unawares when the tide turned against their own rule. It was only a small step from a handful of penniless refugees, howling in protest against the wars that had taken their lands and families, to a mob bent on revenge against their Comyn rulers.
Julianna was on guard, scenting a threat. From the way she was looking at Eduin, she considered it very likely that he was among the troublemakers.
“Alas, the Blessed Sandoval and I happened to be present at the lakeside on that fateful day,” Eduin said. The statement, with its insinuation of innocence, would not fool Julianna, but that was not his aim. He wanted her to ask more questions.
“You were among those who attacked the circle from Hali Tower as they gathered on the shores of the lake?”
“Vai domna, I swear to you we were not.”
She paused, watching him with those glittering black eyes, weighing his words. Eduin saw the tightness of her mouth, the preternatural stillness of her hands. Then what were you doing there? she asked him silently. And will you tell me the truth?
Julianna gestured to the guard standing beside the door on the far side of the room. An instant later, Callina glided into the room. She wore the loosely belted robe of a Tower worker and her starstone hung, unshielded, on its silken cord around her neck. Carefully avoiding looking at either Eduin or Saravio, she halted facing the Queen.
“Cast the spell, child,” Julianna said.
Every other time Eduin had witnessed the setting of truthspell, the leronis or laranzu had bent over his matrix crystal, murmuring the ritual words while the psychoactive gem flared to life. Callina slipped the cord over her neck and held hers aloft. The stone glittered, blue and white, between her fingers. Her eyes went soft with inward focus. She began chanting in a low voice. Although Eduin could barely hear her words, he watched as the stone grew brighter with each phrase.
First, a radiance rose over Callina’s face, then it engulfed her in a cone of blue-white brilliance. By the time she was half-way through the ceremony, the room glimmered as if caught in perpetual twilight, at once brighter and darker than any truthspell he had ever seen. For a long moment, no one dared speak, or even breathe.
“Now,” said Julianna, in a voice that sliced through the stillness. “Now we will learn the truth of this matter.”
“Sandoval the singer, called the Blessed, stand forth,” General Marzan called out.
When Saravio did not move, Eduin nudged him forward.
“Do not interfere!” The general’s voice rumbled like thunder on the peaks. “Each man must answer only for himself.”
Eduin let his hand drop. Let them make what they would of Saravio’s unresponsiveness.
“Were you at Hali Lake? What happened there?” Several times, General Marzan put questions to Saravio, without any visible reaction. Finally, the general raised his hands, as if giving up, and turned to Julianna.
“They say he speaks only upon your command,” she said to Eduin. “Order him to answer.”
“You must tell these good people about the lake shore riot,” Eduin said, enunciating every word with care so that there would be no misunderstanding. “Do you remember how we went there? We saw the circle, and the Lake of Clouds, and Varzil Ridenow had gone down into its depths.”
At the mention of Varzil, recognition flared in Saravio’s eyes. He sent a pulse of anguish through the room. Eduin slammed his laran barriers into place.
“Varzil was there,” Saravio murmured. “Dragons came from the sky. The lake churned. The air turned dark. People ran away. Those that remained . . . died.”
“Varzil the Good?” Julianna repeated. “So he was there, after all. He is loved in Hali, or so I have been told. I wonder why he did not speak to the people, to quiet them.”
“Let us proceed with the questioning,” said General Marzan, “now that Sandoval has recovered his tongue. What did you mean, dragons came from the sky? And where was Varzil the Good when this happened?”
Saravio flushed with emotion. He cried out, his voice like the raucous shriek of a kyorebni, “Varzil—he brings the fire, he brings the fire! Aiee, Naotalba, have mercy on us—” He flung himself down upon his knees, burying his face in his hands.
Terror and pain flooded from his mind to engulf the room. Romilla uttered a cry like a dying bird, quickly stifled.
“Have mercy,” Saravio cried, “or we shall all perish!”
“Your Majesty, great Queen, worthy lords,” Eduin held out his hands beseechingly. “You see how my brother fares.” He referred to their disguise as “Eduardo” and “Sandoval.” “This questioning is too harsh for one of his sensitivities. The tragedy at Hali Lake almost destroyed him. I beg you, let me take him away before he swoons.”
“The fire! Naotalba, save us!” Saravio burst into wailing. He beat the sides of his head with his fists.
Even through his tightly-raised barriers, Eduin felt wave after wave of fear emanating from Saravio. Romilla paled to the color of unbleached linex and appeared on the verge of fainting. Even the General’s ruddy complexion faded. Julianna sat very still. Callina trembled like a leaf in a Hellers blizzard, but did not break her concentration. The truthspell remained, unwavering.
“Take him away,” Julianna said. “Not you,” to Eduin, “you stay here.”
Two guards lifted Saravio to his feet. Saravio could barely stand, but he stumbled along between them, still moaning. The residue of his psychic emanations gradually died down.
“I don’t know how much of that we can trust,” Julianna commented to General Marzan. “Certainly, the man himself believed every word he spoke. As to how reliable a witness he is, that is another matter entirely.” She turned her attention to Eduin. “I sincerely hope you are able to give a more coherent description.”
“Lady, I know only what I saw and what was said to me,” he replied.
“Proceed, then.”
Eduin stepped forward, placing himself so that Callina’s truthspell would directly illuminate his face. He could say anything now, and so long as it was not frank raving, his words would be accepted. No one could lie under truthspell, or so they all believed.
“The Blessed Sandoval and I were living in Thendara when we heard there was to be a great working of sorcery at Hali Lake,” Eduin began. So far, this was the truth. “Some said that a spell had been laid upon the heavens, for there was much lightning. I heard one man say that the Aldarans had done a mighty weather-working, but I do not know if that was true. So we went to the lake, and saw many other people there. They told me that Varzil, he who is Keeper at Neskaya, had gone down into the lake itself, beneath the waters of cloud. What he did there, I cannot tell, but I heard that the infernal device that caused the Cataclysm, changing the water to mist so long ago, was still upon on the bottom, and he had gone to seek it.”
Eduin sensed rather than saw the ripple of response. He shook his head as if he himself were uncertain what to think. Something whispered through the back of his mind, a ghostly echo, Yes ... Set the trap for Varzil ...
“We had not been ther
e very long,” he plunged on, “when I looked above the circle and saw a—I don’t know—it was long like a serpent, with hideous wings. It dove down upon us, slashing and striking. When it breathed, men choked and died. There was no place to hide, no where to run.”
“How is it you were able to escape?” the general asked.
“Oh, it was terrible!” Eduin let the despair of that moment tinge his voice. It had been terrible when their plans turned against them and Naotalba’s army, formed to bring them victory, dissolved into frenzied retreat. “No man could stand against the thing. I don’t know how many died. The lucky ones ran away. We hid, and it missed us. Just then, when it seemed it must see us, the dragon disappeared. It was gone, just like that. I looked toward the lake, and I saw Varzil with my very own eyes.”
“Varzil—you saw him, truly?”
“He was walking out of the water, just as if nothing had happened, and he was smiling.” Eduin conjured a picture in his own mind, half true memory, half a vision born from his hatred. Over it, he poured that unique form of laran, the Deslucido Gift, which his father had shown him years ago. He could hear his father’s mental voice even now:
Now that I am completely sure of your loyalty, I will teach you how to defeat truthspell. You will be able to swear to whatever serves our higher purpose, and no laranzu on Darkover will be able to tell the difference.
No laranzu on Darkover . . . And whatever he said would be trusted so absolutely that men might live or die, kings go to war or make peace, based upon a simple word.
How many times had his father used the Gift and watched certainty dissolve into bewilderment, accusers themselves become the accused, men and armies turn away from their own ends and become instruments of another’s will? Had his uncle, King Damian, stood in the blue light and lied and been believed? Had his cousin, Belisar?
A shudder passed through Eduin as he realized that this was the reason Damian and Belisar had died, this terrible secret. Not ambition, not misjudgment, not lack of military power. Only a trick of fate had spared his own father, who had lived on as a crippled, revenge-obsessed fugitive.
The Deslucido Gift was a weapon too terrible to wield, far more than crystalline bonewater or even whatever dreadful laran machinery had created the Cataclysm at Hali Lake. These things destroyed a man’s body, perhaps even his mind. The Deslucido Gift struck at the trust that bound men together and made them more than vicious beasts.
Only men sing, only men dance, only men weep. So went the ancient proverb. Only men place their lives and honor in each other’s hands.
All this, he could undo with a word. He trembled with the knowledge.
No one else seemed to have noticed, although the room had fallen silent. General Marzan glanced at Julianna as if to ask if she were satisfied. After a long moment, she nodded, dismissing Eduin to return to his chambers.
As he heard the door of their room close behind him, Eduin felt a strange, dark jubilation. Varzil now stood condemned in the eyes of Queen Julianna. She would never believe Varzil had innocent motives for descending into the lake. Her canny mind would put together the Cataclysm device and Varzil’s role in rebuilding Cedestri Tower. Indeed, she would see Varzil’s shadow over Kirella, over Asturias to the north, reaching even now toward Valeron itself. . . .
Eduin found Saravio slumped, barely conscious, in a chair. Saravio’s hands twitched as if jolts of energy coursed through his fingers. His eyes had rolled up in his skull, showing crescents of white between half-parted lids. Julianna’s guards must have left him there, in all likelihood unwilling to have anything further to do with him. Many soldiers were frightened of madness, as if it were some disease that might infect them, too. Perhaps they saw the mark of the gods as unlucky.
“Poor fool,” Eduin murmured and he drew Saravio’s arm across his shoulders and hefted the other man to his feet.
Saravio retained just enough shreds of consciousness to stumble to his bed. As he had so many times before, Eduin loosened his clothing and arranged his arms and legs. On impulse, he laid one hand along the side of Saravio’s neck. He felt the skin, clammy with sweat, and the thready leap of pulse along the artery.
With the physical touch came a wave of mental images. A figure drifted slowly across a landscape the color of ashes. For a moment, Eduin did not recognize Naotalba, her form was so colorless and translucent. Even the light overhead was slowly fading, quenched, exhausted.
Eduin reached out his mind to the phantasmic form, but even as his fingers brushed the outline, it vanished. Poor Saravio, he had not even enough mental energy to preserve the image of his goddess.
Under Eduin’s fingertips, Saravio’s pulse stuttered. Once or twice, he thought it had stopped entirely, but it went on, caught in a ragged dance. He did not know if Saravio would ever waken again, or if he did, whether he would even know his own name or where he was.
Go in peace, he prayed. You have served me well. There is nothing more you can do.
Although it chilled him to the bone to do so, he was already thinking what use he might make of Saravio’s death, how he could make it seem that Varzil had a hand in it. Julianna would be furious that King Carolin’s agent could reach into her own castle and take a man’s life. But at this moment, he felt too heart-sick to care.
A gentle tapping on the outer door roused Eduin from his musings. He left Saravio to see who it was, but before he reached the door, it swung open and Callina slipped in. She carried a small dark box that he recognized instantly as a telepathic damper.
“I am so sorry to disturb you. Is he asleep?” Callina tilted her head toward the bed where Saravio lay. “What a terrible ordeal he must have gone through! Who would have thought that behind the mask of goodness lay such a monster? Varzil, I mean,” she added quickly.
“You are convinced, then, that the Keeper of Neskaya moves with evil purpose against Valeron?”
“How could anyone doubt it? It could not be more plain if I had been there at Hali Lake and seen with my own eyes! But I am forgetting myself. Here, I brought him this,” she held out the telepathic damper.
“I know that Sandoval the Blessed has laran,” Callina said, “and that is in part how he accomplishes his healing work. Now he is the one who requires rest and quiet. This damper will insulate him from any outside mental energies. It will also make it difficult, if not impossible, for him to use his own abilities. Therefore, his mind can rest completely, which it must in order to recover.”
Eduin listened with a carefully respectful expression while she explained what it was and how to operate it. He was long familiar with such devices. Since his early years at Arilinn Tower, he had used one in his own chamber at night to prevent any inadvertent thoughts or fragments of dreams from betraying him. Later, he had found that the insulation granted a blessed respite from the continual need to appear other than he was; within its influence, he could at last relax. Only with Dyannis had he known such peace.
“I thank you for your concern, vai leronis,” Eduin said, “but I fear that not even your magic can help him.”
A glimmer of fear passed over her features, as quickly suppressed. “Then I must see him immediately.”
Callina bent over Saravio’s sleeping form. She went about monitoring his condition in an orderly, competent manner, although clearly this was not her strength. There was no danger if she discovered some lingering trace of Naotalba, if such still existed in the emptiness of Saravio’s mind, for he had often spoken of the Bride of Zandru. As for what Eduin himself had done, he had no fear. After all, the Keepers of Hestral and Hali Towers, far more skilled than this young leronis, had failed to detect what his own father had done to him. He was safe on that account.
Callina worked slowly and carefully, often pausing to search more deeply. At last, she sighed and drew back. “Alas, I fear you are right. I would send for Tomaso, our monitor in the Tower here, but I do not think there is anything he can do, either.”
“You will not insist on a physician
?” Eduin asked, furrowing his brow.
She smiled, a little sadly, and shook her head. “No, I understand why you would not want that. With your permission, however, I will inform Lady Romilla, so that she might prepare herself.”
Eduin nodded assent. Before she left, Callina set the telepathic damper beside Saravio’s bed and turned it on. Eduin felt the familiar blanketing silence. After living so long without such a device, it now felt as if he were suddenly rendered half-blind, half-deaf.
40
Eduin awoke, sweating heavily. He thought he had been dreaming, or wandering in the Overworld, although he could not remember why. Flame and ash and a terrible sense of suffocation enveloped him. He struggled to sit up, pulling away the twisted bedcovers. As he filled his lungs, breath after gasping breath, it seemed his chest had gone brittle, a cage of twigs, and that the pounding of his heart might shatter it at any moment.
The nightmare must be the result of sleeping within the field of a telepathic damper. After all, he had lived so long without it that it would naturally take time for his mind and body to readjust. He told himself that the effects, while unpleasant, would soon pass.
By the light streaming through the single narrow window, the time was well into morning. He had slept longer than he intended, but in this season of long days and lingering twilights, that was of no matter. There would be plenty of time to do whatever must be done that day.
Yawning, he dressed. In the night, one of the servants had taken away his clothing, washed and folded it, and laid it neatly on the small chest. The shirt smelled of sweet herbs. He held it to his face for a moment, remembering when he had taken such pleasures for granted, clean clothing, a warm bed, well-cooked food. Sometimes, in the long years of hiding, a crust of moldy bread and the meager shelter of a half-crumbled wall had seemed like luxuries.
Varzil, it was Varzil who had taken away everything good and bright in his life.