“My good fellow,” the young lordling drawled, “did you think you’d find the streets lined with food stalls? We have nothing for you here. Go back home.”
“Home?” The man spoke with a thick accent. Anguish ripped through his cry, echoed by nods and glances from the people around him. “To what home? To a pile of cinders, all that’s left after the clingfire fell.” With one hand he jerked his shirt open. Gasps surrounded him.
Eduin’s stomach lurched at the sight of the man’s chest, scarred over where it had been cut half away, leaving his arm a skeletal ruin. He’d seen what clingfire could do. Once ignited, it would burn anything combustible, even human flesh and bone, until there was nothing left. The only way to stop it was to physically dig out every single fragment. Someone had saved this man’s life, but at the cost of his livelihood.
“What choice does he have?” Eduin muttered to Saravio. “He cannot farm with his arm like that. He came here for help, and this arrogant puppy tells him to go home!”
“I did not come for charity,” the man went on, “but to find work.”
“Work!” another man, equally ragged, shouted. “Work and justice!”
“I am very sorry for you all,” the boy said, clearly shaken, “but it wasn’t our fault—”
“Your kind sent the aircars that dropped it!” someone behind the crippled farmer cried.
“Aye, and the root blight what ruined two years’ wheat crops till we had nothing left to plant!” came another voice. More joined him as they surged forward, shoving hard against the City Guards. The incipient electrical tension of the day fueled their anger.
The Comyn women and children hurried away, their faces white. The City Guards beat back anyone who tried to follow.
Eduin smiled grimly. The legacy of Carolin’s predecessor, the brutal Rakhal Hastur, lay all about them: injustice, hunger, disease, the ravages of terrible laran-powered weapons.
The time of the Hundred Kingdoms was coming to an end, if not in this generation, then surely in the next. Even a fool could see that. These wars were the dying spasms of an age. Even now, a few powerful families extended their dominion over weaker client kingdoms.
King Carolin of Hastur had become foremost among them. He might have been a good man once, but the world, with all the allure of power, now had him in its grip.
Soon there would be no one to stop him.
His father’s words echoed in his memory: Varzil Ridenow is the key. Without his counsel, Hastur will fall . . .
The crippled farmer stood, watching where the rich lords had passed. His chest heaved with emotion, his face flushed. Desperation radiated from his twisted body like heat from a furnace. Some of the crowd dispersed, but a number of them, particularly the men, remained. They seemed to be drawn to his intensity, as if he had been telling their stories as well as his own.
An idea formed in Eduin’s mind. Gesturing to Saravio to follow, he strode toward the crippled farmer.
“That was courageous of you to speak so to a Comyn lord,” he said, pitching his voice so that all around could hear him.
The farmer narrowed his eyes. Adrenaline and color drained from his features. His one good shoulder hunched, as if he would slink away.
Eduin restrained him with a gentle touch on the arm. “It is a black day for all of us when a man cannot speak the truth or demand justice.”
“Whether he will receive or not it is another matter,” Saravio added.
Eduin stepped into the open area in the center of the street. With a simple twist of the ambient psychic energy, he cast a glamour about himself, so that he drew all eyes to him. He could speak in a whisper, and every word would be remembered.
“Whether or not he will take what is his due is yet another,” Eduin said. The men around him were as clear to his laran as if they had shouted their feelings aloud. Anger and curiosity surged above their ingrained fear.
The farmer rubbed his withered shoulder with his good hand, as if measuring his own human power against the sorcery that could create such a weapon as clingfire.
“What’s the use? What can any of us do against the mighty lords? And what will befall my children if I’m arrested, without even the few poor reis I now earn?”
One of the men muttered, “What are we to do? They feast while our children starve.” Around him, the other men and women nodded. Their eyes glowed with eagerness.
“And why is that?” Eduin asked. “What gives them the right to take the best of everything for themselves? Are they gods, to decide who shall live and who shall die? Do they burn with the clingfire they command?”
“No!” a woman with a pock-marked face cried. “We starve! We burn!” Her simmering anger flared suddenly.
“I’ll hear no more of this treason,” a grizzled fellow with one eye patched said, drawing back. Although his cloak was as dirty and ragged as any, he held himself like a soldier. “I fought for King Carolin, who brought an end to Rakhal’s reign of terror. Now he and Varzil, him they call the Good, they’ve got this Compact, they say, that will end these terrible wars forever. Let honest soldiers fight as they can, and leave the wizards to their own.”
“Do you really believe that the high lords will give up their best weapons?” the woman rounded on him. “That they care a filthy reis about the likes of us?”
“Hold your tongue, woman,” the grizzled man rumbled, gesturing toward Saravio and Eduin. “The King’s worth a hundred of the likes of them, and if he says he will bring peace to all these lands, that’s what I’ll hold to.”
“Let us speak more of this,” Eduin said urgently. “But not here in the open, for their spies are everywhere. Meet us tonight in a safe place—the inn called The White Feather.”
“Aye, we know the place,” one of the other men, a farmer by his clothing, said. “The folk there are honest enough, or as much as any can be in these times.”
Quickly, Eduin set a time. He scanned the dispersing group with his mind. Hope flared in them, an excitement beyond what he’d expected. Someone had gently fanned the embers of resentment into exhilaration.
Saravio.
The red-haired man stood with unfocused eyes. Eduin picked up the ripple of laran power emanating from his mind, and was monitor enough to sense the almost euphoric response in the crowd.
Eduin spoke to Saravio several times before the other man seemed to hear him. Saravio blinked, as if rousing from a sleep, and showed no sign that anything out of the ordinary had occurred.
“We must make preparations at The White Feather,” Eduin said. “The innkeeper’s wife will surely remember you with favor.”
“How could she not?” Saravio said as they made their way back through the mazework of narrow streets. “Yet, I do not see what purpose a secret meeting will serve. These are poor, ignorant folk. Useless.”
“Useless to the great lords in their palaces, certainly. Perhaps even to you or me,” Eduin paused for dramatic effect. “But not to Naotalba.”
As he’d expected, Saravio jerked alert at the name.
Eduin rushed on. “She brought me to you, didn’t she? Just as she has now brought these men—this army.”
“Naotalba’s army? But, Eduin—these are not soldiers. They dress in rags. They have no weapons, no training. What could they possibly do?”
“That is the wrong question, my friend. It is rather what Naotalba can do with them. Do you doubt her power?”
They turned down the street, slightly broader than the rest, which would bring them to The White Feather. Saravio tripped on a cobblestone that had been turned on its end in the muck, jutting upward. Eduin caught his elbow, steadying him.
“I am her servant, always,” Saravio declared. “It is not for me to question her ways.”
“It is glorious to walk in the path of Naotalba,” Eduin intoned. He despised himself for pretending a devotion he did not feel, to feed Saravio’s delusions.
Once, Eduin had prayed to Zandru, Lord of the Seven Frozen Hells. Most Comyn
honored Aldones, Lord of Light, fair Evanda, or the Dark Lady, Avarra. What did it matter which one he invoked if the cause was right? He remembered the woman of Saravio’s vision and shivered inwardly. She could be dark or light, hope or despair, depending upon which aspect of the myth he drew upon. She was imaginary, a dream image, nothing more. Surely he need not fear such a thing. . . .
At the mention of Naotalba, Eduin felt an answering ripple of psychic energy from Saravio. For a moment, he allowed himself to enjoy it. It would be a simple enough thing to block the sendings, to keep himself unaffected while those around them felt whatever Saravio sent them. Pleasure . . . pain . . . elation . . . fury . . .
“Naotalba’s army,” Saravio murmured. He halted at the threshold of the inn and bent his head reverently. “Here it begins.”
Naotalba’s army, Eduin repeated to himself. A few desperate refugees tonight, perhaps, but tomorrow, their numbers would swell. An army, indeed. One to topple even the Keeper of Neskaya Tower.
5
The flush of pleasure on the face of the innkeeper’s wife at seeing Saravio faded when Eduin explained what they wanted.
“The back room? For a private meeting?” She looked from one to the other. Fear lurked behind the bruise-colored hollows around her eyes. The skin of her neck hung in loose folds and her apron, although clean, had been worn almost to tatters and looked several sizes too large for her.
Eduin caught a fragment of her thoughts, the worry about how much ale might be drunk and how much bread eaten, how much she might be able to charge without overstepping the bounds of gratitude.
“We cannot pay you for the room,” Eduin said in his most soothing tones, “only for food and drink, but if that is not enough—”
Saravio nudged the woman’s mind. “No, no!” she cried, clearly distressed. “What must you think of me? How could I take payment from the man who did so much for my Nance?”
Before Saravio could mention the glories of Naotalba’s service, Eduin pulled him away. Saravio was all too eager to stop whatever he was doing to praise his goddess, without any regard to urgency.
“We must make plans for tonight,” he told Saravio as they made their way back to their tiny rented room. “These people are frustrated and angry. They lack direction or leadership. Left on their own, they will spend their strength uselessly and then scatter like chaff upon the wind.”
Saravio went to the small brazier and poked through the bed of cold embers for any unburned bits of charcoal. “Naotalba’s foes are many and we are but few. Yet her might will prevail. This much she has promised me.”
Eduin chose his next words carefully. “Listen to me, my friend. There is more at stake than extolling Naotalba’s name. She has sent us to transform the world.”
“She has?”
“You yourself said it when we first met. It is the Towers who maintain the power of the Comyn lords, the Towers who supply them with terrible weapons like the clingfire that destroyed that farmer’s arm. If we kill one king, even Hastur himself, what then? They will only choose another. But if even a single Tower were to fall—”
“What?” Saravio cried with a surge of his old Tower-born arrogance. “Commoners rise against trained leronyn?”
If Eduin were to succeed with his plan to enlist Saravio against Varzil Ridenow, then he must find a better way to convince him.
“Are you defending them?” Eduin snarled, deliberately provoking a confrontation. “Have you been lying to me about how the Keepers treated you, thrust you out, turned their backs on Naotalba’s summons?”
Saravio whirled, eyes blazing. The air hummed, taut and dry. Eduin felt the tiny hairs along the back of his spine stiffen. His laran senses quivered with the shift in the atmosphere. With that inner sight, he saw the sky lowering, felt the massing of electrical power. This was no natural storm, of that he was sure. He lifted his head, nostrils flaring as if to catch a distant scent. At any moment, the tension would break.
Before Saravio could speak, Eduin raised his arms, spread them wide to the unseen heavens. “Naotalba!” he cried, his voice filling the little room. “Hear our prayers! Come to us—lead us—command us! We are yours!”
Saravio drew back, his eyes wide. Eduin drew breath to repeat his incantation, but just then, the very air split asunder in a deafening thunderous peal. His ears rang with it, even after it had died into rumbles. Through the papered windows, cold white brilliance burst across the room.
“Naotalba! Naotalba!” Saravio fell to his knees, hands outstretched, palms up, head flung back. He shook so violently that Eduin feared he might be on the brink of another seizure. His eyes showed as crescents of white. Again and again, he called out. Each time, the syllables became less understandable, until they merged into a single howl of raw emotion.
Eduin clamped down his laran barriers, lest any tinge of Saravio’s frenzy seep through. Deliberately, he strode to the door and opened it. Only a portion of the sky showed between the dark outlines of the buildings, yet that strip flickered with lightning. Thunder roared again, light and sound so intermixed that the storm must be directly overhead. The air shimmered with power.
He tasted ozone . . . and raw laran power. In his Tower work, he’d manipulated clouds and air currents to either bring rain to a parched region or lessen a torrent. He felt certain that some artifice fueled the storm, but the traces were too deep and subtle to identify. Only a few generations ago, Aldaran sorcerers commanded weather patterns beyond the power of ordinary Towers; some said they were even able to tap into the magnetic fields of the planet. He had never believed it possible, and he did not believe it now, yet some quality of the turbulence overhead, the tension between sky and ground, made him think of armies massing for attack, of weapons being readied.
At Hestral Tower, Eduin had designed and constructed an artificial matrix to focus and direct the natural weather-sensing talent of a young laranzu. Whatever happened to the boy, Eduin never learned, for shortly thereafter, Rakhal’s army had attacked and all had fallen into chaos. Now he stretched out his mind to the storm, searching, and came away more puzzled than before. It had none of the personal stamp of the young Tower worker, or of any other individual, for that matter.
Eduin drew away from the door, suddenly weary. In the last few tendays, he had used his laran more than he had in the last ten years. His muscles quivered, and he knew he should eat, despite his absence of appetite. So should Saravio, who rarely gave thought to such matters. Laran work consumed huge amounts of energy, which must be replaced. Eduin’s thoughts wandered to his early days at Arilinn, where Lunilla, who acted as foster mother to all the novices, would pester him until he’d eaten enough to satisfy her. She always had a kind word for him, and never guessed the secrets behind his smiles. What would she think if she could see him now?
Useless musings, he told himself. Wherever she was, if indeed she still lived, they would never meet again.
On the floor, Saravio had fallen forward, his face hidden under the fall of his hair. He rocked forward and back, crooning to himself. Fine tremors ran through the muscles of his shoulders and legs. Even through his shirt, Eduin saw the outlines of Saravio’s ribs.
You need food and rest, my friend, he thought with an unexpected tinge of compassion. He placed one hand on the other man’s back—
Once again, the image of the woman with the face of ice, dressed in a gown of moonless black, rose up behind his eyes, a sending from Saravio’s mind.
Naotalba . . . Naotalba . . . Saravio’s thoughts battered him like the relentless rhythm of a drum.
This time, however, the vision did not catch Eduin by surprise. His confidence in his own mental abilities had returned along with the rush of memories—of who he had been at Arilinn, at Hali, and especially at Hestral, when he had thrown back Rakhal’s army.
Why not use Saravio’s own visions to ensure his cooperation? Saravio so clearly needed a cause to which to devote himself. Why not let Naotalba herself supply one?
He would have to proceed with caution, weaving his own intentions into the other man’s hallucinations. Closing his eyes, he dropped to the floor and drew out his starstone.
As carefully as he could, Eduin began shaping the visual images. Saravio was so caught up in the frenzy of his belief that he accepted the changes without question. Eduin imagined the woman—Naotalba—lifting her arms in summons. He showed her at the head of an army of men and women, all gazing at her with rapt, worshipful eyes, all ready to die—or to kill—at her command. She pointed to Saravio and from her mouth came the words Eduin placed there.
“You will be my champion. You will lead my army. You will throw down my enemies and bring the dawning of a new age!”
“Naotalba! Naotalba!” Saravio’s physical body crouched even lower. In the vision, he prostrated himself before her. “I am yours to command!”
Slowly, the pale-skinned woman smiled. Eduin drew the moment out to heighten Saravio’s desperate loyalty.
“Tell me, I beg you! How may I serve you?”
Eduin painted a landscape of mental energy. Naotalba and her ragtag army stood upon a ruined plain. Steam rose from rents in the parched earth. The sky lowered, red and congested, above them. A wind, tinged with ice from Zandru’s coldest hell, pulled at their hair and clothing. The vision-Saravio moaned and pressed his face against her foot.
“Arise, my general. Arise and see!”
She turned, pointing. Eduin shaped a rocky tor, and upon its peak, a Tower. He imagined it as white and smooth, like Hali. He showed the people crying out in despair. Then lightnings flew from the hand of Naotalba, lacing the air. When they touched the sides of the Tower, the resulting explosions left jagged fissures. Fragments of wall tumbled down and the Tower rocked upon its foundations. The people cheered wildly. They waved their fists and stamped their feet. Frenzy lit their faces.