He reached out his hands and Dyannis placed hers on them, his palms cool under her fingertips. The physical touch catalyzed the mental contact. She needed no words of description, no explanation, no interpretation of what had happened. She poured forth the memory of her experience at the lake, knowing that he sensed every detail as vividly as if he had been there himself.
The sharing took only an instant. Raimon shivered as he broke the physical link.
“What you have seen is indeed of grave importance,” he said aloud. “We must find out what is going on down there. I will reschedule tonight’s work.”
Dyannis nodded. The short distance from Tower to lake meant nothing to a full working circle under the guidance of a Keeper, particularly one as strong as Raimon. Together they had mined precious metals from deep within the earth and shifted cloud patterns in the skies above. Moreover, every one of them was familiar with the lake under normal conditions. Surely, their combined mental talents would unravel this puzzle.
That night, Raimon summoned the circle of Hali Tower. Halfway up the stairs leading from the common room, Dyannis swore gently under her breath. The hem of her robe had pulled loose again and she’d almost tripped and broken her fool head.
She bent to inspect the offending stitches. After all this time, you’d think I could sew a decent seam, she thought ruefully. She knew it was her own doing, that she would not take the trouble to learn properly. There was always something to do that was more interesting or important than sewing. Some of the older women in the Tower had maidservants to do such tasks, but Dyannis found their constant fussing an even greater burden. As she had so many times before, she simply tucked an extra fold under her belt and went on.
Dyannis had already forgotten the torn hem as she swept past the corridor that led to the Keepers’ wing. Only one of the three suites was currently occupied, and since the death of Dougal DiAsturian, no one had the heart to even broach the subject of turning his rooms to other uses.
A narrow stair took her up two flights to the smallest and most heavily shielded workroom in the Tower. Through the open door, she heard the murmur of voices. She paused for a moment to collect herself. On her heels came little Ellimara, wearing a thick shawl over her long white monitor’s robe. At thirteen, she was the youngest full member of Hali Tower, but she was of pure Aillard blood and strongly Gifted.
Raimon looked up as they entered. “Ah, there you are.”
Dyannis shot Ellimara a quick smile. Thanks to you, sweetling, I am not the last to arrive. Her disregard for punctuality had long been the source of jokes.
Ellimara blushed prettily and went to take her place on the benches along the far wall. As monitor, she would remain apart from the circle itself. Immersed in the mental unity, the workers lost track of their own physiological functions. It was her responsibility to keep them healthy and their channels clear, free to pour all their concentration and power into the joining of minds. No tense muscle or stuttering heartbeat, no fall in oxygen or fluctuation in hormonal levels must interrupt that unity, lest the backlash endanger them all.
Dyannis slipped into her place around the oval table. In the center sat the matrix lattice, an array of linked starstones, which would focus and amplify their natural laran. It glittered as if lit from within, a crystalline fairywork of tiny starstones, linked and attuned to their purpose.
The circle was at full strength tonight, six workers plus Raimon as Keeper. Two more made up Hali’s community, but a circle of nine was beyond his present skill, and they had not enough for two circles, even if they had a second Keeper. They often worked with only five, when others were needed for the relays or were barred from active work due to illness, exhaustion, or in the case of the women, the onset of their monthly cycles.
Hali is not the only Tower to be reduced to a single working circle, Dyannis reflected. Her glance met that of Alderic, who had lately come to Hali. He had ridden with King Carolin in his struggle to regain the throne, and in his thoughts, she sometimes heard the echoes of the dying minds of those leronyn who had fought on both sides.
Too many lost, and too many demands on those of us who are left. Hali had once housed a dozen or more young novices, as well as those Comyn youth in need of training beyond what their household leronis could provide. Now that Ellimara had finished her training, the novices’ wing lay empty.
All things come and go in their season, her brother Varzil had said. Nothing lasts forever, neither the good times nor the bad.
Dyannis shuddered and as quickly, swept away any hint of gloom. Such vaporish maunderings were dangerous to bring to a working circle.
After a brief introduction, Dyannis repeated for the circle what had happened to her at the lake, both in words and telepathically. They were already in light rapport from their intense work together. As she spoke, she felt the individual members shift toward a working unity.
“Now, let us take a closer look at this thing,” Raimon said. He gave the signal to begin.
Dyannis set her starstone before her, closed her eyes, and lowered her mental barriers. Already she felt Rorie’s strength as a steady warmth, like the sun of high summer on the rocks by the river at Sweetwater, where she had lived as a girl. Raimon’s mind brushed hers and she settled even deeper.
Drifting layers of color swept by her, blues fading into shades of green and then gold. It always felt this way when Raimon was weaving the individual members of the circle into a single whole. Once, she’d asked Lewis-Mikhail about the colors, only to be met with puzzlement.
“For me, it’s like singing in a Nevarsin choir,” he’d said, “many voices, some high, some low, all blending together until I can’t hear them separately.”
A hint of wildflowers shifted her awareness and she felt her shoulder muscles soften and her belly relax as she drew in a deeper breath. Ellimara was settling them all for a long session. Dyannis floated on the sensation of relief and contentment. She was no longer one solitary person facing the daunting mystery of the lake, but joined into a greater whole, with strength and wisdom beyond her own. At that moment, no challenge seemed beyond their combined abilities.
Raimon began his work, taking an imprint of the pattern in her mind and channeling it to the circle. Memories rose to the surface, the things she had felt and thought that day on the lake shore. This time they seemed distant, as if glimpsed through frosted glass. She felt him sifting, setting aside her own physiological reactions, her emotions, then refining and drawing out her direct perceptions.
A ripple passed around the circle and Dyannis knew that every one of them had shared those sensations, just as if they had all been there with her, put their own hands into the cloud-water, felt the jolt of electrical power.
A faint humming, little more than a vibration, swept through her. It was familiar, if artificial—the matrix lattice resonating to the pattern that Raimon fed through it. At this point, her entire work would be to concentrate on the lattice, to feed her own laran energy into it. Of them all, only the Keeper in centripolar position directed, controlled those energies.
When she first came to Hali, old Dougal DiAsturian had been Keeper, and most of what he did was a mystery to her. More than once, she’d been chastised for resisting his command. Raimon’s touch was far more subtle, and his mind had a transparent, almost pellucid quality. She retained some degree of separate awareness as he established an anchor point here in the physical Tower and began to create a resonant bridge to the lake below.
There were many functions a Keeper performed that Dyannis understood and could well imagine herself doing, but not this. For such a spatial leap of consciousness to work accurately and safely, the Keeper must be supremely confident of his destination. He must hold the image in his mind as clearly as if he were looking at his own hand. Raimon never hesitated.
The next instant, she felt a gust of chill air, just as she had on that morning, although now it was night and her physical body was safely immured behind the Tower walls. Thro
ugh the circle’s power, she heard the soft splash of the waves and smelled the mingled odors of wet sand and river-weed.
Now, she floated above the lake, rocked by the movement of the waves. In a moment, she would feel their peculiar misty wetness. In one corner of her mind, she braced herself for the surge of eerie power—
But it never came. She remained suspended, untouched, just beyond the reach of the topmost crests. Following the stream of laran energy from her own mind through Raimon’s and then the lattice, she touched a dense barrier at the surface of the water. Trying to move through it was like forcing her way through a thicket of interwoven reeds, resilient and yet impassable. Even the joined minds of the circle could not penetrate the energy layer. Clearly, whoever had created the artificial power source did not want anyone investigating it.
All the more reason to do so, she thought.
The direct way was blocked to them. Determination and curiosity flared up in Dyannis, despite Ellimara’s soothing contact. She felt Raimon move to withdraw.
Just give up and go away? Not if I have anything to say about it!
Dyannis! Regain your focus! Do not break the unity!
With an effort, Dyannis stilled her thoughts and submerged her consciousness once more in the circle. Her emotions were not so easy to control, but she managed with an effort. She had years of experience in struggling with her unruly temper.
The resonance of the circle continued, unbroken. Her lapse had done no serious damage. For a long moment, the interwoven consciousness of the circle hovered above the lake surface. Then, with silken smoothness, Raimon lifted them into the Overworld.
Dyannis found herself standing on a plain of unbroken gray beneath an equally featureless sky. Around her rose the ghostly manifestation of Hali Tower, as insubstantial as if it had been made of water. Glancing down, she saw herself as she had appeared here many times before, in a body very like her own, clad in a soft gray robe that barely reached her ankles. Her hands hovered near those of her neighbors in the circle. Some of them looked younger or older—Ellimara appeared as a woman in her forties, and her robes were not the white of a monitor but rosy, as if the Keeper’s crimson had seeped into them.
Raimon appeared as he always did, almost androgynous, glimmering like an ageless, nonhuman chieri. His eyes met hers, and his mouth curved in a smile.
With a movement of his mind, he called the lake to them. Here in the Overworld, distance and time lost their meaning, becoming mere products of the mind. Even the Tower around them had been shaped by the thoughts of the Hali workers over the centuries, simply because they were accustomed to working within walls and felt more comfortable with a familiar landmark.
The lake, too, retained much of its physical appearance, a depression filled with roiling mists. As Dyannis looked, it seemed not only greatly reduced in diameter, but much deeper. She could not see the bottom, even as Raimon turned the cloud-waters transparent, layer after layer. The strange creatures that lived in the lake waters, half fish and half bird, flashed by as brightly colored shapes and as quickly disappeared.
To casual inspection, the Overworld lake appeared as it always had. Under any other circumstances, Dyannis would have accepted it as normal and turned away. Now that very smoothness deepened her curiosity. Raimon brought the circle’s focus closer.
A layer of psychic energy lay over the lake. It had been shaped to reflect the expectations of anyone approaching from the Overworld. A worker would see only what he thought should be there. It looked so normal that only someone with reason to be suspicious would be able to tell the difference.
Dyannis realized the mirrorlike pattern would also repulse any incoming energy. She’d studied devices like this before and had even constructed them. The barrier would use an attacker’s own energy, so that the harder he pushed, the harder he was thrown back. Only a trained Tower circle could have created it.
Who? Who would do such a thing? And why?
Raimon, too, was no stranger to such a strategy. He shaped the circle’s energy into a spear point, long and slender. Then, instead of aiming in a perpendicular manner at the barrier, he sent them skimming across it, dipping down at the narrowest angle. The tip of the point slipped beneath the outer edge. There was almost no resistance. He increased their angle of descent. A few minutes later, the barrier suddenly gave way. They had broken through.
The lake lay beneath them. Gathering the circle’s forces, Raimon shifted the thought-stuff of the Overworld. Grays darkened, contrast intensified. The mists grew thicker, lapping the shores of the lake. At the same time, shapes appeared at the bottom. They were blurred and indistinct, yet present.
Dyannis felt a surge of elation. There was something there!
Wordlessly, Raimon drew upon them for more power. She gave it freely and felt the others do the same. They moved through the ethereal waters, deep and deeper.
Below, Dyannis glimpsed a vast jagged shape. Instinct recoiled, urging her to flee. She held fast. Though it took every particle of discipline she possessed, she forced herself to examine it.
It had no physical form, neither darkness nor light. With her laran senses, Dyannis felt it as a rending, a disruption in the continuity of time.
The thing drew her, repelled her. It reeked of laran.
7
After they had rested and replenished energies drained by the long session, Raimon brought the circle back together, this time in council. They must understand what they had seen, gather more information, and decide what to do next. The final decision belonged to Raimon, as Keeper, but nothing like this situation had come up within memory. They all were acutely aware of the importance of their next actions.
As they discussed what they had seen, Dyannis suddenly recognized an undercurrent of memory, like an itch at the back of her skull, which had been nagging her all day.
“I don’t know if this has any relevance to our present situation,” she said aloud, “but this isn’t the first time I know of when something strange has happened at the lake. Years ago, my brother Varzil and I spent Midwinter season at the court of old King Felix in Hali.”
In her mind, she returned to that time, and the others, still in light rapport after their long session together, followed her thoughts. She’d been very young, newly arrived at Hali Tower and in a state of constant over-excitement. Memory flooded through her, rippling through the circle, the texture of the stone wall she’d been concentrating on while practicing her breathing exercises, the jarring clatter from below, voices raised, people running. She’d rushed outside to see two men easing her brother’s limp body from the back of a horse. Once the commotion had sorted itself out, the story emerged.
This is what had happened, she spoke to the circle with her mind.
The two men were Prince Carolin and his friend, Orain, and the drenched, bedraggled, half-drowned wretch was her own brother. The healers tended him for hours while Carolin paced the hallways, driving everyone else half-mad with his worry. At first, Dyannis assumed, as did everyone else, that Varzil had wandered into the depths of the lake and stayed too long. She’d been warned about the consequences as a novice.
But something happened to Varzil, she said, something beyond exposure to cold and lack of air. She’d known that the moment she saw him. There was a strangeness about his eyes that astonished her. This was her big brother Varzil, after all, who could hear Ya-men singing under the four moons and other things that sent her scurrying under the bedcovers just to hear of them.
Dyannis withdrew into the privacy of her own thoughts for a moment. Shortly after the incident at the lake, Varzil had tried to interfere with her first love affair, with a young laranzu from Arilinn. It had taken her a long time to forgive him.
Dyannis found it strange that she should think of Eduin now, for he had not crossed her mind in years, not since that disaster at Hestral Tower. She still believed that the entire story might never be known. One thing was certain, Eduin had been unfairly blamed. He had no powerful
friends among the Comyn besides Carolin Hastur, and at that time, Carolin had been an exile, running for his life in the wild lands beyond the Kadarin.
The lake . . .
Dyannis turned her thoughts once more to the current problem.
“What exactly did Varzil find?” Raimon asked.
Varzil had not said so explicitly, Dyannis explained, but she believed he had stumbled upon some relic of the Cataclysm, that ancient disaster that had turned an ordinary lake into the eerie marvel of today. Perhaps the psychic residue of that event still lingered in the mists, perceptible only in the depths. Varzil with his extraordinary laran might have sensed what other men, even Tower-trained, missed.
The others glanced at one another with apprehensive expressions, and even Raimon looked somber. She couldn’t blame them. Varzil was generally regarded as the most powerful laranzu of their day. How could they handle something that had almost overpowered him?
“Of course,” Dyannis said aloud to reassure herself as well as the others, “Varzil was very young then. I don’t think he’d been at Arilinn for a full year. He wasn’t expecting what he found.”
We’ll be prepared, she added mentally, with a confidence she did not entirely feel.
Raimon caught her undertone of bravado. We are not prepared yet. First we must gather information and resources. If this thing is connected to the Cataclysm event, it will be neither simple nor easy to deal with.
There it was, Dyannis thought. He had put into unspoken words the fear that stirred within all of them.
“We must do two things,” Raimon said temperately. “First, we must discover as much as we can about the energy source and, most particularly, whether it is causing the atmospheric disturbances, as we suspect.”
“Anything that powerful cannot be left for anyone to use or misuse,” Lewis-Mikhail said.
“Exactly so,” Raimon said. “Therefore, the second thing is to find out who created the energy shield and for what purpose. We must go carefully here.”