The Children of Kings

  “Just what I said. Don’t break my concentration. Don’t put yourself at risk if I don’t come back. If Adahab’s kept his word, he’ll be waiting at Nuriya. He’ll guide you across the Sands of the Sun—”

  “I won’t go without you.”

  “Rahelle,” he said, and then realized it was no use. She’d stayed in the smuggler base. She’d turned back on the trail. Zandru’s seventh frozen hell, she’d refused to leave Nuriya. Nothing he said would change her mind.

  Surrendering, he lowered himself into the most comfortable position he could find and closed his eyes. As he’d been taught, he slowed his breathing, shifting it into his belly. His mind, already fragilely tethered to his body, began to drift.

  “I will watch over you,” Rahelle murmured. “Wherever you go and as long as you wander, I will keep you safe.”

  Gareth could not imagine how to answer. If he opened his mouth, he would not be able to speak, only to weep.

  He cast his thoughts out into the void.

  Traceries of light flashed across his inner vision, only to dissolve into looping patterns of color and movement, shapes that elongated sickeningly as he watched, now motes like tiny globules of jelly, now as solid as a stone wall, now dissolving into torrents of sleet. Crystals scintillated, drifting across his eyes. He blinked, struggling to focus his thoughts.

  Grandmother Linnea . . .

  Of all the leroni he knew, of all the trained and Gifted minds, the one he stood the greatest chance of reaching was his own Keeper. He fastened on her name, on the memory of her face and the sound of her voice.

  Grandmother! Help me!

  Again and again, he sent out his plea. Each time, he failed . . . yet with each attempt, he came away with the certainty that someone was there, just beyond his reach.

  Help me!

  If he could stretch just a bit farther . . . But he had nowhere to stand. His mind was as formless and unstable as the vortex outside, clashing and shifting into stomach-churning iridescence.

  Hold fast . . .

  Gareth could not tell if the thought was his own or the distorted echo of someone else’s . . .

  Hold fast. The words were like a tiny seed, a pebble . . . a shard of crystal.

  Hold.

  The psychic firmament shuddered under a renewed lash of whirling currents, of colors colliding and jumbling together, shapes forming and elongating and shredding into glittering crystal dust . . .

  Crystal . . . He clung to the image, clear and hard-edged, facets reflecting pale blue light, shimmers of brightness, one moment extending to the ends of the cosmos and the next, infinitesimally small.

  I am that crystal . . . I hold fast . . . The world swayed and pitched and then all chaos fell away.

  Who?

  The question almost broke his focus, it was so unexpected. The moment stretched into an eon. He floated in a void in which only two things existed: the crystal that housed a blue-white flicker and the memory of that question.

  Who calls?

  He had no idea how to answer. Who was he? What was he? What was it he needed more than help?

  In the dim under-caverns of his mind, men came riding over hillocks of sand, pale-haired men who held aloft strange devices. Wherever they passed, fire burst forth from their upraised hands. It blasted rock and tree, men and beasts, mountains and stars. The earth trembled under the galloping hooves of their horses, horses with bare skulls for heads and scorpion stingers for tails. They left behind a trail of blood that burst into crimson flames. The fire died, leaving blackened patches like charred glass.

  Who? Where?

  Around him, the blue crystal walls solidified. He felt them hold him, cradle him. The voice that spoke in his mind took on a fierce clarity.

  Where?

  He recognized the disciplined mental pattern of a Keeper, but not Grandmother Linnea. He did not know this woman—it was a woman, of that he was certain—but he had no doubt of the power that allowed her to hear him across so many miles.

  The blackened patches shrank in size, or rather his own perspective broadened, no longer some ancient desiccated seabed, but the center of a city. He struggled to visualize the steel and glass of the Terran Headquarters, the ancient walls of Comyn Tower, the spaceport as he had last seen it.

  The flames returned, wilder than before. They spread past the boundaries of the landing fields and through the surrounding Terran Zone . . . the Trade City and up the slopes to the wealthier residential areas . . . lapping at Comyn Castle . . . stone cracked under the heat . . . walls tumbled . . . men burned like torches, their bones blowing away as soot-dark dust . . .

  And above it all, huge elongated ships of gleaming metal . . . ships that belched fire . . .

  A pause followed in which he sensed the Keeper absorbing what he had just communicated to her.

  He felt a pressure in his mind, a shimmering of the faceted blue-tinted light. For an instant, he had the sensation of looking into a mirror, seeing not a literal image of his mind, but one that shared some essential quality. He could not have named it or even known until that moment that it was his. In this other woman’s mind, he saw his own.

  Then she was gone, or perhaps he was the one who left her, falling slowly but surely through a whorl of stars, until he opened his eyes and saw Rahelle smiling at him.

  29

  In her sitting room at Nevarsin Tower, Silvana roused from her trance, gasping. The images of fire and destruction still lingered in her mind. No mere dream could have affected her or evoked such fear. It had been a long time since she’d woken from nightmares of faceless, menacing figures. She had never dreamed of consuming fire or of riders who left rivers of blood and ashes in their wake.

  Her starstone lay in the palm of her hand, warmed by her skin. She clutched it to her breast, drew her shawl more tightly around her shoulders, and forced herself to analyze the situation.

  She had been working with the stone as had become her daily habit since returning from the Yellow Forest, using the matrix to amplify her natural Gift to further develop her sensitivity and control. As a Keeper, she had mastered the skills of gathering and integrating the mental energies of the people in her circle; now she forced her own mind into greater suppleness and strength. And discipline as well, to resist the lure of the heartstone.

  If the chieri can sense that space ships have landed in the Dry Towns, then perhaps I can, too.

  At first, her efforts had left her exhausted and confused. Even enhanced by the starstone, her mind did not seem capable of reaching across such vast distances. But she had persisted, partly out of stubbornness, partly out of memory of the concern in Lian’s voice.

  Weakness lapped at her, such as she had not known since her days as a novice. She needed to replenish the energy her body had expended. In a moment, she promised herself.

  While in trance, her mind had been barricaded against every starstone except her own. Yet . . .

  Yet someone had touched her mind. Not only touched her, but transmitted images of such desperation that she still reacted viscerally to their vividness.

  Nausea nudged her, a sign of her body’s depletion. She could not think clearly or act rationally in such a state. As usual, she had placed a dish of concentrated morsels within easy reach. She took a handful of dried cherries and a nut-crusted honey roll.

  The identity of her communicant she set aside for the moment. It had been a man, young she thought, but not any Tower worker she knew.

  What he had sent to her mind, on the other hand, could not be set aside. The pale-haired riders could be Ridenow, but she did not think so. That Domain was peaceful and well-regulated under its current Warden.

  They had ridden over sand . . . sand suggested the Dry Towns.

  Dry Towners, armed with weapons of such power?

  How could that be possible? The Dry Towners had n
ever possessed such things, not even during the Ages of Chaos, when the Seven Domains had been torn with laran warfare. As far as she knew, the Terranan had never traded with them—the ships Lian had spoken of, “up there, passing . . . and setting down far across the sands.”

  Stop. Breathe. Think.

  If the fiery weapons seemed fantastical, then so did the horses, with their scorpion tails and bare-skull heads. So the image could not have been an actual memory, unless the sender had been insane. The message did not bear the stamp of a hallucination. She had tended enough men whose minds had been broken to feel sure of that. No, this person was distraught, but not mad.

  So the images were not literal but metaphorical. Metaphors for what?

  Silvana downed a second cup of watered wine. The trembling in her limbs eased and her vision steadied, but she could not think what the horse-beasts and their riders might represent. They seemed like the stuff of childhood nightmares.

  She could not think what, if anything, should be done about the threat from the Dry Towns, if indeed there were one. She set aside that train of thought and turned to the images of the starships.

  . . . ships aloft, raining fire upon a city . . . a city of towers, a castle in the old Comyn style . . . Thendara, it must be Thendara . . . a broad paved expanse beyond which rose rectangular edifices of glass and metal . . . the spaceport?

  She had seen the Federation spaceport as a child. Regis had taken her there, during that brief time when it had been safe, when they had been a family together. She had seen ships like the ones in the vision, waiting to launch themselves into space. And she remembered sensing her father’s longing to take passage on them. This memory she set aside, thinking, We all yearn for things we cannot have. We all, in our own ways, must answer the demands of duty and honor.

  Whoever had sent those images believed the Thendara spaceport was at risk. Dirav and the others, had they sensed it, too?

  As to who had sent the warning . . .

  Someone who had received information that the Dry Towners had or might have obtained Compact-banned weapons.

  Someone who believed fervently that the spaceport was in danger of a devastating attack.

  Someone who had been able to reach her mind, unaided.

  Someone with the Hastur Gift.

  Silvana closed her eyes, willing her pulse to slow. Her body, disciplined by years of rigorous physiological control, responded. She wrapped the shawl around her body and shoved her feet into her felted slippers. The chamber housing the relays would be cold, particularly the stone floor.

  It was time to call her mother.

  Silvana settled herself before the relay screens, making sure her spine was correctly aligned and her shawl tucked around her to retain body warmth. Except for that one message she had been called to receive in person, she had not worked the relays in many years. In the interim, the screens had been attuned for other minds. She spared a little time to recalibrate the linkages to her own preferences. What she intended was going to be difficult enough without the added irritation of even a slight amount of distortion. She needed to be able to communicate as clearly as possible.

  When she had adjusted the matrix to her satisfaction, she entered the psychoactive crystal lattice. Although Comyn Tower had not been operational when she trained on the relays as a novice, she found no difficulty in locating it.

  Comyn Tower . . .

  She slipped into contact with the presence on the other end of the relay.

  Nevarsin Tower—Silvana, is that you? It’s Illona! The younger woman’s joy sparkled through the psychic connection.

  Silvana felt as if a constricting band had been released from around her heart. Illona Rider, who had served as her own under-Keeper, whom she loved as a daughter, had gone to Thendara as under-Keeper.

  Chiya, how wonderful to speak with you. Are you well?

  More than well! I am—Illona broke off coherent thought and projected a mental image of herself, radiant with health and happiness—pregnant!

  Silvana’s delight faltered. Could this be safe, to work as a leronis when carrying a child?

  Illona replied with an arpeggio of silent laughter. Linnea assures me that it is, as long as I allow her to monitor me regularly. I must have something useful to do or I would run away to join the Travelers again! It’s much better to do the work I was trained for.

  For a long moment, Silvana struggled to collect her own thoughts. She had been immune from the dilemma faced by so many of the women of her caste, for she had never taken a lover since entering the Tower. Now she understood how her own mother had struggled with the choice between her work as a Keeper and her family.

  How terrified she must have been when those children were being kidnapped, after everything she had sacrificed for me.

  Would Illona have easier choices? Knowing the young woman’s self-reliance and fierce spirit, Silvana doubted that she would be cowed into traditional roles.

  Forgive my outburst, Illona said. I had not expected to encounter you on the relays. Has something happened, that you are now breaking your seclusion?

  It is a matter between Keepers. Silvana sent a pulse of affection to temper the formality of her statement. I would speak with the Keeper of Comyn Tower.

  Of course. The flicker of curiosity from Illona’s mind vanished, replaced by practicality. She is not working in the circle tonight. I will bring her as quickly as I can.

  Not too quickly, for I would not be the cause of your falling down the stairs!

  I shall go carefully . . . but quickly!

  Only a short time later, the relay came alive as Linnea established connection. Silvana felt a tremendous sense of presence, of stillness, of listening. The excitement of their previous contact was gone, mastered as only a Keeper could master such feelings. Not even a hint of anxiety leaked through the linkage.

  Comyn Tower, Nevarsin sends greetings. Silvana’s greeting was overly formal, so she was a little surprised by the cordiality of the response. The words were formulaic, the phrasing traditional, yet permeated with a sense of gracious welcome.

  As Keeper of Comyn Tower and as a representative of the Keepers’ Council, I greet you in return. Again came a moment of undemanding silence.

  I have received a report—perhaps a rumor only—of a danger threatening the Domains. I cannot vouch for its credibility, only the earnestness of its source.

  What danger?

  Silvana related her analysis of the images, both the Dry Towns riders with their star-bright weapons, and the even more devastating attack from space.

  Thank you for the warning . . . for breaking your long silence, Linnea said. These reports are troubling indeed.

  Silvana agreed. Neither seems likely, but if they are true, the results could be dreadful.

  I will ensure that both possibilities are investigated. If the Dry Towners have somehow obtained illegal weaponry, the entire balance of power with the Domains is at risk. The Regent has agents who send him information from at least as far as Carthon. Perhaps they can look into the matter and either verify or disprove it.

  That will take time, Silvana pointed out.

  Time in which we can prepare, should this rumor prove accurate. As for the starships . . . we never expected Darkover to remain isolated forever. Once the Federation conflict is over, they will return for the same reasons they sought us out in the first place. Meanwhile, the scanning and communications equipment at the old base is still operable. Jeram, whom you may remember, has been training young people in its use.

  Jeram? Silvana recalled the Terran deserter as he had arrived at Nevarsin Tower, a man wounded in spirit as well as body. His friendship with Lew Alton had begun the process of healing, but when he’d left Nevarsin, she had lost track of him and knew of him only through reports. She had no idea what one person might do against devices of such appalling power,
but Jeram was a man of considerable resources. He had been a soldier, trained in off-world military technology.

  You believe your informant? Linnea inquired. On what basis? How does he or she come to this knowledge?

  Silvana hesitated. Her first intention had been only to pass on the warning, trusting that Linnea, both as Keeper and as the dowager Lady Hastur, would take the necessary steps. She was still not easy in her own mind about how much personal contact she wanted with her mother. Her sojourn with the chieri and the new knowledge that her father had indeed tried to find her had given her a new understanding.

  Silvana remembered sitting with her mother at High Windward and then in the townhouse in Thendara, making music together, their voices and minds in effortless rapport. She had always been in their hearts, as they had always been in hers. Yes, that was true, just as Lian and David and Keral and Dirav would always be with her.

  Within the little pouch hanging from its cord around her neck, the heartstone radiated a pulse of gentle warmth. She sensed it even through the layers of insulating silk. But it was not time. Not yet.

  Let me show you . . . Silvana opened her memory of that desperate mental sending. Across the relays, she felt as if her mother had clasped hands with her. Their minds joined so seamlessly that everything Silvana had seen and sensed appeared in perfect replica in Linnea’s mind. Silvana turned her thoughts to the one who had sent the warning, the man with the Hastur Gift.

  It must be Gareth. Linnea sounded distressed.

  Gareth?

  Your brother Dani’s son. I do not understand how he was able to do this, to reach you without the aid of a relay or even his own starstone . . . but there is no one else it could be. When Regis died, we all thought the Hastur Gift died with him.

  Was Gareth not tested for the Gift?

  You do not know his history. Even if his parents had agreed, the Council would never have sanctioned it. I taught him privately, as much for the discipline as for the development of the laran he would never be allowed to use.