A Flame in Hali (28 page)

Eduin hesitated. They had not seen him yet. It was not too late to withdraw.

“Naotalba has said nothing to me concerning the blessing of babes,” Saravio said. Something of the girl’s anxiety must have roused him, for he sounded unusually alert.

“It is early yet,” the girl’s voice sank. Eduin heard the fear naked in her voice.

He stepped forward, breaking the awkward silence between them. Raynita whirled and fled into the shadows of the massive trees. Her feet kicked up piles of withered leaves.

“No babes,” Saravio mumbled. “Nothing for babes.”

“Why not?” Eduin said. Saravio’s refusal rankled unreasonably. “You had no problem helping the boy. Surely you can manage a blessing out of mercy.”

As soon as Eduin uttered the words, he realized that
mercy
had nothing to do with Saravio’s interventions. Had it been
mercy
to drive the Hali Lake mob into a killing frenzy or inflict lethal pain upon the two thieves? He stared at Saravio and wondered if this were the same man who had dragged him from the gutters of Thendara, fed him, befriended him, given him a glimpse of hope. Like Naotalba herself, Saravio seemed to have two faces. Eduin hoped he would never call upon the friend, only to be answered by the fanatic.

“Come, my friend,” he said. “It is time for rest. We have a long way to go tomorrow. We must be rested to serve Naotalba.”

“Rest,” Saravio repeated. “Yes, rest is good.”

Saravio dropped off to sleep as soon as he stretched out under his blanket beside the dying cook fire. Eduin sat gazing into the shifting orange embers, trying to still his thoughts. Sleep would not come.

Above, mauve Idriel and pale Mormallor spun their milky haloes across the sky in the opening between the inky shadows of the trees. The faint smell of river-weed and plashing of water came from the river. The echoes of Saravio’s spell resonated faintly through Eduin. The pressure inside his head receded.

Nothing for babes,
Saravio had said. Surely it would do no harm to make sure Raynita carried a healthy child. He could monitor her himself and then offer reassurance in Saravio’s name. It was a small enough favor and would mean much to her. He wondered who the father was. Raynita had never shown any particular interest in a lover, but then, how should he know? If
Tia
did not object, it was hardly his place.

Strung on a cord between the wagon and a tree, Raynita’s tent was barely wide enough for one sleeping person. He crouched beside it, for the coarse, patched cloth presented no barrier to his thoughts. Here in the shadows, he had no fear of discovery. He slipped out his starstone. A twist of pale blue fire flickered in its depths.

Raynita’s mind wandered in dreams like those of a fever victim, casting an odd distortion over her energy channels.

As easily as sliding between layers of silk, Eduin reached through the girl’s defenses. Though he probed through layers of muscle and connective tissue, he sensed no golden glow emanating from her womb. With a sickening jolt, he realized that Saravio had been right in his mutterings about Naotalba’s silence on the subject of babes.

Raynita was not pregnant. Instead, she carried a pit of sickly green luminescence deep within her belly.

This particle was larger than the one in the boy’s body, or perhaps there were several of them, aggregated together. They had lodged in one of the tubes leading to the womb, where a blood-filled sac had formed in grotesque mimicry of a true pregnancy. Very soon now, it would rupture, taking the girl’s life with it.

Eduin did not pause to consider. He shaped his
laran
into a spear-point and thrust at the clump. Before, in Jorge’s brain, the particles had flickered and gone inert. These turned molten for a terrifying moment before disintegrating into ash. Pain lanced like jagged lightning through Raynita’s dreams. Dimly, he heard her shift toward a whimper. The flash of heat died, leaving a thickened scar. Eduin did not think he could open the blockage in such delicate tissues, and he was already feeling the quiver of exhaustion.

It was enough that the girl would live. He withdrew.

Sound jarred him back to the physical world, a rustle of the dry leaves, the crackle of a twig. A figure appeared, for an instant back-lit against the faint glow of the cook fire embers. Eduin made out the old woman’s full skirts, back hunched under the weight of years. As he drew his feet under him to rise, he searched for a likely explanation for his presence here.

He cleared his throat, but she spoke first. “You are not such an evil man as you believe yourself to be, nor is your friend a simpleton. Keep your secrets; I care nothing for any man’s past. Listen to me, Eduin . . . Isoldir has wizards aplenty and no need for your Gifts. Instead, I advise you to turn your path toward the Plains of Valeron and the city of Kirella, where the Lord’s youngest daughter wanders within the prison of her own mad dreams and none can reach her. You could do worse than earn the gratitude of that family.”

With those words, she retreated into the shadows.

Eduin sank back on the ground. Kirella was home to a small but powerful branch of the Aillard clan, and Aillard was Isoldir’s sworn enemy. If he could gain the trust of the Lord there, he might well be able to use that great clan as his weapon against Varzil. Even if he failed, he still had Saravio. Together, they would find sanctuary at Kirella. That is, providing they were able to cure the daughter whose sickness had become such a well-known story.

E
duin and Saravio traveled with the musicians until they reached Carskadon, the next good-sized trading town. Only a ramshackle palisade defended the place, but crews of men worked at its repair and guards stood uneasily beside the gates. No collection of hovels marred the surrounding countryside. Cottages with neatly tended gardens and coops of barnfowl lined the road. The town itself had grown up around a central plaza, once an unpaved field where traders met to bargain, now bordered with wooden buildings, stables, inns, warehouses, craft halls. Upon their arrival, a boy driving a herd of fat
chervines
directed them to a place on the outskirts they might safely leave their wagon and find cheap feed for the horse.

The troupe gave performances in the market square and then moved on, but Eduin and Saravio remained. Eduin used their share of the takings for a room at one of the poorer inns. By then, he had formulated a plan.

“Naotalba has spoken to me again,” he told Saravio. “She has commanded me to seek out those in need of her miraculous powers. Through us, she will restore them to joy.”

“What must we do?”

“We must take on new names. We must turn away from anger and instead sow healing. Through us, Naotalba will cure the sick and make glad the hearts of all who heed her call.”

Eduin then went about advertising Saravio as a divinely-inspired healer. Since there was no Tower nearby, few of the folk had access to any medicine beyond traditional herbs. Eduin clothed Saravio in robes of solid black, “as Naotalba’s captain,” and a tightly knitted cap of the same color. The unusual garb enhanced Saravio’s charisma.

Saravio sang, while Eduin applied his
laran
skills. Together, they were able to deal with various disorders of both body and mind. After a few free treatments, they had enough work, between the townsfolk and the traders, to move to better lodgings. News of their success quickly spread throughout the surrounding countryside. People from outlying farms and villages traveled to the town with ailing loved ones, or sometimes just out of curiosity.

Soon it was time to move on, while the fair weather still held. They must not risk an early winter here. They had acquired enough coin to purchase decent clothing, two horses, and a pack animal.

From Carskadon, they descended onto the Plains of Valeron. Eduin had never seen anything so vast. The sky above the Plains was larger than he’d imagined possible. He had spent most of his life bounded by either mountains, the confines of a working Tower, or city walls. Something within him expanded, as if in response to the endless horizon. On rare occasions, he caught a glimpse of an aircar in the distance or
kyorebni
hovering on the thermal currents. Grasses bent their heavy heads in the wind, filling the air with musky sweetness. The horses snatched mouthfuls as they walked on.

Days merged into each other. At night, Saravio stared unblinking at the sky and carried on long dialogues with Naotalba, whose form he deciphered in the starry patterns.

Sometimes Eduin lay on his back, watching the moons spin their complex dances, each at its own pace, sometimes greeting one another but never touching, always apart. He felt a strange kinship with those orbs of colored light. His own life seemed to be a series of near-collisions—with Varzil, with Carolin. With Dyannis. And now with this poor benighted soul who was, for good or ill, the keeper of his sanity.

The Plains were neither entirely flat nor featureless. The Valeron River cut through the expanse, providing lush forest on either bank. They spotted it from a distance as a line of dark green. Far to the west, the river widened into the marshy area where lay the city of Valeron and Castle Aillard. Valentina Aillard, who had served with Eduin at Arilinn so long ago, came from that region. He did not know what had happened to her, whether she still served in a Tower or whether her recurrent illnesses had overcome her at last, or her family had deemed her of greater value in an arranged marriage.

Turning south along the river, they came to the walled city of Kirella. As Eduin and Saravio approached, the road broadened through a series of sprawling villages that had grown up to house workers and supply goods to the citadel itself.

Kirella was much smaller than Thendara, but just as heavily fortified. Mounted soldiers drilled in formation on the one good flat stretch of land. They passed watch-towers, set within sight of one another in a perimeter. A deep channel cut from the river ran past walls pierced by slits for archers. As they approached, an aircar rose and then sped away in the direction of the city of Valeron.

Armed guards stopped them well before they reached the bridges and demanded their business. The guards eyed their clothing and laden pack animal, clearly reckoning their wealth and rank, and let them pass.

Once inside the city, they had no difficulty finding respectable lodging. Eduin spent several days walking the streets, familiarizing himself with its various districts, listening to the people’s complaints, measuring the temper of the place. His years of hiding in Thendara had attuned him to the pulse and rhythm of the streets. With only the lightest use of his
laran,
he could sense the shadows of fear, the pinch of hunger, the belly-gnawing thirst. This was, he quickly concluded, a city on edge, but the people’s concerns went beyond preparations for battle. Few had seen actual combat, and fewer feared an immediate assault upon their own city. The stresses lay right here within their own country, centered on the citadel.

Lord Brynon held his title as a courtesy, for in truth he was Regent to his only daughter. It was the late Lady Aillard whose lineage carried the rulership of the city and surrounding lands. Only a daughter could inherit, and it was she whom Eduin had come to heal.

The castle sat upon a little rise, the only hill in the entire area. In the brightness of the day, it seemed to draw in upon itself, gray-walled and unyielding. It was, Eduin thought, a place that gave nothing, that kept its secrets. He could not have wished for a better stage to play out his little drama.

First he must set the scene. A few judiciously placed inquiries brought him the information he needed. Instead of gathering a crowd in some public place, he sought a means of entry into the higher social circles. It was not long in coming. Tales of their healing miracles along the road reached had Kirella. With his strange manner and black robes, Saravio was unmistakable. Eduin soon obtained an introduction to a wealthy cloth merchant, recently widowed.

On the night Eduin and Saravio presented themselves at the merchant’s residence, the wind blew chill and damp with the first intimations of autumn. Saravio as usual donned the black robes of Naotalba’s servant. The house with its walled gardens sat within the protective sphere of the city, within sight of the residences of the nobility.

A
coridom
greeted them at the door, branched candelabrum held aloft, and led them to the room where his master waited. The place had a deeply funereal air, more tomb than presence chamber. The merchant looked up from his seat beside the empty hearth. A single candle sat upon a table of some darkly marbled stone. Deep vertical lines marked the man’s face, as if tears had etched runnels there. Eduin sensed the man’s grief as a dammed river, stagnant and festering.

The servant asked if he should bring more light. Eduin seized the opening. “On no account discommode yourself, worthy sir. It is we who are at
your
service.”

“There is nothing you can do for me,” the merchant said in a heavy voice. “Not unless you can raise the dead. I must have been mad to agree to this meeting.”

“Sometimes our truest instincts speak through us in ways we least intend,” Eduin replied. “I do not believe it is necessary to
raise the dead
to cross the abyss of parting.”

“You speak nonsense.” Despite his words, interest flared.

“If common sense can be seen on one side,” Eduin said, holding out his right hand, palm up, “then the deepest desires of our hearts lie on the other.” He raised his left hand and extended it toward the merchant.

“Deepest desires of the heart . . .” Pain welled.

Almost in reflex, Saravio responded. He stood behind Eduin, at the edge of the cone of light cast by the candle, where his black robes blended into the shadows. Eduin felt him
reach
into the merchant’s mind.

The
coridom
departed, but his presence would have made no difference. There was nothing out of the ordinary to be seen, no incantations to be heard, no arcane rituals to be witnessed. Only someone gifted with
laran
and trained in its use could have detected what transpired.