A Flame in Hali (8 page)

At least, there were times, however brief, when his thoughts were clear. There must be a way to free himself of both the enslavement of his father’s command and the numbing addiction of either drink or Saravio’s euphoric touch. He walked the outskirts of the city, to and from his days of casual labor, and considered his situation.

Gradually, Eduin’s awareness shifted. He needed a permanent solution, not a temporary respite that exacted an even higher toll. Perhaps the answer was not to dampen the compulsion but to fulfill it. For so long now, he had regarded it as an impossible task. How could he possibly attack Carolin Hastur while he was reduced to skulking in the shadows, hardly able to earn his bread for fear of revealing himself? He had never succeeded before, when he was the Prince’s companion, and Zandru knew, he had had enough opportunities.

Carolin Hastur seemed to lead a charmed life. He had survived every attempt on his life, not only by Eduin and his brother, but by his own cousin, Rakhal, who had seized the throne and sent Carolin into exile. How had the man done it?

In a strange, transcendent clarity, Eduin understood. It was not his fault he had not been able to defeat Carolin Hastur so many years ago. Something had always gotten in the way.

Not something. Someone.

A voice whispered through the hollows of his mind, not the brutal command Eduin knew so well, but nonetheless familiar, subtle and cunning:
Varzil Ridenow is the power behind the Hasturs. Without his counsel . . . Carolin will fall . . .

Eduin would not be a penniless outcast if it were not for Varzil Ridenow. He would be secure in his position as Keeper, hailed as the savior of the siege of Hestral, and Carolin would long since have been in his grave.

Varzil!
At every turning in Eduin’s life, Varzil Ridenow had managed to thwart him. It was Varzil who kept Carolin safe from Eduin’s careful plans, Varzil who had tried to prevent Eduin’s first romance with his younger sister, Dyannis, Varzil who foiled Gwynn’s assassination attempt, Varzil who secretly aided Carolin during the Prince’s long exile, Varzil who unmasked Eduin’s role in the murder of Queen Taniquel’s daughter, and betrayed Eduin during the battle to save Hestral Tower.

In order to fulfill his father’s command, he must kill Carolin Hastur, whom he once loved, but in order to do that, he must first eliminate Varzil Ridenow, whom he hated still.

As the thoughts roiled in Eduin’s mind, the knot of ice in his belly loosened. Triumph shivered through him. For the first time, he need no longer fight the compulsion. Instead, he would use it to fire his own thirst for justice.

Justice . . . and the end of Varzil Ridenow. He would have to go carefully. He had no direct access to any Tower, let alone the most famous Keeper on Darkover. A Keeper of Narzil’s ability could not be taken by surprise or killed by ordinary means. Varzil might have the resources of rank and Tower behind him, but even the most mighty
tenerézu
was mortal flesh and blood. Eduin needed a way to bring Varzil down from Neskaya, place him within reach . . . distract him . . .

And in this pursuit, Saravio would be his ally, his helper, his tool.

Traders arrived with the opening of the roads, and a party of rich
Comyn
lords walked the broad avenues in their fur-trimmed cloaks, their heads raised to the spring sunshine. The laughter of the women rose above the music. A bevy of jugglers and street minstrels accompanied them. Two young boys, twins by the look of them, shrieked in delight as they tossed a glittery ball. Their nurse, her ample skirts of fine-woven wool swirling around her, ran after them.

“Look at them,” Eduin said to Saravio. They were standing at a corner beside the door of the inn where they’d earned a few coins chopping wood and washing dishes.

Along the street, a crowd in tattered rags, many with weeping sores on their exposed skin, pressed against the City Guards. Despite the clear skies, the air carried a faint prickle like the first intimation of lightning, perceptible only to trained
laran
yet hovering on the edge of the senses.

Saravio still went cloaked. With time and Eduin’s coaching, he was rapidly losing the carriage of a Tower worker. No one would mistake him for a peasant, but he passed well among the underclass. He might have been a tradesman or a soldier, down on his luck and on the streets too long, surviving from day to day. Now, he had no difficulty finding work as a common laborer.

Saravio’s lip curled in a sneer that Eduin felt rather than saw. “They play while our people suffer.”

Our people.
Eduin wondered if he could use Saravio’s bitterness and the simmering resentments of the people to generate an attack against Varzil Ridenow. “The
Comyn
are nothing but parasites,” he pointed out. “But it is the corrupt Towers that sustain their position. Without that power, they would be nothing.”

Once Eduin had believed that the Towers ought not to take orders from kings, as if they were some breed of superior servant. Those who created
laran
weapons were the only ones with the right to decide how they were to be used. Such power ought to rule, not to serve. But the Keepers were too bound to law and tradition to see the truth, just as they had turned away Saravio’s remarkable gift. Although their reasons differed, Eduin and Saravio found common cause in their hatred of the Towers.

“Stand back!” one of the Guards cried. He had drawn a stout wooden staff instead of his sword, and he pressed it against the foremost ranks of the crowd.

“For pity!” one man cried. His shirt hung loose from shoulders that had once been broad and strong. Now the bones jutted from his body like the beams of a ruined house. “My children are starving!”

“Then you should have stayed where you belong, and not come to Thendara.” One of the
Comyn
party, a young man barely twenty, took a step toward them. He’d thrown back his cloak to reveal a tunic of elaborately patterned cut velvet, ornamented with a golden chain whose price would have fed an entire village for a year. The sun glinted on his pale hair, the color of straw with only a slight tinge of red. Eduin caught only the whiff of
laran
from the boy, not nearly strong enough to be worth training.

“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.”