The Fall of Neskaya (34 page)

“Acosta is richer than any of those,” she pointed out.

He shook his head. “In the taste of its fine wines, perhaps, but not overall. And he does not need you to hold what he already has.”

“With me at Belisar’s side, he needs only a minimal occupation force . . . and it is true, what Hawksflight lacks in vineyards, it offers in copper ore and
chervine
wool.” She tapped her fingertips together, thinking, remembering the Acosta lords, how they had looked at her as their savior. How she had pledged herself to them. She forced her thoughts back to the problem at hand. “But Hawksflight and Verdanta and High Kinnally are all rugged hills and forest, terrain which is difficult to hold.”

“Or to cross.”

“I don’t understand, uncle.”

He smiled encouragement. “You have a keen mind, even if you have not been trained to use it. These tiny mountain kingdoms have no strategic importance except as gateways to one another. And they lead to—? Where, Tani?”

She envisioned a map, the funnel-shaped location of Deslucido’s conquests, and shivered in the sudden sensation of cold.

“At first, I thought it might be necessary for me to go,” she said, lowering her eyes. “But now—” She met his gaze, unflinching. “It is not only for my own sake, for my son’s and the whole of Acosta that I refuse. Deslucido must be stopped and driven back to his own territory. Do you remember the deputation of Acosta lords who arrived just after the Hastur Council meeting last summer? They had come to beg your protection against Deslucido’s rule. He promised peace and fairness, but delivered only tyranny. Javier of Terrelind, who was as loyal a subject as any one could wish, was executed out of hand, along with his two sons. They were desperate, these men.”

Rafael’s expression shifted to questioning. “And as their Queen, how did you answer them?”

“How must I, in all honor? When Padrik placed the
catenas
on my wrist, I promised myself to the land as well as the man. My son is the only rightful King of Acosta, and I have pledged my life to restore him. If I cannot rule as a woman, am I no less a daughter of the Lord of Light? Does my duty compel me any less than a man’s? Was I not born for this, bred for it, raised for it?”

“You were, indeed, but not many men could match your courage.” After a moment, he said in a thoughtful voice, “You did not mention this to me.”

“What, and begin the argument we had already been over a dozen times?” she flared. “I myself had answered them. What cause was there to make you responsible for my freely given oath?”

“I have wronged you, niece. I thought you spoke only from vengefulness, that with a lusty new husband, you would give up your wild schemes of reconquest and be content. It would have been foolhardy to risk a single Hastur soldier in such a personal cause. But now the stakes have shifted.”

Taniquel flushed with pleasure at his apology. Then she remembered the trap at the Acosta gates. “Deslucido will not give up easily. I have seen this man in action and I fear to underestimate him. If it is war with Hastur he wants, he will bring it here, right to your doorstep, no matter how you wish to avoid it.”

“We shall see,” Rafael replied. “I am not as easy an opponent as those he has met before.”

A delicate tracing of ice laced the back of Taniquel’s neck. She remembered her dream from the morning of the messengers’ arrival. Coryn, standing surrounded in blue flames.

“Through water, you came to me,”
he had said.
“Through fire, I will come to you.”

She had no reason to think she might ever see him again. But one thing was sure. The fire would come.

T
wilight shrouded Ambervale Castle in a pearly aura and then gave way to ever-deepening shadow. Servants darted across the courtyard from the kitchen, bearing steaming platters, baskets of round loaves, soup tureens, and pitchers of hot mulled wine. Torchlight and the bustle of the evening’s meal filled the central hall.

Rumail paused at the bottom of the steps leading to a little-used wing of the castle and took two practiced breaths to still his rising excitement. The others were waiting for him, above. His first circle.
His
circle. For this he had dreamed and trained all his life.

The training room was small, its stone walls unadorned and rough-cut, following the general contours of the surrounding turret. Rumail found it a fit setting for his own Tower, austere and honest. He’d had it prepared, floor and walls scrubbed, every cobweb swept away, furnished simply but comfortably.

The two teenagers he had found on his search and the one trained
leronis,
a monitor who’d been dismissed from Arilinn some years back on some pretext or another, sat on padded benches around a bank of fine beeswax candles. Other candles in freestanding candelabra, placed at precise distances, gently illuminated the room. They provided enough light to see, but not enough to distract.

Rumail greeted them all and took his place on the last empty bench, facing Ginevra, the monitor. Together they would form the anchor points for the circle. Rumail suppressed a frown, for she refused to wear the gray robes he selected for them as emblem of their uniqueness, outward tokens of the things which would set them apart from all other Towers.

Ginevra’s white robe shone in the muted light. Now, she nodded to him—challenged him. He refused to be provoked. It was, after all, her prerogative to wear the robes of her rank, but if she saw herself as only a monitor, that’s all she would be. He hoped—no, he needed—her to be much more.

Rumail lowered his eyes to sharpen his own concentration. He had instructed his students to prepare themselves with breathing and muscle-relaxation exercises, and then to focus on the candle flames. Since the beginning of their training, he had used a candle flame as a focal point, so that ought to make the evening’s task easier.

When he dropped into a state of deeper awareness, reaching out to each of them with his
laran
, he was pleased with what he found. Each sat in a balanced way, spinal muscles relaxed, eyes unmoving on the candles, comfortable with Ginevra’s light contact. After achieving rapport with them individually, he would be ready to link them into a single unity, one which he could mold and direct as he wished.

He would be a Keeper at last.

The girl, a sullen creature he’d found in a brothel using her talents to convince each customer she was a virgin, swayed gently with the flickering of the candles. With a start, Rumail realized there was no movement of air in the room; she was manipulating the fire by adding energy to the air above it.

Darna, no. You must focus on the light, not play with it.
He mind-spoke her gently, for he did not want to discourage her. Such a talent could be valuable later. First she must learn discipline and fundamental techniques. She could not hear him clearly, not yet, but she felt his mental nudge.

Nor was she aware how easily he could pick up her thoughts. She had not yet learned to trust him as her Keeper, she barely knew what a Keeper was. And how should she, who’d led a life in which people saw her only as a thing to be used? He intensified the rapport, felt her tighten in resistance. She was sixteen, older than most Tower novices, and she had lived alone and in fear since the awakening of her talent. Any contact from outside, he knew, would be painful, but not unbearably so. He was no Alton to smash her defenses, forcing rapport.

Then, still retaining his mental grasp of the girl, he turned his attention to the boy. Kyril’s attention had also wandered, but not from boredom. The boy was simply undisciplined, had never tried to do anything more complicated than carve a piece of meat for his dinner. He was some
Comyn
lord’s by-blow, raised in a comfortable but ignorant cloth-merchant’s shop in Temora. Aldones only knew who his father was or why he’d ignored such an obviously gifted son. Maybe he’d never thought to ask or even known he’d fathered a child.

Rumail himself had never gone cold or hungry; his
laran
had been identified and trained. He had everything a
nedestro
could expect—a place in the world, training for his gift, a brother’s love. When he’d seen the boy, something had stirred in him, so that he could not have turned away even if he’d wanted to.

Kyril.
As with the girl, he kept his touch light, soothing.
Concentrate. Use the light to gather yourself. See only the point of brilliance, nothing else.

Not the itch on your backside, nor the curve of Darna’s rump, he thought to himself.

The boy squirmed on his bench, but his mind, a blur of colors, grew clearer. Rumail envisioned his own
laran
as a net, settling softly over the luminous colored globe of Kyril’s mind and Darna’s sharp-edged crystalline facets. Slowly, he gathered up the strands.

Easy, easy . . . There is nothing to fear.
He knew this next part wouldn’t be easy. Normally, by the time novices joined in a circle, they’d had years of Tower discipline. They’d studied matrix theory and the fundamentals of monitoring, they knew what their own
laran
talents were and the basics of their use. Even the youngest had extensive training in controlling their own breathing, body temperature, and muscular tension. But Rumail had to accelerate the process for these two. Ever since the lungrot plague, everything seemed to be happening ahead of schedule.

Well, Rumail thought, he’d done the best he could in this short a time. For all he knew, the traditional, lengthy methods of Tower training were unnecessary. If anyone could find a simple, direct way of creating a working unit, he knew he could. Once joined in a circle, he’d be able to directly manipulate the minds of his workers and eliminate the mental rubble that usually took years to clear away.

As Rumail began to draw them closer, Darna stiffened. Her mind recoiled, and she gasped audibly. Rumail felt her response in both mind and body. He sent out a wave of reassurance.

In response, she pulled back harder. He sensed her pain increase as the muscles in her shoulders and belly tightened. She caught her breath and held it. Ginevra moved in, easing the girl’s muscles, shifting her posture, and smoothing her breathing. Panic flared as Darna realized that she was no longer in control of her body. Ginevra held her fast.

Rumail had rarely seen a monitor take such agressive action, but he himself had only the basic level of skills. He could serve as a monitor, just as any other technician of his rank—
Keeper
, he reminded himself—but he was no expert.

Darna no longer offered any physical resistance, but her mind was as turbulent as before. Rumail had to admire Ginevra’s deftness. But why did she ignore the girl’s pain level? It was no matter, for once included in the unity of the circle, it would abate along with her psychic friction.

Kyril . . .
The boy’s mind opened to Rumail almost lazily. He had some natural barriers, but they were haphazard and easily diverted. By far, the greater problem would be that the boy himself would be unable to sustain his part of the contact.
Kyril, you must concentrate. You must hold on.

Oh . . . all right.
The thought came slurred, like a yawn.

Satisfied, Rumail deepened his rapport with the minds of his circle. Ginevra—practiced, easily flowed with him, observed the other two, and held the girl immobile. The girl’s mind darted this way and that like a hunted animal. Rumail bore down on her, caught her. For a moment, she continued to twist in his mental grasp. Then, with a flicker of mixed pain and despair, she surrendered.

The boy, the last—whatever focus he’d achieved was already shredding into bits of daydreams, memories, body sensations.

Hold!
Rumail commanded, and in the next instant, he had them all. The unity poised, currents shifting uneasily, pulling his energy in three different directions at once.

He hesitated, unsure of how to proceed. Although he’d intended this first rapport to be an initiation, a cleansing ritual, he hadn’t anticipated how fragile, how unstable a circle might be. Gathering up the minds of the members had always seemed so easy when Bernardo of Neskaya did it. There was nothing for it but to go ahead. Between the two of them, he and Ginevra had more than enough strength to control the youngsters. First, though, he needed to move them all on to a more ethereal astral plane. He signaled Ginevra to support him as he shifted the circle to the Overworld. She fed him energy and tightened her hold on the girl.

In his mind, Rumail visualized the chill gray place that lay beyond material existence. It had terrified him the first time his own Keeper had taken him there, although he knew the many safeguards in place. Its vastness, its utter lack of features had engulfed him as if he were no more than an insect. But he had learned to build structures there, using only his own thoughts, to sculpt and shape mind-stuff beyond anything material.

He saw himself lifting the circle, straining with very little movement. The girl felt like a leaden weight, the boy a sack of jelly. He would have to leap, to blast through their inertia with raw power—

Darna shrieked as if doused with liquid fire. Her agony reverberated on both physical and psychic planes.

The circle shattered. Gasping, Rumail jerked back to his own body. His eyes snapped open. Darna bent over, arms wrapped around her ample breasts, screaming over and over, scarcely pausing to draw breath. The boy lolled back, propped on one arm, blinking in confusion. Ginevra gave a little shiver, collecting herself, and glided over to the girl. She put her hands on the girl’s shoulders, but did not attempt to raise her.

Rumail tried to get to his feet, but his knees had turned to powder and gave way beneath him. He fell heavily back on the padded bench.