Zandru's Forge (31 page)

As one season followed another, Varzil’s own life had settled into a new pattern, a cycle of work and friendship, the slow progression of lessons that brought him further along his path toward becoming a Keeper. There was no longer any doubt that he would. Pride had long since given way to a healthy appreciation of the strenuous dedication involved. Sometimes it seemed he did nothing but work, sleep, and study. Nights melted into tendays, and every once in a while, like today, Lunilla would order him outside.

“You don’t see enough of the sun!” she’d scold. “Next thing, they’ll be calling you the Hermit of Arilinn, the Keeper no one has ever seen!”

“But there is so much more to do,” he’d offer in explanation. He meant not only the routine tasks of the Tower, which all too often these days included receiving and tending those victims of the latest plague, whether poisoning from bonewater dust or some natural illness. Last summer, they had nursed a dozen children from the Lake District, stricken with muscle fever. Beyond the continuing struggle to improve his skills and deepen his knowledge, there was the search for ways to use
laran
to promote peace instead of war. Even if he could not speak to Carolin face-to-face, their dream lived on in his own work.

Lunilla, however, would not be dissuaded. “The work will be there whether you are rested or not. The only difference will be your ability to do it! Out with you, into the fresh air! Go for a walk, look upon a strange face, think of something besides matrix lattices and channel balancing for a few hours!”

He walked toward the city, noticing the stiffness in his legs. Lunilla was right; he wasn’t getting enough exercise. His body was young enough to be forgiving, but the long hours of immobility, combined with the intense concentration and energy drain of circle work, would eventually take their toll. He had been putting off attending to such things. There would be time for them later.

At least until the next war breaks out.
In a way, it already had. Isoldir and Valeron had clashed, and even Arilinn was now called upon to make
clingfire
from time to time. At home, Serrais was beset with Dry Towns bandits on one quarter and ambitious neighbors on the other. Kevan and several other men had been killed in a border raid, following the death of old
Dom
Felix. Varzil had not returned home for the funeral because travel was too dangerous. His brother Harald now ruled as Lord of Sweetwater.

Varzil set a brisk pace into the city, stretching and warming his muscles. He lifted his arms, making circles with his shoulders. The joints in his upper back crackled.

The morning market was almost empty, the winter crops sold. At this season, there remained only hard-shelled squashes and root vegetables, a few hothouse herbs, things that could be stored in cellars over the frozen months. It would be a few tendays still before the first of the spring greens appeared.

Greens and tonic,
Varzil thought wryly,
that’s exactly what I need.

“Dom
Varzil!” came a woman’s voice from one of the shops bordering the square. He recognized the baker’s wife, her hair tied back under a white kerchief, sleeves rolled to the elbow and a dusting of flour on hands and across one cheek. She grinned as he strolled over.

“And a fine afternoon it is to you, too,” he answered in the same lilting tone.

She flushed a shade redder as he stepped inside the shop. The warm air swept over him, laden with the yeasty smell of bread and the sweetness of honey and spicebark. Behind the worn but freshly scrubbed counter, the shelves were three parts bare. A slatted wooden tray bore only a single spiral bun. The sight of the pastry, glistening under a light honey glaze and studded with nuts and candied pear, made his mouth water.

Before Varzil could protest, she snatched up the bun and placed it in his hand. “You’re much too thin,” she said, sounding just like Lunilla. “Don’t they feed you up there?”

Varzil ignored her question and bit into the bun. Though not as heavily sweetened as Lunilla‘s, there was a perfect balance of the light, cheery bread and the concentrated flavors of nut, fruit, and spice. Wishing there were another for him to purchase, he dug into his belt pouch for a coin.

“Put that away!” the baker’s wife snapped. “I’ll none of it! After what you did for my sister’s boy when he was took so bad, you should have a thousand buns and still not be owing!”

She was so vehement, he dared not contradict her. Some of the Tower workers accepted gifts or ordered things specially made without paying for them, as their due, but Varzil didn’t like to do so. His tastes were simple, and between the little money he had of his own and the stipend he received for certain kinds of dangerous work—making clingfire, for instance—he could buy whatever he needed. He wondered irritably why he should be treated like a demigod because he had one talent and not another, laran instead of horsebreaking or metalsmithing or baking like this woman’s husband. But it would have been ungracious to say so or to refuse her gratitude.

He kept his eyes from the racks of bread, lest she press more upon him, and asked about the news of the town.

“Ah, the usual!” she said, clucking her disapproval, but whether it was of the gossip itself or the doings being gossiped about, he could not tell. “Looks to be an early spring, which means late summer storms and half the harvest ruined if it’s left too late.” At his quizzical expression, she added, “My da still farms wheat and oats away south. He’ll keep out extra for us, though, so there’ll be no lack of good bread for you. We take care of our own.”

Just then, another customer came into the shop, a harried-looking woman wrapped in three threadbare shawls, one layered on top of the other. She asked in a low voice if there were any bread left over from yesterday’s baking, and while the two were discussing the price, Varzil slipped out the door.

He spent the next hour contentedly strolling Arilinn’s twisted lanes, watching people scurrying out on errands during the few hours of relative warmth, packs of children darting here and there to shrieks of delight. He took the coin he would have given to the baker’s wife and left it in the hand of a beggar, wondering where the man went at night. Now and again, he picked up snatches of conversation or quickly-masked scowls. While the baker’s wife, whose nephew had been saved during a bout of lung fever, greeted him happily, not all the inhabitants of Arilinn felt that way. Sometimes, he caught phrases like, “damned sorcery” or “mind tricks,” and those not spoken kindly.

Why do they fear us?
he had asked Auster after one such disturbing episode.

They do not know us,
was the answer.

You will get used to it,
Auster had said serenely.
Our work requires us to live apart; there is no cure for that. The Tower can be a necessary refuge.

A refuge or a prison?
Varzil still wondered. Was it possible, or even desirable, for people of talent and power to separate themselves from the rest of humanity?

Varzil was still lost in thought as he turned his steps toward the Tower. He was drawn back to reality by a mounted party approaching the gates. There were four armed men on good horses, bearing a pennant he did not recognize. They surrounded two ladies, one of them a person of some importance by her bearing, the quality of her long cloak and her palfrey’s beautifully ornamented gear. Varzil caught up with them just as the guards were helping the lady to dismount.

As he lifted his eyes to hers, his first impression was one of merriment. She was veiled as befitted a proper
Comynara,
but lace could not hide the sparkle in her eyes. They were green, slightly tilted, and alight with interest in everything around her. She met his gaze boldly.

“I’m Felicia of Nevarsin.”

“I‘m—Varzil Ridenow.” He stared at her, feeling slow-witted. With a flicker of his gaze back in the direction of the Tower, he added lamely, “Under-Keeper, First Circle, Arilinn.”

Her smile deepened, revealing a small dimple at the left corner of her mouth. She tucked a stray auburn curl behind her ear. “You correct me so tactfully, Varzil of Arilinn. I was and suppose I still am, until matters are arranged otherwise, matrix mechanic of the Second Circle at Nevarsin. We’ll see what use your Keepers can make of me.”

Without waiting for assistance, she kicked her feet free from the stirrups and dropped lightly to the ground. She had, he noticed, been riding astride, and she handled herself in an easy, graceful way. Once on her feet, however, her color paled. She clutched the saddle with one hand, covering her mouth with the other to smother a cascade of coughing.

Are you ill,
domna?

“I was ill,” she replied aloud, “and if I stand out here for much longer, perhaps I will be again. Would you please give instructions for my escort?” She turned toward the inner courtyard and the Veil. “And Varzil, as soon as I am able, I intend to take my place in the circle like everyone else. It is hardly seemly for you to call me
domna
as if I were some overdressed plaything and not a trained leronis.”

Her words stung him into action. In short order, he arranged for quarters outside the Tower for her men, stabling for their mounts, and
kyrri
to carry her belongings aloft. He remembered that a new leronis was due to arrive from the Tower at Nevarsin, but not for a tenday or so. He didn’t know anything about her, other than she had suffered some lingering damage to her lungs from a fever last winter and it was thought the milder climate of the Plains would do her good. The winters at Nevarsin were legendary for their brutal cold.

When all was settled below, Varzil came up by the rising-shaft to the common room that now formed the heart of his Tower family. Felicia perched on the very divan where he had sat, with Lunilla clucking over her and plying her with a hot drink. Varzil grinned, remembering.

Felicia looked up, caught his expression, and grinned back. Afterward, when she had finished her interview with Auster and been assigned quarters, she remarked to Varzil, “I do not understand why everyone assumes that because my body has been weakened, my mind is not capable of work. There are few things more tedious than being forced to lie still when you are already bored past reason, or being restricted to only the simplest tasks, as if your intelligence were somehow linked to the muscles of your legs!”

Varzil caught the image of a bedchamber with bare, featureless walls, looking across an immaculately smooth comforter, and seeing little pairs of legs, detached from the rest of their bodies, cavorting about. The notion was so fanciful, he chuckled.

“I suppose they are right, and I should rest after my journey,” she sighed. “I hoped to be given real work, and not just drilling novices in basic theory! Where is it written that all women must enjoy teaching children?” She wrinkled her nose.

“I don’t know,” he said lightly. “Perhaps we could comb the archives and find out. That’s what Auster puts me to doing when he decides I’ve been working too hard.”

“No dust for me,” Felicia said, making a face. “Bad lungs, remember?” By the time Cerriana came to join them, they had discovered half a dozen mutual friends.

Arilinn Tower bustled with the excitement generated by its newest arrival. All three circles were curious about the new leronis, a trained technician, and there were the inevitable social overtures and shuffling of relationships as she settled into their midst. Fidelis fussed over her like a mother hen until Eduin suspected that he, like half the Tower, was smitten with her.

Eduin himself had little energy to indulge in the novelty of the new worker. Felicia had brought not only herself, but news from Nevarsin, the Tower and cristoforo monastery there, as well as the territories she had passed through, and a pouch of letters. Among these, there had been a message for Eduin.

Eduin took it to his chambers to read in private. By the time he had climbed the stairs, made his way down the corridor and barred the door behind him, his hands were shaking. Pausing, he turned on the telepathic damper that would prevent any inadvertent psychic eavesdropping. He’d convinced Gavin Elhalyn on his very first day at Arilinm that he was so sensitive to stray telepathic thoughts that he needed it to maintain his sanity. Thus, he ensured that no dream image or unguarded thought could betray him, here in his own room. The weight of his childhood oath, of the things he had done and more importantly, the things he had not yet done, dragged on him. He could not have endured it without this safe haven.

With a gesture, he summoned the blue fire to light a glow-globe. Drymouthed, he lowered himself to the edge of his bed.

The folded paper was of poor quality, ragged around the edges from rubbing inside the letter pouch. The handwriting was not his father’s. He did not know whether to be anxious or relieved. Yet, he could think of no one else who would have cause to write to him. Dyannis certainly would not.