The Fall of Neskaya (35 page)

What—what happened?
He did not know if he spoke the words aloud, or merely thought them. What was wrong with him? He was
Keeper
, by all of Zandru’s frozen hells, and he ought to know!

“Some kind of backlash,” Ginevra murmured. She sounded drunk, or in a half-trance. “I’ve never seen it before. . . .”

Summoning the rags of his strength, Rumail hauled himself upright and stumbled the two strides to Darna’s bench. She was still hunched over, face covered by shadow and the fall of loose red-black hair. Her screams continued, raw now as if torn from a bloody throat.

Then he saw Ginevra’s expression. She’d knelt before the girl, eyes half-closed, whites glinting, lips curved and partly opened. In pleasure, he realized.

In pleasure so intense, it bordered on sexual ecstacy.

Rumail shuddered, his stomach seething. Acid filled his mouth and cold sweat broke out on his forehead.

She—she was
feeding
on the girl’s pain.

Rumail grabbed Ginevra and pulled her backward, not caring whether she fell. He took Darna’s face in both his hands and lifted it to the light. Her face and hands were streaked with crimson, where mental energy had burned along the channels, searing the smaller nodes beneath the skin. He could only guess at the internal damage. But her eyes . . .

They were no longer soft brown-green set off by sweetly curving lashes. Nothing of the structure of lid or eyeball remained. Both sockets, from brow to cheekbone, were lightless, charred black.

“Ginevra!”
he roared, whirling on her. “This is your doing, isn’t it?”

The monitor picked herself up from where she had stumbled, brushing the folds of her white robes. She met his gaze with her own, insolent glare. “And if it is? What are you going to do about it?
You
are the Keeper here. Don’t you know the first thing about being a Keeper is that you are solely responsible for whatever happens in the circle?”

She pushed past him toward the door. In shock, he made no move to hinder her.

Darna’s cries died rapidly into whimpers. She seemed to crumple in on herself as she fell sideways and then slipped to the floor. Stiffly, he bent over her. Before he could touch her, her muscles jerked in spasm and then loosened. She lay very, very still.

The boy stretched and yawned, his jaw popping audibly. “Is it dinnertime yet?”

Rumail lowered himself to Darna’s bench and buried his face in his hands. Never in all his years, not even when he stood before the Keeper at Neskaya for the pronouncement of his dismissal, had he ever felt such utter failure. Tonight’s experiment had been doomed from the start.

His shoulders sagged. He realized he was in shock, or he would surely have wept, and done so without shame.

Only men laugh, only men weep, only men dance.
The old proverb whispered through his mind.

Bitter laughter burst from him. What more could he do, except to get up and dance?

As quickly, the black mood lifted. What did he expect, with such raw materials—two flawed teenagers, already too old for proper novice training and damaged by their short lives—and a perverted, sadistic monitor? The failure had nothing to do with him. No one, not even Aldones himself, could have turned them into a decent circle.

But there was already a fully trained, functional Tower out there . . . Tramontana. It had not yet fully acknowledged its fealty to Ambervale, and it might not. Even after death, Kieran’s influence was powerful. If not Tramontana, then some other Tower. Perhaps even Neskaya would bend to his will.

He would be Keeper some day. He must. It was his destiny, the means by which he would shape the future of Darkover, even as Damian dreamed.

Some tendays later, after the ambassadors returning from their mission to Hastur had made their report and bowed themselves out of the King’s private quarters at Ambervale Castle, Damian Deslucido turned to his brother with an exultant grin.

“That old fox, Rafael! Because he sees the trap, he thinks he can avoid putting his foot into it. But we have him now. He
must
deal with us.”

Rumail stood uneasily and watched his brother begin pacing, as he so often did when feeling expansive. “Consider the situation,” Damian went on, gesturing as he thought aloud. “We have put forth our claims based on right and custom. And no man may say we do not have sufficient cause. Now is the time to strike, and strike decisively!”

Damian paused, eyes blazing with inner vision. What Rumail had once seen as the certainty of a true mission now turned to brassy, empty blustering.

Rumail frowned.
I must find a way to slow him down, before he rushes us into disaster.

Their original plan had called for consolidation of resources, including Tramontana Tower, before taking on the might of Hastur. Prospects had not looked good until the
emmasca
from Aillard, that bastion of neutrality, had died, presumably of extreme old age. Even then, the Tower resisted the legitimate claims of fealty as unclear and conflicting. Tomas, Keeper of the First Circle and now by seniority and personality the leader of the Tower, might be a distant Ardais cousin, but he was the fourth son of a third son, coming from a small holding with few defenses. With only a little effort, Damian was able to bring Tomas’ mother and only sister to Linn, where he could keep them under watch along with the Storn girl. It had not taken much further suggestion to enlist the Keeper’s cooperation.

The original timetable had begun to disintegrate with the lungrot plague at Verdanta. Despite their victory at Tramontana, Rumail’s attempt at forming his own circle had ended in disaster, one of his students dead and the other little more than a drooling idiot unable to accept the discipline of a circle. The memory still had the power to shake him.

There was no point in moaning,
If only we had waited, we could have controlled the plague, if only I had taken the time. . . .
Rumail was pragmatic enough to know that the only problem which mattered was the one they were facing. And right now, that was his brother’s unbridled confidence.

Rumail picked his words carefully. “Is this a war you could win? Have we grown that strong?”

“We are as we have always been, ready to act when the right opportunity opens itself. Daring must prevail when in the service of right.”

“Yet Hastur is a family with many branches, rich in resources and arms. Need you stand alone against them?”

“A powerful ally, one pledged to the defense of another, can be a great asset,” Damian said, although without conviction. In the past, Damian had never sought allies in the established Domains, either by treaty or marriage. He conquered, he did not compromise. His was not the sort of personality which easily accepted a subordinate role. And after the defeat of the Ridenow of Serrais some two hundred years ago, no other clan would consider challenging Hastur.

“That is not exactly what I have in mind,” Rumail said. “Rafael Hastur is formidable, but his might is nothing compared to the combined strength of all the great houses of Darkover. What if we need not resort to force of arms? What if we could appeal to a court of his peers to judge the issue?”

“A court?” Damian said. “You think Rafael Hastur, who knows no law but his own, would meekly submit himself to an outside judgment? He would listen and smile and do exactly what he pleased.” But the idea clearly intrigued Damian. “And who would these peers be?”

“The
Comyn
Council itself. It has not been particularly active in recent years, but it once had great authority throughout the Domains. No heir could take up his father’s place without their inspection and approval, nor any marriage of consequence take place. These are, after all, matters of
laran
lineage.”

“Bah! The Council has no real power today. Hastur will never abide a verdict that went against him.”

Mentally, Rumail waved his brother’s objections aside. True, King Rafael II had no particular strength of
laran
and only a few seasons at Hali Tower as part of a royal education, but too many of that accursed family were Gifted. The breeding programs of the last few centuries had produced strange, wild talents, including the Deslucido Gift for evading truthspell. Other talents ran throughout the great houses, particularly strong in Hastur.

Rumail could have sworn the Hastur girl had been the one to break free from his compulsion spell at the gates of Acosta, although later, when he had probed her on several occasions, her mind had either churned with the expected emotions of a new widow or else been as blank as a cow’s. The way she focused on her food, she’d likely be as fat as Durraman in a few years. She had some
laran,
that was clear, but not enough to be worth training. Belisar still wanted her, Aldones only knew why, probably because she’d refused him. He would keep her pregnant until she died in childbed or was so worn out as to pose no further threat.

But Hastur was
Comyn
and made a grand show of his support for the Council. He even had his own group of counselors, whose primary goal, so far as Rumail could tell, was to advocate elimination of the most effective
laran
weapons. Hastur had considerable military might, but his influence over the other Domains, and even the branches of his own family, depended upon his reputation and his leadership. Having sworn himself to the Council, he dared not back down.

“Think of it, brother,” Rumail said. “Instead of spilling more blood to establish our rights, we take our case before the Council. Hastur has publically declared his loyalty to them. He will agree to their judgment or reveal himself as a consummate hypocrite. With a little help from me, Belisar can swear under truthspell that the Hastur girl agreed to the marriage. The Council will order her returned to us. Then Hastur must either comply—which he will not—or risk standing alone against us. Then you will be justified before all the world in taking what is rightfully yours.”

Damian’s eyes widened. Slowly he smiled. “How right you are, brother. The girl herself means nothing to me, only a means to separating Hastur from his allies. And in the time we gain by this wonderful ploy, men and matériel, and most of all, those
laran
weapons that will ensure our victory will be ours.”

Rumail settled into a padded chair and folded his hands across the belly which had grown broader and fuller in the year since Neskaya.

This is your time, brother
, Rumail thought with an unexpected feeling of contentment, a
nd I will have mine. Not a couple of spoiled, untrained children and a renegade sadist, but a true Circle of Power
.

For the time would come when diplomacy and maneuvering failed, when ordinary weapons became useless. Stockpiles of
clingfire
would be exhausted. Then the true might of one Tower would be pitted against another. Peace would eventually come, but a far more glorious peace than any Damian could imagine. As long as ordinary men ruled, commanding the Towers this way and that, there could be no lasting cease-fire. Damian’s objective, a united and harmonious Darkover, was a true one. Limited as he was by his own lack of
laran
, he could see no farther than military solutions.

F
or the last three days of the journey to the Hidden City near Arilinn, where the
Comyn
Council held its gathering, dry lightning ran jagged across the summer sky. Taniquel’s skin prickled with restless, pent-up energy. Even Lady Caitlin, who rode with King Rafael’s entourage as
leronis
and chaperone, slept badly, ate little, and began sentences which trailed off distractedly.

Taniquel’s appetite had fallen off as her milk dried up, but even now her empty breasts ached, and at night she found herself reaching for Julian. More than once, she had buried her face in a pillow to keep from crying out. No one had forced her to leave him behind with a wet nurse. She, more than anyone, knew how dangerous it was to bring him anywhere near Deslucido’s reach. When she had first heard of the summons to
Comyn
Council, she had burst into her uncle’s chambers, where he sat over a light summer dinner.

Her uncle had fixed her with the same blend of mildness and tolerance as he once used after the worst of her childhood pranks. “We would be obliged to attend in any event,” he pointed out, “or send some suitably important representative. I am, after all, Hastur of Hastur.” He bent to his chilled cherry soup.

There would be other legitimate Council business, though Taniquel was not sure what that might be. In all her years in Thendara and then Acosta, she’d had nothing to do with the Council, being neither an heir nor possessed of any
laran
worthy of their attention. Their seasonal gatherings came and went without any special awareness on her part.