Eduin paled, wondering what had given him away. Before he could sputter a reply, Lord Brynon went on.

"You are the keeper of the most extraordinary man I have ever met. I will not let either of you slip so easily through my fingers. If he can work a tenth of the miracle of the other night upon my daughter-well, we shall see.

Meanwhile, do not trouble yourselves with imagined fears. The walls of Kirella are stout and well-defended. Winter will soon be upon us and that will put a pause to any immediate threat. Go now to your proper work and see that the Blessed Sandoval is ready to attend Lady Romilla as soon as possible."

Eduin, hearing the dismissal in Lord Brynon's words, withdrew. It mattered little that he had been cast off so lightly. He had planted a seed, which was all he wanted.

Now to create the garden in which that seed would ripen into a towering tree.

20

When Eduin dragged himself from sleep the next morning, bleary-eyed from restless awakenings and even more restless dreams, Saravio lay exactly as he had last seen him. Only the slow, shallow movements of his rib cage indicated he still lived.

Eduin washed, dressed, and sat down for what he prayed would not be a death watch. He did not know what he would say to Lord Brynon, and he suspected that he had run out of time and acceptable excuses. He wondered what he would do if Saravio continued on like this. Even if Saravio did not die in the immediate future, he could not go on for very much longer with any hope of reasonable recovery.

The time he had appointed to meet with Lord Brynon arrived. He knew he should bestir himself, but he could not summon the energy. He slumped to the floor beside Saravio's bed. His head dropped upon his folded arms, his face only a few inches from Saravio's. In that unguarded moment, he had no defense against the insidious despair emanating from Romilla's powerful but utterly undisciplined laran.

Thoughts rose unbidden to his mind. What was the use of going on? What was left for either of them but more hiding, futile struggle? More endless tormented dreams, broken by days of increasing exhaustion?

Why had he imagined a measure of security and purpose here? Misery and despair lurked in every corner. The brightness of the court with all its grandeur and comfort was but a mockery, an illusion. A shadow had fallen over Kirella and its inhabitants. They were doomed, all of them.

He knew the thoughts were not his, and yet he could not stop them. They rippled through his mind, drawing upon every memory of his own hopelessness.

Soon the lights would go out. Nothing could stand against the coming darkness. It would spread like a cancer across all the Aillard lands, all the Hundred Kingdoms from the Hellers to the Sea of Dalereuth. Only frozen ashes would remain.

Even the thought that Varzil, too, would perish brought only the faintest tinge of satisfaction. What did it matter? He himself would not be alive to see it.

Better, far better to surrender now, to find an end to the unremitting misery.

Eduin remembered his brief glimpses of the borderland in the Overworld between the living and the dead. Upon rare occasions, he had heard, a traveler might encounter the form of a dead person, usually a loved one, seen at a far distance. It was perilous to have anything to do with them.

In the Overworld, thought had the power to transport, to build, to destroy.

Although he had not consciously willed it, Eduin now found himself standing on that vast, unbroken plain under the familiar sky of endr less gray.The air, thick and still, seemed colder than he'd remembered it.

Turning slowly in a complete circuit, he saw nothing, only the colorless rim of the horizon. He glanced down and saw that, instead of being clothed in the robes of a laranzu of his rank as he had been each time before, he was naked.

This, then, must be death. Eternal grayness, eternal chill, eternal silence.

Eternal solitude. It was neither the oblivion he craved, nor any semblance of peace, but it would do. He had only to wait here until his physical body, like an abandoned husk, perished from thirst and starvation.

He lowered himself to the ground and crossed his legs, placing his hands in an attitude of meditation. Time in the Overworld passed at a different rate than it did in the outer world, but he thought it would take a long while. His body might be discovered and attempts made to revive him. That charlatan physician might well be called in, to ply him with herbal concoctions. In the end, it would be of no avail. Deprived of animating spirit, flesh would fail.

His escape would be complete.

The thought carried an unexpected lightening of despair. He had finally fled beyond pursuit. No one would find him here, or if they did, would not have the power to compel his return. He was, for the first time, safe.

Safe...

But not alone.

Eduin heard no footstep, felt no whisper of disturbed air, caught no scent.

He felt the slight fall in temperature, a chill of the mind, not the body. It sank into his marrow and with it came a sickening jolt of recognition.

His father, Rumail Deslucido, appeared as large to him as when he had been a small boy. Eduin could make out only the faintest features, for the form was almost transparent. The face with its deeply incised lines was free of the snowy beard of his later years, and the body, what he could make out of it, appeared straight and strong. This was not the image of his father in death, but in the vigor of his prime.

Despite himself, Eduin shrank away from the pale fire of those eyes.

The ghostly mouth opened. No sound issued forth, nor any hint of breath.

Lips curved, shaping words Eduin knew intimately as the palm of his own hand.

The evil of the Hasturs and their Ridenow defender goes unavenged... You swore... You swore...

Eduin willed himself to deafness. Yet he could not bring himself to turn away or lift an arm to cover his eyes.

As Rumail continued speaking, his features became sterner, more adamant.

Eduin remembered those expressions all too painfully. His father had rarely seemed otherwise. It was not until he came to Arilinn that he knew adult men were capable of gentleness or encouragement. The first time his Keeper had spoken kindly to him, his response had been incredulity. Many seasons had passed before he realized that Auster spoke in that manner to all the young students, that he cared for them and wanted them to succeed.

Go away, old fool! Eduin thought angrily. I've had enough of your criticism!

You're dead now. You have no hold over me.

No hold but the snare in his own mind ...

But not for long!

Eduin hauled himself to his feet and turned his back on his father's ghost.

The phantasm appeared in front of him. He dodged this way and that, spinning around. No matter which way he looked, the same visage con- fronted him, the mouth moved in silent phrases that echoed down the corridors of his memory.

Failed me ... You swore... Revenge...

K-k-kill!

He felt a tug inside his own thought-body, like a tether at its length. In a moment of terror, he looked down at his hands, expecting to see pale unbreakable shackles linking him to the specter. It did not matter that they were invisible, even in this eerie realm of the mind.

I will never be free of him, and when I die, I will spend eternity like this.

"Curse you!" he screamed. The syllables resonated from one horizon to the other. "Curse you to Zandru's Seventh Frozen Hell for what you have done to me!"

Perhaps the mouth paused in its relentless litany, or the fierce light in the ghostly eyes abated. He still had some power, then, if not over the shade of his dead father, then over his own fate.

He would not die. He would refuse to remain here, chained forever to this specter of mindless vengeance. He would live, and out of that life, carve out his own triumph.

When Eduin opened his eyes again, the room was very much as he had last seen it. He might have hovered in the twilight of the Overwork! for a day, an hour, a heartbeat. Hunger cramped his belly. The smell of freshly baked bread hung in the air. Tracing it, he found that a tray with a simple breakfast, still warm to the touch, had been left in the central sitting room.

The bread was fine and soft, the cheese creamy, the jaco pleasantly bitter.

Eduin ate it all, using bits of bread to mop up the traces of cheese from the plate. Gazing into the jaco dregs, he considered his next step.

Try as he might, he saw no way of continuing on here at Kirella without Saravio. He had failed to kill Varzil at Hali Lake. This time, he would not depend upon the vagaries of chance and an enraged mob. He needed solid resources-trained soldiers, aircars, laran weaponry. What Kirella lacked, Valeron, the seat of the entire clan, would supply.

He needed a way to insinuate himself into Lord Brynon's confidence. For that, he needed control over the heir, Romilla.

And for that, Saravio.

There was no help for it. He knew what he must do next, and though the idea repelled him, he steeled himself to it.

He must enter into Saravio's sleeping mind, establish control, and drag him back into the waking world.

Eduin's first telepathic rapport with Saravio had been unintentional. He had meant only to shock the other man out of his seizure, not to penetrate into the inner depths of his consciousness. Certainly, he had had no idea of the extent of Saravio's insanity or possession, whatever it was. Now the situation was different. He was no longer ignorant. He knew what he faced.

He settled himself on the bed beside Saravio and reached out to touch the other man's hand. Physical contact was necessary for the depth of rapport he needed. Eduin steeled himself, repeating that he had no choice but to violate the most fundamental ethic of Tower work-never to enter unbidden into the mind of another person. It was all nonsense and pretension. Tower circles broke the rule every time they went onto the battlefield. Even the casting of a simple truthspell involved a certain amount of coercion.

Even as he justified his actions to himself, Eduin knew that what he was doing was different. He was not shaping the thoughts of a madman back to sanity for any altruistic purpose. On the contrary, he needed Saravio's obedience, and he meant to get it any way he could. Why else would the gods have given him laran, if not for such a purpose?

He skimmed the surface of Saravio's thoughts, finding only a howling emptiness that reminded him of a storm-swept plain. There were no images of everyday things, of light and food, the places he had passed through, the people he had spoken to. The very texture of the mental landscape felt barren, abandoned. Saravio had indeed withdrawn from life.

Eduin pressed deeper. He wandered through a house that had stood vacant too long. The impressions left behind by all the activities of daily living had faded and the unique stamp of personality all but vanished.

He had touched the minds of dying men. He knew the taste and weight of that severing. Saravio still lived, but had withdrawn to a level that mimicked death. Eduin had expected to find, somewhere within the tangled web of Saravio's unconsciousness, some core of the man he knew. He had thought he would be able to manipulate the form of Saravio's thoughts as he had done before, to enter into the other man's delusions and dominate them to his own advantage.

But there was nothing here-no black-robed woman with burning eyes and a face like ice. No Tower racked by lightning. No multitudes pleading for salvation, for release from suffering.

Saravio had said that Romilla Aillard appeared to him as the incarnation of Naotalba. Was that why the Bride of Zandru was now absent from his mind?

Had Saravio decided his own purpose was fulfilled, that he had no reason to continue living?

I still have a purpose for him, Eduin thought savagely. I cannot let him slip away.

If he could not track down the kernel of personality that was Saravio by means of the delusion they had once shared, then he must use something else. Eduin paused and gathered himself, turning inward for anything, any resonant imprint that he could use.

He remembered Saravio's gentle voice saying, "I brought you in from the storm." Saravio speaking of the innkeeper's daughter and how he had sung her free from her pain. Saravio bending over the fallen musician, murmuring, "Rest now, be easy, no harm will come to you."

Something inside Eduin, some tremulous childhood memory, breathed in the words like balm across his ravaged heart. Saravio, for all his divine insanity, had offered him simple kindness, generosity. Love. He had freely given these things not only to Eduin, the man he had dragged, a pathetic sodden wreck, from the gutters of Thendara, but others. The dispossessed, the hopeless. The injured.

And now, the daughter of this house. But only if Eduin could drag Saravio back to life.

Using Saravio's own compassion to control him seemed like the only hope, and yet Eduin shrank from it. That moment of kindness shone out from all the years of filth and degradation. Now it seemed he must twist it, use it for his own ends.

He told himself that Romilla Aillard was in need, was not unworthy. He told himself Saravio would do these things anyway, that he would never know the difference, that he would give his consent if he could.

For a long, heart-chilling moment, Eduin hovered in indecision. None of these arguments changed what he meant to do. Saravio might cure the girl and lift the miasma of despair from the entire city. All the Aillard lands, not just Kirella but Valeron itself, might bow before him. All these actions, no matter how good they seemed, would forever be tainted. The work of Saravio's remarkable ability would no longer be a freely bestowed gift.

Nothing in the world remained pure, as Lord Brynon had said. No man acted except in his own best interest. Not Saravio, not he himself, not Carolin Hastur on his high throne, or even Varzil the Good. In the end, what drove men was selfishness. Yet even as Eduin thrust the thoughts from him, he felt a flicker of shame for what he was about to do.

He found what he sought, a kernel of tightly interwoven mental energy, an ember of personality consumed and fallen in upon itself. It reminded him of an immense, congested energon node, one of the structures that channeled and stored laran in the human body. He used his own thoughts to shape a net around the kernel.

At first, Eduin met no resistance. As he tightened the strands and began to draw them toward himself, awareness sparked. There were no coherent thoughts, only a stirring, an expansion. Slowly, and then with escalating speed, Saravio's mental faculties returned.

Quickly, before Saravio had regained enough awareness, Eduin struck. He did not reason through what he was doing. He only knew that this chance might never come again. Now, while Saravio was still confused and only fragmentally aware, before his sense of self-preservation had returned, he was still vulnerable.

Eduin speaks with the voice of Naotalba. Follow his commands as you would hers.

Naotalba...

Images drifted, ghostly and distorted, through the firmament of Saravio's mind. Eduin made out the superimposed figures of two women-Naotalba as he had first seen her, beautiful and tragic, yet with a kind of nobility-and Romilla. For a moment, they seemed not at all alike. Then Eduin understood why Saravio had confused them. The sense of utter hopelessness, of doom, linked them. But for his plan to work, Romilla must have a future and the courage to meet it.

With all the skill at his command, Eduin began separating the two figures.

Naotalba he drained of color, so she shimmered like a statue of ice, a true bride for the Lord of the Seven Frozen Hells. He brushed Romilla with brightness, envisioned her lifting her head, cheeks flushing, lips rosy. Then he had Romilla fall to her knees before Naotalba.

Surprise rippled through Saravio's dreaming mind as Eduin raised Romilla's hands in supplication.

Heal me, O great Naotalba. Give me strength! Give me hope!

Without Eduin's conscious direction, the demigoddess responded. She placed one hand on the girl's dark hair and smiled. Eduin flinched at that smile, for it was only partly in blessing. Underneath the benign surface ran an undercurrent of ruthlessness. There would be a price to pay for such healing and he did not think it would be an easy one. He nudged the figure of Romilla to her feet and watched as she dwindled in the distance. The test of whether he had successfully detached the girl from Naotalba in Saravio's mind would come the next time they saw her.

Eduin waited as Saravio rose toward waking. Saravio's thoughts strengthened and his mind once more took on its complex, familiar patterns. Eduin recognized the areas of damage, like burned patches of a forest after a fire has passed. He knew better than to try to speak telepathically. Instead, he placed his hands upon Saravio's shoulders and shook gently.

"Saravio. It is time to wake up."

Saravio's eyes shifted behind closed lids. His chest heaved, lungs drawing in air. He stretched his legs. The joints of his spine crackled.

"Eduin." Saravio's voice was hoarse, his words slurred. "I feel so strange. I must have slept too long."

"Indeed you have," Eduin replied with a smile. He helped Saravio to sit up.

"I will call for food and a bath. You must regain your strength."

"Have I been ill? What has happened?" There was something almost pathetically childlike in Saravio's questions.

"There is much work for you to do."

"Yes ..." Saravio tilted his head in an attitude of listening. "I can sense it-so many people in pain."

"It is Naotalba's wish that you help them. I will guide you in this."

Saravio's expression turned eager. "Tell me, then, what I am to do."

"After you have fed and washed, we will arrange an audience with Damisela Romilla ..."