"What kind of questions are these? Unlike the mythological figure you previously cited, this man is real and so are his accomplishments. Together with Carolin Hastur, he rebuilt Neskaya Tower. Now he is emissary to that same King Carolin and his name is often praised as a force for peace and justice. Many call him Varzil the Good."

"And you? Do you admire him also?" Eduin pressed.

"He is honored wherever he goes."

Again Saravio's mind sent forth an intimation of fury, stronger this time, like caustic over raw skin. The courtiers murmured, restive. Several voices rose above the others.

"Traitor!"

"He sold us out!"

"The Hasturs? Could they be behind this?"

One of the chief councillors, an older man with a dignified bearing, stepped forward. "Vai dom,must this continue? The prisoner has failed the test of truthspell."

Lord Brynon stirred in his great chair. Truthspell turned his features stark and grim. "I do not understand this line of inquiry. What is your point?"

"He has not yet told us who sent him here to destroy Kirella's hope for the future," Eduin said. "We must have the entire truth."

"Varzil Ridenow?" the old councillor said, astonished. "Why would he concern himself with Aillard business? You cannot seriously-"

"Silence!" Lord Brynon cut him off. Drawing himself up like a predator about to strike, he said, "Dom Rodrigo Halloran, did you place poison in the food of Sandoval?"

The physician stood like a beast at bay. With an odd dignity, he raised his head so that all might see the truthspell. "I did add a substance to a meal intended for this charlatan. It was no poison, and would have brought no harm to any ordinary man. But I did not believe him ordinary. How could any normal man presume to intervene with the treatment of the young mistress? Since the moment of his arrival, I suspected this Sandoval as being a wild laran talent, untrained, lacking even the rudiments of discipline, erratic and unpredictable, in short, dangerous in the extreme.

How else could he have suborned Lady Mhari, a legitimate leronis, and re- cruited her to be his ally? How else could he have cast his net of seduction over this entire court, especially young Lady Romilla, who in her illness and confusion, fell victim to his wiles? I sought only to reveal his true nature-"

"You admit it, then?" Romilla cried out, her voice sharp and harsh like the scream of a hunting falcon. "You admit you tried to poison him? Or at the very least incapacitate the one man who could bring light into my darkness?"

"You know not what you speak, damisela," Dom Rodrigo returned, his voice now soothing. "Sandoval might have seemed at first to help, but in the end, his lack of training would surely have brought you even greater illness.

What his purposes are, I cannot say, beyond his own advancement in this court through illicit control over your susceptible mind. I, on the other hand, have always been your true physician, desiring nothing more than your happiness and well-being, and have ever sought to use my knowledge and skill in your service."

Throughout the physician's oration, the light of truth-spell remained on his face. He truly believed what he spoke. Pompous and self-important he might be, but not deceitful. He had indeed served the court of Kirella for long years.

Dom Rodrigo's speech, so measured and reasonable, spread like balm over the restive crowd. Eduin saw in their faces that many believed him and even now were thinking that what he had done was not so very terrible. Many in the courtly audience had benefited from his skill. Sandoval, as they called him, was an outsider whose aloofness had earned him little friendship outside of Romilla's circle. A few more minutes, and some might even begin to wonder if it might be simpler to dismiss Sandoval and let the physician continue in his former place.

"My Lord!" Knowing he had to act quickly, Eduin spoke up. "This man stands convicted by his own words, but he has not yet revealed the extent of this conspiracy. We must discover who sent him, what power lies behind this dastardly plot. For Romilla's sake, for the sake of all Kirella, we must know."

"What is this nonsense?" Regaining his confidence, Dom Rodrigo whirled on Eduin. "Who said anything about a plot? I acted in the defense of Kirella and its young mistress, nothing more!"

"But you admit that you admire Varzil Ridenow, that insidious agent of the Hasturs?" Eduin continued. "Can you then deny that you seek to spread his influence here in Aillard lands and bring us under the rule of King Carolin?"

"This is outrageous! Preposterous!"

His words were cut off as, under a renewed burst of pain and anger from Saravio, Romilla screamed, "The fire! The fire! Sandoval, save us!"

Lord Brynon watched with a horrified expression as his daughter, whom he thought cured, shrieked and trembled.

The audience surged like a wild beast straining against a cage. Lord Brynon, his face suffused with darkness, leaped to his feet, shouting out orders. His guards shoved the crowd back. Steel clashed. A woman shrieked. Domna Mhari wavered and collapsed in a faint. The pale blue light of truthspell vanished.

Eduin took Saravio by the shoulders and forced the other man to meet his gaze. "You must calm them. Call upon Naotalba in this place and bring her peace to them. Only then can we defeat her enemy."

Although he could barely hear his own words above the uproar, Eduin saw the light of recognition in Saravio's face. Saravio got to his feet and stepped into the middle of the chamber. The milling crowd parted for him. Guards lowered their weapons. Courtiers fell back. Dom Rodrigo, who had been struggling in the grip of a guard on one side and a young lordling on the other, abruptly stopped his resistance. Saravio raised his arms and began to sing.

"Oh, lady of the starless night, Bring us into your shadow.

We give ourselves to you.

Take us now, take us speedily now-"

For an instant, Eduin's vision went white as the familiar wash of pleasure swept over him. It was too much, he thought, and then he could not think at all.

He stood once more in the gray forest, where willowy trees lifted their pale branches to the sky. Music chimed, soft and distant, awakening a resonant vibration in his bones. Chierimoved through the grove in the serene complexity of dance. They encircled him, embracing him with their luminous eyes, brushing him with their fingertips or the strands of their long, loose hair. He moved through their midst, caught in the ebb and flow of movement. Time itself seemed suspended. The sadness and beauty of the song pierced him with sweetness. A figure stood in the very center of the in- terweaving dancers, muffled in a cloak the color of shadow.

When he opened his eyes, he saw order emerging from chaos. Weapons were lowered. Some had sunk to the floor, heads thrown back. Romilla had thrown herself at Saravio's feet, sobbing. Mhari got to her feet and went to her mistress, helping her to rise.

Lord Brynon ordered Dom Rodrigo to be taken away and kept under close guard. The chamber quickly emptied. Eduin knew that within the hour, the story of what had happened here would not only spread throughout the castle and surrounding villages, but be well on its way to Valeron.

As he turned to go, Lord Brynon gestured to Eduin and Saravio. "Attend me privately, both of you."

A few minutes later, they stood before him in a small sitting chamber, more suitable to an intimate family gathering than the grim business at hand. A small fire gave off faint warmth. A servant hastily added more wood, lit a range of candles, and retreated.

"After what I have seen and heard," Lord Brynon said thoughtfully, "I now have cause to suspect that the physician's perfidy is not his alone. Despite his denials, I cannot believe he acted by himself. His might be the hand that wielded the poison, but not the will. He thought he was doing nothing more than his duty to this house. Someone must have used his loyalty to their own ends."

Eduin waited for a moment, then said, "I believe we can say who that was."

Frowning, Lord Brynon strode over to the chair beside the fireplace and lowered himself into it. "You were the one to bring up the names of Varzil Ridenow and King Carolin Hastur. Until today's events, I would have said they had nothing to do with us. Now, I wonder. Why did you speak of them?

What else do you know?"

"Varzil the Accursed has long opposed the will of Naotalba," Saravio said.

"What he means," Eduin said, "is that together these two men seek to alter the balance of power with their talk of a Compact, persuading king and lord alike to surrender their most powerful means of defense. What purpose can they have, except to plot the eventual domination of all Darkover?"

As Eduin spoke, Lord Brynon nodded, eyes hooded and thoughtful. "The realm of Hastur has indeed grown powerful. Now that Carolin has his throne back, and there is none to stand against him ..."

"As you say, my lord, without anyone to stand against him, how long can even the best king remain free from ambition?

Carolin may have begun his reign with noble intentions, but even he must succumb to the temptations of power and conquest. He has the most powerful laranzu on Darkover, the great tenerezu Varzil Ridenow, to do his bidding. Together, they will disarm any who might oppose him. If we do not act soon, it will be too late for any mortal power to withstand him. Darkover will be united under one king and that will be Carolin Hastur!"

Lord Brynon's frown deepened. "If what you say is true ... I cannot decide these issues alone, for Kirella is but a small part of Aillard. As soon as may be, we must confer with the Lady of Valeron and the wise councillors there. I expect-I ask-that you and the Blessed Sandoval make ready to accompany me."

BOOK IV.

24

Dyannis Ridenow did not leave, Cedestri Tower until almost the following spring. At first, there was too much work yet to do, tending the immediate injuries of matrix workers and villagers alike. Some were so badly burned, the reconstructive healing required many sessions. Over and over, she thanked whatever god might be listening that the Aillards had used ordinary fire-bombs and not clingfire. In addition, a supply of bonewater crystals had been returned to the Tower after Varzil convinced the pilots to abort their mission. Some of the storage containers had been shattered in the attack.

Each particle had to be sought out and destroyed, a meticulous and exhaust- ing task. Dyannis thought it ironic that Cedestri's experiment proved to be a greater danger to itself than to its enemies.

Then came the work of rebuilding the matrix screens, particularly the relays. Few travelers had visited Cedestri since the fire-bombing, so the Tower was cut off from news. The main road seemed to be blocked, but it was not until Varzil, working with a partly-constructed screen and his own starstone, was able to reach Hali Tower, that they learned why. The single aircar that had continued on, refusing to be dissuaded by Varzil's argument, had been attacked by forces from Valeron and its deadly contents scattered.

The road and the surrounding countryside were contaminated, and no one knew how long the poison would persist. If it behaved like the bonewater dust it resembled, that might be a generation or more. Varzil sent out word for any who traveled there to seek help at a Tower.

"I do not have much hope that we will be able to reach all of them," he told Dyannis, "for with war between Aillard and Isoldir brewing yet again, people flee, seeking safety wherever they imagine it lies. The pity of it all is that in such a conflict, there is no safety."

When he said this, they had been standing together at the window of the largest house in the village, the headman's own dwelling, given over to their use until the Tower could be rebuilt. From its balcony, a simple wooden railing, they could see the tumbled walls of a once-graceful Tower. The rising sun cast a rusty glow over the scene as if it, too, bled.

Dyannis thought of the lives that had slipped through her grasp, broken in body or spirit.

How many of those deaths are my fault? How many would still be alive if I had chosen differently?

"Chiya." Varzil touched her gently with his fingertips across the back of one wrist. "You must not take that burden upon yourself. In the past, you have acted rashly, but your instincts have always been sound."

"Perhaps, but not my discipline. If only-"

"How long are you going to carry that single lapse like a stone-filled sack upon your back? You have been judged by your own Keeper, and he is satisfied."

"You make light of my crime, calling it a 'single lapse.' Yet I almost repeated it along the road."

She left the brightness of the window and retreated into the room. This early in the day, the only light came naturally through the opened shutters.

Candle wax and laran were in far too short supply to be wasted in illumi- nating rooms for people who were not working.

Varzil was trying to hearten her, she thought, to assuage the guilt that rumbled like distant thunder in her mind. He was so good, so true and loving, that he could not see the shortcomings in others. Nothing he said erased the memory of those dying minds, the hearts and souls that her own impetuousness had destroyed.

I will never be free from what I have done.

"Now you are being willful and self-indulgent," he said in a sterner voice.

Stung, Dyannis turned back. Something in Varzil's voice, or perhaps a trick of lighting or glimmer of laran power, made him seem taller. He was no longer merely her big brother, but the most powerful Keeper on Darkover.

"If you truly wish to make restitution," he went on, "consider your present actions. The past is behind us, and nothing you can do will change it; the future cannot be known. If you truly feel indentured to those you injured, you have no right to cripple yourself with idle self-recrimination. Your talents do not belong to you alone, but to the people you serve. You say you accept responsibility, yet when it comes to honoring that obligation, you behave no better than a spoiled child!"

Heat rose to her cheeks; the last time she felt like this was when they had clashed over her first love affair. Then she had thought Varzil was opinionated, domineering, and interfering. He had no right to command her against her own desires. She had done as she pleased, as her heart bade her.

Now, he was not only her brother, but the Keeper of Cedestri Tower, and for the time being, her Keeper. He had every right to upbraid her.

Dyannis wanted to lash out at him, to shout back that he should mind his own business, but in doing so, she would only prove the Tightness of his accusation. A spoiled child, indeed! Part of her atonement must therefore be acceptance of whatever censure he saw fit to inflict upon her. She gathered the shreds of her dignity around her. "I will do so no more." "That is a fair reply," he said.

Working together with the townspeople, Dyannis and Varzil, along with those Cedestri leronyn who were able, cleared away the worst of the rubble.

Large sections of the walls, both outside and interior, remained, although some of the stones had been cracked by the intense heat and must be replaced. Francisco was not yet able to do this energy-draining work.

Standing in the shadow of the Tower one afternoon, Dyannis gazed upward, her eyes following the broken outline, the streaks of black still marring the beautiful stone. Her first impression of the physical structure had been one of grace, shattered, and she had never lost that feeling. Cedestri Tower reflected the world in all its imperfect grandeur.

The other members of their improvised circle assembled, two men and a woman from the original Tower. Two other women, including the young monitor Dyannis met when they first arrived, stayed in the town for the continued healing of the most severely wounded.

"A fair day to you," Earnan said, nodding. He was the youngest of the three Cedestri workers, sweet-faced and eager to try new things.

She smiled at him, and also at Niall and Bianca, although she didn't like either of them personally. Niall hated authority and had to be flattered into his best efforts, and Bianca, although sobered by the Aillard attack, was no better, being fonder of resentment than patience. They nodded back at Dyannis, reserved but impeccably polite.

Today they were going to raise the largest stones to complete a chamber suitable for a matrix laboratory. It would be a long, exhausting session, with little energy to spare for petty irritations.

Cedestri Tower had long had a tradition of joining hands when forming a circle. Dyannis found the physical contact a little distracting at first, but accommodated herself to it. These people had been traumatized enough; it was a simple enough thing for the comfort of familiarity. Varzil, as the circle's Keeper, didn't seem to mind, one way or another.

Dyannis closed her eyes, focusing inwardly upon an image of an open sky.

She knew from long experience that this was the best way to set aside petty irritations that might form a barrier to the circle. Instead, she imaged herself a falcon, wings spread wide to catch the faintest air currents.

The wind caught her, sustained her, carried her upward ...

Her heart leaped in her throat at the sheer pleasure of soaring. From one pulse beat to the next, she felt herself drop into rapport with the rest of the circle under Varzil's infallible mental control.

A sense of Tightness and order suffused her. If she became a Keeper, this is how it would be.

She felt Varzil gather the combined laran power of the circle, shaping it subtly, deftly, felt the rough granularity of the first stone, the lingering hum and chisel of its fashioning, the intrinsic taste and weight.

Air... stone... breathe ...in and out and up... It was as natural as the rhythm of her own body. She poured her strength into the psychic linkage.

Slowly, the stone rose. Her mind sensed it as a series of overlapping images, of tiny motes of substance spinning through emptiness, of spheres of shimmering power forming and reforming within the larger field of laran.

She held the stone and guided it to rest in its precise position. It took no effort at all. Weight and size no longer mattered, only the power streaming through her mind. In that moment, she felt as strong as a Hellers peak, her touch as steady, and yet as fluid as clear water.

Air ... stone ... fire ... water... Each element complemented and balanced the rest, parts of a perfect whole. Air and stone might change places, like dancers moving through a complex figure, but it was all the same. Nothing was added or taken away, nothing burdened or strained. Everything was as it should be.

The next stone rose at her unvoiced command. She lost all sense of the passage of time, floating between sky and earth, shaping the link between them. An hour might have passed, or an eon. There seemed no end to the joyous energy.

There came a time, however, when she felt the final stone slip into place.

The entire building hummed like a rryl coming to life in the hands of an expert musician. The Tower had originally been built by laran, and its en- ergy imprint remained. The physical and the psychic resonated in harmony.

Enough. Break now.

The words echoed through her mind in a voice not her own. She shivered, suddenly aware of her individual separateness, the shell of fragile, human flesh. Around her, the unity of the circle dissolved.

Dyannis caught her breath, blinking her eyes open. Her fingers felt stiff from holding VarziFs hand on one side and Earnan's on the other. When she lifted her gaze, she saw the completed roof of the Tower, the soaring arch of her vision.

Earnan let out a whoop of joy. Varzil turned to Dyannis, a smile lighting his gray eyes. The world blurred around the edges. She bent over, fearing she might disgrace herself by fainting. Someone hurried up with a plate of food, a confection of nuts, dried peaches, and honey. She stuffed a piece into her mouth and let the concentrated sweetness dissolve on her tongue. Her vi- sion steadied and nausea receded.

"We all need food and rest," Varzil said, "for today we have accomplished a great feat. Soon we will begin moving the Cedestri folk back into their home."