"The Blessed Sandoval and I were living in Thendara when we heard there was to be a great working of sorcery at Hali Lake," Eduin began. So far, this was the truth. "Some said that a spell had been laid upon the heavens, for there was much lightning. I heard one man say that the Aldarans had done a mighty weather-working, but I do not know if that was true. So we went to the lake, and saw many other people there. They told me that Varzil, he who is Keeper at Neskaya, had gone down into the lake itself, beneath the waters of cloud. What he did there, I cannot tell, but I heard that the infernal device that caused the Cataclysm, changing the water to mist so long ago, was still upon on the bottom, and he had gone to seek it."

Eduin sensed rather than saw the ripple of response. He shook his head as if he himself were uncertain what to think. Something whispered through the back of his mind, a ghostly echo, Yes ... Set the trap for Varzil.

"We had not been there very long," he plunged on, "when I looked above the circle and saw a-I don't know-it was long like a serpent, with hideous wings. It dove down upon us, slashing and striking. When it breathed, men choked and died. There was no place to hide, no where to run."

"How is it you were able to escape?" the general asked.

"Oh, it was terrible!" Eduin let the despair of that moment tinge his voice. It had been terrible when their plans turned against them and Naotalba's army, formed to bring them victory, dissolved into frenzied retreat. "No man could stand against the thing. I don't know how many died. The lucky ones ran away. We hid, and it missed us. Just then, when it seemed it must see us, the dragon disappeared. It was gone, just like that. I looked toward the lake, and I saw Varzil with my very own eyes."

"Varzil-you saw him, truly?"

"He was walking out of the water, just as if nothing had happened, and he was smiling." Eduin conjured a picture in his own mind, half true memory, half a vision born from his hatred. Over it, he poured that unique form of laran, the Deslucido Gift, which his father had shown him years ago. He could hear his father's mental voice even now: Now that I am completely sure of your loyalty, I will teach you how to defeat truthspell. You will be able to swear to whatever serves our higher purpose, and no laranzu on Darkover will be able to tell the difference.

No laranzu on Darkover . . . And whatever he said would be trusted so absolutely that men might live or die, kings go to war or make peace, based upon a simple word.

How many times had his father used the Gift and watched certainty dissolve into bewilderment, accusers themselves become the accused, men and armies turn away from their own ends and become instruments of another's will? Had his uncle, King Damian, stood in the blue light and lied and been believed? Had his cousin, Belisar?

A shudder passed through Eduin as he realized that this was the reason Damian and Belisar had died, this terrible secret. Not ambition, not misjudgment, not lack of military power. Only a trick of fate had spared his own father, who had lived on as a crippled, revenge-obsessed fugitive.

The Deslucido Gift was a weapon too terrible to wield, far more than crystalline bonewater or even whatever dreadful laranmachinery had created the Cataclysm at Hali Lake. These things destroyed a man's body, perhaps even his mind. The Deslucido Gift struck at the trust that bound men together and made them more than vicious beasts.

Only men sing, only men dance, only men weep: So went the ancient proverb. Only men place their lives and honor in each other's hands.

All this, he could undo with a word. He trembled with the knowledge.

No one else seemed to have noticed, although the room had fallen silent.

General Marzan glanced at Julianna as if to ask if she were satisfied. After a long moment, she nodded, dismissing Eduin to return to his chambers.

As he heard the door of their room close behind him, Eduin felt a strange, dark jubilation. Varzil now stood condemned in the eyes of Queen Julianna.

She would never believe Varzil had innocent motives for descending into the lake. Her canny mind would put together the Cataclysm device and Varzil's role in rebuilding Cedestri Tower. Indeed, she would see Varzil's shadow over Kirella, over Asturias to the north, reaching even now toward Valeron itself....

Eduin found Saravio slumped, barely conscious, in a chair. Saravio's hands twitched as if jolts of energy coursed through his fingers. His eyes had rolled up in his skull, showing crescents of White between half-parted lids.

Julianna's guards must have left him there, in all likelihood unwilling to have anything further to do with him. Many soldiers were frightened of madness, as if it were some disease that might infect them, too. Perhaps they saw the mark of the gods as unlucky.

"Poor fool," Eduin murmured and he drew Saravio's arm across his shoulders and hefted the other man to his feet.

Saravio retained just enough shreds of consciousness to stumble to his bed.

As he had so many times before, Eduin loosened his clothing and arranged his arms and legs. On impulse, he laid one hand along the side of Saravio's neck. He felt the skin, clammy with sweat, and the thready leap of pulse along the artery.

With the physical touch came a wave of mental images. A figure drifted slowly across a landscape the color of ashes. For a moment, Eduin did not recognize Naotalba, her form was so colorless and translucent. Even the light overhead was slowly fading, quenched, exhausted.

Eduin reached out his mind to the phantasmic form, but even as his fingers brushed the outline, it vanished. Poor Saravio, he had not even enough mental energy to preserve the image of his goddess.

Under Eduin's fingertips, Saravio's pulse stuttered. Once or twice, he thought it had stopped entirely, but it went on, caught in a ragged dance. He did not know if Saravio would ever waken again, or if he did, whether he would even know his own name or where he was.

Go in peace, he prayed. You have served me well. There is nothing more you can do.

Although it chilled him to the bone to do so, he was already thinking what use he might make of Saravio's death, how he could make it seem that Varzil had a hand in it. Julianna would be furious that King Carolin's agent could reach into her own castle and take a man's life. But at this moment, he felt too heart-sick to care.

A gentle tapping on the outer door roused Eduin from his musings. He left Saravio to see who it was, but before he reached the door, it swung open and Callina slipped in. She carried a small dark box that he recognized instantly as a telepathic damper.

"I am so sorry to disturb you. Is he asleep?" Callina tilted her head toward the bed where Saravio lay. "What a terrible ordeal he must have gone through! Who would have thought that behind the mask of goodness lay such a monster? Varzil, I mean," she added quickly.

"You are convinced, then, that the Keeper of Neskaya moves with evil purpose against Valeron?"

"How could anyone doubt it? It could not be more plain if I had been there at Hali Lake and seen with my own eyes! But I am forgetting myself. Here, I brought him this," she held out the telepathic damper.

"I know that Sandoval the Blessed has laran," Callina said, "and that is in part how he accomplishes his healing work. Now he is the one who requires rest and quiet. This damper will insulate him from any outside mental energies. It will also make it difficult, if not impossible, for him to use his own abilities. Therefore, his mind can rest completely, which it must in order to recover."

Eduin listened with a carefully respectful expression while she explained what it was and how to operate it. He was long familiar with such devices.

Since his early years at Arilinn Tower, he had used one in his own chamber at night to prevent any inadvertent thoughts or fragments of dreams from betraying him. Later, he had found that the insulation granted a blessed respite from the continual need to appear other than he was; within its influence, he could at last relax. Only with Dyannis had he known such peace.

"I thank you for your concern, vai leronis," Eduin said, "but I fear that not even your magic can help him."

A glimmer of fear passed over her features, as quickly suppressed. "Then I must see him immediately."

Callina bent over Saravio's sleeping form. She went about monitoring his condition in an orderly, competent manner, although clearly this was not her strength. There was no danger if she discovered some lingering trace of Naotalba, if such still existed in the emptiness of Saravio's mind, for he had often spoken of the Bride of Zandru. As for what Eduin himself had done, he had no fear. After all, the Keepers of Hestral and Hali Towers, far more skilled than this young leronis, had failed to detect what his own father had done to him. He was safe on that account.

Callina worked slowly and carefully, often pausing to search more deeply. At last, she sighed and drew back.

"Alas, I fear you are right. I would send for Tomaso, our monitor in the Tower here, but I do not think there is anything he can do, either."

"You will not insist on a physician?" Eduin asked, furrowing his brow.

She smiled, a little sadly, and shook her head. "No, I understand why you would not want that. With your permission, however, I will inform Lady Romilla, so that she might prepare herself."

Eduin nodded assent. Before she left, Callina set the telepathic damper beside Saravio's bed and turned it on. Eduin felt the familiar blanketing silence. After living so long without such a device, it now felt as if he were suddenly rendered half-blind, half-deaf.

40

Eduin awoke, sweating heavily. He thought he had been dreaming, or wandering in the Overworld, although he could not remember why. Flame and ash and a terrible sense of suffocation enveloped him. He struggled to sit up, pulling away the twisted bedcovers. As he filled his lungs, breath after gasping breath, it seemed his chest had gone brittle, a cage of twigs, and that the pounding of his heart might shatter it at any moment.

The nightmare must be the result of sleeping within the field of a telepathic damper. After all, he had lived so long without it that it would naturally take time for his mind and body to readjust. He told himself that the effects, while unpleasant, would soon pass.

By the light streaming through the single narrow window, the time was well into morning. He had slept longer than he intended, but in this season of long days and lingering twilights, that was of no matter. There would be plenty of time to do whatever must be done that day.

Yawning, he dressed. In the night, one of the servants had taken away his clothing, washed and folded it, and laid it neatly on the small chest. The shirt smelled of sweet herbs. He held it to his face for a moment, remembering when he had taken such pleasures for granted, clean clothing, a warm bed, well-cooked food. Sometimes, in the long years of hiding, a crust of moldy bread and the meager shelter of a half-crumbled wall had seemed like luxuries^ Varzil, it was Varzil who had taken away everything good and bright in his life.

I survived. That's all that matters. Once Varzil is dead, and Carolin's reign is ruined, I'll never have to think about those years again.

Saravio was still alive, although in so deep a slumber he did not rouse, not even when Eduin placed a hand upon his shoulder and shook him gently.

Eduin was not sure if he'd expected otherwise.

He has done his work. I no longer need him.

Eduin ran his fingertips over Saravio's brow before leaving him. He felt no mental contact, for that was impossible within the field of a working telepathic damper, only a deep sadness. Surely the man who had pulled him from the Thendara gutters, fed and housed him, deserved some memorial of the heart. Saravio had given him so much more. They had shared the joys and privations of the road, had understood each other, exiled laranzu'in, as perhaps few others could. More than that, Saravio had been his only friend, or as close as anyone could be.

The telepathic damper sat on the wash stand beside the door. This close, Eduin felt its effect like a faint buzzing along his nerves. Since Saravio was clearly beyond any help from such a device, Eduin turned it off.

The change in the ambient psychic atmosphere of the castle almost brought him to his knees. Gone was the surge and play of holiday merrymaking, as well as the anxieties of the situation with Isoldir. Instead, framed against the fractured babble of ordinary minds, he felt a singleness of purpose, a shift like a river in flood.

Something had happened, but he could not discern what.

Cold burned deep in his belly. A voice whispered in the back of his mind, Kill... and he realized with a terrible certainty that it was no longer only his father's voice.

Eduin raced down the corridor. A maid carrying a basket of soiled linens made way for him. He slowed his pace.

"What's happened?" he shouted.

In response, she cringed against the wall, shaking her head. "I-I know nothing! Don't hurt me!"

The stableman would surely know of any comings or goings. Eduin flung himself down the back stairway, taking the steps two at a time. A pair of servants in Valeron house livery jumped aside. What did they know? He had no time for more useless answers. Urgency spurred him on. Hallways flew past and then he burst into the courtyard.

Everything looked normal, the household staff finishing their morning labors. Eduin found the stableman leading Lady Marelie's favorite mare to the watering trough.

"What has happened?" Eduin cried. His heart pounded and his breath rasped in his throat. He knew he looked like a madman, racing through the placid late summer morning as if half the demons in Zandru's Seven Hells were on his heels. How would he explain the sense of disaster that seared every nerve?

The stableman turned to look at him. "Oh, they were off before dawn and that's all any of us knows."

"Off? Who? Where?"

The stableman stroked the mare's neck. She had buried her muzzle in the green-tinted water and was sucking noisily. Then she raised her head and blew out foam, shaking her head to scatter droplets in every direction. The stableman laughed.

"Where?" Eduin repeated.

"Oh, we'll be finding out soon enough. Whatever the Lady's up to, she'll keep her own counsel until everything's done and settled. Times like these, with all the merrymaking, folks come and go, and you never know whose tongue might wag."

With an effort, Eduin controlled himself. "Someone went somewhere. That much you know."

"Crept out quietlike they did, from the Tower to the field. This little lady," he indicated the mare, "was being no lady at all, but about to kick her stall down, so I was awake to hear."

"From the Tower to-the airfield?"

"The very same-"

Eduin did not stay to hear more. He bolted for the gate leading to the outer courtyard where the aircars were kept.

The yard was empty except for an old servant in a homespun smock raking the dirt field.

"You there! Halt!" a man's voice rang out behind him.

Eduin turned to see three Valeron soldiers hurry toward him. The foremost wore the badge of a captain and a frown.

"Who are you and what are you doing here?"

Eduin stammered out the false name he used, adding that he served Lord Brynon, before blurting out, "What happened? Where did they go?"

"You'd best get your answers direct from your master," the captain said.

"There's no harm in telling you the aircars took off two hours before dawn.

They're safely away now. There's nothing any man can do to stop them now."

Two hours before dawn! While I slept- It could all be perfectly innocent, but he knew it wasn't. He felt it in every mote of air around him, every beat of his heart. A peaceful mission would have left in daylight, without any need for stealth. It had to be an attack, one planned in secrecy and shrouded with dread.

The thoughts of the laranzu'in piloting the aircars hung in the air.We have no choice. We must seize the chance... But if we should be wrong...

"I-I thank you," Eduin stammered, making his retreat. "I am sure my Lord will tell me whatever he wishes me to know."

He hurried back to the castle proper and made his way, at a more decorous pace, to Lord Brynon's chambers. To his surprise, he was refused entry.

Lord Brynon was not within, but closeted with the Queen.

Eduin's gut twisted. Frustrated and furious, he reached out with his laran and plunged through the aide's flimsy defenses. While he'd slept, exhausted and numbed by the telepathic damper, the Queen had met with her advisers.

General Marzan had been summoned, several of his most trusted officers, Lord Brynon ... and the laranzu'in of Valeron Tower.

Forcing himself to calm, Eduin bowed and took his leave. The Queen had convened a war council, that much was plain. She had commanded the laranzu'in to set out in the aircars. Doubtless, they were loaded with clingfire or some other powerful weapon. The speed and secrecy of the attack and the lack of movement of ordinary soldiers suggested it was meant to be a decisive strike.

Against Isoldir? Eduin frowned, pausing to let one of the under-coridoms hustle past him. Had Julianna come to doubt the sincerity of DomRonal's pledge? Did she suspect he might have betrayed an oath made under truthspell?

He shuddered. Then another thought lifted his heart. She might also have finally seen the hand of Varzil Ridenow in Isoldir and sent the aircars to destroy the newly-rebuilt Tower.

Whatever the mission, it was clear he would get no answers from the servants. He had not dared to approach any of the Tower folk, for fear of detection. But Callina might well know something. At this hour, she was often in Romilla's bower. He quickened his pace in that direction.

He was admitted without question, where he found Callina sitting with Romilla over cups of jaco and plates of little flower- decorated pastries. Callina looked pale, the delicate skin around her eyes dark, her energy brittle. Romilla, however, glowed. Her eyes glittered with a hectic fire.

"Good morning to you," Romilla said, looking up. "Where is the Blessed Sandoval? I hope he is not exhausted after the audience last night. Callina said he needed rest and quiet."

Eduin had all but forgotten Saravio in his need to discover what had happened. He replied, "I fear that he has, vai damiseia, and worse than ever before."

"If he has not recovered under the damper, there is not much more I can do," Callina said. "I do not suppose either of you would accept a physician's ministrations. Shall I send for the Tower monitor?"

That was the last thing Eduin wanted, although he did not think that what he had done to Saravio was detectable even by a trained laran healer. He bowed and said that if the Blessed Sandoval did not rally, he would leave the next step to Callina's discretion.

"I will pray to Evanda for his recovery," Romilla said.

"If you must pray, let it be to Naotalba, who is his special patroness," Eduin said.