The Fall of Neskaya by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Taniquel rolled free. She must have shoved him safely out of the way. No mortally wounded man could make so much noise.
Gerolamo hauled himself to his feet, still holding his arm. Dark blood flowed over his fingers and down Rafael’s bright blade. Its pungent smell filled the tent.
“By all the gods, what have I done?” Rafael’s voice shook. His eyes blinked, like a man emerging from a nightmare. The sword dipped.
Gerolamo toppled to his knees in front of Rafael. “Vai dom, kill me now, I beg you. I do not deserve to live—to have laid hands on you—I tried to—”
“Oh, stop it, both of you!” Taniquel snapped. “We don’t have time for this! We’ve got to pull ourselves together. It was some kind of laran attack, don’t you see, that made us turn on each other. Who knows what Deslucido will try next?”
As if in reply, another invisible wave of the mental energy swept through the tent. This time, Taniquel felt it as a physical blow. She wavered on her feet. The men’s faces hardened, eyes gone cold. Before she could summon words, could remind them again that whatever they were feeling wasn’t real but only a sending from Deslucido’s sorcerers, Rafael shook his head and raised one hand. The starstone hidden in the folds of his shirt glimmered. He seemed to grow taller, straighter. She remembered that like all Hasturs, he had been tested for laran as a youth, and had trained, at least minimally, at a Tower.
Gerolamo fastened his eyes upon his lord as a drowning man toward the shore. His face paled and colored, but he held firm.
“Gero, get that arm bound up. Then find me. I will have need of you shortly,” Rafael said.
The glittery panic in Gerolamo’s eyes vanished. He did not flinch when Rafael turned and plunged into the night.
Gerolamo glanced down at the blood-smeared hand over his wound. “By the time I’ve knotted a kerchief over this, he’ll have half the camp organized.”
“Sit down. This will take only a moment.” Taniquel took the eating knife and slashed a long strip from her ripped hem. A few strokes cut away the worst of the bloodied shirt. Luckily, the cut was not deep and had bled freely at first. The blood was already beginning to clot. She poured the rest of the wine over it.
“Yow! Woman, that stings!”
“If you were a cristoforo, it would be just penance for your sins.” Taniquel wrapped the hem strip twice around his arm and knotted the ends, making it tight enough to compress the wound edges together and yet loose enough not to cut off circulation. “Off with you!” When he turned to say something, whether thanks or yet another apology, she shoved him bodily out of the tent.
36
Taniquel stood alone in the tent. While she’d had something to do, some focus for her thoughts, she had been able to resist the relentless pressure. Now thoughts crowded in on her, pounded through her mind.
He would seize your throne, he has betrayed you . . . None of them can be trusted . . . They deserve to die . . . Kill them all . . . Kill . . .
“NO!” A voice cried out, distorted but still recognizably a woman’s. She lowered her hands from her ears, with no memory of having covered them. It was her own voice.
Take a knife . . . Kill . . . Kill . . .
“Merciful Evanda, mother of life, protect me!”
The cry, torn from her soul, brought a measure of respite. But in the end, she knew, as long as she had no better defense than her own weak prayers, the voices would win. She must fight the spell with action, just as she had at the gates of Acosta. Only this time, she must not be too late.
She strode to the opening of the tent and grasped the door flap. Outside, she heard the sounds of men struggling, steel clashing, screams and war cries. The darkness seethed with blood lust.
Her fingers dug into the canvas and for a heartbeat she could not move. Every instinct urged her to stay hidden, a rabbit-horn in a pack of wolves gone mad. What could she hope to accomplish out there? She had no weapon and poor skills to use any she might find. Would an attacker recognize her and hold his hand? There were men out there who had no loyalty to her, only to Rafael. They might well see her as the enemy, the way this spell warped men’s minds.
I am afraid, the thought came to her, to be answered, When has that made a difference? You were afraid when Deslucido cut down Padrik. You were afraid on the trail, in the frozen river. You were afraid to face Deslucido at the Comyn Council. Yet you did all these things and more. Do you claim to be a Queen? Then go out there and act like one!
Taniquel took a deep breath and stepped into the night. A stench like burning copper hung in the air. For an instant, she thought Deslucido’s men had already fallen upon the camp, catching them unawares. Tents had fallen into misshapen heaps between those which still stood like decrepit sentinels. Here and there, bodies lay in clumps of shadow, as if dead. She feared some of them were. Between them, in the aisles and around the campfires, men fought with anything they could lay hands on, whether rock or steel and their own bare fists. In mindless frenzy, they swung and stabbed, or grappled each other. She hurried past knots of soldiers where two or more cornered a single man, then turned on one another.
Where Rafael had passed, however, order prevailed, frenzy held in abeyance for the moment. Men were already setting the camp to rights, pulling apart those who were still fighting. A few sat groaning, heads in their hands. Aides ran along the aisles, shouting orders.
In a few moments, she reached the tent she shared with Graciela, but it was empty, undisturbed. She made her way to Edric’s tent, a short way distant. It too looked untouched. Inside, however, she found Edric and the others. They stood in a huddle, hands joined. Graciela, recognizable as the only woman, swayed on her feet like a willow in a storm.
Taniquel closed her eyes, trying to envision what she could not physically see. They’d linked somehow, forming a single unit with their minds. Wave after wave of madness battered the camp, but now she sensed a shield arising from the joined minds of the workers. It was thin, more veil than armor, but they were able to keep out the worst of it.
She stood irresolute for a time, wondering what she could do to help. Domna Caitlin had told her long ago that she had not enough laran to be worth training, but she no longer believed that. Had she not resisted Deslucido’s spells, first at Acosta Castle gates and now this night? Surely that must be of some value. But she did not know how to join with the others. She feared that if she spoke or touched one of them, disturbed their concentration, then the protective circle might shatter, leaving the entire camp vulnerable. Not even Rafael’s leadership could draw the men back together.
And no one knew when Deslucido’s armies would strike in earnest . . . They had to be ready.
Sounds came from outside the tent, toward the back—shouts, scuffling. Light flared, penetrating the canvas walls. In a moment of brightness, Taniquel saw the faces of the other workers, set with concentration. Blood trickled from a gash in one man’s forehead.
More lights from outside, more shouting. The voices sounded closer, almost on top of them. Still the laran workers stood, eyes closed, focused inwardly. Taniquel moved toward the door. As unthinking as the men under the spell were, they might smash into this tent as they had others. She must stop them. Maybe if she taunted them, lured them away . . .
A circle of fire points appeared on the tent fabric, low down. The dry cloth ignited instantly. Fire exploded up the wall, leaving gaping holes. Clumps of orange coals came hurling inside. Whatever they touched—carpet, furnishings—burst into flames. The tent wall blackened and fell away. The robe of one of the men burst into eye-searing white-yellow flames. He screamed and so did Graciela.
Taniquel grabbed the screaming man by both shoulders. It was Edric, his eyes wide and unfocused. He struggled in her grasp. Years of childhood scuffles with Padrik came back to her. She hooked one foot around the back of his knee, kicked back hard, and twisted his shoulders to break his balance. He went down heavily.
She snatched the carpet, praying she was near an edge, but c
The whole tent was on fire now. Within moments, it filled with smoke, dense and acrid. She could see only a few feet.
“Come on!” One of the other men, the one with the gash on his forehead, grabbed Taniquel’s arm and hauled her to her feet.
Together they dragged Edric through the tent door and let him fall on the bare earth beyond. Graciela knelt beside him, her starstone in her hand. It glowed with an eldritch blue light.
Two men in uniform appeared with buckets of water, which they threw over the collapsing tent. Their lips were drawn back over their teeth hard and tight, caught in a terrible rictus of effort. Taniquel shuddered, sensing how that awful pressure was even now shredding their self-control.
“We can’t face this!” she cried. “We must get the circle back!”
“Are you crazy?” In the last flickers of the tent fire, Graciela’s face contorted. “Edric’s burned too badly to focus. And we cannot do it without him. We barely held them as it was!”
Taniquel’s temper broke. She grabbed the younger woman’s arm and with a strength that surprised her, lifted her to her feet and shoved her in the direction of the two laranzu’in.
“To Zandru’s icy hell with your cannots! You will do it! You will do it now!”
“Vai domna—” one of the men began. His shoulders sagged. “You do not understand. It is no use. The Ambervale army is but an hour away.”
“Did you send word to my uncle?” Seeing him shrug and shake his head with an expression of In this madness? Taniquel took a step closer. Her hands curled into fists and the physical act of restraining herself from striking him sent jagged lightnings of pain up her forearms. “Then you must give us that hour!”
“Even if we could . . .” Graciela lifted her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “We are too few to stand against a Tower . . .”
“A Tower? What Tower?”
“Tramontana,” one of the men said wearily. “Only a full circle could cast a spell of this magnitude over such an area and control so many minds at once.”
“Graciela’s right,” the other said. “We don’t have enough strength.”
A Tower pitted against an army of men unable to defend themselves in the slightest? It wasn’t fair!
“Can you not reach them through your starstone?” Taniquel had heard of such things. Caitlin, who was a telepath like many in the Towers, could speak mentally with her friends at Hali, if the distance were not too great. She had done so, in sending word of the Drycreek disaster. “You must convince them to break off the attack so it will be sword against sword, unhindered!”
“We tried that, when the attack first began,” Graciela said. “They are barricaded against us. Nor can we contact Hali, to ask them to restrain Tramontana. There is too much—you wouldn’t understand the exact term—psychic static.”
Taniquel’s thoughts raced like wildfire. “There must be another way!”
“What do you want of us?” Graciela cried. “We are not enough to defend the camp as it is, and now you want one of us to go wandering through the Overworld on such a fool’s quest.”
“I ask only that we do what we can—all of us,” Taniquel said, putting all the command she could muster into those few words.
In response, they took up positions in a triangle, lightly joining hands. “It will do little good,” one of the men said, “but we will try our best.”
“I must go to my uncle now. He is—I am—counting on you to do your part.”
There was no reply, which Taniquel supposed was good. She hurried in the direction Rafael had gone. After a couple of steps, she cursed her own folly in not asking one of the laranzu’in to locate him. But she could not go back now and ask. That would surely start another debate all over again. She tried to make out those channels of order in the seething darkness of the camp which had marked where Rafael had spoken to his men, gathered them back into sanity. Minutes slipped away as she searched, while the awareness pulsed through her veins, Only an hour away!
Almost by accident, she met Gerolamo giving orders to a group of younger officers. She heard his voice before she saw him, rough-edged but firm, and caught the gleam of ivory silk tied like a badge around one arm. He held a naked sword in one hand and looked ready to use it. The officers dispersed even as she approached.
“Where is King Rafael?” she said without preliminary.
“He’s taken those men still fit to fight to the field beyond,” Gerolamo said.
At least, there were some. She dared not think how many or what had happened to them when the circle broke. “I must speak to him right away!”
Gerolamo said it was not safe for her to be wandering the camp, even as he took her arm to escort her himself. Once an armed man rushed at them from the darkness. Moonlight glinted off the whites of his bulging eyes and the dagger he jabbed at Taniquel. He screamed, “Witch-hag! Your kind killed my father! You poisoned him in his sleep!”
Gerolamo deflected the thrust and sent the dagger skidding into the dust. The soldier stared at Gerolamo’s sword, then sprinted away. Gerolamo handed the dagger to Taniquel.
“Use this only if you must,” he told her, “but use it to kill.”
Nodding, she took the dagger. Rank and reason would avail her nothing tonight. If she needed to use the dagger, she would get only one chance.
In a pool of torchlight, Rafael was talking to his soldiers in quiet, even tones. She felt them drinking in his words. The pressure of the laran spell still resonated through her. Yet these armed men resisted its command, each in his own way. Until that moment, she had not understood how loyalty could override even the most deeply-rooted hatred.
“Each of us carries the seeds of war and the seeds of peace,” Rafael’s voice rang out. “We make a choice every day of our lives, every moment. To kill, to preserve. To grow a tree, to chop it down. To stand with law and right, to let loose the outlaw within us.”
And every moment he talked, they chose. They chose to stand, hands unmoving on their weapons, eyes fixed upon their king.
They are worth more than all the gold in Shainsa, these men, she thought. They must not fall beneath Deslucido’s swords!
Rafael, seeing her approach, paused in his speech and drew her aside.
“Chiya, you should not be here—”
“Edric and the others have been screening us from the worst of the laran attack,” she said, brushing his words aside. “It comes from Tramontana. Now Edric is hurt and our own defenses crippled. We have less than an hour before the Ambervale forces arrive.”
“An hour . . .” he said, drawing in a breath, “and we cannot withdraw with the men in such disorder. The hills will force us to scatter where they could hunt us down one by one.” Or, he thought but did not add aloud, fight like this.
“Uncle, there must be something we can do!” Desperation rose in her, closed icy fingers around her throat. By the torches, she caught the shift in Rafael’s expression. He meant to order her from the camp, into what fragile safety lay beyond. He thought her useless at best, to be protected at the cost of his pitifully thin resources.
“No, do not spare a man for me,” she said as briskly as she could. “I can resist this spell, don’t you remember?” She lifted the dagger Gerolamo had thrust into her hands. “And I am armed. I will see what aid I can bring to Edric and the others.”
This might be the last time she saw Rafael Hastur alive and she wanted to throw her arms around him, thank him for his kindness and his vision. But she dared not. She had to pretend that they had a chance.
Less than an hour!
As Taniquel rushed back to her tent, the laran attack seemed to intensify. There was less active fighting among the soldiers, but more sitting with their heads bowed, sobbing or hiding their faces. In the eyes of the men who looked up as
Taniquel lowered the tent flap behind her, sat on her sleeping pallet, and buried her head on her folded arms. Not for the first time, she wished she had a starstone and the training to use it. Then she could join Graciela and the others and strengthen their resistance. She wished she could send visions of flaming scorpions upon Deslucido’s men in return. Perhaps she could even go out into that nebulous place apart from normal time and space called the Overworld and find help.
Help. Where would she go, whom would she ask? Except for Caitlin, she had only a passing acquaintance with the folk at Hali.
But Hali was not the only Tower beholden to her uncle. Neskaya Tower also owed allegiance to Hastur, and Coryn was at Neskaya.
Coryn . . .
Taniquel lifted her head. Memory flooded her senses—the warmth of dappled sun in the garden that magical afternoon, the sweet softness of his lips on hers, the smell of flowers and his skin. His hair, loose to his shoulders, had brushed her face when he turned; she could feel that light, silken touch even now. Shadows delineated the curve of his ear, the strong line of his jaw. In her mind, he turned back to her with those eyes so full of light that she felt herself falling into them . . .
She lay back on the pallet, clasping her hands.
Coryn . . .
Even as she spoke his name in her thoughts, her heart called out. Longing pierced her.
Through water you have come to me; through fire I must come to you. But where was the water? Where the fire?
Fire . . . and once again, as in her dreams, she saw the impossible blue flames. Now she stood in the very heart of the blaze, in the heart of a sparkling matrix. For a moment she could not move, dared not even breathe lest she sear her lungs. But the flames burned without heat or smoke. They consumed nothing, arose from nowhere. Her hands passed through the shimmering walls, untouched.
Drawing courage, she took a step and then another. As she emerged from the blue fire, she felt solid ground beneath her feet. She blinked, clearing her vision.