Read Online A Flame in Hali by Marion Zimmer Bradley - Free Book Online Page B

Keeper of Neskaya Tower.

5
    T he flush of pleasure on the face of the innkeeper’s wife at seeing Saravio faded when Eduin explained what they wanted.
    “The back room? For a private meeting?” She looked from one to the other. Fear lurked behind the bruise-colored hollows around her eyes. The skin of her neck hung in loose folds and her apron, although clean, had been worn almost to tatters and looked several sizes too large for her.
    Eduin caught a fragment of her thoughts, the worry about how much ale might be drunk and how much bread eaten, how much she might be able to charge without overstepping the bounds of gratitude.
    “We cannot pay you for the room,” Eduin said in his most soothing tones, “only for food and drink, but if that is not enough—”
    Saravio nudged the woman’s mind. “No, no!” she cried, clearly distressed. “What must you think of me? How could I take payment from the man who did so much for my Nance?”
    Before Saravio could mention the glories of Naotalba’s service, Eduin pulled him away. Saravio was all too eager to stop whatever he was doing to praise his goddess, without any regard to urgency.
    “We must make plans for tonight,” he told Saravio as they made their way back to their tiny rented room. “These people are frustrated and angry. They lack direction or leadership. Left on their own, they will spend their strength uselessly and then scatter like chaff upon the wind.”
    Saravio went to the small brazier and poked through the bed of cold embers for any unburned bits of charcoal. “Naotalba’s foes are many and we are but few. Yet her might will prevail. This much she has promised me.”
    Eduin chose his next words carefully. “Listen to me, my friend. There is more at stake than extolling Naotalba’s name. She has sent us to transform the world.”
    “She has?”
    “You yourself said it when we first met. It is the Towers who maintain the power of the Comyn lords, the Towers who supply them with terrible weapons like the clingfire that destroyed that farmer’s arm. If we kill one king, even Hastur himself, what then? They will only choose another. But if even a single Tower were to fall—”
    “What?” Saravio cried with a surge of his old Tower-born arrogance. “Commoners rise against trained leronyn? ”
    If Eduin were to succeed with his plan to enlist Saravio against Varzil Ridenow, then he must find a better way to convince him.
    “Are you defending them?” Eduin snarled, deliberately provoking a confrontation. “Have you been lying to me about how the Keepers treated you, thrust you out, turned their backs on Naotalba’s summons?”
    Saravio whirled, eyes blazing. The air hummed, taut and dry. Eduin felt the tiny hairs along the back of his spine stiffen. His laran senses quivered with the shift in the atmosphere. With that inner sight, he saw the sky lowering, felt the massing of electrical power. This was no natural storm, of that he was sure. He lifted his head, nostrils flaring as if to catch a distant scent. At any moment, the tension would break.
    Before Saravio could speak, Eduin raised his arms, spread them wide to the unseen heavens. “Naotalba!” he cried, his voice filling the little room. “Hear our prayers! Come to us—lead us—command us! We are yours!”
    Saravio drew back, his eyes wide. Eduin drew breath to repeat his incantation, but just then, the very air split asunder in a deafening thunderous peal. His ears rang with it, even after it had died into rumbles. Through the papered windows, cold white brilliance burst across the room.
    “Naotalba! Naotalba!” Saravio fell to his knees, hands outstretched, palms up, head flung back. He shook so violently that Eduin feared he might be on the brink of another seizure. His eyes showed as crescents of white. Again and again, he called out. Each time, the syllables became less understandable, until they merged into a single howl of raw emotion.
    Eduin clamped down his laran