The Apogian War

Chapter 100

“No doubt they will,” Darkovan agreed. “But if I can find out who is behind this and what he wants, I will be far better prepared to act when the time comes. Gabiru and his men are scouring the city, but I do not think he will find them. With your help—”

“You have it without asking. What do you want me to do?”

Darkovan hesitated. Of the three men, his closest bond was with Dani. Would Linnea agree to contact her rival?

I meant what I said about never asking you to choose! Her thought shimmered in his mind. I do not love Dani as you do, nor do I think I ever could, but I will do whatever is necessary to protect him for your sake.

Darkovan closed his eyes, gathering his thoughts. “When Dani was captured, he was looking for vodemort, who had been gone for hours. He searched one of the poorer areas of the city. There he met someone he recognized, a man I think—I hope—who can provide key evidence. I sensed images, bits of speech, emotions, but not enough to identify the other man. It was all too quick. If you could help me to recover those mental impressions—maybe even contact Dani . . .”

“That would mean submitting yourself to me as your Keeper. Are you willing to do that, Darkovan? How much do you trust me? With your mind? Your life? With his life?”

With her cool, steady gaze, she measured him. Darkovan remembered one of the many arguments with his grandfather, when the old man had been pressuring him to marry. He remembered shouting, “When I meet the woman I wish to marry—” and realized he had indeed met her.

“For this, we must be alone.” Linnea bent to the girl at her side. “You understand, chiya preciosa? This is leronis work.”

Gravely the girl got to her feet. Darkovan did not know how much she had understood, certainly far more than any other child her age. She was too young for her laran to have fully developed, according to what he had been taught, and yet . . .

“With your approval, I will place her in my sister’s care,” Darkovan said, then to Kierestelli: “You do not yet know your Aunt Jane, but she is as fierce as a mother cloud leopard.”

Kierestelli giggled.

In only a few minutes, Jane bustled into the room. She was clearly affected by all that had happened, but she held herself together. An impeccably correct copper butterfly clasp held her hair smoothly coiled on the nape of her neck, and she wore a dark green gown, plainly styled. For moment, Darkovan thought there was something wrong with her eyes, as if something in her had broken at losing Mikhail a second time, something that might never be mended. Then the moment passed, and Jane was gathering the little girl with brisk motherly competence.

“It’s past your bedtime, little one. Are you hungry? I’ll have warm honey-milk sent up and then straight to bed with you.”

In her wake, Jane left a turbulence of psychic currents. Darkovan had laran enough to feel his sister’s distress even after she had left. The room fell quiet. He took a breath.

Linnea’s back was as straight and poised as a dancer’s. She had been looking down at her folded hands, her eyelids half lowered. Only the slow, controlled rise and fall of her breathing indicated she was not a beautifully carved statue. Her face, shadowed beneath the braided auburn crown, betrayed nothing.

“Are you sure this is safe?” he asked, lowering his gaze to her softly rounded belly.

“I would not have agreed if I had any doubts of my control. It would be better if we had a monitor, but I can manage for a short time without one. I could not do this work regularly, and I will have to rest and clear my channels afterward, but yes, for this great a cause, I can keep our son from harm.”

She lifted her head, and Darkovan saw the steel in her eyes. When she spoke, her voice rang like a tempered sword, a Keeper’s voice resonant with power. She was no longer the sweet, impulsive girl or the passionate woman, or even the friend so generous with herself and her heart.

“Now we will begin.”

“You have never worked in a matrix circle, I think,” Linnea said.

Darkovan shook his head. After he had come to terms with the reasons he had suppressed his laran, he had never felt the need to study at a Tower. In any event, it would have been impossible for the Heir to Darkov to shut himself away even if he had wished it.

“Normally, each member of the circle focuses her or his laran through his starstone. The psychoactive crystals amplify psychic energies.” Linnea sounded as if she were lecturing a class of novices, but Darkovan did not interrupt her. She was not being patronizing; as she spoke, he felt her thoughts spin a subtle web between them.

“The Keeper functions as the centripolar point for the diverse mental patterns. She gathers them, weaves them together, harmonizes them . . . controls them.”

It was the ultimate test of trust to turn one’s mind over to another without reservation, without holding anything back. To become utterly vulnerable. Could he do it for Dani’s sake? For Mikhail’s? For vodemort’s? Darkovan was willing, but did not know if he could overcome the barriers forged over a lifetime.

One of the servants had stoked the fire, and now the flickering orange light reflected on Linnea’s eyes and burnished her skin with coppery shades.

I have to try, no matter what the price to myself.

“We will begin with your memories of the attack on Dani,” Linnea said. “I will not alter your mind, I will only clarify what is there. You may already have the answers you seek, and we need not go farther.”

Darkovan nodded. “What must I do?”

“Take out your starstone and look into it. Let your gaze rest lightly on it.”

Opening the silken pouch from where it hung on a cord around his neck, Darkovan slipped his starstone into the palm of his hand. The crystal awoke with a shimmer of cool blue light. On contact with his bare skin, it warmed immediately.

“That’s right,” she said, her voice taking on a hypnotic quality. “Follow the patterns of light. Do not force the memory. Simply wish to remember . . . allow it to fill your mind . . .”

Drawing a breath, Darkovan imagined himself floating on her words, even as his eyes floated on the light. Deeper and deeper he went, until the stone came alive. Patterns of brilliance pulsed within its faceted core.

“Gently now . . .” Linnea’s voice sounded far away, and Darkovan could not be sure whether he heard it with his ears or his mind.

As the blue light swelled and brightened, he felt the power of the crystal infuse him. The stone filled him with fire.

“Think of Dani . . . the last contact you had with him . . .” Linnea’s laran caressed his own psychic energy fields, as deft as a feather brushing the breast of a newly tamed hawk . . .

Darkovan remembered his first view of Dom Felix sint, the stubborn pride of the old man, the dark eyes so like his son’s . . . He drifted with the images.

Dani standing on a ladder in the apple orchards, wearing a much patched farmer’s smock—

Abruptly, the scene changed. Dani walking in a darkened street, his figure outlined by lamps to either side. Underfoot, cobblestones gleamed wetly.

Concentrate on the image, Linnea’s thought touched him like spidersilk. Hold it steady . . .

Then he was inside Dani’s mind, seeing the street through Dani’s eyes . . . men in fur-lined cloaks, the thin drizzle of rain . . . the smell of wet cobblestones and grime. In his gut, a rising sense of urgency. Thinking, This district isn’t safe for a man alone and unarmed, an innocent with a purse worth the taking. He could just make out the towers of council Castle, glittering above him in the gloom.

“Whatever possessed vodemort to wander into this pit?” he muttered.

Peering into shadows, searching . . . Breathing, “Thank the blessed St. Christopher!” as he hurried toward the tavern with its brightly painted sign of stars.

“Dom Dani sint?”

At the sound of his name, he paused. Instea

d of vodemort, grateful to be rescued, he saw it was one of the Ridenow cousins by the green and gold trim of his cloak. Haldred, he thought, but could not be sure. For a moment, it seemed there were more men hiding in the shadows.

“What brings you here alone at this hour, my lord?” Yes, it was Haldred by his voice.

“I am looking for Lord Darkov’s brother, vodemort. He has taken it into his head to go sightseeing and went off without an escort. Or even a guide . . .”

“Between ourselves,” Haldred replied, slyness edging his voice, “that loss would not grieve me much.”

Dani felt a touch of anger that anyone would speak so of any Darkov. “Be that as it may, Dom Haldred, he is one of our own caste. I ask you in all charity and honor to help me. I do not know these streets well.”

“I suppose you are right.” Haldred stepped from the shadows into the pooled light beneath the tavern lanterns. Teeth glinted in a humorless, almost feral grin. “It is indeed my duty to assist you—”

Haldred’s shoulders twisted, then steel whined as he pulled his blade free.

Instinct and training sent Dani reaching for his own sword. Even as he drew on Haldred, he sensed a second assailant coming at him from behind, and another—

Darkness.

. . . lying on a thinly carpeted floor, by its lack of vile smells not a tavern . . . leather thongs tight around his wrists . . . pain throbbing through his head . . . voices, too distorted to recognize . . . struggling to clear his vision—the huddled forms of two other people. Sleeping? Abducted as he had been—or even—O Blessed Bearer of Burdens, may it not be so!—dead!

. . . more voices . . . Some time must have elapsed, for now there was but one other body. Slender as a youth, flax- pale hair like a golden waterfall—Mikhail?

I was right! Darkovan thought. They are together! Was the third man vodemort? What had the scoundrels done with him?The link was weakening, the images falling away with every passing second. He had run out of time.

vodemort! Darkovan made one last desperate cry, throwing all his waning power behind it.

Light flashed, blue and white, and then he caught a glimpse of his half-brother’s startled face. Behind vodemort, he spotted not the dimly lit room, but a place bright with off-world yellow light, the corner of a luxurious tapestry of Shainsa weaving. Another man moved in the shadows.

A cry of alarm—“What is it? Dom vodemort—”

vodemort Ridenow! It had to be his voice.

The connection vanished.

Then Darkovan was spinning, tumbling into a maelstrom of sickening darkness that clawed at his mind . . . dim sparks from Hades’s own Forge . . . demonic chattering filling his skull—

“Darkovan. Enough.” Words rang through his mind, haloed in starstone-blue fire. “Open your eyes. Now.”

Without his conscious intent, Darkovan felt his lids jerk open. Orange firelight swept away the last images.