A Flame in Hali by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Under any other circumstances, Dyannis would have accepted it as normal and turned away. Now that very smoothness deepened her curiosity. Raimon brought the circle’s focus closer.
    A layer of psychic energy lay over the lake. It had been shaped to reflect the expectations of anyone approaching from the Overworld. A worker would see only what he thought should be there. It looked so normal that only someone with reason to be suspicious would be able to tell the difference.
    Dyannis realized the mirrorlike pattern would also repulse any incoming energy. She’d studied devices like this before and had even constructed them. The barrier would use an attacker’s own energy, so that the harder he pushed, the harder he was thrown back. Only a trained Tower circle could have created it.
    Who? Who would do such a thing? And why?
    Raimon, too, was no stranger to such a strategy. He shaped the circle’s energy into a spear point, long and slender. Then, instead of aiming in a perpendicular manner at the barrier, he sent them skimming across it, dipping down at the narrowest angle. The tip of the point slipped beneath the outer edge. There was almost no resistance. He increased their angle of descent. A few minutes later, the barrier suddenly gave way. They had broken through.
    The lake lay beneath them. Gathering the circle’s forces, Raimon shifted the thought-stuff of the Overworld. Grays darkened, contrast intensified. The mists grew thicker, lapping the shores of the lake. At the same time, shapes appeared at the bottom. They were blurred and indistinct, yet present.
    Dyannis felt a surge of elation. There was something there!
    Wordlessly, Raimon drew upon them for more power. She gave it freely and felt the others do the same. They moved through the ethereal waters, deep and deeper.
    Below, Dyannis glimpsed a vast jagged shape. Instinct recoiled, urging her to flee. She held fast. Though it took every particle of discipline she possessed, she forced herself to examine it.
    It had no physical form, neither darkness nor light. With her laran senses, Dyannis felt it as a rending, a disruption in the continuity of time.
    The thing drew her, repelled her. It reeked of laran.

7
    A fter they had rested and replenished energies drained by the long session, Raimon brought the circle back together, this time in council. They must understand what they had seen, gather more information, and decide what to do next. The final decision belonged to Raimon, as Keeper, but nothing like this situation had come up within memory. They all were acutely aware of the importance of their next actions.
    As they discussed what they had seen, Dyannis suddenly recognized an undercurrent of memory, like an itch at the back of her skull, which had been nagging her all day.
    “I don’t know if this has any relevance to our present situation,” she said aloud, “but this isn’t the first time I know of when something strange has happened at the lake. Years ago, my brother Varzil and I spent Midwinter season at the court of old King Felix in Hali.”
    In her mind, she returned to that time, and the others, still in light rapport after their long session together, followed her thoughts. She’d been very young, newly arrived at Hali Tower and in a state of constant over-excitement. Memory flooded through her, rippling through the circle, the texture of the stone wall she’d been concentrating on while practicing her breathing exercises, the jarring clatter from below, voices raised, people running. She’d rushed outside to see two men easing her brother’s limp body from the back of a horse. Once the commotion had sorted itself out, the story emerged.
    This is what had happened, she spoke to the circle with her mind.
    The two men were Prince Carolin and his friend, Orain, and the drenched, bedraggled, half-drowned wretch was her own brother. The healers tended him for hours while Carolin paced the hallways, driving everyone else half-mad with his