A Flame in Hali by Marion Zimmer Bradley Page A

worry. At first, Dyannis assumed, as did everyone else, that Varzil had wandered into the depths of the lake and stayed too long. She’d been warned about the consequences as a novice.
    But something happened to Varzil, she said, something beyond exposure to cold and lack of air. She’d known that the moment she saw him. There was a strangeness about his eyes that astonished her. This was her big brother Varzil, after all, who could hear Ya-men singing under the four moons and other things that sent her scurrying under the bedcovers just to hear of them.
    Dyannis withdrew into the privacy of her own thoughts for a moment. Shortly after the incident at the lake, Varzil had tried to interfere with her first love affair, with a young laranzu from Arilinn. It had taken her a long time to forgive him.
    Dyannis found it strange that she should think of Eduin now, for he had not crossed her mind in years, not since that disaster at Hestral Tower. She still believed that the entire story might never be known. One thing was certain, Eduin had been unfairly blamed. He had no powerful friends among the Comyn besides Carolin Hastur, and at that time, Carolin had been an exile, running for his life in the wild lands beyond the Kadarin.
    The lake . . .
    Dyannis turned her thoughts once more to the current problem.
    “What exactly did Varzil find?” Raimon asked.
    Varzil had not said so explicitly, Dyannis explained, but she believed he had stumbled upon some relic of the Cataclysm, that ancient disaster that had turned an ordinary lake into the eerie marvel of today. Perhaps the psychic residue of that event still lingered in the mists, perceptible only in the depths. Varzil with his extraordinary laran might have sensed what other men, even Tower-trained, missed.
    The others glanced at one another with apprehensive expressions, and even Raimon looked somber. She couldn’t blame them. Varzil was generally regarded as the most powerful laranzu of their day. How could they handle something that had almost overpowered him?
    “Of course,” Dyannis said aloud to reassure herself as well as the others, “Varzil was very young then. I don’t think he’d been at Arilinn for a full year. He wasn’t expecting what he found.”
    We’ll be prepared, she added mentally, with a confidence she did not entirely feel.
    Raimon caught her undertone of bravado. We are not prepared yet. First we must gather information and resources. If this thing is connected to the Cataclysm event, it will be neither simple nor easy to deal with.
    There it was, Dyannis thought. He had put into unspoken words the fear that stirred within all of them.
    “We must do two things,” Raimon said temperately. “First, we must discover as much as we can about the energy source and, most particularly, whether it is causing the atmospheric disturbances, as we suspect.”
    “Anything that powerful cannot be left for anyone to use or misuse,” Lewis-Mikhail said.
    “Exactly so,” Raimon said. “Therefore, the second thing is to find out who created the energy shield and for what purpose. We must go carefully here.”
    Raimon sent word that night through the relays of what they had discovered. He made plans to confer with King Carolin, for Hali Lake was within the Hastur realm. Whatever harm came to his people or lands from the presence of such a powerful and unregulated energy source was ultimately his responsibility. If another Tower were involved, this might well be a suitable occasion to extend the Compact.
    Hali Tower had already sworn to abide by the Compact, that oath of honor that forbade the use of all weapons that killed at a distance. It might be one of the oldest Towers on Darkover, but it derived much of its prestige from the rhu fead, site of the ancient holy things, and its proximity to the royal seat. It had no power to compel any other Tower. In these uncertain times, with armed conflict ever a possibility, no Tower maintained true neutrality. The Comyn