A Flame in Hali by Marion Zimmer Bradley Page B

Council exerted great influence, but its meeting season was still some time off; like all institutions, it moved slowly.

    A few days later, storm clouds gathered and poured down a spring torrent. Thunder crackled as waves of lightning bridged sky and earth. Only the fact that the rain had already drenched every tree and hut, house and field, prevented a rash of fires. The stone walls of Hali Tower vibrated with the ferocity of the winds.
    When the rains eased and the great red sun appeared once more, the Tower community immediately noticed a great lessening of the electrical tension. Raimon decided to take advantage of the respite, for no one knew how long it might last. He sent Dyannis down to the lake, along with Rorie and Alderic, to take a closer look. The day was sunny and surprisingly mild for the season, as if spring had sent a perfumed herald to tease them. There were no clouds in the sky. Even so, she approached the cloud-water with some trepidation.
    The three of them were in light rapport; linked in this way, the two men would search the lakebed while she would watch both of them, monitoring their breathing.
    Dyannis found a place to sit on a tumble of weather-smoothed stones. She gathered her skirts around her and composed herself, using her deep breathing practice to settle her body. The sun warmed her face and made patterns through her closed eyelids. She smelled wet sand and the faintly pungent odor of river-weed. Behind her, small birds cheeped.
    Her mind descended with the men, as if they were carrying her, silent and invisible, along with them. Mist, gossamer-white, swirled past her. Time itself seemed to slow. Light rained down in sheets of brilliance. Balls of color, like a patterning of bright yellow and orange-black stripes, darted across her vision. She exclaimed aloud, delighted by the strangely illuminated creatures that were neither bird nor fish. They clustered around the explorers, benign and beautiful, always beyond reach.
    As the men went deeper, the colors shifted. Yellow gave way to tones of inky blue. The temperature dropped. Dyannis shivered in the sun, then found herself gasping for air.
    Breathe—you must remember to breathe! she sent. She counted, Inhale—two, three—exhale—two, three—inhale . . . knowing that her friends below mirrored her discipline.
    A time or two, momentarily blind, she lost touch with them. Each time, she strengthened the link with greater difficulty. It seemed that something more than distance separated them. The cloud-water, which once seemed to transmit psychic impressions, now acted as an increasingly resistant barrier.
    Rorie? ’Deric? What’s going on?
    We’ve reached the bottom. Alderic’s usually clear mental voice sounded blurred. At least, we aren’t going down any farther. I can’t see far, but there doesn’t seem to be much down here except rock and sand.
    Dyannis frowned. The jagged rent in the Overworld could look like anything—or nothing—to ordinary senses. Keep searching, she told them. And remember to breathe.
    If we forget, we can trust you to remind us, said Rorie.
    Laggard.
    Pest, he retorted good-naturedly.
    There’s something ahead, Alderic broke in.
    Dyannis glimpsed a pale shape emerging from the swirls of mist. The two men moved toward it with a slow, almost floating gait, half-suspended in the cloud-water. The outline remained infuriatingly indistinct, despite her attempts to concentrate. She became convinced the effect was not merely the distance or insulating cloud-water. It stemmed from some quality of the site itself.
    What can you see? she asked.
    Stones, Rorie responded. Worked by tools, not natural. They’re enormous, sort of pillars toppled and broken, but still more or less in line.
    Dyannis sensed Alderic running his hands over the curved surface. On one level, she felt the pitted hardness of the stone, the slipperiness of untold years of slime, the roughness where some creature had attached its shell and then