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

many seasons, but he still had difficulty thinking clearly. The song and its effects lingered, wrapping him in a dreamy lassitude.
    “I believe that Naotalba has spoken to you, too,” Saravio whispered, his breath rasping between his lips. “Until now, I was the only one who could stand against her enemies, and you see what I have been reduced to. I live in this hovel, the object of charity, with not a single follower to hear her truth. I tell you, my friend, more than once I came close to despair. But Naotalba has kept faith with her servant. She brought you to me.” Saravio grasped Eduin’s shoulders, bringing his face within a few inches. Sweat broke out over Saravio’s forehead and his eyes bulged, so that the tracery of tiny red vessels stood out.
    “She has brought you to me, hasn’t she? Or . . . were you sent to destroy her work? Answer quickly!”
    Waves of trembling shook Saravio’s frame and his cheeks flushed a dark, congested red. His fingers dug into Eduin’s flesh like talons.
    Along with the shouted words, Eduin felt a renewal of the pressure against his psychic shields. If he failed to give the proper response, Saravio might well throttle him on the spot.
    You are right. She has sent me to you, he answered, mind to mind so that there could be no question of deception. Using the force of the Deslucido Gift as his father had taught him, even as he himself had lied under truthspell, he shaped the thought so that it would ring with sincerity.
    For a long moment, Saravio did not respond. Eduin wondered if he had said the wrong thing. Perhaps Saravio was so caught up in his own frenzy that he had not received the mental message. The pressure on Eduin’s throat tightened.
    “You passed her test—when you healed me,” Eduin gasped aloud, “and now I am here—to guide you—in your great work.”
    “I knew it!” Saravio crowed, releasing Eduin. “I knew she would not abandon her chosen one!”
    Well, Eduin said to himself as he rubbed his neck, making sure no trace of the thought leaked past his barriers, Naotalba is as good a god as any, these days.
    For so long, his only goal had been freedom from a quest that he could not possibly fulfill. As a penniless fugitive without any way of making a living, save with those skills that would betray him, he had no hope of putting an end to King Carolin. Now for the first time, he had both respite and hope—hope that with the help of this stranger, however odd he might be, Eduin might rid himself forever of his father’s dying curse.
    “I knew it—I knew it—” Saravio chanted, bouncing up and down on the rickety pallet like a small child. “I knew-ew-ew-ew it!”
    Dark Avarra, the man is not odd, he’s raving mad!
    Eduin got to his feet, thinking it would be safer to retreat for a time. He had already seen enough of Saravio’s shifting moods to suspect how uncertain, how dangerous his temper might be.
    Before he could turn toward the door, however, Saravio’s body went rigid. His eyes bulged, the whites stark against the dusky flush of his cheeks. He arched backward and fell upon the pallet with a loud thump. For a moment, he lay there, as still as a corpse.
    The door lay only a step or two away. Eduin could be gone in a moment, out into the streets and their familiar anonymity. Every instinct shrilled at him to run, to hide. He might have a few hours or days before the compulsion returned. Yet, he hesitated.
    Saravio’s next breath came as a hoarse gasp. His spine bowed upward, so that he rested on the back of his skull and his hips.
    Eduin had trained as a monitor at Arilinn, one of the oldest and most prestigious of all the Towers on Darkover. Although he had not done the delicate work of diagnosis and healing by laran in many years, he had not forgotten the techniques.
    Do nothing to draw attention to yourself, urged his years of living as an outlaw. Hide who you are and what you can do.
    Shudders ran the length of Saravio’s frame, each wave