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

a peak between her flawless brows, her skin glimmered like pearl. The faintest tracery of rose on her cheeks and lips was the only color. Gray eyes searched his, yet he knew she could not see him.
    Hers was a beauty to break men’s hearts, and yet as Eduin looked upon her in that moment, he felt only pity. Pity that such a human woman walked the earth no more, but must descend into the Seven Frozen Hells.
    She shaped a word, perhaps Adelandeyo, “walk with the gods,” a formal phrase of parting among the Comyn .
    Walk with the gods, she must.
    Naotalba.
    Eduin repeated her name to himself. He thought that if she answered him, if she called his own name, then his heart would shatter.
    A gust sprang up at that moment. It whipped Naotalba’s gray cloak, churning the snow at her feet into glittering billows. First her body disappeared, then the pale oval of her face. The dark outline of her cloak flared outward, growing in size like a giant maw, opening to engulf the whole world. Around it, the wind raged, streams of sleet and darkness, far worse than any Hellers blizzard. He looked upon a tempest against which no man could stand, a maelstrom straight from Zandru’s coldest hell. And it was coming for him . . .
    NAOTALBA! NAOTALBA!
    Claws like frozen darkness pierced him. In a spasm of terror, he hurled himself backward. The psychic substance of his body stretched and tore. A brassy din reverberated through him.
    Eduin found himself back in his physical body, sprawled on the wooden floor. His outstretched legs convulsed for an instant. Then he scrambled to his feet. He ran trembling fingers over his face, feeling the skin damp and hot, as if with fever. He snatched up the filthy scrap of silk and tucked his starstone away. Chest heaving, he looked down upon the man on the pallet.
    Saravio lay back on the bed, his breath deep and even. The blue tinge had faded from his lips and as Eduin watched, the iron tension seeped from his muscles. His face relaxed, giving him the aspect of a sleeping child.
    Eduin’s heart pounded in his ears and sweat ran freely down the sides of his neck and across his chest and back. Gradually, his terror gave way to pity. He knew very well the taste and weight of obsession, the bitterness of enslavement. What must it be like to live, day by day, with such visions, cast out by the very Tower that was his best hope of healing?
    If Eduin were to have any chance at ending his father’s curse, he must find some way to help this poor, crazed man. Murmuring a prayer he thought long forgotten, Eduin slipped out the door.

    Eduin returned to Saravio’s quarters late in the day, as the early dusk engulfed the canyons of the city. The place was very much as he had left it, with Saravio lying on his side, knees bent toward his chest, head resting on his outstretched arm, breathing deep and regular. Eduin sensed rather than saw all this. The battered lantern that he had purchased with part of his day’s earnings cast an uncertain light across the room. In his other hand, he clutched a packet of nutbread, the cheapest he could find, and a skin of water. It had taken all of his ragged determination not to fill it with ale instead.
    Sighing with weariness, he set the lantern on the crude table and lowered himself to the pallet. He placed one hand on Saravio’s shoulder. The physical contact flooded him with laran sensations. As Saravio slept, his brain had continued its recovery. Waves of energy rippled through the overlapping systems of nervous tissue and energon channels, slow but steady.
    Eduin sent out a mental probe, a simple telepathic thought. It ought to have been as clear as spoken word to the man’s awakening mind, but there was no response, not even a flicker of awareness. He had not expected one.
    He shook the shoulder gently. Saravio’s eyes opened.
    “It’s you. I dreamed . . . Naotalba . . .”
    “Yes, you’re all right now. Here, you must eat something.” Gently, Eduin helped the other