Zandru's Forge (12 page)

“You don’t?”

“Oh, sometimes, when the work’s not too technically demanding. I do whatever I’m allowed to, but everyone knows I’m not here to stay. I suppose you could say I’m on sojourn, training for the throne and not the Tower.”

“The—? Who—who
are
you, Carlo?”

Carlo dipped his head, showing the first hint of diffidence. “I thought you knew.” Eyes filled with gray light met Varzil’s. “I’m Carolin Hastur.”

Carolin Hastur. Hastur of Hastur, nephew and heir to King Felix. The death of Rafael II made Carolin the next ruler of the most powerful branch of the Hastur Kingdom.

It had been over two centuries since the Peace of Allart Hastur, which had brought an end to the long, bloody conflict between Ridenow and Hastur. Yet war still smoldered in the Hundred Kingdoms, breaking out in a dozen smaller conflicts. Hastur and Ridenow had not found themselves on opposing sides... yet.

On impulse, Varzil reached out and placed his fingers between Carolin’s loosely folded hands. It was not quite a gesture of fealty, and it would not have been fitting in any case.

We must,
came Carolin’s thought. Then, aloud, “I do not know why, but you belong here in this Tower, just as I belong in the world, and that for the sake of our world, we must build a bridge between the two.”

Like the
bredini
of the song.
Embarrassed by his own romantic sentiment, Varzil pulled away. Without the physical contact, they dropped out of rapport. Something remained, as if they had indeed sworn themselves in that brief moment.

Everyone at Arilinn worked, not only at study and the discipline of
laran,
but the physical labor of maintaining the Tower. Lunilla was a masterful organizer, so within a week of Varzil’s arrival, he was taking his turns at pot scrubbing, floor sweeping, onion peeling, bundling linens into the town for laundry, and other errands.

“The
kyrri
are useful in their fashion,” she said, forestalling objections she’d heard a hundred times, “but they don’t think the way humans do. We’ve learned never to let them near a dirty plate or a basket of apples.”

One frosty morning about a month after he’d arrived at Arilinn, Varzil went out with Carolin, Eduin, Cerriana, and young Valentina, the girl with the ringlets, to pick apples. A small orchard of tart green fruit, perfect for pies and sauces, had been donated to the Tower by a grateful merchant whose wife and son had been saved in childbirth by the Tower monitors.

They made a festive caravan with Carolin mounted on his fine horse, Eduin on a mule, and the rest trotting along on pannier-laden stag ponies. Varzil had to cross his legs over the beast’s withers because of the huge wicker baskets. He jounced along the road, his rump getting ever more bruised.

By the time the young people arrived at the orchard, the sun had already melted the frost, although white still laced the shadows. The orchard lay on the lowest slopes of the western Twin Peak. Many of the trees were old, misshapen by decades of neglect. Someone with more enthusiasm than skill had taken a pruning saw to them, Varzil saw. Heavily knotted branches stretched out in unbalanced array, giving the trees the appearance of dancers in a tipsy Midsummer revel. The branches bowed under the glossy emerald-toned fruit.

They hobbled the horse and mule, leaving the
chervines
to graze. Eduin and Cerriana, who had worked in this orchard in seasons past, drew out the wooden ladders and aprons from the little shed. In her enormous canvas apron, Valentina looked like a doll dressed by a seaman.

Cerriana had no head for heights, so she and Valentina took the lowest branches, those which could be reached on foot. Eduin and Carolin started on the biggest tree, at the end of the row. Within a few minutes, they’d left the ladder behind to perch on the twisted branches.

Varzil placed his ladder in his usual careful way, studying the branches. Applewood wasn’t supple like willow. Those limbs, as heavily laden as they were, could snap in a rough wind. As he climbed, the tree creaked under his weight.

He began picking, dropping the apples into his pocketed apron. The aroma of the fruit filled his head, sweet with lazy summer afternoons. He bit into one. The skin was tough, the flesh crisp, the juice a burst of honeyed tartness.

Valentina, the youngest, began a song in her sweet child’s voice, and Cerriana joined in. Eduin sang in a surprisingly good tenor, as did Carolin. Varzil, with no singing voice of his own, was content to simply listen. He kept his eyes on the apples and his mind on judging how much weight each branch could take.

Crack! Crash!
came from across the orchard.

Varzil grabbed the nearest branch as the ladder went tumbling out from under him. He wrapped his legs around the branch, even as the tree swayed uhder his weight.

“Carlo!” Cerriana shrieked.

Varzil, clinging to his perch, couldn’t see exactly what had happened. Cerriana and Valentina rushed to the other tree.

Varzil shimmied down until he could get a foothold on the lowest branch and from there, drop to the ground. By some miracle, he managed to land on both feet.

Now he got a good look at the tree where Eduin and Carolin had been picking. Eduin still stood atop his own ladder. His thin features were set and ashen, his blue eyes lit with an unreadable expression. A massive branch had snapped off and crashed to the ground.

Carolin lay unmoving under the thickest part of the bough.

Cerriana threw herself down beside Carolin’s half-hidden form. With one hand, she touched his bare, outstretched hand.

“He’s alive.”

She was a monitor, Varzil told himself, and would know from a touch. Still, his heart stuttered as he rushed over.

He wrapped his hands around the thick, splintered branch and pulled. It was surprisingly heavy. He staggered under its weight. Valentina tugged uselessly at one of the smaller offshoots. Cerriana made no attempt to help, but reached underneath, toward Carolin’s head.

With her other hand, Cerriana took out her starstone, a chip of faceted, blue-tinged fire set in a filigree of copper on a long chain between her breasts. It glimmered into life at her touch. Varzil could almost see a halo of
laran
sparks surrounding her hands as she worked.

Valentina sniffled, but sat quietly. Her round eyes took on the serious, inward-focused look that Varzil already associated with matrix work. She was following Cerriana’s mind.

Varzil felt Cerriana’s concentration, the surge of her
laran
as she examined Carolin. But Eduin—Eduin’s mind was a blank. Varzil glanced up to see the older boy climbing down, rung by slow, studied rung.

Varzil inhaled deeply, filling his chest, just as he’d seen men on his father’s estate do when faced with some feat of strength. Letting the breath out in a rush, he tightened his grasp on the branch and heaved with all his strength. Not straight up, against the weight of the dense-grained wood, but sideways, pivoting the branch. To his surprise, it moved.

“Let’s get him out!” Cerriana sprang to life. “There’s nothing broken—it’s safe to move him.” She grabbed one of Carolin’s arms and Valentina, the other. Together, they managed to pull him clear away. Varzil lowered the branch.

Carolin lay motionless, head lolling, eyes closed. Thick lashes curled over pale cheeks. One arm stretched at an awkward angle and the shoulder bulged unnaturally.

Varzil sensed a faint presence.
Carlo? Can you hear me?

Silence answered him.

As Varzil knelt by his friend’s side, he felt Eduin’s approach as a prickle of the hairs at the back of his neck.

“He—he fell,” Eduin said. “There was nothing I could do.” He swallowed hard.

Through Eduin’s barriers, Varzil caught a tinge of intense emotion, fear and concern and an odd desperation, all blurred together.

Cerriana, once more in rapport with the unconscious youth, did not respond, but Valentina blinked.

“Don‘t—” Varzil began, meaning to say,
Don’t distract her.

“Don’t tell me what to do!” Eduin snarled. He circled the branch to crouch beside Cerriana.

No,
shuddered through Varzil. He bit back an exclamation. What was wrong with him? Eduin was Carolin’s friend, and he had four years of Tower training.

Just as Eduin stretched out his hand, Carolin’s eyelids fluttered. He took a deep, heaving breath. Moaning, he raised one hand to his forehead. “What happened—?”

“Hush,” Cerriana said. “Lie still while I monitor you.”

“No, I’m all right.” Carolin lifted his head and struggled to sit up. The brief tint of color immediately drained from his face. He fell back.

Varzil took Carolin’s hand between his. “Let Cerriana finish her work. It will take only a few minutes. If you sit up too soon, you’ll faint and get Valentina upset.”

Valentina had been sitting, watching quietly without the slightest evidence of any distress.

Carolin’s mouth quirked upward at one corner, but he made no further attempts to rise. Cerriana continued her scan of his body. Eduin mirrored her from the other side.

Watching Eduin’s serious expression and the care with which he examined Carolin’s shoulder, Varzil felt ashamed of his suspicions. Had he held a stupid grudge against Eduin for having greeted him so rudely on that first morning?

“You managed to hit your head pretty hard, Carlo,” Cerriana said, sitting back. “There’s no bleeding inside that thick skull of yours and your neck is intact. Your shoulder’s dislocated, but that seems to be the worst of it. I’ve done what I can, short of compressing two weeks’ rest into five minutes. There’ll be no more apple picking for you today, I fear.” She laughed. “A rather extreme method of getting out of work, I must say.”

Cerriana helped Carolin to sit up. He gasped in pain and grabbed his injured shoulder. His arm hung at an odd angle.

“Ah!” Carolin winced.

“Alas, I have not the skill to set it back,” Cerriana said. “Fidelis tried to teach me, but I’m not strong enough and I kept getting the angle wrong. I doubt you’d appreciate me putting my foot in your armpit and pulling as hard as I can. No, we’d best put the arm in a sling and get you back.”

“By then, the joint will have swollen. Putting it back will be much more difficult,” Varzil said.

“How would you know?” Eduin demanded.

Cerriana looked at Varzil, assessing him.
He’s so small,
he
must have grown up in a monastery. What could he know of such injuries?

Varzil shrugged. “The oldest son of my father’s paxman had his shoulder torn half out of its socket by a colt that had gotten into ghostweed.”

Memories rushed over him. He’d been watching from the pole corral, along with Harald and a few of the men. The horse had been one of a herd brought in from winter pasture for the yearlings to be branded, trained to halter, and then turned out for another season before being broken for riding. Kevan, Black Eiric’s teenaged son, had roped and haltered the colt.

The three-year-old, driven into a frenzy by the toxic weed, had thrown himself over backward to escape an imagined terror. Kevan’s hand had caught in the halter rope, spinning his body around and jerking his arm behind him before he could release himself.

Varzil had jumped into the enclosure a moment after Harald did. Harald had waved his arms to shoo the horse away. Squealing, the beast had shied and bolted for the other side of the pen, where it had stood, trembling and dripping foam from its nostrils. The other horses had whirled and bunched together at the far end.

Varzil had bent over Kevan, who clutched his shoulder even as Carolin did now. Kevan had cursed under his breath and the skin around his mouth had turned white with pain. The oldest of the stable men, Raul, had evaluated the damage with a few deft touches, the same care as he would use for a frightened foal. Raul himself was a wizened nut of a man, a head shorter than the others, his back bowed and knotted with years of bat tling bad weather and rough livestock.

“Slid your shoulder out of its socket, you have, young Kevan,” he had said in a kindly voice. “But we’ll soon put it to rights. Now you watch this, Master Varzil. The usual way’s to stick your boot in the poor man’s armpit and haul away like crazy. It works but tears the muscles something fierce. Sometimes the cure’s worse than the illness. But see here, you can do it smart instead of strong.”

Raul had placed Kevan on his back and, continuing to speak in a soothing tone, had bent his arm, pulling gently at the elbow. “Ah now, I’m waiting for the moment when the muscles relax. Easy is best, with men as well as horses. Can you feel it start to give? There, now.”

He had slowly brought Kevan’s elbow to his side and rotated the entire arm so that the hand lay on the opposite shoulder. Varzil heard a soft
pop!
An expression of incredulous relief spread over Kevan’s face.