Marion Zimmer Bradley - Clingfire Trilogy 01 - The Fall Of Neskaya

THE FALL OF NESKAYA

BOOK ONE OF

The Clingfire Trilogy

MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY

AND

DEBORAH J. ROSS

DAW BOOKS, INC.

DONALD A. WOLLHEIM. FOUNDER

375 Hudson Street,New York ,NY10014

ELIZABETH R. WOLLHEIM

SHEILA E. GILBERT

PUBLISHERS

www.dawbooks.com

Cover art by Romas Kukalis.

DAW Book Collectors No. 1189.

DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Putnam Inc.

Book designed by Stanley S. Drate / Folio Graphics, Inc.

All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that

this book may have been stolen property and reported as "unsold and

destroyed" to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher

has received any payment for this "stripped book."

First paperback printing, July 2002 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

U.S.PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

MARCA REGISTRADA.

HECHO ENU.S.A. PRINTED IN THEU.S.A.

Rose, this one's for you!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Heartfelt thanks to the usual list of suspects: Betsy Wollheim, Ann Sharp, Elisabeth Waters, Susan

Wolven and es¬pecially Dave Trowbridge, for mcguffins, military insight, and so much more.

DISCLAIMER

The observant reader may note discrepancies in some details from more contemporary tales. This is

undoubtedly due to the fragmentary histories which survive to the present day. Many records were lost

during the years following the Ages of Chaos andHundredKingdoms , and others were distorted by oral

tradition.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Immensely generous with "her special world" of Darkover, Marion Zimmer Bradley loved encouraging

new writers. We were already friends when she began editing the DARKOVER and SWORD &

SORCERESS anthologies. The match between my natural literary "voice" and what she was looking for

was extraordinary. She loved to read what I loved to write, and she often cited "The Death of Brendan

Ensolare" (FOUR MOONS OF DARKOVER, DAW, 1988) as one of her favorites.

AsMarion 's health declined, I was invited to work with her on one or more Darkover novels. We

decided that rather than extend the story of "modern" Darkover, we would re¬turn to the Ages of

Chaos.Marion envisioned a trilogy be¬ginning with the Hastur Rebellion and the fall of Neskaya, the

enduring friendship between Varzil the Good and Car-olin Hastur, and extending to the fire-bombing of

Hali and the signing of the Compact. While I scribbled notes as fast as I could, she would sit back, eyes

alight, and begin a story with, "Now, the Hasturs tried to control the worst excesses of laran weapons,

but there were always others under de¬velopment ..." or "Of course, Varzil and Carolin had been

brought up on tales of star-crossed lovers who perished in the destruction of Neskaya ..."

Here is that tale.

Deborah J. Ross March 2001

BOOK I

1

Coryn Leynier woke from a dream of fire sweeping down from the heights. The dream had begun

peacefully enough, but with an unusual vividness, as were so many of his dreams since his body had

begun changing with adoles¬cence. At first, his glider hovered beneath Darkover's great Bloody Sun, its

silken sails spread wide over fragile wooden struts. Last summer, his eldest brother, Eddard, who was

heir to the mountainous Verdanta lands, had shown him how to ride the air currents for short distances.

In his dream, Coryn soared freely. He felt no fear of the height, only plea¬sure in the limitless heavens.

Summer lightning flashed in the distance, across the Hellers. The air crackled with energy. Smoke curled

sky¬ward from a grove of resin-trees. Coryn tensed. Since he could remember, he and his brothers had

kept watch for for¬est fires, sometimes competing to be the first to sound the alarm.

In his dream, Coryn struggled to turn the glider, to head

back toVerdantaCastle with the news. But the wood and leather apparatus would not respond. It fought

him like a liv¬ing thing, twisting and turning in his grasp.

Coryn noticed the starstone, a chip of brilliance, lashed to the crossbeams. It looked just like any other

starstone, be¬stowed on each child according to family tradition on the Midwinter Festival following their

twelfth birthdays, but this one he knew was his own. As he gazed at it, blue light flared within, as if in

recognition. He'd heard that with such a stone, a trained laranzu could send a glider wherever he wished,

not just where the uncertain winds took it. The idea stirred something in him, a wordless longing.

To go where he chose, not where chance carried him... .

Coryn gazed into the starstone and pictured the glider turning back toward home at his command. Blue

fire flick¬ered in its depths. His nerves prickled and his stomach clenched, as rebellious as the glider.

Still, he kept his eyes fixed on the starstone, trying to go deeper, ever deeper.

The fire shifted, pouring down the hillsides, leaping over the firebreaks which were strangely overgrown

with neglect. In a matter of moments, it enveloped brush and copse, sweeping over everything in its path.

Grass went up in puffs of smoke. Resin-trees blazed. As the pockets of flammable sap ignited, the trees

exploded, one by one, showering live cinders in every direction. Smoke, dense and acrid, billowed from

the forest.

Far in the distance, alarm bells sounded, over and over again as every holding in the Hellers, from

Aldaran to theKadarinRiver , was roused.

In the next heartbeat, he was sitting up in his own bed inVerdantaCastle , shivering as if it were deep

snow season and not the height of summer, with alarm bells ringing in his ears.

Coryn scrambled into his boots and bolted headlong down the stairway. Tessa, his oldest sister, hurried

along the corri¬dor with a tray of cold meat buns. She wore an old gray dress, several inches too short

and patched with scraps of even older garments. She'd tied a white kerchief over her hair, so that she

looked more like a scullery maid than her usual demure self, the lord's eldest daughter. Coryn grabbed a

bun and stuffed it in his mouth while he pulled on his shirt. For once, she did not object.

In the courtyard outside, dawn cast muted shadows across the bare-raked earth. A fitful breeze carried

the hint of the day's heat to come.

The yard seethed with movement. Everyone old enough to walk was here, all hurrying in different

directions, carry¬ing shovels and pitchforks, rakes and sacks and buckets, folded blankets and

threadbare linens for bandages. Yard-fowl squawked and fluttered, raising more dust. One of the castle

dogs scampered by, barking. Men struggled to lash shovels and rakes to the saddles of pack chervines.

Padraic, the castle coridom, stood on the rim of the largest watering trough, shouting orders.

Coryn paused on the threshold, heart pounding. For an awful moment, the yard seemed to slip

sideways. He gulped, tasting bile, and swayed on his feet.

Not again! he stormed inwardly. He could not, would not be sick. Not now, when every able-bodied

male over the age of ten, be he family or servant or guest, was needed on the fire-lines.

"You're with me on the firebreaks, lad." Eddard stepped into the yard, gesturing for Coryn to follow.

"Get the horses ready!" Eddard was dressed for riding in supple leather pants and boots, and he carried

two message rolls wrapped in oiled silk. "Petro!"

Coryn's next older brother, Petro, had already mounted

the sleek Armida-bred black which was the fastest horse in the stables. His face was flushed and his

black hair, so un¬like Coryn's bright copper, jutted in all directions, giving him the aspect of both fear

and excitement.

Eddard thrust one of the message rolls into Petro's out¬stretched hand. "This one is for Lord Lanil

Storn, a direct re¬quest for his help."

"Help?" Petro asked, incredulous. "From Storn? Are we that desperate?"

"We've asked under fire-truce. This one looks to be the worst within memory," Eddard said, clearly

uneasy. "Only a fool would let his neighbor's house burn and think his own safe."

Fire-truce, Coryn repeated silently. But would it hold? Verdanta and Kinnally had been raiding each

other's lands for so many years that few recalled the original squabble. He believed it had had something

to do with the ownership of a nut-tree grove which had long since died of root blight dusted accidentally

over the hills by aircars from Isoldir.

"Father also asks for your passage to the Tower at Tramontana. If Lord Storn grants you leave," Eddard

said with a twist of the mouth that indicated how unlikely he thought it, "you are to give this second roll to

the Keeper, Kieran. Also give him a kinsman's greeting, for he is Aillard, related to Grandmama's family."

Petro tucked the rolls into his belt, his eyes stormy. "If Dom Lanil believes he can gain some advantage

over us by waiting while we spend our strength on this fire or by block¬ing Tramontana's aid, then no

mere scroll of parchment will change his mind."

"Mind you bide your tongue," Eddard said with a trace of sharpness, "and repeat only what you have

been given and not one of your everlasting speeches. Your mission is to ask

the man for help, not to lecture him on the evils of modern society."

Petro subsided. "I will do my best. After all, Father says that if you treat a man as honorable, he is more

likely to be¬have that way."

"Good speed, then, lad, and may Aldones bless your tongue as well as your horse's heels."

Petro nodded and spurred his horse through the gates at breakneck speed, scattering yardfowl.

Eddard gestured to a man halfway across the yard, strug¬gling with the harness on a chervine. "No! Not

like that!"

Lord Leynier's bay stallion, massive enough to carry even a legendary giant, whinnied and danced

sideways, ramming one shoulder into the scullery lad clinging to its bridle. The boy sprawled in the dust

as the horse reared, pawing the air.

Coryn grabbed the reins before the beast could trample the boy. White ringed the horse's eye and its

body reeked with the smell of fright. He put one hand over its nose, pull¬ing its head down. "Easy, easy,"

he murmured. The horse snorted, eyes less wild.

"Here, now." Lord Beltran Leynier, tall and grizzled, yet still powerful across the shoulders, took the

reins from Coryn and swung up into the saddle. "First party, with me!" He galloped for the road,

mounted men and pack animals close behind.

Stepping back, Coryn stumbled into the kitchen boy. The boy's cap went flying, to reveal pale red hair,

twisted into clumsy braids and wound into a crown. Aldones! It was his baby sister, Kristlin, dressed in

some servant's castoffs. She was only eight, too young to be assigned to anything more interesting than

rolling bandages or chopping onions. From the look she gave him, he'd find spiders in his bed if he said a

word to anyone.

"Coryn! Where are those horses?" Eddard yelled from across the yard.

Within the dusty closeness of the stables, the few re¬maining horses stamped and nickered. The groom

had just finished cinching the saddle on Eddard's raw-boned gray mare. Coryn checked girth, breastplate

and crupper strap on his own dun-colored Dancer, for they would be scrambling over rough terrain and

a slip of the saddle could be fatal.

"You be careful out there, you young rascal," the groom said. "I've not seen a fire this bad since

Durraman's donkey was foaled."

In the yard, Coryn scrambled on to Dancer's back and caught the lead line for the pack chervines from

Padraic. He and Eddard clattered down the strip of road in the brighten¬ing day.

A plume of smoke rose from the forested hills, still many miles off. Coryn sensed the acrid lightning tang,

the greasy feel of smoke from half-burned soapbush, ash across his face.

The world reeled, sky and green-gold hills blurred ... melted.... Acid stung his throat. He swayed in the

saddle, retching.

With a fistful of sandy mane in one hand and the other clenched on the pommel of his saddle, Coryn

struggled to keep his seat. Eddard, riding ahead of him, had not noticed. The spasm of dizziness passed,

leaving a sour film in Coryn's mouth.

Coryn's hand went to his neck, where his starstone lay in¬sulated in the pouch of thick silk which he'd

stitched him¬self. He felt its inner light as a wave of heat through his fingers.

He thought miserably that if only he knew how to use starstone and glider, as he'd dreamed, there would

be no need to send Petro racing to Tramontana, or be at the mercy

of High Kinnally. He, Coryn, could go aloft and drop the precious laran-made fire-fighting chemicals

directly on the blaze.

With that thought, he pressed his lips together, dug his heels into Dancer's sides, and galloped on.

Coryn, along with his brother Eddard and three of the small¬holders from the rough borderland along

the Heights, labored through the day, working their way along the estab¬lished firebreaks and cutting

new ones. Last summer's fires had been smaller than usual, but the winter had been mild. Dense foliage,

much of it flammable soapbush, overflowed every open space and gully.

By the next morning, it was clear that the men were spread too thin, the land too vast to clear

containment breaks of everything that could burn. As yet, there was no word from High Kinnally.

Perhaps it was too soon.

Eddard brought them to the southern hill above the fire to spy out its direction. Timas, the oldest of the

smallholders, studied the wind, the dryness of the underbrush, the slope of the hills. He had worked

Verdanta's fire-lines since he was a boy.

"Tha'," he pointed up the slope, "and tha'. D'ye see it, m'lord, how the land sits to channel the flame

upward, toward the grove?"

Coryn, munching on a handful of nutbread smeared with sour chervine butter, followed the old man's

gesture. The wind blew fitfully and at an angle. If it held steady, Timas said, the fire would follow the

steeper path to a protected valley where resin-trees and firecone pine crowded together. But if it

changed direction ...

The other way, the shallow, easy slope, bore nothing but grass. A spit of bare rock separated the two

paths.

Coryn's sight wavered and he sensed the streams of ghostly fire. Images came to him—the wind

freshening, shifting. Narrow tongues of fire lapped at the curling grass; it caught, flames racing faster than

a galloping horse. Seeds sent tiny embers aloft as they popped, leaping ahead of the main fire. He saw

them land on the rocky spit and as quickly go out. The fire left a crust of black behind it as it leaped along

the easy slope.

Coryn's sight raced ahead with the fire. More embers landed on the rocky divide. Beyond his line of

vision, the spit narrowed, the rock weakened by years of alternating summer heat and winter freeze. A

spiderweave of minute cracks gave rooting to windweed and other quickly growing grasses which

sprouted in the spring rains and died as quickly in the heat. A single spark landed—he felt it catch, the

sudden flare of the dried windweed tendrils. In the next heartbeat, the fire burned on both sides of the

barrier, lap¬ping toward the resin-trees.

If the resin-trees go up, we will lose the entire mountain¬side. ...

Coryn blinked, realizing that a long moment had gone by.

"—but it will be worse if the fire heads due south," Eddard was saying. "We must not risk the trees."

The old man shook his head, eyes cast down before his lord's heir. "Ye canna' trust the grass," he said

stubbornly.

"Timas is right," Coryn said, a bit surprised at how steady his voice sounded. "The fire—it will start with

the grass but it won't stay there. Up there past the outcrop ..." Quickly, he described what he had seen.

The other men fell silent, listening to him.

"Aye, that's the way of it," the old man said, nodding.

"I've seen sparks leap ten feet or more. Rock, river, fire¬break. But you, young lord, how did you

know?"

"I—I saw it. It happened just like you said."

"Nay, lad, I said only how the fire could go. One way or t'other, at the beck of the wind."

Coryn lifted his chin and faced his older brother. "It will go that way. I saw it."

"You believe you did, chiyu." Eddard raked back his dark-red hair, leaving it just as unruly as before.

"But if we choose wrongly and leave the resin-trees unprotected—"

"Lord Eddard!" One of the men, who had gone down halfway toward the fire, shouted and pointed.

"The wind!"

"Zandru's curse!" Eddard spat. The wind had shifted, whipping the flames into miniature firestorms,

burning even hotter and faster than before.

Toward the grassy slope.

"Let it have the grass!" Eddard shouted, swinging up on his horse. "Downslope, where Coryn saw it leap

the rock! With luck we'll be in time!"

Coryn could not remember being so numb with exhaustion, so drained in every muscle and nerve fiber,

as when he and Old Timas stumbled into the makeshift camp on the third night of the fire. They had

worked without stopping all that night and the next day, cutting new, wider firebreaks, clear¬ing away

grass and underbrush.

They saved the resin-trees, only to lose the next two hill¬sides and part of a nut-tree grove. Coryn saw

the fear in the eyes of the smallholders who depended on what their chil¬dren could gather in the forests

to feed their families during the lean seasons. The next few winters would be hard, until

the nut trees which had not been too badly burnt could bear

again.'

Lord Leynier was a generous man. In times of need, the castle would slaughter some of its livestock, the

older and weaker animals, to distribute the meat and lessen the de¬mand for feed grain.

Now, toward the end of the third day, a young boy on a pony brought orders from Lord Leynier that the

men who'd gone out in the first groups were to rest. A handful of re¬placements had come from the small

estates to the south and east. But they could look for no help from High Kinnally. Lord Lanil Storn had

refused both men and Petro's passage to Tramontana.

At the news, a cry of dismay rose from the smallholders. Ash-streaked faces turned paler.

"Vai dom," said one man, "how can they not send help against—against fire?"

Eddard's jaw set tight, and for a moment Coryn saw his father's eyes flash in his brother's face. "I know

not if he means to let us waste our strength against the fire and then strike when we are weak, or if he is

fool enough to think the fire will stay on our lands only."

Coryn thought of the old proverb, Fire knows no law but its own. Then he remembered that Kieran, the

Keeper at Tramontana, was a distant Aillard cousin. The obligations of blood ran strong in the Hellers.

"Perhaps," he said in one of those quicksilver leaps of thought which came all too often now, "he fears

that the Tower may give us other things be¬sides fire-fighting chemicals."

"You mean weapons?" Eddard looked grim. "If only they would! That is, if there is anything left of us

once this fire is done."

Eddard turned toward the waiting horses, but Coryn

remained for a moment with Timas. The old man's eyes wa¬tered as if smoke still blew across them.

"It's a rough business," Coryn blurted out, aware of his own awkwardness. Without knowing why, he

wanted to say something, to ease the other man's unvoiced distress.

"Aye, lad, that it is." Timas's voice was gravelly from smoke, but Coryn felt the emotional resonances

beneath the words. "But fightin' fires isna' like warfare. Then it's the lords that get all the glory and it's us

poor folk that pay for it."

"But," Coryn said, repeating words he'd head his father utter, "would you not suffer even more under an

unjust ruler? Not every lord takes care of his people as my father does. Storn would let your children

starve while he sits in his castle and feasts, or so I've heard. Isn't that worth fight¬ing for?"

Sighing, Timas shook his head. "How little you know of it, lad."

"Eat as much as you can and then sleep," Eddard said as they reined their plodding horses into the

makeshift head¬quarters. The camp lay on flat, rock-strewn ground, set on a hillside that had burned a

dozen seasons before, so that only brush and saplings grew. A spring yielded water for cooking and

bathing burns.

The women and younger children of the castle had set up picket lines, an outdoor kitchen, and a few

tents. Tessa and the next youngest sister, Margarida, moved briskly between the tents, carrying bandages

and salves for burns, basins of washing water, and poultices for pulled muscles. In the ab¬sence of Lady

Leynier, for their mother had died at Kristlin's birth, Tessa assumed the duties of supervising the

household staff and dispensing herbal remedies to everyone on the

estate. In her plain dress and kerchief, her sleeves rolled up to the elbow, she issued a stream of orders

for the care of the injured. Margarida followed in her wake, a wide-eyed shadow.

Men who had come in earlier, their faces and garments grimed with ashes, hunkered over cups of

meat-laced por¬ridge or sprawled exhausted on blankets.

Coryn slipped to the ground and gratefully handed over Dancer's reins to one of the castle people. The

smell of the food sent a wave of nausea through his belly. He followed Eddard to the rough table where

Lord Leynier sat, poring over maps with his coridom. At his left side, a stranger stood, watching silently.

The hood of his dark gray cloak masked his features.

"We have arrested the fire along these lines," Padraic said, tracing them on the map. "But we cannot

guard this en¬tire front, even if we could get there in time. If we push on, if we try to save this part of the

forest, then we risk losing even more in other places."

Tired men are careless, Coryn repeated to himself what his father had said so many times. And fire is

unforgiving.

"If we permit the fire to burn itself out," his father said unhappily, "who knows how much more it may

consume? There will be even greater hunger and cold in the winters to come."

Coryn felt a rush of pride for his father and how he cared for the lands and people under his

stewardship.

"The Tower folk will arrive in time to save your forest," the stranger said.

"Father," Eddard broke in, frowning. "We received word that Petro could not get through to

Tramontana. I understood that we could expect no help from that quarter, or from the six-fathered

ombredin at High Kinnally."

"It is our good fortune that Dom Rumail arrived early,"

Leynier said with a deference that surprised Coryn. "And that he has the skill to contact the Tower

through his star-stone."

"I could do no less." The stranger lifted the hood of his cloak back from his face, revealing a face so long

and seamed, it might have been made from leather. Coryn thought him the homeliest man he had ever

seen, yet the deeply shadowed gray eyes burned with an inner fire.

"It is in my brother's interest to protect the lands of his future daughter-in-law," Dom Rumail said.

Laranzu! Coryn caught the glitter of a starstone at the man's throat. He had never met a laran-gifted

sorcerer be¬fore and now stared, entranced.

"Come on, young pup," Eddard threw one arm around Coryn's shoulders. "We'll starve, standing here.

Let's eat!"

Coryn lowered himself to the folded blanket in between two sleeping men, his brother Petro and one of

the stable hands, and accepted a cup of stew topped with dried fruit from Kristlin, who was still wearing

those castoff boy's breeches.

With the first tentative bite, Coryn felt ravenously hun¬gry. He wolfed down the whole portion.

Someone else brought him another plate and also a tankard of watered ale. He dimly felt his head drop

forward, someone take the dish and cup from his hands, and then he felt nothing at all.

Shouting woke him, and for a dizzying moment he won¬dered if the last three days had not been yet

another dream. He struggled upright, blinking in the cloudless daybreak. Another man, not Petro, snored

at his side, but the rest of the camp was already roused.

Marion Zimmer Bradley - Clingfire Trilogy 01 - The Fall Of Neskaya

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