A Flame in Hali by Marion Zimmer Bradley

man to sit up.
    Like an obedient child, Saravio accepted morsels of bread and sips of water. He took the first few bites tentatively, as if he had forgotten how to chew and swallow. When Eduin sent a gentle telepathic message, Saravio gave no sign, overt or mental, that he’d sensed anything.
    The little experiment confirmed Eduin’s suspicions. All through the day, as he had labored at mucking out stalls at the livery stables at the city’s edge, he had mulled over the morning’s events.
    Whatever Saravio’s talents while he was still at Cedestri Tower, before Naotalba had “visited” him, he was now as head-blind to telepathic contact as any commoner. Coupled with his delusions and unpredictable temper, that would certainly render him unfit for work in a matrix circle.
    Eduin thought it likely that whatever caused the seizures had also damaged that part of Saravio’s brain responsible for receptive telepathy. Saravio seemed to have no idea of his extraordinary projective empathy, his ability to temporarily override the compulsion spell.
    We are two of a kind, Eduin thought with a touch of unfamiliar compassion, each crippled through no fault of our own. Perhaps together we can make one whole patched-up man and limp through the world. No, he realized, he would no longer have to settle for a half-existence in the shadows. Life held the promise of much more.
    Emotion, hot and bright, came singing up behind Eduin’s throat. For the first time in his years of hiding, he had a friend, an ally. He would know moments of freedom, and in them, a chance to think, to plan, to reach beyond the gutters. Perhaps, too, he could help Saravio find peace and a use for his unusual talent. It would be a fair trade.

4
    T he last of the snow clung to the alleys and back streets of Thendara long after it had melted everywhere else. Here in the poorest sections, shadows clung, chill and secretive, to the broken walls. Grime scummed pools of slushy water. Half-starved children picked through the piles of refuse for scraps of moldy bread.
    Eduin, now close friends with Saravio, had moved to roomier quarters. Saravio sang to him whenever he could not bear the internal pressure of his father’s dying curse, and he would know a few days of release before the cycle, remorseless and inexorable, began again. Saravio sometimes lapsed into seizures after an episode, although the fits were never as severe as the first. Eduin dared not leave him, for fear that Saravio might stop breathing again. This only increased Eduin’s exposure to the euphoria of the song. His craving for drink abated, but at the same time he found himself longing for the moments of physical pleasure that accompanied Saravio’s laran manipulations, finding ways to draw them out. The allure frightened him, for it was, both in its power and its purity, far more seductive than ale.
    With the lifting of the numbing effects of drink, Eduin experienced a renewal of other emotions as well. Whenever Saravio suffered his fits, Eduin felt a mixture of pity, disgust, and guilt. Guilt that he himself had brought this malady upon the friend who sought only to help him. He never inquired about Saravio’s willingness to pay this price. Indeed, Saravio always responded cheerfully to his request and afterward, seemed unaware of what had happened. Then Eduin felt shame, as if he were taking advantage of the innocent trust of a child. He thrust the unpleasant feelings from his mind. What choice did he have? Silently, he promised himself that he would use the respite from the compulsion in a good cause. He swore he would find a way to do without the soporific effect. Usually he would feel better for a while, until he was forced to ask Saravio to sing again.
    As one tenday blended into the next and the sun swung higher in the sky, heralding the end of winter, Eduin began to wonder if he had exchanged one form of imprisonment for another. As far as he could tell, Saravio’s laran manipulation did